We all know that he doesn’t think you’re racist and is just upset that people that he thinks are to the right of him advised him about the use of a problematic term.
You don’t understand, bro. A racist term coined by American racists specifically to denigrate Black people was adopted by British people smart enough to know that it was coined by American racists and who use it mean the same exact thing the American racists meant, but it’s totally not racist when British people say it. I, as an American, cannot possibly know anything about what transpires on the British Isles, so I can only assume their innocent, non-racist usage is because there are no marginalized Black people in the UK, and they don’t have a history of colonialism and slavery that they have justified on racist premises. As such, any language that to me looks problematic must be assumed to be as pure as the fresh fallen snow and couldn’t possibly harm anyone over there.
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My point is that a Manichaeist view of forum wars as a dualistic struggle between good and evil is wrong.
Maybe we should just learn to be more tolerant of people we think are racist.
Agreed, it’s not purely one sided. Of course, dismissing it as simply “both sides” is also wrong.
I’ll add that I don’t think any of the people that had/have authority roles here had any sort of evil intentions. It’s the nature of the beast and why I’ve come to believe it should be avoided as much as possible, especially at a place like this. A few had bad ideas and some got carried away.
There’s a continuum and the people who only post about moderation and meta issues are generally worse than the people who are engaged in drama but also post about other stuff. It’s reasonable to treat balancing out your bad forum wars posting with good posting as a mitigating factor in determining how much bad behavior is tolerated and how severely that behavior is punished, if punishment is warranted.
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Withholding content is one of the few leverages available those without software-enabled power and arguably the least damaging.
A threat of withholding content doesn’t have much leverage if you don’t first establish a track record of producing good content (where good is defined as whatever readers of the forum subjectively think is good).
I will take that as directed to me personally, which is completely fair, but I wasn’t really referring to me. I certainly don’t hold that lever. But then I don’t feel most of my posting has been “bad forum wars posting” and I’ve held posting related to that topic to the appropriate threads almost exclusively.
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It wasn’t directed specifically at you, although I don’t recall anything you’ve posted outside of meta stuff. I don’t read the weed thread and for all I know you’re a key poster there.
People complain about getting different treatment for CN when he also posts like an asshole, but he also established a perceived usefulness on COVID that earned him a longer leash. Is that unfair? Maybe, maybe not.
It’s draining to have every bit of forum governance be up for a vote, so we’ve delegated moderation tasks to moderators. Instead of rigidly defining a system of punishment like a three-strikes-and-you’re-out law, we’ve given mods some discretion.
Where we’ve failed is to establish clear guidelines to shape that discretion. It may be a mistake to give mods god-like powers to do whatever they want, but if that’s true then maybe it’s also a mistake to give posters god-like powers to post whatever they want. So what’s the middle ground?
Maybe this all doesn’t matter. Maybe this place dies and until it does UP is an open battleground where two warring factions sally forth from their protected communities to engage each other because they really like fighting.
But maybe one side vacates the premises and the other side has a chance to rebuild and show that they weren’t just about petty drama.
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From what people are saying about post counts it’s more likely the new place fails, which (apart from his Henry VIII complex) is one reason why cuse won’t resign his modship here.
Not surprising when they don’t have captains to attack relentlessly.
But does he help people with their math homework? That should give him a totes free pass if he does.
Tangent: who gave giddyup cuse and company permission to ban a bunch of accounts at exiled? …children.
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The exile was commonWealth’s thing from the start, it was never a community owned blah de blah.
Is that your memory or did he actually say this?
Yes, I remember he started it up after Mat shut down 2+2 Pol. It’s why he’s listed as the admin.
Right, he started it. I was surprised by your claim that he thought it was his, like he was in charge and owned it.