The problem here is Posters B–C asking questions instead of making arguments. Poster A ignoring JAQs is good practice.
On* this board *there is a vast difference between:
Your post has racist views
vs
You are a racist.
That might be part of the problem.
Some questions are JAQs, some are trying to understand someone else’s position or argument, and some are arguments of a Socratic Method sort.
Ignoring JAQs is good practice as it is a means of trolling. Ignoring the other two sorts of questions of that list is not. It is OTOH quite annoying. And FWIW insults posed in the form of a question are also best ignored.
Carnal K I could not disagree more. The standard of attack the post not the poster is a very positive standard and not part of the problem. Cartoon categorizing of posters (as opposed to arguing about individual ideas and what makes them so problematic) OTOH would make this an uglier place very quickly.
MandJO, do you believe that name-calling reduces ignorance? If so, then in your mind is that the most effective way to reduce ignorance? Does isolating those with ignorant beliefs into groups of self-affirmation reduce ignorance?
Look I’m not signing up to spend large portions of my time with trolls and jerks either, be they those who are hateful on the Far Right or sanctimonious and arrogant on the Left (both make this board a less fun place for me). But reality is that contact with other ideas is a slow and inefficient means of changing hearts and minds, and still the only means that does any good at all. Censor what we will for the sake of this being a more enjoyable place to spend some time, but making it less here by fiat does not make it in reality any less, and likely only ever so marginally facilitates its real world increase. Don’t pretend that because you are seeing it and directly combating it less you have won some battle against it.
It did work and it’s still working. We’re a good decade behind on trans issues than we were on, say, gay marriage. When I joined these boards, the majority of Americans didn’t think same sex couples should be able to legally marry. Pew wasn’t polling about “whether it’s possible for someone to be a gender different from the sex they were assigned at birth” (their current language). We weren’t talking about the topic back then, with only a few threads in the early days of the board. I wasn’t even thinking about it.
And I don’t have a 2019 poll, but per Pew in 2017, the majority of Americans were answering “no” to the above. If random new posters are representative of the general population, then it’s a coin flip whether the feel one way or another. Ignorance doesn’t fight itself. You might not convince the bigot, but there are people reading even if they aren’t posting, and you can convince them. The people who don’t know anyone who is trans. The people who haven’t thought about it much. The people who have only heard about the topic from biggots.
I.e. asking someone else to make the argument for you instead of making it yourself, aka laziness.
After careful consideration of this topic, and thinking about all the changes this Board has gone through in all the years I’ve been here, I have three recommendations.
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Close down the Pit. We have many other places on the Internet where we can howl at the moon for most topics, and allowing us a designated sniping area to use against each other is just inviting trouble.
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When mods start getting multiple complaints about a particular poster’s style, even if an individual post doesn’t quite rise to the level of warnable, don’t hesitate to hand out notes.
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Make warnings more severe. That doesn’t mean the mods should hand out more, but the consequences should be more direct. First warning - okay, now you’ve been officially warned. Second warning - suspension for a week. Three times and you’re out. To balance that, let warnings expire after a year or two.
You have a very incorrect understanding. In point of fact intelligent questioning is quite a lot of work. Asking questions that create the space that reveals the weakness of a position is not lazy.
At his peak Ted Koppel was a master of this. He did not argue against any guest but he asked the questions that gave them the rope to hang themselves with.
This may or may not be a digression from the topic at hand, but in the spirit of the board moving forward in a productive direction I want to cite my slight surprise at the banning of Budget Player Cadet, more as a case study than as an individual issue.
BPC has always been given to extreme and emotional forms of argumentation, true. And among the recent warnings there are two that needed to be slapped down and maybe even removed: wishing harm on elected officials and wishing harm on certain conservative journalists. Those are inexcusable and potential legal liabilities to the board. But beyond those two he’s simply struck me as a passionate poster who sometimes brushes past the rules to make his impassioned points.
What to do about a poster like that I’m not sure. Maybe longer suspensions? But here’s my concern.
My concern is that we end up with a board increasingly populated with ill-informed but awfully civil JAQers, sea-lioners, and faultlessly polite conspiracy theorists (and by golly, we actually endorse witnessing/CT in GD as long, of course, as it’s very polite!). We already have a handful of posters (I’m not trying to finger just one) who are a waste of time and a detriment to the board because their content, quite frankly, is shit. I don’t mean that I disagree with it. I mean it’s vapid and utterly useless.
The mods have always been adamant that it’s not their job to rule on the quality of content, but only on adherence to the rules. I would like to suggest that for the long-term future of the board, this is wrong. Consider a magazine whose editors rule only on flouting the magazine’s rules of style and conduct and otherwise accept any drivel that is submitted. How long would such a magazine attract quality readers and contributors? How long would it last?
