I posted a link to the hosting company of the pro rape douche bag who runs runs dot com. I suggested people send a message to his hosting company asking they cancel his hosting contract and deny him a voice.
This is a legal form of activism. All I am saying is people can send their opinions, the company in question can decide for themselves if they want to take action or not. Can you explain why you don’t allow this?
The purpose of this board is to promote discussion and interaction on a wide variety of topics among the participants here on this site.
It is not meant to simply be a venue to drum up activism (no matter how worthy) towards outside ventures. We also don’t allow promotion of commercial ventures, advertising blogs, fundraising appeals, except under rare circumstances and with prior moderator approval. Discussion about the activism and the issues at hand would be allowed. A thread or post encouraging people to sign petitions, email, lobby etc is not.
I hope that clarifies the reasons behind the board’s policy.
I don’t understand your criteria. If you are against ignorance then you should let people encourage activism as long as it’s legal. You have boards dedicated to politics as well as the pit. What are you losing by disallowing activism?
IANA PTB, but here’s my 2 cents …
What we lose is becoming a target for counter activism. Would you like 4chan to decide we’re a problem? I wouldn’t.
Better to talk amongst ourselves persuasively than to simply rouse the rabble then hope for no backlash.
We don’t want a gazillion people signing up here to direct traffic to their sites.
A lot of potential problems that nobody wants to get involved in.
The policy on this is right here in the Registration Agreement that you read when you signed up. It shouldn’t be a surprise.
The purpose of this board is to get people engaged and participating here. Discussions about all kinds of topics do that. Posts that are simply encouragement for off board pet projects detract from that.
And this.
Isn’t this a big overstated? I seem to remember a big thing where we were told that fundraising appeals are usually granted, and Dopers are told to beware of scams. And I definitely remember it being okay to put a site link in your signature–which you can only use once per thread. And, of course, you can sell stuff in the Marketplace.
Still, yeah, the stuff about online activism has always been a thing. Especially when it’s essentially starting a fight with another website.
My understanding is that the OP could make a thread about a story showing the existence of some sort of movement, or even post a link and talk about how horrible the site is. But not directly advocate for any sort of activism. Is this correct?
I’m not sure what you mean by overstated. Most commercial ventures are now routed to The Marketplace so we don’t approve them for the general board when asked. Advertisement of blogs rarely is allowed and those threads get locked frequently. The few fundraising requests that come through get looked at and are often approved but not always.
Without giving blanket approval, in general the scenario you describe is what I was getting at in my reply as being ok.
The OP seems to be accepting this is the policy, but is wondering about the rationale.
Moderator Note
I have removed the names from the OP as they are not relevant to the discussion.
Not to mention, such an action is unlikely to work, or achieve the desired effect at all. Hosting companies host all kinds of content they don’t necessarily agree with. Unless it starts to affect their other customers, your request is going to generally be deleted without a response.
I’m not going to tell you what will get the company’s attention, because it’s technically illegal activity.
Plus, they’d just get hosting elsewhere. The beauty of the internet is it doesn’t truly matter where your content is hosted.
Using some google detective work on this thread to find out what the page in question was I went to the site to see what it was all about, and there’s absolutely nothing on the front page endorsing rape. Or about rape at all. I’m not digging deeper into the site, but I find trying to get someplace pulled from their host just because you don’t like what they say to be far more offensive than anything actually on that site (as of the time I looked, anyway).
Regardless of all of that, the rule here is a good one, no one here would benefit from any sort of war with other sites.
Yes I accept the policy, I didn’t realise it was prohibited so I won’t do it again.
He does have a blog post advocating making rape legal on private property, TBG you didn’t dig deep enough. And as for it being effective, yes it could be, he is already the target of denial of service attacks, which is a pain for his hosting company, and he’s already on a large CDN. Theres only so many large hosting companies which can cope with that, it wouldn’t be hard to have him blacklisted from all of them.
He has a right to free speech, but so do the people writing his hosting company to ask him be denied a platform. Hosting companies are private companies and are not bound by the first amendment.
Suffice to say - you either followed the wrong links or you overlooked something. The pro-rape post in question is from a year ago, although it’s been getting a lot of mentions lately. In addition, there’s copious other examples of the character’s thoughts on race, gender, consent or lack their of, homosexuals, feminists, fat people, and sex tourism, all over the internet, just a google away.
Yes, but this post of yours is. (Slight :), on the endless loop.)
More seriously, insofar as I take these things more seriously–which is only when I get dinged and fight back like a poked crazed weasel in a cage–is the opening “…a link […] of the pro-rape douche bag…”
I know OP is worked up, so I, for one, (IANAM) wouldn’t give him a warning if I were, especially because it’s his first word of his OP, and it’s no fun to be told (as I was by a boss once) “…You through? Now get the hell out of my office, and walk back and start over, but this time remember who you’re talking to” (for SD forum rules, he’d say “…which office you’re in.”
On the other hand, a current thread (and a perennial one) is about getting dinged for an insult in the wrong forum with no preamble and a far less clear language. Different case in details, but the insult here is so clear, vulgar, directed at one person–-ie, a good specimen of one as any–that’s always “calm down”-ed, Noted, or Dinged (or Insta-dinged, by some opinions).
tl;dr: Crucify him!
What are you on about? Who’s talking about giving anybody warnings? I assume coremelt was calling somebody off-site a douchebag, which isn’t against the rules.
Yep, I’ve scolded by the mods a few times but never had a formal warning. And yes the removed link was to an offsite douche bag, not a board member.
Ah. My mistake. I thought alleged douche bag was a Doper, whose name was removed by ecg.
Never mind. Stand down on crucifixion.