I get that Holocaust denial doesn’t represent an existential threat to you and your family. I get that in your world, “let’s just see if any Nazis show up and then tell them they’re welcome to hang out so long as they don’t talk about too much Nazi stuff” is a workable solution for you. That’s cool for you. Must be nice. But it’s not the case for everyone.
Sometimes you don’t let something grow just to see if it might or might not be poison oak. Sometimes you just salt the fucking earth. Holocaust denial is one of those sometimes.
Indeed. I think I was reading here, but not a poster back when an “out pedophile” was posting. People were arguing that he should be tolerated, others wanted him gone. I couldn’t believe it and just left for a while.
I believe there was an incident of that sort way back in February 2005. It was an ugly situation. I don’t know if that is the same person you’re thinking of.
That’s a perfect example of the kind of topic that is extremely disruptive to the board and best left alone. It went very, very bad.
I won’t give more details because I don’t think it would be productive to do so.
I believe anything forbidden board-wide is forbidden in the Pit. It’s not really an “anything goes” place, it’s just a lot more permissive. People can do personal attacks, accuse people of trolling, insult each other, and so on. But there is still a lot not allowed there. No racism, misgendering, threats of harm, and so on. Basically, you can be mean and cuss a lot but otherwise if you can’t talk about it on the board you can’t talk about it there either.
I’m not a mod, and maybe @Miller can correct me here, but I don’t think a thread about the “forbidden” topics is allowed there either. Otherwise such threads would be moved to the Pit rather than closed.
You’re largely correct about the Pit not being an “anything goes” forum. I wouldn’t say that the entire list of “tired topics” is necessarily not allowed in the Pit, though. I don’t think it’s come up, but a Pit thread about 9/11 being an inside job, or the moon landing being a hoax, probably would be okay. The pointlessness of debating these issues would be offset by the ability to call their proponents mean names.
Holocaust denial or “scientific racism” certainly would not be allowed.
As we found out in another one of my threads forced-moved by mods into the Pit. What you will get is guaranteed to turn into a pit thread. Self-fulfilling prophesy.
I believe that if a thread is only suitable for the Pit, it is closed and the OP is given the option to leave it closed or to have it reopened and moved to the Pit.
In the past people would create a topic which would be moved to the Pit over their objections, and the OP often would not be happy with how the thread turned out. Now there’s a choice.
Not to be a pest, but I still have some concerns about both thread closures mentioned here – the temporary one that was the subject of the OP, and the recent closure in FQ by ECG over alleged “Holocaust denial”.
We have a bunch of rules for GD and P&E (and other fora) established by TPTB that all seem to make sense, but ISTM that they’re being interpreted so strictly that perfectly valid topics are being barred just because they seem somewhat adjacent. For example, the FQ thread about the lampshade thing. It’s a distasteful and frankly offensive topic and perhaps should have been closed for that reason, but certainly not for the reason given. In what way does asking or discussing the question constitute Holocaust denial in any way, shape or form? The logic seems to be that if the Holocaust is historical fact and there is no legitimate debate to be had about it (I agree) then any other separate question about it cannot be discussed, either (I absolutely do NOT agree).
Same with the men’s rights thing. That one seems to me to be a reasonable prohibition on advocating the idea that men are inherently superior to women or should have inherent rights just by virtue of being male. This is flat-out bigotry and is in the same category as white supremacy and maligning racial minorities as inferior, and should be banned. But the role of the male partner in a relationship regarding abortion is a legitimate discussion. Frankly I think it should be exclusively the woman’s decision, but it’s still a legitimate discussion and has no element of bigotry.
To give another example, back in the day we had a number of annoying and time-consuming threads centering on climate change denial. I welcome this being called out as a thrice-told tale that we don’t want to see any more. I personally devoted a lot of effort to fighting this ignorance. But are we now at risk of having every thread having anything to do with climate change scrutinized and perhaps closed “out of an abundance of caution”? Isn’t that the same thing as the previous two examples? What if someone wants to argue – as many conservatives do – that whether climate change is real or not, the costs of mitigation are so excessive that we shouldn’t attempt it. That goes directly against the science. Should that be a prohibited discussion?
In summary, ISTM that the rules in question are intended to prevent the advocacy of blatant bigotry, outright lies, racism, and other toxic topics, but not anything and everything that is even tangentially related.
The rules are also meant to keep the mods sane, so that they can continue to give us a nice place to chat civilly.
What discussion can be had about Nazi lampshades? Either they were human skin, they weren’t, or some were and some weren’t. That’s pretty much it, unless you want to start getting into subjects indistinguishable from Denialism.
You said that you think it should be exclusively the woman’s decision, so what discussion can be had that isn’t a man telling a woman that he has a right to revoke her bodily autonomy?
Child support is a different category, but I don’t know if such discussions have been/would be shut down by mods. But it’s adjacent enough to MRA propaganda that a mod is probably going to end up riding the thread full time. I can see such a discussion given very short leash.
There are plenty of places that these topics can be discussed. The reason that people want to discuss topics here is because the mods give us a nice place to do so. We should return the favor by not trashing the place and making them clean it up.
There certainly do seem to be some posters who do not enjoy their time here discussing topics with other posters, and it seems as though their objective is to prevent anyone else from doing so either.
The existence of the Buchenwald lampshade has never been proven. This singular piece of information is often latched onto by Holocaust deniers (as conspiracy theorists tend to do) as a way of casting doubt on everything else. “If we don’t know this, what else might we not know?”
The thread wasn’t closed down because it was about the holocaust, or even because it was about a distasteful thing. It was closed becauase that specific topic about the Holocaust is a well-trod Holocaust denial talking point.