About Moderation (old original thread)

I like skydiver but this post sums up just about everything that is wrong with the way discourse is being handled today.

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Offended on behalf of others.

Put me in cuffs for racism, Wookie, or whatever transgression you imagine I committed with that post.

If someone is offended by a term you should never express it towards them. This is a given. It doesn’t matter the reason. You can pick between not using the term when speaking to them or not speak to them at all. Any other approach is assholeness.

But if you want to tone the language all together from a discourse of a group including areas you are not an active participator, you need a much better reasoning than ‘a single person is offended’.

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I have done this to only one poster on this forum, and he deserves it.

I don’t want to give the wrong impression that I was offended by it. I’ve used it myself. And perhaps this is a good time to reflect on that and try to remove it from my vocabulary like other words I’ve tried to stop using.

But when Sky takes the stance that words shouldn’t be used if they might offend even one person, but bans Fidget for bad faith for pointing out her use of AIDSing, it gives the impression that she is making an argument of convenience. And I still don’t understand how some of the mods are so sure that it doesn’t offend anyone here. Again, it seems quite obvious why it might.

And actually Jal made a pretty good case for it in that thread.

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Can we all agree that “AIDS” is an expression we should probably phase out?

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Yes, we can.

I can agree. And I promise promise promise I’m not being an ass when I ask this, but should we get rid of cancer too? As in, “he’s a fucking cancer.”

Neither phrase bothers me in the least but I can understand why people would take offense at either and have no intention of using either going forward.

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I’ve said this in PMs a few times now and will do so publicly. I have no special power to protect anyone from bans as a mod and in fact it will be easier for me to make a stink when I’m not a mod. I can almost guarantee you there will be no permas of long time regular users without a site-wide vote. There’s no reason to believe that’s where this site is going and I, and I’m sure many other regs, will do whatever we can to stop it if it looks like it’s going that way.

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Sure. Literally nobody has been arguing the contrary to this. It’s a strawman.

WTF I’ve been nice to you online for 16 years now just on the off chance you might become a mod some day (or President) and I could get some fringe benefits, and now you tell me…

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I have no idea if I made the right decision, you can’t roll these things twice, but I debated including more than just the c-word in the poll I did, but I thought it would be better to give c-word its own poll and then poll the s-word separately later. I think I explained that in the poll too.

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Maybe we could “phase out” “fuck” and “shit” as well? They are words whose original meaning was to refer to bodily functions, which seems somewhat uncouth.

I don’t understand how this has gone on longer than someone asking you to not say one thing and you just respecting that. Even if you think it’s silly or whatever, it’s such a minor thing to let fester.

now this is the high level of discourse i signed up for

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@goofyballer bumping this because I’m getting a bit fucking fed up of being made a scapegoat for this shit show. You going to ignore this just like you ignored my offers to self-restrict, so you have someone to blame?

No, dude. Bad read. I didn’t want other posters to get punished for whatever grievances you and wookie have against me. So I offered to self-restrict in that interest. And yes, since you didn’t believe I’d do it, I threw a 3-day ban out as a freeroll for you.

Sure. Saying to a woman “I’m sorry that’s how you feel” is a totally legit reason to get banned.

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I mean, @goofyballer, you can keep ignoring this. The reason Wookie or skydiver are not defending this is it’s because it’s fucking indefensible. Wake up and smell the roses, bro.