LHOD, I still have not seen you explain how a Brexit debate can be conducted without allowing the Leave side to articulate the views that were in actuality behind the majority vote for that referendum. If you basically don’t think it can or should be conducted, why not say so?
How is that relevant to this thread?
Yeah, hold your breath, dude.
Repeating this idea fails to make it true.
All three Mods in GD told that poster to not post such drivel. Two explicitly said to stop and one, having seen the Note to avoid such hostile crap, explained why it was a false assertion.
A claim that we are “comfortable allowing” such stuff has no basis in facts and is certainly not demonstrated in the thread under discussion.
How is it not? It’s central to the fundamental complaint: pro-Brexit posters articulating racist or xenophobic rationales for the Leave side. Those rationales are why Leave won! It would be like having a debate over the ERA (which has still failed to pass, sadly), while stipulating that the anti-ERA side cannot say they think women are not equal to men, because saying so is sexist (and yes: it absolutely is). Well, okay: what possible tack can they take, then?
Again, if you don’t believe the debate can be held, because one side is fundamentally motivated by bigotry and therefore there is no real civil debate to be had, I’d disagree based on what I’ve endorsed of the J.S. Mill ideology on free speech. But that would at least be an understandable, logically coherent position. To say “sure, let’s debate it: but don’t say anything racist or xenophobic” is silly. Why would you want people to even try to offer a debate position that bears no relation to the actual politics of that vote and this issue?
“Comfortable” is putting it strongly, but that post taken in context of everything I’ve said in this thread should make it clear what my precise objection is. I encourage you to read it in said context, rather than treat it as the sum total of my description of what I object to in the moderation.
Actually, mulling it a little more, you don’t even need to be a free speech absolutist like Mill to believe that you shouldn’t cut off a frank and full debate in a topic like Brexit (or, for that matter, the ERA). These are issues where the “bigoted” side is still currently on the winning side politically. I could easily imagine someone who thinks Mill takes things too far with his “all of humanity save one” talk, and would say that, for instance, even if you could find a few people who would argue that we should take away the franchise for women and African Americans, it’s not only bigoted but not a serious idea with any traction in the body politic, so it doesn’t need to be given a platform. Whereas the Brexiteers and the anti-ERA camp are actually currently winning in the real world of today, 2019, and thus they have inherent legitimacy in terms of it being necessary to take their arguments seriously and counter them as best as we can–even if one might hope that in a few decades or certainly centuries, their arguments would no longer need to be responded to seriously.
Now you see why the movement to expand the so-called hate speech umbrella is so critical for progressives. If you criminalize and/or make it justifiable to physically attack speakers or writers solely for their point of view you don’t have to worry about winning with rhetoric, reason, or persuasion. If people stopped treating certain words or phrases like Voldemort’s name they’d lose much of their power.
This isn’t what is being discussed. Like, not even close, not the same league, not the same sport.
I thought it was sort of resolved about the appropriateness of the comment in question? That was answered real promptly was it not? So I was responding to SlackerInc’s comment.
The phrasing here is nice because it immediately reminds us of the case that proves it’s really not true.
Clothahump was a member for 18 years. His membership was old enough to get a DUI in most european countries by the time the moderators wisened up to the fact that maybe having the guy whose entire contribution to any given thread was “post the dumbest thing in it and then [del]defend that idiocy[/del] double down when called out on it” (because you really cannot call what he did defending his ideas in any meaningful way, more a slurry of Tu Quoque, changing the subject, and calling everyone who disagreed stupid) was not improving the forum’s overall climate.
Other noteworthy trolls (who I will abstain from naming by name) who provide damn near nothing of value to the forum are still with us. The problem is ongoing and nowhere near resolved. The moderators here are embarrassingly bad at dealing with specifically that shit. And I got suspended for… oh yeah, calling them on it. Fun!
*Whom *you will abstain from naming by name. 
(Which, BTW, would suggest that they are literally *not *noteworthy.)
I would argue that there is a cadre of well established racists on this board who are very adept at derailing meaningful discussions with their bigotry. Whether this is overt trolling, or just the outcome of their bigotry is irrelevant; operationally, they behave like trolls. As as been noted it takes years for them to dealt with.
Granted, I have been inactive on the board for a while, but I have always known the SDMB is the place for truth. So if if immigrants breed like rabbits… I have got to update my tinder profile.
[sub]I’ll let let myself out. Door’s on the left right? Hey, does anybody have any experience with duolingo?[/sub]
Good to see your name, welcome back.
Trolls, and in fact most non-cyber misanthropes are engaged in self stimulation. If you choose to masturbate with them, you can expect them to come back more often. There is, in cyber space a piece of communication equipment within your reach that will have the most reliable effect on the quality of your use of the boards. It’s called the page down key. In real life it can be much more difficult. Laughter works there, most of the time, if accompanied by walking away.
Tris
No one does anything for the sole purpose of not being noticed. Except ninjas. But you don’t have any choice about ignoring them.
“Just scroll down” is the most useless fucking advice in the history of useless fucking advice.
Answer me this - *why *should non-trolls have to?
Exactly. Just scroll down and see how the racists trolls have completely derailed the thread. Just scroll down through the dozens and dozens of posts. Why, by scrolling down, you can browse the entire SDMB in just 2 minutes. See, wasn’t that easy?
This sounds very close to bigotry=trolling. I have opinions that some posters will disagree with, and I disagree with some opinions expressed by some other posters. One of us may be a bigot in the other’s opinion, but that doesn’t make our responses to each other trolling. And it certainly doesn’t justify their being “dealt with.”
I think that overt and unapologetic bigots who make their bigotry the central theme of their posting are trolling, whether or not that is their actual intention, or just an outcome of their bigotry. As we’ve seen, they can carry on in this way for years and years.