Preach it sister. I have no idea why this RO thread became a “you must play nice thread” and you became the focus of such misguided ire, but the anti-vaxxers deserve patience and humanity.
The reason they can appear so calm and nice is that no one is allowed to challenge them. This needs to be understood - if you go over there and post something pro-vaxx, they will ban you.
Secondly, you appear to be skipping over a lot of stuff - things like
And cites from David Ickes - http://www.davidicke.com/icke/reading/MedicalMafia.html
All from the thread you linked to.
This sounds reasonable to you?
Calm and rational has been tried. Citations have been tried. To put it in SDMB terms, all the approaches from GQ thru GD thru IMHO have been tried. So, all that remains is Pit.
“You can’t reason a person out of a position that they didn’t reason themselves into”.
For heaven’s sake, if seeing children die isn’t enough to convince them, nothing we can do will change anything.
They’re not listening. Because they’re nuts. That’s how it works sometimes.
Regards,
Shodan
More from that “pretty reasonable place”, mothering.com, in a thread in the “I’m Not Vaccinating” forum, discussing having one’s unvaccinated children in preschool/school. Lots of responses including discussion of how they used exemptions to avoid vaccination, with not a single one expressing concern about their kids potentially spreading dangerous diseases to their classmates. A sampling of comments:
*“Our family does not vaccinate…sometimes I feel like my son will be the only unvaccinated child in the class, and god forbid there is a breakout, they will blame him or something…”
“I just read an article in the Parenting magazine where the doctor was telling vaccinating parents to get angry at those who choose not to vaccinate when entering school. I mean, are you serious??? I don’t like that magazine because it’s mainstream, and I can usually avoid those articles, but I had to read that one and it just made me angry and sick to my stomach.”
“My kids are vax-free. Dd was in play groups, day care at the gym, and with kids from 3 months old. She started pre-school at 2 and still goes.”
“My kids are both 100% vax free and my dd will be starting preschool in the fall. The exemption is super easy in my state!..Guess they’ll just have to blame my dirty family if there’s an outbreak of something 
(tongue in cheek!!)”*
Lovely, reasonable parents.
Bolding mine.
That’s because a frequently-given piece of advice on how to respond to pro-vaxxers who talk about herd immunity is “Tell them you 're not a sheeple and don’t want to be part of the herds.” As if you can opt out of disease.
~Lorene, who was also banned from MDC several years ago
Well, that is probably a pretty effective tactic for appearing to casual browsers to be a calm and nice place. isn’t it?
The point ---------------------------------------------------------------------------> over there. You missed it.
Yes, if people practice censorship, things can look calm and nice. SO WHAT? By definition, that makes mothering dot com an invalid source of information.
And it’s actually NOT calm and nice, if you read the threads on vaccines. They rant and rave against vaccine supporters in much the same way as we’re ranting and raving here against anti-vaxxers. The difference? We’re doing it in a Pit thread, blowing off steam, while they’re doing it on the main discussion boards as factual information.
I have to conclude that you are intentionally choosing to misinterpret me.
Mothering is not a valid source of information.
Mothering very likely appears, to a newbie engaging in casual surfing, to be a valid source of information and a generally pleasant place.
The fact that this illusion is achieved through trickery is lamentable, but since a newbie doesn’t know about this trickery, it is still going to appear to be a nice and decent place to them.
I can’t think of any other, more straight forward way to put this.
And I can’t think of any more straightforward way to respond that this information is irrelevant to the original purpose of this thread, which was started so that we could vent about the lunacy of the anti-vax people.
If your purpose here is to continue to bleat that we, on this message board, in this forum, need to be nice and pleasant so that people surfing about vaccines won’t run across this thread and be so startled by the use of strong language that they run screaming away, then let me again respond by saying “fuck off.” I’m not going to temper my language or my reactions in a thread in a forum designed for venting.
Just because mothering dot com maintains a calm tone (according to you, which again you haven’t read enough of their anti-vaccine threads to realize that their ranting against vaccines can be JUST AS strong as the language here) doesn’t mean that we should never, ever raise our cyber-voices or use bad language when we vent about anti-vax idiots.
And you coming in here all high-and-mighty and chastising us about our tone in a Pit thread is still stupid.
As long as the casual browsers don’t notice the other things I mentioned, like cites from whale.to and David Icke.
If that appears to be “reasonable” to the casual browser, then the casual browser is an idiot. Although to be fair, that would mean she would fit right in at the anti-vaxx boards.
If you think it is a good idea to lie, suppress truth, and ban those who don’t buy into bullshit, in order to appear reasonable and win friends and influence people like mothering dot com does, then I have to disagree with you.
Regards,
Shodan
Since you apparently missed this before, here are a couple of quotes from that mothering.com thread about parents sending their unvaccinated kids to preschool and regular school:
"“Our family does not vaccinate…sometimes I feel like my son will be the only unvaccinated child in the class, and god forbid there is a breakout, they will blame him or something…”
“My kids are both 100% vax free and my dd will be starting preschool in the fall. The exemption is super easy in my state!..Guess they’ll just have to blame my dirty family if there’s an outbreak of something 
(tongue in cheek!!)”
Kindly explain what is “nice and decent” about having your unvaccinated kids being the potential source of school outbreaks of dangerous infectious diseases, while your only stated concern is that the blame will come to fall on you (never mind the other kids and their contacts who’d get sick). Personally, I find that a nauseatingly antisocial frame of mind, but apparently your mileage varies.
