Revisiting the BBQ Pit- Boon or Bane?

Uh-oh, did I post something pittable? Sorry, I took it as a given that you don’t see eye to eye with the mods about racism based on your posts here. My apologies for making a bad assumption.

Cite that this is a significant problem? Not only have I never seen anyone do such a thing, I have difficulty imagining what it would even mean. Presumably politely advocating for murder(!) is against the board rules, so are we talking something like arguing in favour of selective abortion or embryo screening?

Leaving that aside, even a poster advocating for discrimination is an extremely rare event; the large majority of what is claimed as bigotry by ‘progressive’ posters is simply people disagreeing about theories like CRT, or on factual questions, or on the best way to deal with racism, sexism, etc.

Calling someone disingenuous is an insult. That’s why you can only do it in the Pit. Objecting to being insulted is obviously not the same as objecting to other people having a different opinion. Debating with people who hold a different opinion is kind of the point of GD. Getting insulted and abused by people who can’t handle disagreement with their ideas is just an unpleasant aspect of board culture that the SDMB would be better off without.

I don’t see eye-to-eye with the mods around the moderation around racism. With the current set of mods, I think we are in general agreement about is and isn’t racism is. So there’s no reason to suppose that should reason prevail and actual racism be moddable, that I would be unsatisfied.

I’m not unsatisfied with the modding around homophobia, for instance, or most of the modding around misogyny - it’s a learning process, we let the mods know what we think is misogyny by reporting, and the mods let us know what they think is misogyny by modding or not modding particular posts. Sometimes they let a reporter know their thinking sometimes not. I’m generally satisfied with the process even if I disagree with specific instances. So I wouldn’t say I disagree “a lot” around it. It’s more about honing the edges.

Sorry if that was extra cranky, but I’m kind of sick of the bullshit narrative that I see everything as racism and won’t settle for anything less than complete acquiescence. There are in fact only a couple of changes to the moderation that I’d like. Hell, just one change would satisfy me.

Please try to post the non-leftist view on topics such as affirmative action, magnet school admissions, or the existence & desirability of critical race theory, and let me know how long it lasts before someone finds a reason to shut down people arguing for the position that the median American holds on these issues. There all sorts of both ambiguous and unwritten rules that are selectively wielded on people who have the wrong opinions and/or the wrong amount of board tenure, and ultimately any discussion of how things work around here needs to address that fact.

I have found over the years that it is not so much what is said, but how it is said.

Could posting slurs about the mental health of others over and over again possibly be part of the problem?

Yes, this could work.

But you see, the real issue is not that the posts or posters are racist. The real issue is that people want to insult people by saying:

Most times the poster called out is not racist, the post is not racist, but the name caller just wants to show his SJW credentials and at the same time call names like on a playground. It is a twofer.

“SJW”?

(Yes, Discourse, this is all I wanted to post.)

Social Justice Warrior.

One of the Alt-Right boogeymen terms for anybody that says “Hey, why don’t we treat people with dignity?”

The posters may well not think of themselves as racist, but I’ve rarely if ever seen someone on these boards call out a post as racist when I couldn’t see their point.

There are some people who refuse to consider anything racist unless it meets a very narrow definition – I’ve seen people declare that nothing’s racist unless it carries specific evil intent to do damage explicitly on the grounds of somebody’s race. This when I’ve seen it is usually a position taken by someone who wants to take a paternalistic racist position and/or to defend or espouse supposedly “scientific” racism; though sometimes it’s just a matter of someone who wishes the whole issue would magically disappear and so is refusing to look at most manifestations of it.

There are others who haven’t thought through that the consequences of what they’re saying would do such damage, or who don’t recognize a particular slur, or who are ignorant of relevant history. That in itself can happen by accident; it’s the reaction to being called on it that’s telling. ‘Whoops, I’m sorry, I didn’t know that! I’ll stop using that word / go study up on that subject’ is one sort of reaction. ‘You expletive expletive explitive how dare you call me a racist! I am not a racist so I couldn’t possibly have said anything racist!’ is an entirely different sort of reaction – especially if combined with doubling down on the ignorant statement.

Well, yes it can mean that, it often does. But here on the SDMB, we have several posters that live to attack other posters, calling them names, just because those posters slightly disagree on some issue.

I doubt if their calling out or purported "I am a million time more woke that you are stance’ is sincere. They are performing a type of trolling, where they can call posters names that disagree with them, while at the same time holding themselves out as the one true sources of what is and is not racism- which basically comes down to “Disagree with me and I will call you a racist and other names”.

They allow no disagreement or argument. They confidently state they are the one true expert and are omniscient when it comes to those issues.

Unfortunately mental health and aberrant behavior go hand in hand. Mental illness is a horrible thing and tragic in many circumstances. But most of us on this board are not mental health professionals, even were we, a message board is a poor arena for the treatment of mental health. Unfortunately we lack any meaningful way to help people afflicted who post here, but at the same time we are subject to their aberrant behaviors, many of which are inappropriate and disruptive. The rules of a discussion forum should be to promote proper and good discussion, and when someone’s mental afflictions mean they cannot follow those rules, then we should not have to tolerate them.

Are you?

Yeah, that’s what I meant to say, but I was not sufficiently clear, sorry.

I am generally in agreement with you about the moderation around misogyny, which is why I think itcould work for racism as well.

All of this is in context of the idea of eliminating the pitting of individual posters and moving those discussions to ATMB. With some slightly revamped rules about what is allowed in that forum, I think it could work.

Yeah, that’s very much right up the alleyway. You asked a “what if,” qualified it with the possibility it might not be true and asked what people thought.

You got off topic posts, the same old tired derision of Donald Trump, personal attacks against you without moderation, and when moderation finally comes, your thread must be shut down because of too many personal attacks.

Well, why weren’t the personal attacks moderated to begin with to keep your thread on topic?

I mean, you were threatened with a warning for asking about the dangers of pools in a gun thread, but people in the thread you quoted were talking about every single thing Trump had ever done or allegedly done. Posts are allowed in Cafe Society to slam on Trump and Republicans in the “Alex P. Keaton” thread. I am noted for asking why June 19 is the right day to celebrate the end of slavery. But the attacks on Republicans go on and on and on.

And I don’t really care about me personally, but if you want more people and a diversity of opinion, then the moderation and the behavior of the board needs to be even handed. If you think a post is racist, then why not just argue against the content of it instead of resorting to a tired old yarn. Same with “bigotry”? Or the new misnomer “trolling” which has changed meaning to “something that upsets someone”? Or if you think your wife is hot: misogyny.

But the moderation, with no disrespect, has largely signed on to the left wing agenda which holds that we don’t just have a difference of opinion, and not even that you are objectively wrong. But that you are bigoted, racist, being a jerk, being a troll, etc. so we can’t even talk about it.

The gravitational center of the board needs to be recalibrated for the reasons that you said, if we want to attract or indeed keep members. If that is not the desire, and that it should be a left wing rant room, then by all means keep it up. It wasn’t what made this board the excellent place I came to: far from it.

I think the definition of racism has been drastically expanded, and while it’s probably not concious, certain people (who might just possibly be dscribed as SJWs) find this very useful as a way to ‘win’ debates and avoid having to defend their views. It allows them to declare whole areas of argument off limits, and discourage much disagreement by presenting it as morally reprehensible. This gives them an interest in promoting a maximally expansive definition of racism.

And questioning the definition of racism is also Not Allowed. Preferring anything less than the maximal definition, or attempting to defend something you or someone else has said, is in itself regarded as evidence of racism, or at least moral turpitude. These activists have appointed themselves sole arbiters of what is racist, and seem to believe it gives them a right to abuse anyone who doesn’t recognise their authority.

There are two possibilities here.

  1. That the Mods will not do anything about a openly racist post or poster. Since I have seen them hand out warning and even a ban or two, I do not think it is correct. I do not think that being a racist is against the rules for the simple reason of how do we know? I know that openly racist posts have been modded.

  2. That your definition of what is racism does not meet with that they think is racism.

So “SJW” is a code word that means you believe a poster is a troll or a liar?

This thread is getting pretty far afield, and I’m not seeing a whole lot related to the original topic. I think it’s time to close this before it goes off the rails any further. Thanks to everyone for your input. This was an interesting and valuable conversation.