I got interrupted before completing my post, but when I started typing the link wasn’t there.
And I’ll repeat myself at the risk of boring you - the issue isn’t just that you closed the thread, it’s how you did so.
Well, if were talking about the mod note listed in the OP, I’d start by removing commentary about it being a hot button topic for BB and recommendations that he stop posting about it on the SDMB. You made it BB’s anger issue, rather than an issue of MPSIMS vs the Pit. You want to avoid lecturing him on whether he’s entitled to be angry or allowed to express it. Instead, saying that you recognize that the comments are problematic and you acknowledge his anger but the Pit is a more appropriate place for the discussion.
Then, importantly, you then focus on the comments that he’s replying to, and call out the impact the words are having on a member of the indigenous community. Acknowledging BB anger and focusing on the impact (even if it was unintended) reinforces his right to be angry when a racially charged comment is made.
In other words, the benefit of the doubt goes to the BIPOC person when they say that comments are crossing the line.
Now, this is an off the cuff answer, and may be incomplete and imperfect, but I think you get the idea.
FWIW, doing this right is really hard. I totally blew it at work with one of my personnel, not stepping in and shutting something down when I should have. At the moment I was tongue tied and frozen, and I know this work better than some. It’s hard, because the “rules” we may have grown up with don’t apply, but for good reason.
It is a hot button issue for him, and as I said, even if he’s right, that doesn’t give him a free pass to drive threads off the rails with it. How do I say that without it being a racial issue?
I’m an old white guy, but honestly killing kids is a hot button issue for me as well. Which made me scratch my head about the original thread staying in MPSIMS.
“BB, I get why you’re angry. Those posts were inappropriate and even if he’s not intending them to be insulting, they clearly are impacting you that way. While your anger is justified, the Pit is the place for heated discussions on this board.
(I can’t remember who the poster was), your comments are coming off as insensitive and are crossing a line. Please listen to what BB is communicating to you about your language being dismissive of this situation. Again, a heated back and forth is better suited for the Pit.”
Not perfect bc it’s off the cuff, but that’s the idea.
This reads, to me, like you think he’s deliberately using his anger in a race-card-y way.
You want to maybe think about what that says about your thinking on this issue, and the kind of intent you’re assigning to Bear, there? Because it tracks very much with parts of the Black Buck trope I linked to in the OP.
I can’t claim to be “indigenous” in any way so I cannot claim or pretend to share Banquet_Bear’s experiences at all.
That being said, despite all the disagreement, I think there is broad underlying agreement in this thread on two things:
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It’s appropriate for PoC to get angry about topics pertaining to them and their race directly, as long as their anger is kept within reasonable limits. Nobody is saying they shouldn’t be allowed to show any anger in the least, nor is anyone saying it’s acceptable for them to flame away completely unrestrained.
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PoCs shouldn’t derail threads that aren’t at least in some way related to their race or race-topic.
I wouldn’t phrase it as just “their race” only. Indigenous peoples’ solidarity stretches past the bounds of mere ethnicity.
Okay, maybe I should re-phrase. (too late for me to edit)
But - the broader two points still remain - threads shouldn’t be hijacked, and anger is OK as long as it remains within reasonable limits.
Sure, I agree, but “reasonable limits” is where, I think, the mods fall down currently. They play far too hard into both-sidesing everything.
I would say “seconded” except a number of people seem to have beaten me to it.
And he wasn’t “blowing things out of proportion.” This is a huge issue, and insisting that people must treat it as a minor one, and/or that they mustn’t criticize posts insisting that it’s only a minor issue, is IMO absurd.
He wasn’t derailing this one. He was trying to keep it on track.
They looked pretty bad to me.
Why? Because he kept asking, and not getting an answer to, what specifically he had done to be threadbanned for that other people in the same thread hadn’t done without being banned?
Why? Just because it was a back and forth?
I went back and forth in that thread quite a bit with/against Martin_Hyde and neither of us got threadbanned, or even noted. He called my arguments “warm piss” [edited to correct quote] and “stupid” and didn’t get threadbanned for it.
The thread as a whole seemed to me to quite clearly be serving a practical purpose. What do you think its purpose was, if not to call people’s attention to and educate them about an outrage?
The thread was not being driven off the rails. It was right exactly on the rails.
It’s the people trying to say ‘this all happened in 1890’ or ‘this all happened in the 1930’s’ or ‘this didn’t really happen at all, it must have just been some one guy somewhere’ and in general trying to say that this discovery has nothing to do with the society we’re all living in now who are trying to drive it off the rails. And the moderators seem to think that it belongs off the rails.
Well put.
Well, on this message board, the reasonable limits are that if you want to berate another poster, we ask you to do that in the pit. I was too slow to moderate that thread, and too slow to realize what to do, but going forward I think moderation of that sort of thing should start with a mod note asking the angry poster to do exactly that, rather than by thread-banning him.
With this software, you can even have a link to your pit thread show up attached to the post you wanted to reply to.
(The same poster could, of course, give calm and factual rebuttals in the MPSIMS thread. But if that’s too distasteful, there’s no need to do both.)
But this is always the pushback even if it is the supposed “patronizer” who is being insulted. No one should get a free pass at abrasively insulting people because of what some other people did.
That is not at all a fair characterization of the moderator note, and placing that in quotes implies a direct quote, which is, at best, extremely inaccurate.
If I wanted to do a direct quote, I know how the quote function works. I use quote marks for paraphrases or single/few word quotes. That sentence used both.
And it’s an extremely charitable characterization of the mod note - would you like my uncharitable read, which starts with “Just shut up, Angry Brown Man…” and gets worse from there?
Being able to enact “calm and factual rebuttals” of open, unmodded genocide denialism is a nice privilege to have.
Would you ask the Jews here to only provide “calm and factual rebuttals” of Holocaust denial, and not let a trace of irritation show?
Add me to the people Who thought that thread closure was jaw-droppingly inappropriate. Engineer, please listen to what you’re being told here, and don’t be quick at all to defend your behavior.
On which subject, I apologize for my own behavior in the previous thread, parsing words and making allowances that didn’t need to be made. Not good on my part. And I’m sorry.
MrDibble’s OP here is exactly on point.
A trace of irritation is routinely allowed. But if that Jew got really pissed, they should make use of the pit. That’s exactly what is for. And if more irritation leaked into their post than they intended, a mod should probably remind them to use the pit.
I write this as a Jew who has, at times, lost patience with Holocaust deniers.
As several have pointed out, this is a pretty hot-botton issue, and not just for indigenous people. A bunch of children were kidnapped, underfed, raped, brutally beaten, and allowed to abuse each either. The MPSIMS thread probably needs a companion pit thread.