The examples you gave were all of posters that had a much more extensive posting history (except one, but I was on the fence on that one too). This poster in question had about 30 posts IIRC. If someone trolls in their first foray into the boards, I’m going to ban them. Banning trolls is open season for any mod. I admit it’s a bit of a sliding scale, where people with a lot of history may get more leeway, hence trolling being the 4th most popular warning category.
It’s not that trolling isn’t worthy of a warning, it’s that the post in question didn’t rise to the level that would yield a warning for trolling, in the context of that poster.
I find those posts eye-rolling but basically harmless. Getting rid of them would be 100% fine with me if it means we get rid of the “scientific racist” posts and their ilk.
At the time of the moderation, this discussion did not exist. So saying that is a reason that no record is needed doesn’t make sense. Anyway, we are always told that records are not kept for mod notes. If we are now counting “informal records”, then maybe we shouldn’t be told that anymore. The post in question and the moderator’s note will exist, and that serves as an “informal record”.
This is pretty silly. If he had been a frequent poster, you would have warned him for trolling but because he isn’t you’d have to ban him. Since that seems a little harsh in this case then you can’t do anything. You are handcuffing yourselves for no logical reason.
There are lots of different standards on trolling and “playing devil’s advocate” around the internet. Why should this one rule be treated so special that a newb can’t be corrected with a warning?
That’s simple. Since you don’t recognize quantifying modifiers as weasel words, you could simply write, “All the country’s problems are the fault of most old, white males.” That wouldn’t ruffle feathers, right?
Of course, I’ve never seen a post blaming all the country’s problems on old, white males, but if you wanted to make such a comment, that seems like the way to go about it. Good luck defending it, though.
Its description of how Holocaust deniers engage should sound real familiar to anyone who’s read any of the Just Asking Questions scientific racist posts that crop up around here. Their description of how they deal with such posts will be novel and refreshing.
I encourage folks, but especially mods and admins, to read what they’ve done, and consider how much better our board would be without the need to coddle racists.
This seems almost tangential to my post and doesn’t even address your fellow mod’s musing regarding political ideology.
I agree that people can change their beliefs which is why I used the word, “generally”. However this requires good faith in discussing the topic. Some additional points below:
Most importantly, this isn’t a fucking game or debate about gun rights or tax brackets. Arguing whether people are inherently inferior isn’t a “political debate”; real people are getting hurt and affected by this. The problem is that racism directed at anyone against whites is treated differently on these boards from anything else. Discussions on other inherent characteristics like gender and sexual orientation are met with far more moderation. The mods were more willing to listen during the misogyny debacle a few months ago but don’t appear to be listening now even though it’s the exact same issue. The same result will happen where minorities leave or decline to participate and slowly you end up with a board dominated by racist beliefs. In other words, either be fair and apply the rules equally or just admit that a racist board is fine so that the rest of us can make our decisions but this continued game where racism isn’t tolerated except it’s “a discussion” to say that black people/Hispanics/brown people are inferior is dissembling bullshit.
The same posters repeat the exact, same arguments in thread after thread even after they are solidly refuted. Very often, they don’t engage with the refutation but simply continue to make post after post on the same topic. This isn’t good faith and instead is more like the “fake news” or “propaganda”. It’s incredibly difficult, if not impossible for anyone new to be aware of this or to get rational discussion. I give props to MrDibble for trying to counter the same arguments over and over because I won’t venture into those threads anymore. I know other people have done the same thing. This isn’t a discussion. And this isn’t new.
There’s a current thread in the Pit that also shows a poster who hasn’t even read his cites but somehow he knows black people are inferior.
Facebook, Apple and everyone except Twitter is starting to take their TOS regarding harassing or discrimination seriously. Letting posters continually and repeatedly target the intelligence and equality of groups containing other posters isn’t discussion; it’s harassment. Why is this board going in the other direction?
In this case, you guys are turning yourself into logical pretzels trying to excuse given a warning to a racist post. The reasons provided aren’t consistent with past behavior. I’m just asking for fairness.
LHOD, thanks for posting that article. It articulated much of what I’ve been thinking but was too incoherent with anger to say. Every mod should read it. Then I hope a new policy emerges.
Replace denialist with racist, and Nazism with racism, and they could be talking directly to the mods here.
I may have misjudged reddit - I thought it was merely a haven for racists, Red Pills, incels and GamerGaters, and that’s the way the CEO liked it. I mean, read his take on it- it might have come from the keyboard of a mod here:
Might have to give some of these other saner subreddits that don’t buy into that bullshit a look-see - I wonder if someone maintains a list of good ones…
Yes, “this poster” has made 32 posts. Fifteen minutes before the post we’ve been discussing here he made this post in which he discusses " Blacks’ soulless, tribal reaction to the first O.J. verdict". (S)he resurected a 2007 thread to point out “today we have blacks who’ve declared a grossly unfair war on the police while excusing daily murders among their own people, e.g. Chicago.”
I guess the mod(s) must have missed that one when taking into account the poster’s history. That’s only 2 racist posts out of an entire 30. That’s definitely not a racist spewing racism that deserves a warning.