Not only was Der Trihs not so “open” in the expression of his views, I would say that I can’t remember any poster advocating any extreme position who has been so “open” in comparison to this one.
Whether that justifies mod action is, of course, the topic under debate.
DT was also twice the age of Construct and engaged in a ton of personal attacks.
Stop right now. MrDibble is correct. This is a question about moderation not about a poster. