Mod communication/biased modding

[DemonTree]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

When someone like Demontree argues that “controversial” opinions are moderated, or that she wouldn’t be moderated for “lefty” opinions (such as saying that dehumanizing others is out of bounds)

That is an egregiously unfair example. I was thinking of opinions like this:

@Der_Trihs

The Right is about greed, hatred, cruelty, malice, and the denial of reality - empathy and understanding other people go against everything that make it what it is. It’s always been about hurting and oppressing people and denying reality in order to justify it for as long as the concept of “right wing” has existed; longer than the US itself has.

The board rules on hate speech have an exception for “political affiliation or leaning”. I suggest removing this exception. Reasonable criticism supported by facts would presumably still be allowed; why specifically condone hate speech for this one group?

@Aspenglow

As such, I struggle to be characterized as “biased” when my perspective on the issue has never changed, and it wasn’t “bias” until certain rightward factions decided to make it so.

If you’ve ever wondered how conservatives and many centrists feel about all the changes pushed by progressives: exactly like that!

@songsoflovetrouble

This is obviously not the standard. No one is going to say it’s “dehumanizing” and against the rules to contest the notion that “Christians are uniquely saved by Christ and everyone else is going to hell,” or “Israeli Jews are the indigenous people of the Levant” or “Russians are the legitimate governing power of Ukraine.” There are millions of people who genuinely define themselves as those things, and of course those identifications should be, and are, subject to debate in any forum that purports to be dedicated to “debate.”

Just like all the other proposed post-facto standards e.g. “no debating metaphysical status of anything is allowed, only practical proposals for legislation” it’s very clearly not the rule, never has been the rule, and is not workable as the rule in the future. It’s all obvious posturing to avoid just saying “we have decided not to allow debate on the following topics because we have the power to do so and have chosen thus, there is no overriding principle as to what topics are on the list besides which issues the staff of the board personally feels are important, and you can suck it up or leave.”

I agree with all of this. If the consensus is that posters or mods don’t want to allow debate on certain subjects, and want to ban even some widely-held opinions from being posted, then just do it. Modding links differently depending on whether the poster says they agree or disagree with them is obviously indirectly modding people for their political views.