I can only judge from what you’ve posted, which includes creating a false impression of alleged inaccuracies by pro-vaccination posters and repeated concern trolling. How much of this stems from personal views on immunization and how much is part of your continuing mission to be a clueless horse’s ass, is difficult to say.
even sven, I understand exactly what you’re saying. The problem is, you’ve let your desire to be the calm voice of reason around here run away with your thoughts. Yes, in places where people might be looking for information about vaccination, or for support for a wavering intention to vaccinate, calm, rational, informative posts would be a very good idea. That’s why many of us do that in those places. This is not one of those places. Nobody is coming here to the SDMB for that information, and on the one in a million chance that they might, they aren’t going to be looking in the Pit.
You want to remind people how to be persuasive? You want to explain how to avoid alienating people? Fine. It’s just that…this ain’t the place for it. Save it for places where there’s actually a discussion of vaccines or related subjects going on. This is the SDMB Pit, where members come to vent and holler about all sorts of stuff.
Great Og but people adopt some dumbshit positions when cornered in debate. This is precisely what even sven and I have been saying all along. We have never, for one microsecond, suggested we have been talking about anyone who is not “TRULY” a fencesitter.
It’s almost as if in your hysterical, childish, squealing, angry little brain you didn’t take the time to figure out you agreed with us. Oh wait. You just had a “bored, dismissive attitude”. Right. You know, if I were you I’d go for hysterical, childish, squealing and angry. At least then you’d have an excuse for arguing against something for three pages that you finally admitted you agree with.
Happy now, Princhester? You’ve made your totally irrelevant point. Now can we get back to the subject at hand, which is venting about idiots who not only don’t vaccinate their children, but who think sending contagion through the mail is a fine thing to do.
See the second para of my post #162. There was always going to be somebody. It doesn’t make me happy though. It’s sad really.
Yeah, I see it. That doesn’t make you any less self-righteous, though.
As I have said, a certain fool posting above could have commented at the outset that what **even sven **and I were saying was probably right but that this was a pit thread and they were just here to vent. Instead they chose to argue, and argue, and argue that we were wrong (not just arguing in the wrong place, but wrong), on increasingly stupid and disingenous grounds. Before finally admitting we were right.
Like everyone else I post here for entertainment and amusement. I’m not always nice enough to ignore the chance to point and laugh while allowing some idiot the opportunity to make an idiot of themselves.
Sad, really 
It’s really sad that the two of you continue to fail to understand our fundamental point. Many of those fence sitters you think will be offended into walking away from vaccines by calling them out when they post “facts” from Rense aren’t fence sitters at all. They are anti-vaxxers. Almost no one is an anti-vaxxer. Or at least will admit to being one. Instead, as I pointed out, they call themselves vaccine safety advocates or some such similar phrase. Andrew fucking Wakefield would probably call himself such an advocate while simultaneously explaining that vaccines do indeed cause autism.
The two of you would know that if you had bothered to read their posts or ours. But you haven’t. You’ve obviously never spent a single second patiently arguing with someone like Interested Observer who I daresay would drive a saint to slap her.
Even Sven had the nerve to pull up an actual link at Mothering from someone who might label herself a fence sitter. She then whined that we were being too harsh on people like her, despite no evidence to the contrary and despite highly detailed and referencing including myself on this subject in multiple prior threads on this subject. You crawled up her ass and applauded her finger waving while reserving your shrill anger for posters who tried to point out how wrong she is.
As I have said multiple times since you apparently think it is so easy to convince such fence sitters then go ahead and show us how it is done.
SInce, as many of us will tell you, you probably can’t at least have the grace to shut the fuck and stop ludicrously patting yourself on the back.
Jesus Haploid Christ, are the Sanctimonious Twat Twins STILL at it? Still tsk-tsking and shaking a finger at strong language in the Pit?
Both of you need to seriously get a fucking life. If you don’t understand the purpose of a forum, you could always read the description. Or lurk a while and see what kind of stuff gets posted in the various forums that are available, since you’re apparently too new to understand the purpose of the Pit. Oh, wait, your join date is 2001. So you’re well aware of the purpose of the Pit - you just wanted to act like a fucking spinster aunt and swoon and clutch your pearls and post “well, I never!” So, fuck right off, you clueless moron.
There are no fence-sitters here, you festering shitstain. This thread wasn’t started to try to convince anyone of anything. This thread was started to vent about idiots sending biohazardous material through the U.S. mail, out of disdain for established medical science. The fact I have to explain that to you means that you either 1) didn’t read the OP or any of the other posts in this thread or 2) are too cognitively challenged to be able to comprehend the English language.
And if there were fence-sitters here, I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass. This isn’t the “Educate the Idiots” forum, this is the Pit. I’m going to vent here in ways I wouldn’t elsewhere. If you two condescending arrogant and at the same time completely fucking clueless peckerwoods can’t comprehend that, then do yourselves and humanity a favor and stick to what you do understand - knitting and cat hoarding and judging your betters, and stay off the confusing and frightening intertubes.
LavenderBlue is right…there are no fence-sitters. I don’t recall ever running into one, ever, in all the time I’ve been reading about this subject on message boards. InterestedObserver is a great example…she says she is NOT anti-vaccine, she is pro-CHOICE on vaccines. They are not right for HER family, but she is fine with others feeling differently for their own families. Then she posts walls of text arguing against vaccines and explaining why polio isn’t really as bad as it’s made out to be. So, the point is moot. If you find a real fence-sitter, send them over here, we’ll be nice. And good luck finding one.
I love how gendered your attempted insults are.