Assuming your description of what you were told is accurate, then this is also untrue. handsomeharry was banned for his Pit thread. I have seen no indication that he was insincere in his statement, in the Pit. In what way did he indicate otherwise? And where did he make his statement outside the Pit, just to stir up trouble?
Colibri has accused me of trolling on several occasions, as a poster. So what? Being called a troll by another poster, including a mod posting as a poster, is just another insult. If a mod wants to issue an official ruling, he puts on his Mod Hat and says so.
This one -
handsomeharry’s repulsive speech was met with suppression. Not with a mod note, not with a warning, not with anyone Pitting him, not with starting a thread to ask about it in some other forum than the Pit, but with an insta-ban. The SDMB did not operate on the alleged principle in this case. So it doesn’t “always” operate under that principle, and Miller’s statement is false. It operates under that principle sometimes, but not in this case, even under the definition of “more speech” as mod notes or warnings or Pitting. handsomeharry made the statement, and made it clear that he was not going to be baited into the usual pile-on, but responding in the Pit to insults with insults.
No, I pointed out the contradictions in the OP and subsequent posts.
The whole thing was so bizarre that I wonder if it was suicide-by-mod.
It’s clear to me that he wasn’t banned “just” for being a Nazi. A poster who started an “I’m a Nazi” thread in GD or IMHO would actually have to explain and defend their position, and the other posters would have to play by the rules of those forums. That thread would be locked or shunted to the pit if it started to go off the rails.
He took an unpopular stance and refused to define his terms or discuss his beliefs, instead opting for personal insults and edging over the hate speech line in places: saying “Nope, can’t help you with your loss(es). You have no idea what killed them; actually, I’m more inclined to think that it was people such as yourself that make any wholesale slaughter possible” to Jewish poster who had lost family members to the Holocaust sounds pretty hate speechy to me.
Maybe a one month suspension would have given him a chance to cool off or slink away quietly. But jerkishness and hate speech have always been against the rules, so I’m not going to criticize the mods for reaching for the banhammer right away.
Errrm, it would be hard to define “trolling” without reference to what is or is not incendiary, volatile, and provocative.
I would like it to be true that there is no subject whatsoever that is verboten and cannot be raised and discussed here on the board. (We don’t quite have that situation but it’s mostly constrained to legal topic, not noncontroversial or nondisturbing topics).
I do not think that being faithful to that principle requires that the same scrutiny be given to discussion of highly inflammatory topics that have the potential for polarizing and upsetting folks that is afforded to a random generic discussion topic. To be able to be open to discussion that kind of topic at all means walking a bit of a tightrope.
If we decide it is OK to discuss the possibility of fire while seated in a crowded theatre, we may still choose to be very very careful about how we go about doing so.
Is advocating genocide, or in the case of pro-pedophilia, the sexual abuse of children, merely expressing a “political position.” The board shouldn’t have to provide a platform for vile extremism. It’s only a slippery slope if you are uncomfortable planting your feet.
I too was struck by the weird timing of this guy’s self-immolation. I was wondering if there was some board-related event that set him off, and made a quick search of his posts over the past month, but nothing really stood out. He seemed to post mostly to Café Society and MPSIMS and although there were a few hints of a perhaps, er, non-mainstream political attitude, I didn’t see much overtly political commentary.
This seems to be the message board equivalent of the person all the neighbors said was a quiet guy who kept to himself, until the day he started firing a shotgun out the bedroom window.
But that’s never been an absolute rule, and well it shouldn’t be. Do you object when someone is banned for a racial-slur laden tirade? That’s certainly repulsive speech that is met with banning.
It’s a general rule – generally, the best response to repulsive speech is more speech. But this isn’t always the case – and in this case, in which the poster in question stated something repulsive and refused to answer questions or discuss it when challenged, then it became clear he only mentioned the repulsive thing (whether or not he truly believes it) to get a rise and piss people off. Therefore, he was banned for trolling – making a repulsive assertion out of the blue, and then refusing to discuss it when challenged, is reasonably judged as trolling.
