Regarding the forum, I recall a point you once made about the abstract proposition that certain politics might be actively promoted, and ideas antithetical thereunto actively suppressed, with such censorship justified on the basis of certain political positions; it happened to go along, on one or another occasion, with the bit about mature adults, and all that. And toward that, yes, it's easy enough to declare we find this proposition very problematic, unless that happens to be what we are doing.
What stands about your present iteration is that you wrote what you did not so long after I covered that point with you; so just to remind you:
• It's like when you see the word "dangerous", and start sneering about people getting triggered and needing protection from controversial subject matter: You never gave a damn about certain other triggers that matter. Most of us have seen stupid advocacy of dangerous behavior, before; what Sciforums doesn't need, nor anyone else for that matter, is others finding comfort and justification in those posts. That, too, is what dangerous means.
In a way, no, of course I'm not surprised to find you here putting your needs onto everyone else. Seriously, you even got the bit about, "There is always the option not to read". What was it I said? Oh, right, that a certain kind of annoying, why-did-he-waste-his-time post,
with its decision to respond or pass over, is the kind of unnecessary hostility we get for setting such low and antisocial bars.
And we should probably take the moment: While the idea you saw the note and went on to write that is something of a headscratcher, the flip side is that you're just that predictable.
Not irrelevant: Several years ago we revised the rules. Why did we bother? Or, more directly, we retained language about rational discourse. Why? Was it just too difficult to come right out and say it, then, that standards of rational discourse are anathema? Did something change 'twixt then and now? Why bother with the pretense? Compared to the rules we posted, did any of the moderators ever stand a chance? They thought they were trying to enforce the rules to help build an intelligent community for rational discussion. It turns out they seem to have been offending your aesthetics. Most of them didn't sign on for a place to catalog the lowest valences of effort willful antisociality could manage.
For the most part, they played along in good faith. And they tried. And then there's you, who apparently can't tell the difference between behavior and a political view. And tilts windmills.
Like this, which is your own make-believe, and for years, now. We can't even discuss behavioral questions because of this. And here's the trick: If someone is behaving poorly,
you are the one who thinks them incapable of behaving any better. That's the key to your appeal about silencing people.
So, let's go ahead and clear this part up: If one is forbidden to behave in a deliberately provocative manner, how is that person silenced? (
Is that person incapable of not behaving in a deliberately provocative manner?) If one is forbidden lying and misrepresentation of sources, how is that person silenced? (
Is that person incapable of not lying and misrepresenting?) We even have some breathakingly self-indulgent make-believe, and, okay, it's true, in one case if we told the member to stop behaving like a delusional, offensive prig, he probably couldn't, but it's not entirely clear what political view would be silenced, since it changes so often.
To the one, you never really did enumerate what political views you thought you were protecting; to the other, you made it kind of clear, anyway. But the sum effect of needing it here, James, even if it's full of shite, is that Sciforums is known as a place that needs it.
To engage this behavior in discourse can be futile, because it has, by your insistence, no obligation to good faith. People can choose to not read, and try to continue discussions disrupted by provocative behavior; in that case, the problem is invested in other people who didn't choose to not read, refused or saw no reason to leave the behavior alone. One can certainly try putting as many people as they need and can on ignore until it the willful antisociality doesn't reach them. At that point, we will have sacrificed pretty much everything about being a discussion board unto the altar of free speech, or whatever, creating a safe space to catalog cheap supremacism and antisociality.
How much effort should anyone put into trying to figure why you want it that way? Seriously, though, it's kind of useless, at this point, to keep pretending otherwise.
Still, I'm in a room where even the ostensibly enlightened are obliging people to kill. It's not that our little corner of bedlam is the only place that could ever happen, or anything; it just happens to be the room I'm in, and creating the sort of atmosphere and ethos in which these outcomes occur does require some effort.
