“Round up the usual suspects” would probably not be a way to run a message board founded on “fighting ignorance.”
GermanicPride got shitcanned not in a hurry but only after he crossed the line into calling names, etc.
Amen, Brother!
Can I suck up, or what?
OK. Thanks for being thy guy who actually made a concrete proposal. I still don’t think it would accomplish what the OP intends, but it is a proposal rather than just an idea.
I agree. We should ban a Nazi jerk for being a jerk. But if we were to get a hypothetical polite well-mannered Nazi - maybe Speer or Ribbentrop - they’d be entitled to present their own unique point of view just like anyone else. And to have that point of view called into question.
They’re the bacterial infection of the digital society. Some times an abbreviated infestation does the host a long-term good. Like an actual medical clinic, the hallmark of a message board’s health isn’t necessarily the health of its’ constituents or patients, but the robustness, speed and accuracy of the diagnosis and response that follows. I think we do OK.
As XT noted, it is useful to have a SDMB smackdown of Holocaust Deniers available via your preferred search engine. Same goes for any other delusional idea. Sure, these guys are a nuisance. But insta-banning them won’t make them or their ideas go away.
Yes. Yes. Yes. No.
In all fairness, I don’t see a need for a rule banning things like Neo-Nazism or Holocaust denial or anything like that, either. Just let them post here. Dumbass will spew their Dumbass nonsense, a few Dopers will try to honestly debate with Dumbass before realizing they’re trying to reason Dumbass out of a position that he didn’t reason himself into, Dumbass will post his rebuttals thus revealing his true Dumbassery, the whole thing will turn into one big game of PALATR, thus setting off Dumbass to the point that he posts something that clearly does break the rules of the SDMB or anywhere that has any kind of TOS at all, and ends up getting shown the door. Works every time.
When you consider that the whole process I just described rarely takes more than a week to complete, it doesn’t seem like we’re losing that much. Dumbass comes and leaves without convincing anyone else he’s right, Dumbass is still convinced he’s right despite the well-intentioned Dopers who think a few posts on a message board regardless of how flawless their logic is can override the Voices from Mars inside Dumbass’ head, the lurkers reading the thread will either like the fireworks for the impressive debate and become members who post opinions that have some level of sanity or like the fireworks for the cheap lulz before heading back to wherever they were before, the Dopers themselves return to life as normal until Dumbass 2: Electric Boogaloo shows up turning Dopers into a proverbial Roland Deschain. Rinse and repeat.
Banning the countless Dumbasses on sight may be a better way of improving the level of discourse on the SDMB, but my idea is a lot more fun and takes only a week longer to achieve the exact same result.
If you really want to strip evil of all power, don’t censor it, don’t oppose it, don’t ignore it, but just laugh at it.
tl;dr: Give the morons enough rope to hang themselves with.
Didn’t 7% of the recent Greece voters vote for some National Socialist Party? Should they all be banned if they came in to debate the elections? Or only deniers of the Holocaust that also identify as one of your grouping?
Fact is millions where gassed, shot, hung, decapitated, starved the Nazi regime was horrible with no defense, no way to “open” someones eyes to there better side, they had none. What they bring that argument you mention up for, is to compare our treatment after victory to the Nazis during the reign.*
- Which I am not to proud of our countrymen for doing myself but it is apples to oranges.
It turns out thoughtful, detailed and well-reasoned point-by-point refutations won’t, either.
As an aside, I wonder if in Germany, where the Nazis **are **banned, this has not made them even more opposed to bail out the Greeks.
I think this is really the best rationale for not banning these guys outright. We’re not so much providing them with with a venue for their idiotic ideas, but providing a place where their nonsense can be thoroughly and systematically shredded.
Trying to argue their views here has to be one of the most counterproductive things these clowns can do. They aren’t going to find a receptive audience or any new recruits on this site. Instead they waste their time futilely trying to defend their positions, when that time could more productively be spent many other places in the internet. And these threads provide ammunition for attacking their views elsewhere.
It sort of comes with the territory, I think - Holocaust deniers are pretty much automatically also jerks. In my experience, it doesn’t take too long trying to defend a loosing argument before they get frustrated and start insulting other posters and engage in hate speech. And then we ban them for cause.
As has been pointed out upthread, there is value in having a dearth of information on the net for those on the fence or just a place that comes up on a search that shows intelligent refutations of these idiots. Count me in with XT.
On preview: and Colibri.
Well… I do find that argument somewhat persuasive, but the problem is there are already excellent resources on the 'net. Most (all?) of us who posted those refutations in the GD thread just linked to Nizkor. I’m not sold on the idea that we really need more than Nizkor, but I suppose that our posting cites from it does show a “Denier debunking in the wild”.
Emphasis mine.
That word; i do not think it means what you think it means.
What, you think by adding the SDMB to the refutations there would then be a preponderance? A veritable plethora? Nah, there would still be an inadequate supply.
It seemed to me that you were arguing that there would be value in having sufficient information.
If you were, in fact, arguing that there is value in having an inadequate supply of information, then it’s your logic rather than your grammar and usage that i would take issue with.
Nevermind.
.
But… having them around as chew toys is fun. We can stroke our ego, be all high and mighty, even the worst of us can stand on top of the pile-on and say “truly, I am a better person than this poster.”
And then ban them when we tire of them.