I’m not suggesting that moderators review every post submitted – far from it! All I’m suggesting is a more liberal attitude to reports of ridiculous posts, where (for instance) an immediate defense of some nonsense in GD is defended as “witnessing, and therefore allowable” should be immediately nuked instead, as most such threads go nowhere anyway. Same with suspected trolling/JAQing posts in GD and Elections. Yes, I’m asking mods to step up and make their jobs even harder, but I don’t see an alternative. I keep hearing that participation in the board is declining, and from some of the comments from old-timers, I suspect that the quality is, too. I don’t necessarily want more liberals on the board, I want more intelligent people from both sides of the aisle, fewer idiots, fewer deliberate disruptors, and better and more informed discourse.
To his everlasting credit, I think that by establishing some general principles specifically directed at a couple of posters habitually guilty of thread disruptions, Bone was taking a step in the right direction.
If you can counter an argument, you can counter it. If you can’t, or can’t be bothered, you can still play games with fools for entertainment purposes.
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I’m not taking a pro-name calling stance. What I want to be able to do is have moderation shut off certain hijacks by fiat. Transgender people are mentally ill. Gay kids need conversion therapy. Most girls who say they were raped are lying. Genes for intelligence are much more commonly found in white and Asian populations. Racism is basically over and most stories you hear these days are made up for attention. When a thread goes into these directions, I want the mods to be able to say “This is considered a settled question on the SDMB. If you want to argue it’s not true, you need to find a different forum.”
You know what I think really helps move the needle on bigotry? It’s the targets of bigots feeling free to come out into the light, to be normal people who, through their normalcy help dissipate the “othering” that permits the bigotry in the first place. When we treat transphobia, homophobia, racism, sexism as propositions in a formal debate club, we bend over backwards to make sure that those poor misguided souls have a safe space to develop their ideas. But what we aren’t doing is making this a safe space for the targets of those “misguided souls”.
Imagine a college class is having a discussion on the nature of crimes and violence, and a student says “I think most people of African descent just don’t have the same capacity for abstract thought as white people. A few freaky ones are as smart as normal white people, but it’s less likely”. The class gets antsy—two or three kids out of 40 are of African heritage, and they feel personally attacked. Students bring up counter-arguments, but the original kid just refuses to really address those, and just sticks to his claim, citing horrible sources. The only role the professor plays is to tell the class “I will kick out anyone who raises their voice”. After a bit the conversation shifts–but the next day, the student makes the same claim. Again, people get upset. Several go to the professor after class. They ask him to shut it down. He says “It’s not my place to decide if he’s right or not. As long as he doesn’t raise his voice, he can say whatever he wants in my classroom. I hope you guys can change his mind”. This goes on for weeks. Some of the not-bigoted kids lose their temper and get kicked out. Which to do you think is more likely? The bigoted kid will see the light, or the minority kids will drop the class? I think the latter. And I think it’s entirely possible that the bigoted kid will convert a couple other kids to his point of view–and the professor is as fault here, by not shutting that shit down and by legitimizing that view point as worthy of debate.
You are worried we are driving away bigots. I am worried we are driving away women, gay people, and transgendered people. And yes, I think sequestering people with extremely bigoted views is preferable to the alternative, which is sequestering their targets. I think a child who grows up with gay friends is less likely to be a homophobe than a child who is raised hearing pro-homophobia arguments treated with reasoned respect–and gay people afraid to come out and insert themselves into that conversation. You say “I’m not signing up to spend large portions of my time fighting these jerks”, but if you’re the only black person or gay person or transperson or woman in the thread, the thread is about you, you can’t just opt out. You can’t compartmentalize. And you can’t ignore the fact that the official administrative position is that they may well be right and if you think they are wrong, it’s on you to prove it. Every Damn Time, no matter how often the same arguments are brought up.
You are putting the bigots in the center of this story–their rights, and what is best for them. What about their targets?
Nope. We weren’t creating college “safe spaces” in the early 200Xs, and the trend was the exact opposite wrt same sex marriage. Bigotry is bad science and will ultimately not stand up to scrutiny.
There was not more homophobia on college campuses in the 2000s than in the generation before. There were more gay people that were publically identified as such, and society did have more protections for them by then–GSAs and other organizations that would advocate for a student if he was being harassed or bullied or attacked. Public bigotry toward homophobia was much, much less acceptable in 2005 than in 1995. The change was not that we started letting the homophobes speak. They had always been allowed to speak. What changed is that we started letting gay people speak.
#metoo wasn’t “let’s let men who assault women open up about their reasoning, so that we can dismantle it”; it was about women deciding to share and normalize their stories. BLM wasn’t “let’s let cops give their rational, logical reasons for racial disparities in police department outcomes”, it was letting minorities share their lived experiences–this time with video footage.
“We just need to have civil conversations” is the cry of the white moderate. Civil, reasonable conversations led to entrenched Jim Crow, not progress. Progress came with sit-ins, marches, and boycotts.