Trolling and being a troll are really two different things. Everyone has posted something that might be viewed as trolling, when that was far from their intent. Any shot at another poster is a form of trolling, but that’s far from targeting the entire board. A troll on the other hand, consistently posts trollish crap in an attempt to piss off as many as possible.
I don’t think you come close to qualifying as a troll.
Because one position is incredibly inflammatory (and incredibly unusual) and the other is not. The mods determined that the only possible motivation for, without prompting, proclaiming one’s Nazi proclivities (an incredibly unusual and inflammatory position) and then refusing to answer questions or discuss it when challenged, is to get a rise and piss people off (i.e. trolling).
Look, I’m not going to miss the guy. I’d just like to understand the grounds for the banning and its significance, if any, for future mod decisions. Miller seems to be saying that it wasn’t his self-identification that earned the ban but his refusal to explain further. But this wasn’t GD, it was the Pit. Do we need to justify our political positions in that forum?
We have tolerated all sorts of extremists on this board and, paradoxically in the present case, it’s only when they began to expound on their extremism and descended into hate speech that they were banned. HH didn’t do that and was banned anyway. If the unusual length of Miller’s post tells me anything it’s that he himself realized this was an extraordinary ground for banning and needed some attempt at justification.
handsomeharry didn’t target the entire board, and didn’t consistently post trollish crap - he was a member for fifteen years and nobody knew he was a Nazi until recently.
And yet the accusation was made (from someone posting as a poster). I don’t think it was something that I needed to take seriously.
Which is, again, something that indicates an inconsistent standard - no Mod notes, no warnings, nothing - just an insta-ban, of a poster with no issues for fifteen years. If there is one thing the mods are fairly good about is being clear when they are acting as mods. Now that too is in question. If a mod calls you a troll in the Pit, you might be banned without warning.
Maybe it hasn’t happened like this to a 15 year poster before (though it certainly has for newer posters), but maybe also no long-time poster has committed so blatant an act of trolling before.
Presumably, if multiple moderators believe someone, even a long-time member, is trolling, then that person might be subject to banning, even without a warning. Why wouldn’t this have always been the case? So I wouldn’t worry about a single mod occasionally calling you a troll, unless you’re actually trolling (which, for the record, I don’t believe you do, based on our interactions).
When it comes to the real, true, honest-to-god bigots, I think it’s a case of comfort. I think they get comfortable in a place and just sort of forget where they are or what they’re posting, or maybe think that ‘finally’ they can let their hair down, or whatever. Then when the backlash starts happening they say, “oh right, I guess this place is as full of ‘those people’ as everywhere else” and they flame out. Sometimes it happens all in one thread, sometimes it takes a few weeks or months.
Something similar happened with the_diego, though it took a bit longer.
I always knew he was a Nazi. It came up years ago-Idon’t remember where-but I am pretty sure that’s where I learned to look for “hh” people on the internet. So that didn’t come out of nowhere and it wasn’t a secret.
So the idea that the banning wasn’t position-based is not correct in your view? That seems undesirable.
Consider the position that same sex marriage is “icky”. I don’t hold this view, but some do. That position is inflammatory, and unusual on this board. It’s an emotional position, not a rational one. So if someone were to ask why, the response could honestly be, just because - and that could be construed as refusing to answer questions. That shouldn’t be bannable.
I really like consistency. This banning seems inconsistent with the rules as they were understood up to now.
I read that post. There’s a lot worse in the Pit. That’s pretty mild actually.
If you’re going to ban a guy for, at least in part, the content of his political beliefs, then don’t simultaneously claim that “The SDMB has always operated under the principle that repulsive speech is best met with more speech, not with suppression.” It just isn’t true. This is a board that openly and regularly disciplines hate speech. Why not just own that?
It also seems a little disingenuous to defend an insta-ban as not “going to go out of our way to allow [the unpopular position] to be heard here if they can’t otherwise abide by the rules.” Giving a single warning before a banning isn’t “going out of the way.” It is what you do when you actually believe the principle that repulsive speech is best met with more speech.
So, you are going to ignore everything that has been pointed out that shows how wrong that is since the last time that was said and just repeat yourself.