nm
I think it results in less. We have far less now than when I started posting.
We have far less everything since you started posting.
There was no claim there that the board “should” lean towards anyone’s view in particular, just that the LHOD would lean towards his.
See, I can pick nits too, you know?
What bothers me is not so much line-by-line parsing, but isolating a line from the context in which it was given. I think that, if you break things up idea by idea, that’s fine. I’m even okay with quoting the most relevant part but responding to the full context. But not if you treat each line as a separate post.
That is what often happens in these “line by line” rebuttals. You don’t get a meaningful rebuttal of the underlying argument, just snippy responses to various lines that may not fit with the rest of the post.
But that isn’t the only time it happens. It also can happen when just a single line is quoted and refuted without paying attention to the context in which that line was offered–whether the context of the post, or the thread. This has the same problem–you reply to something the other person didn’t actually say. Both tactics create fights when people don’t even necessarily disagree all that much.
I believe this is what mean by wanting to stop “needless nitpicking.” It’s not that you can’t respond point-by-point; it’s that you shouldn’t break the points apart and ignore the context. That’s when it becomes sniping at each other instead of actual argument.
How is the board better on bigotry?
Before trans people could post here. Now they don’t want to, because they will be devalued as humans. The misogyny got so bad that women had to jump in and get new rules put in place to deal with it. Nazi ideology previously was not even argued, because we all agreed it was wrong, and everyone knew a Nazi would wind up banned pretty quickly. Now it comes up all the time.
GD and the Pit are currently broken, with a mod having to leave because things got so bad. People are out there using people’s trauma to attack them–that’s bigotry against the mentally ill. We’re getting into debates over when bigotry crosses over to hate speech–an argument we didn’t need to have before because no one even got close.
I see no sign that bigotry has gotten better here from arguing about it. In fact, the board’s problem with bigotry seems to be what is keeping people away.
You can’t allow bigotry and demand civility at the same time, as bigotry is inherently uncivil. We want a less hostile board? Bigotry has to be dealt with in a way that doesn’t let it spread and become worse.
That last bit is kind of the core issue. Is the management of the board going to decide that racism, misogyny, and transphobia is inherently uncivil. I am under the strong impression that important parts of the staff think only delivery matters.
Well, either your memory is faulty or short or you are just setting the bar higher.
Bigotry was common, and there wasnt a month without a bigot based thread in GD. I remember a common thread was discussion of that one PhD’s “proof” that “negroes were less intelligent than whites” or that “blacks were racially better at a certain sport”.
misogyny? in many other threads, any mention of a bra or anything vaguely related to a womans breasts would bring many “pics or it didnt happen” or “How you doin?”(which I admit I used once and got thanked for it, but I thought the setting was appropriate- and I’d never use that now, except in jest).
Now there are ten times more complaints about misogyny than before and there’s a lot less. That doesnt mean there’s not room to improve, but this board is not the Good Old Boys Club it used to be.
And overall- people are just not posting on MB’s anymore. There’s FB, Twitter and a dozen other things. I doubt if anything in particular (other than the ads) is “driving people away”, it’s just not the “thing” to do anymore.
Again, why should his preference prevail? That’s what he’s asking for.
Moderator Warning
While there is nothing wrong with being of the opinion that certain things should be reported, actually accusing someone of being an ostrich with their head in the sand crosses the line into being an insult and a personal attack. Make your point without attacking other users.
This is an official warning for personal attacks outside of the Pit.
Do you want his business plan or what? He thinks the board would be better the way he describes. What more does he need to justify it?
And the following is a good example of why being able to split up posts is a good thing. It would be difficult to reply to DrDeth’s argument here without breaking it down into smaller, manageable chunks.
Yes, one type of thread no longer recurs. But your stated argument was that this was because we were arguing against bigotry. However, what actually happened was that the posters who kept posting the those threads don’t come around anymore.
The bigotry hasn’t gone away–it’s shifted. Now we get the transphobia threads. We know with 100% certainty that trans people have been driven off the board because of these threads. I got a PM from a trans poster informing me, saying that they and a dozen others had left because the mods were refusing to listen when they would report this stuff.
Yes, there is an improvement there. But, remember, your argument was that it was the arguing with the bigots that caused this.
But that’s not what happened. It got so bad that the mods had to create new rules to deal with it. That’s what resulted in less misogyny. Not people arguing with it.
This doesn’t have anything to do with my post. I never argued that our numbers were down due to bigotry. I mentioned posters who don’t want to post here anymore because of bigotry. These are posters who announced why they were leaving, so I know why they aren’t here anymore.
