I am happy to hear conservative viewpoints through fact-based media. I do not feel the need to create a controlled environment that will be welcoming to conservatives merely to increase exposure. This is how the alt-right get their tentacles in: by insisting that if we really want to be open minded, we should not only be aware of their talking points, but go so far as to provide them a platform that will allow them to reach a wider audience, ostensibly so that bad ideas can be refuted, but in reality so that bad ideas can be spread and others drawn in. Which is exactly what they want. Because it co-opts the venues for rational discourse and turns them into the entrance to the alt-right rabbit hole. It’s why the online “skeptic” community has became such a steaming pile of bad-faith argumentation such as selective/cherry-picked quoting of more left leaning viewpoints, straw manning, and nut-pickery in the last decade or so. Their followers don’t really follow them so much as they follow their followers now. Because if they ever actually said, “Hold up a second, this crazy!” and walked back to a position of proper skepticism, they’d find themselves out a good chunk of their ad revenue.
In short, I get plenty of exposure to the right offline and with their stranglehold on state/local politics even in majority center/left states. I don’t feel the slightest need to give them another platform, except on merit (which they are supposed to love). If they have good ideas, then they can make them known and push for them. If they don’t, then I don’t feel the need to hear them out just for the sake of being exposed to bad ideas.
There are always new sources and opinion writers out there. If it is necessary to see a conservative viewpoint, then those can always be cited.
And that’s exactly the problem. If I want to have a conversation about the best ways of getting universal healthcare, a bunch of us on the left could have a discussion about tradeoff and such, and have a productive conversation.
If there are “conservatives” in the mix, it stops being about how to get universal healthcare, and become whether we should have universal healthcare.
Same with pretty much any topic that is politically divisive. There isn’t a discussion about how to solve a problem, it becomes an argument about whether the problem exists or should be addressed. This is far less interesting and productive, IMO.
I disagree for two reasons. The first being that, even if we all agree, we haven’t made a solution, as we are not a governing body, we are just people talking on a messageboard. There is not actually anything at stake here, what we decide isn’t what will be implemented by the govt or by society as a whole.
And the other reason I disagree is as I said in my preceding paragraph. We cannot come up with workable solutions if one side is constantly arguing that there isn’t a problem that needs to be addressed, and therefore, does their best to prevent discussion from progressing towards solutions.
See, your statement would be an example of the kind of misrepresentation of the positions of others that detracts from a conversation, rather than adding to it, and the sort of thing that I certainly would not mind seeing far less of.
This sounds more like a problem of the forum rules not being administered properly. If a thread is about “how do we get to universal healthcare?” and someone says, “we shouldn’t have universal healthcare,” then one should be able to report that as a form of threadshitting - a mild version of threadshitting, but threadshitting nonetheless. (After all, a while ago, we had a thread for “positive gun news of the day” and someone was modded for posting an anti-gun comment in the thread. I don’t see why this hypothetical UHC thread would be different.)
Now, if the thread were “is UHC a good thing or not?”, then that would be different. But in your hypothetical example, if the thread is “how do we get to UHC,” then all replies should only be permitted in the vein of, getting to UHC.
He said he was doing his best, not that he was succeeding.
It depends which “lab leak theory” you mean. If you mean the theory that a virus they had obtained elsewhere may have been leaked from the lab, then that is still under investigation. If you mean the theory that it was created in that lab, that’s been pretty thoroughly debunked. And some people conflate the two for various reasons.
Checking the quality of evidence put forward is the right thing to do, your own evidence included. You don’t want to be the one regurgitating or ignoring good evidence.
This has not been the way that modding has ever gone. Not in UHC threads, not in immigration threads, not in gun control threads.
It inevitably attracts those who are against these things to derail them, and to start casting accusations of nefarious intent on those who wish to debate them.
That pro-gun blog is still there, and still enjoys those protections. It enjoys protection that pretty much no other thread does, for… reasons. It’s been legislated to death, and lets just say that there are still disagreements and hard feelings about those decisions, and that’s as far as I’m willing to delve into that subject here.
That sounds like an ATMB discussion, but so far, that has not been how moderation has gone. I’ll agree that such a distinction is hard to moderate, so I understand why directions that I would consider threadshitting is allowed, but it still interferes with the more interesting discussion.
But we all exist in the real world with the power to effect who our representatives are and what policies they attempt to enact. If a politician runs on a platform of “I’ll ban all guns!”, I’m not likely to support them because I know it’s an unworkable solution and so inflammatory to the right that they will mobilize a unified opposition that ensures that person is not elected. Regardless of how I feel about the issue, I know that in the real world, that kind of politician is likely going to make things worse by empowering people who want expanded gun rights. Part of the reason I feel this way is from the discussions we have on the SDMB where gun advocates are so unwilling to compromise. Without that in-your-face evidence, I might underestimate their convictions and mistakenly think that banning guns will be much more feasible than it really is and not comprehend what kind of backlash it will bring.
Those would be two different threads, and both would be acceptable, but not all responses would be acceptable in both.
“Let’s debate the merits of UHC” would be completely fine and posters of all stripes would be welcome. However, posting “if you’re against UHC, you’re a monster” in that thread could be moderated for threadshitting or attacking other posters.
“Let’s figure out how to get to UHC” would also be completely fine and posters of all stripes would be welcome. However, posting “Getting to UHC would lead us inexorably to socialism” could be moderated for being off-topic or threadshitting.
Go for it. Create a couple of your classic naive, babe-in-the-woods threads about these things and come back if things go wrong and complain. I think both of those topics are fine for GD and the threads would move along pretty smoothly.
The first. With the added bonus that some of the people trying to divert attention from it were possibly involved in funding gain-of-function research in the Wuhan lab, giving them a strong motive for trying to pin the blame on the wet market instead.
Absolutely. If those of us who are liberals or lefties or what-have-you can’t handle having our ideas challenged, if our views can’t stand up to questioning and debate, our ideas probably aren’t that good.
Unfortunately true.
Liberals, lefties, whatever, can get pretty insane too sometimes. Not quite as insane as the Trumpists (as opposed to actual conservatives), but pretty insane. And sometimes just plain stupid. Let’s not pat ourselves on the back too much (not saying you’re doing this – you’re not).
You haven’t made that many? Dude, you’ve made over ten thousand posts. I’m not prepared to comment on your characterization of “most of them” as hodge-lodge, but someone doesn’t have to respond to your posts to get a picture of how you present yourself.