MandaJO, before I agree with your several good points I will strongly disagree with one: no I am not putting bigots at the center. Frankly I am putting your and my enjoyment of this site at the center. I concur with cutting some lines off right off in service of that. I want diverse thought inclusive of posters who teach me about minority and disempowered perspectives that I am ignorant about. And I don’t want an echo chamber of correct thought because it would be boring. I am being self centered and am honest about it.
I do recognize your point that erring on the side of keeping disempowered voices participating is more important than tolerating ugliness but I do still argue that a board in which voices like mine are always the farthest to the right would a very distorted conversation not very reflective of our world. That would not appeal to me at all at least. Both boring and uncomfortable. Bleh.
OTOH I do see some of the same among intelligent conservative voices and those who are disempowered: a lack of willingness to be in the same rooms as each other and a tendency to view other thoughts as not with me then against me and to hyperpolarize what could be useful discussion.
If this place cannot provide the rooms and moderation that facilitates actual discussion then I don’t know where can.
Maybe it simply can’t exist right now.
But there were also people even more radical in their tactics and rhetoric than the leadership of the civil rights era who were unsuccessful. So it could be that the freedom to say “this is a racist position” is more likely to lead to successful engagement than either letting people have free reign as long as they are polite or labeling them as racist would be. (To an extent, of course: the entrenched have already been shown not to change their minds.)
Gay kids need conversion therapy. When was the last time this was seriously brought up?
*Most girls who say they were raped are lying. * I dont remember ever seeing this, I have seen "Some girls who say they were raped are lying. " which isnt very good either. It’s quite rare- in fact for every liar then are ten who dont report.
Genes for intelligence are much more commonly found in white and Asian populations. Used to be we’d see this in GD every so often, sure. When was the last time this was posted?
Racism is basically over and most stories you hear these days are made up for attention. Hmm, I think that racism has been on the downturn for ever year of my life- and I am a Boomer. But it’s not gone, possibly never will be. I have seen people here argue that racism is no longer a serious problem "since we elected Obama’. :eek: Ok, not **as **serious of a problem, maybe.
I would be Ok for the first three, but not the last. It’s good to be hopeful. Honestly, I haven’t met a racist human- *in person *- for like over a decade, but they are still out there. At Trump rallies, and certainly on the Internet.
I feel like we lost the moderate conservative voices long ago. We used to have more, but they’ve either disappeared or, in some cases, radicalized. Some of that I think is based on the current political situation: it can’t be fun to be a reasonable conservative right now. But I would also propose that our “content neutral” moderation might has exacerbated things, as well. It’s allowed conversations to go to really nasty depths that make the whole board less civil. It’s lead to a not-entirely unjustified belief among conservative posters that they are targeted and unwelcome. I feel like having a short list of the “self-evident truths” would not hurt this board. I am not *enjoying *watching montro and Mr. Dibble get called stupid and genetically inferior–but that’s okay, because it’s done politely. I do not enjoy threads where transgendered people are called mentally ill. When I was 20, maybe I enjoyed endless debates with the stupidest, most bigoted people on the internet, but I’ve aged and I’ve mellowed and I’d really like to talk about subjects upon which reasonable people can disagree–of which there are millions. Couldn’t we, at the very least, let the mods off the leash? Couldn’t we give them the power to end threads that were getting gross and going nowhere, albeit in a civil fashion?
I dont go into the Pit very often, but outside of that, doing so would get a warning, and I am not sure if “genetically inferior” would fly in the Pit even.
They do have that power and have done so.
They don’t, not explicitly. This is less than 6 months old:
And it’s from a poster who has been starting threads supporting that point of view for years without reprimand. Being content neutral is not a virtue.
This is a couple years old, about transgendered people:
Can you imagine reading that if you were trans? Would yo. u feel welcome to participate, to engage that poster? They’ve already declared you are mentally ill–any argument you make, however “Reasoned” will be dismissed as the rantings of a crazy person. You have to hope “normal” people–people with credibility–will speak on your behalf. Why would you stay at a place where that was the attitude? Where the official party line was “we take no position on the validity of this statement”?
And the same thing goes for the racist shit. How do you defend yourself against someone who has said you are genetically inferior? Why can’t we have an official stance that this is horseshit?
And we’re now hearing from trans people. We were hardly even talking about trans people in 2003. I searched for threads and came up pretty dry. The first time I even heard (not here) someone suggest that sex and gender weren’t synonyms in 2001 I guffawed. They were asking me to back them up in a conversation they were having with someone else and I blew then off. This person is now male, then identifying as female. Not my proudest moment, even if I know better now. It just wasn’t a topic that had ever come up before. The haters had no reason to start nasty threads; permanent binary was the status quo. Arguments on this board helped me learn. If the bigots speak up now, it’s not because the board was previously trans-safe and now isn’t, it’s because it was indifferent and now we’re winning. Same as we’ve done before.
If we want to win people over, and by all accounts we have lots of work to do if we want to move faster than just letting older people eventually die off, then we need to have the conversations where people who don’t know better can see reason. Again, it’s not necessarily the vocal ones we’re winning over, but all those who read along.