Finally, you didn’t even address the multiple NEW problems I mentioned. These are the main things that refute your idea that the board has less of a problem with bigotry than before.
Ultimately, you are pushing an old idea, one that progressives used to believe. If we could just present good arguments to the bigots out there, we could beat them. And that did work, up to a point. But it ignored that arguing with bigots gives them a platform and helps spread their ideas. It ignores that having these arguments in public make minorities feel unwelcome, because they see all these loud bigots saying crap.
It’s like the old “colorblind” ideology. We (well, mostly white people) used to think that, if we could just get everyone to ignore race, we’d have a non-racist society. But that doesn’t work. It winds up making you blind to your own unintentional prejudices. It means that discrimination isn’t noticed–you can’t notice that black people are treated differently if you don’t first notice they are black. The actual solution is more difficult and complex: you have to notice how everyone is different while at the same time treating them equally. You have to notice who has a bum rap and help them more than the people who can handle it on their own.
I invite you to take a step back. What did you do in your post? You accused a woman of just running and hiding from bigotry because she wants the mods to ban it. Rather than listen to her experience on the issue, you decided you knew best, and that she was just making things worse.
The one thing that actually worked to reduce bigotry on this board was rules against it. And that is something that came about because the women of this board stood up against it and got changes made. A problem that had been here for over a decade finally started getting better. The people more experienced on the topic had a better idea of how to deal with it.
Don’t you think you should listen to them now, as well, rather than just dismiss them?
To piggy-back on BigT’s post, I don’t remember ever using reasoned, determined, heroic argument to enlighten bigots, or even to make them leave. What I do remember is a lot of waiting/baiting those users to fuck up on a technicality so that we could ban them for that, like Al Capone on tax evasion. We make special rules or topic bans and wait until they cross a line we put there for them to cross. Then, when they get banned, their supporters have more evidence that we are biased and arbitrary. The system is literally the worst of every world: it leaves the targets of bigotry feeling unsupported and creates the impression that there is a “secret agenda” to squash certain views–and leaves the impression that that includes “all conservative views”. This makes conservative posters feel like it’s only a matter of time before the mods come for them. It drives away minority voices AND reasoned conservative voices, because both feel unheard and excluded.
The emoticon indicates that was said in jest, I was trying to inject some lightness into the thread. Nor did I say that, I asked if they did.
You are a racist! vs Are you a racist?
Would you expect anyone to say “Yes!” At least on this board?
Honestly—and maybe it’s be cause I’m new here—I kind of scratch my head at the idea it’s (apparently) allowed to say “That’s a racist thing to say,” but then “You’re a racist!” is right out (honestly, I think both should be equally acceptable or equally unacceptable. I don’t see why I should have to tiptoe around calling someone who states they are proud of their race, believes the races should be kept separate to preserve uniqueness on the grounds that every race has its positives, and they fear what effect unchecked immigration might have on the uniqueness of various races, but particularly their own, a “racist.” Someone who posts that has just made a racist post: I can pretty damn guarantee that person him or herself is a racist. Why can’t I call a spade a spade? Why do I have to keep on just pointing to the hole they’ve made?).
Anyway, to your point and back on topic, the idea of “just asking a question” as a dispute technique kind of reminds me of Cartman’s technique in the episode Dances with Smurfs. A long string of accusations phrased initially as an assertion leveled at Wendy, but then followed up by “or does she? I’m just asking questions!”
I have no opinion on the warning. I did not report the comment. But it didn’t feel like you were speaking in jest. I read it as an accusation of extreme moral cowardice. It seemed pretty hyperbolic.
An insulting joke is still an insult.
Ha! Ha! Has that worked since 3rd grade?
Who knows?
I understand, but we really don’t know each other as People. So isnt it better to address the post, not the person?
Well, yes, but I dont do that sorta thing. We do have a couple people that JAQoff, true, it’s not very common tho.
My… puzzlement over “You’re a racist!” vs “That’s a racist thing to say,” and similar criticisms nominally aimed at “the post” isn’t so much the degree to which the distinction in target is meaningful as it is the extent to which such a comment is meaningful at all. Simply saying “That’s a racist thing to say,” really adds nothing of substance to the discussion and still throws “the other r-word” into the mix. So either it’s really unambiguous racism that ought to be intuitively obvious to the most casual of observers, in which case I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to call the poster what they are, a racist, or it’s more nuanced/veiled, in which case it’d probably be of benefit to explain what about the post is racist, not just label it as such.
ETA: It strikes me as rules lawyering.