Any large gathering has an inherent potential for riot. Calling for mass protest has at least a small risk of leading to a riot. That doesn’t mean that calling for mass protest should be banned just because of a tiny risk of bad consequences. I would argue that calling for mass protest even when you know that the response has a strong chance of causing a riot is not wrong because the blame lies solely on the other side for provoking that behavior from a (presumably) lawfully gathered crowd.
In that case I am (partially) hopping aboard the Wookie train.
Let’s present the “mods can notify law enforcement” version as narrow as we can and still have all people on that “side” of the issue still support it.
From two recent Wookie posts:
Say that multiple mods must agree before law enforcement can be notified
Say that mods may notify law enforcement only in response to specific threats of lethal violence.
Personally I would still vote for the “no law enforcement” language version, but I could see that the forum as whole could prefer the above compromise.
I don‘t think that is practical. There might be an imminent thread and only one mod online. The situations we are talking don‘t allow hours for the mod council to convene.
Somebody has to have it for various reasons but as past events at the old, old site have shown there is the potential for abuse when mods have access to IP addresses.
There are about a billion things which could lead to very bad outcomes each much more likely than the scenario “a poster posts an imminent threat, a mod notifies law enforcement, law enforcement stops the threat based upon our notification”.
IP/email information in the hands of mods (current and future) is a precarious situation. Exacerbating that precarious situation by adding language to one of our rules about mods contacting law enforcement seems absurd.
Let’s say we all agree on not having that language in the rules. At some point somebody posts a picture of himself in a bulletproof vest with a bunch of guns saying I am going to shoot up place x. There is no reason to believe this is some kind of edgelordy joke. Do you want the mods to do nothing?
Why the fuck do you need a rule for someone to do something about that? That argument is really disingenuous and I have a hard time believing it’s in good faith.
These scenarios are very, very, very unlikely to occur here but they have happened elsewhere. This is almost certainly a purely philosophical exercise.
How about we make it a rule that if any mod for any reasons reveals any personal information (IPs, email addresses, names etc.) to anyone s/he is automatically and immediately demodded? We also don’t mention anything about transmitting information to law enforcement in the rules.
If it ever happens that a mod reveals information we can discuss if his action was in any way justified. We can’t stop it anyway.
Well, if you are looking for a serious answer, there are pros and cons to both versions of the rule (policy). I think on balance the better version of the rule (policy) is to remove the notify law enforcement language (and have a policy that mods will not notify law enforcement for any reason). And I don’t think it is even close.
I have given my reasons in many (too many?) posts above.
Oh fuck off dipshit. That sounds like a threat. Everyone already knows my info. I have an active stalker right now. Me of all people would care about the powers that be deciding on their own what to do with it, or feeling “obligated” because of some stupid rule.