Mods - Is it now policy that all opinions are equal?

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1

Bone has several times posted variations on the statement made in this post.

The context is an argument about a post made by Hurricane Ditka in this thread.

That and other posts by him spawned threeinterlockingthreadsin ATMB over the weekend.

The TL;DR is that every single woman who responded called that original post misogynistic. A small group of conservative men defended it. (A larger group of more liberal men agreed with the women, but set them aside for now.)

Everybody agrees that no objective rule exists to settle that argument. I had thought, in my naivety, that everybody agreed that not all opinions are equal. Some opinions are informed. My opinion about whether your digestive symptoms are from lactose intolerance is worth more than your brother-in-law’s because I’ve written three books on lactose intolerance and he hasn’t. I don’t guarantee my opinion for any number of reasons, but my long experience with and knowledge of the subject give me pretty good odds.

Women as a group have more experience with and knowledge of misogyny than men as a group. I hope that no one argues that this isn’t true. Their opinions on the subject are worth listening to. When they are unanimous, the best course for men should be to shut up and nod.

That women with a history of sexual harassment have a better understanding of what misogyny is than a group of men who have been accused of - perhaps unintended - misogyny should be obvious. Giving the opinions of the two sides equal weight is not merely dismissive, foolhardy, and obnoxious, it is itself misogynistic. Saying that their personal experience with and understanding of the subject is not a substantive argument is also itself misogynistic.

But that’s the stated policy of one of the mods.

Where are the rest of you? Why haven’t you been posting in these several threads? What are you positions on the controversy? Does the Dope now have multiple mod by mod policies on the central issue or is Bone speaking for everyone?

And you, Tuba. Isn’t this an admin level subject that needs to be reflected in the Board rules?

Where are the mods?

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Good luck. I’m still waiting for an explanation for the incongruency of the first two quotes here.

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What would such a policy look like in practice? On the one hand, admins and mods would have to memorize everyone’s gender, race, etc. (maybe they know posters well enough by heart, who knows, but we have dozens and dozens of active posters) so they could say “Poster A is a woman, you are a man, so your opinion has less weight than hers on women-related issues” - ditto for LGBT, religion, race, etc. And how should the mods go about it - “Since you are not a woman, please modify your posts so that they defer to the opinion of those who are?”

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As a general rule, any mod posting in ATMB is speaking for the moderation staff in general. On the occasion where a mod takes a stance that the rest of the staff disagrees with, we work it out behind the scenes, and then inform the rest of the board once we’ve reached a consensus. That’s fairly rare, and we will usually mention that the subject is being discussed in the mod loop in the relevant ATMB thread. Absent any such announcement, it is safe to assume that the moderation staff is largely all on the same page on the subject.

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Your analogy to lactose intolerance undermines your argument, in that the reasons an expert opinion on that issue are given more weight don’t apply to the case at hand.

You would give the opinion of an expert on lactose intolerance more weight because 1) it’s a relatively specialized subject that many people have no experience with and 2) more importantly because it depends on facts that many people don’t know. By contrast, misogyny issues are 1) supposedly all around us on a constant basis, and 2) more importantly are not about questions of facts but are about a) interpretations of other people’s underlying attitudes and b) about how to rank competing values.

I’m curious as to how consistently you would apply your logic. Would you give more weight to the opinions of Jews as compared to others in deciding whether Omar Ilhan is an anti-Semite? (Consistent with your logic above, one would think that “giving the opinions of the two sides equal weight is not merely dismissive, foolhardy, and obnoxious, it is itself anti-Semitic”, and any time some group of Jews agree that she’s an anti-Semite then “the best course for non-Jews should be to shut up and nod”.)

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How about if a Klansman and a black guy have differing opinions on a racist statement? Should they be given the same weight? Or even maybe not a Klansman, but just a regular white person who has never personally experienced racism, but maybe has witnessed it?

I know I’ve gotten into discussions on this board with men who are convinced that sexual harassment doesn’t really happen, or that no one that know had told them about being assaulted so it doesn’t really happen very often, or that women don’t get catcalled because they’ve never done it and have never seen it.

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I’m pretty sure it would not improve the board and would make nobody happy to have the mod staff deciding whose opinions are worth more for any given topic.

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Obviously, yes. I mean, how is that even a question?

That doesn’t mean that every time a Jewish person accuses someone else of anti-semetism they are right – but OBVIOUSLY their opinion would carry more weight than someone who wasn’t Jewish and hadn’t experienced anti-semetism.

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Also, I’ll note that we aren’t saying we should give more weight to women when trying to determine if certain posters are misogynistic. We are saying their opinion about specific things which are said should be weighed more heavily. So it’s not about whether or not Omar Illhan is anti-semetic, but about whether or not a particular statement she made is anti-semetic or not. Note that considering her background, it wouldn’t be very surprising if she did say certain things that are anti-semetic, even if she didn’t mean them in that way and is not actually anti-semetic. Obviously, Jewish people’s opinion on such statements should be given their due consideration.

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And I’m still waiting for a response to this one.

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That’s certainly their current policy on racism. Well, colour racism, at any rate. Antisemitism is another matter entirely.

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Not that it matters – but I would say that Ashai’s OP in that thread definitely crossed the line and should have been moderated.

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It would make me happy if my opinions on what is derogatory to Republicans or conservatives is weighted more.

Fair’s fair, after all. If women on the SDMB are unanimous that some posts are offensive to them, then clearly conservatives on the SDMB with the same degree of unanimity should get to decide what is offensive to them.

Regards,
Shodan

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You want the same protection on this board that women get?

Are you sure about that?

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Aww, that’s precious. Poor oppressed minority, right?

You don’t see the difference between a category like “Black” or “Gay” or “Christian” or “Female” and a category like “Republican”?

Note that nobody is going to stop you from being as derogatory as you’d like to Democrats – so long as you’re being derogatory about their politics, and not dragging their race or gender or sexuality into it.

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That would be the all-male moderation staff, right?

I’m fine with that. I mean, that’s exactly what the OP and everyone else is saying.

Two things wrong with this: first, no one said they make the decisions on what is offensive. Their opinion should be given more weight, but that doesn’t mean they are the final arbiter.

Second, there is a big difference between a political view and a gender. There’s a reason that gender is a protected class and political views aren’t. This is pretty obvious to most people, and I bet you can figure it out.

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Sure, I see the difference. One is a group whose opinions should be given greater weight, because otherwise they might leave the SDMB and diversity of viewpoint is important. The other is a group whose opinions should not be given greater weight, because even if they leave the SDMB, diversity of viewpoint isn’t important.

A group in the minority on the SDMB, who is unanimous or nearly so, needs to have greater weight given to their opinion, except when it shouldn’t. Because it is important to keep them around, and who needs them anyway? They’re just weak, fragile little creatures who can’t take the heat and deserve special protection.

Seems pretty straightforward to me, and makes no sense.

Regards,
Shodan

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If you are being offensive to women, you are mistreating people based on an innate characteristic they cannot control. This also applies to race, sexuality, etc. It does NOT apply to religion, but in our society we have decided that religion should be a protected class anyways.

Care to point out a time where somebody was offensive to conservatives or Republicans due to some characteristic inherent to being a conservative or Republican, rather than because of a view that they held?

(ETA: Before you link Ashai’s post, I already said I agree that his post should have been moderated.)

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I hereby vow to fight against right-wing discrimination just as hard as they fought against misogyny on this board.

Fair enough?

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I am not a moderator here but I have been an administrator at Wikipedia for years (though I’ve been mostly retired for some time). At Wikipedia we have a frequent problem where people appeal to authority, claiming to have some sort of credential or to have a connection to a person or organization and that their opinion or other suggestion should hold more weight. At Wikipedia the standard is to reject those claims because, as has been infamously stated, “on the internet nobody knows that you’re a dog”. When you are able to interact with people anonymously you can make whatever claim you want to and it is difficult or impossible to verify or disprove your claims.

An infamous example is the Essjay controversy:

Essjay was the handle of an editor at Wikipedia that had become an administrator (a position of some trust and privilege on the site). He had done so claiming to be a university professor of religious studies and to hold multiple doctoral degrees, and often argued using those credentials to back up many of his claims. He was well-respected and held in high esteem.

Things came crashing down when he was doing an interview for the New Yorker about Wikipedia. They looked into his background and could not confirm any of his claims. He eventually admitted to being a 24-year-old community college dropout. Even Jimbo Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia who ran the site was involved, initially defending and then later condemning him. Essjay resigned his administrator position and left the site in disgrace.

That’s just one example of the controversies that have occurred at Wikipedia over false claims of identity and/or credentials. And it’s one of the big reasons why generally those claims are given a grain of salt. You can claim to be whatever you want, but what matters is what you can contribute and what you can back up (through proper citations). I don’t see why that shouldn’t be the case here as well.

In this situation, what is to prevent an MRA from making an account, claiming to be a woman, and claim from his “female perspective” that misogyny issues on the board are overblown? What’s to stop someone from the Alt Right from claiming to be Jewish or Black or Arabic or whatever, and make racist claims that should be accepted because they are only speaking against their “own kind”? Do we give those more weight just because of who they claim to be?

I don’t at all disagree with the general premise here that people who are living the controversies that come up should have more say in how they are handled. Women are impacted the most by misogyny, Jewish people are impacted the most by antisemitism, LGBTQ+ folks are impacted most by homophobia or other prejudice against those who aren’t cis/hetero/whatever. But the fact is that we don’t know for a fact that a person is who they say they are, and that should be taken into account.

I am not a mod here but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this wasn’t something they consider in these discussions.

And since I made a claim myself about being an authority, here is a link to my Wikipedia page. I think I’m safe enough to “out” myself this much: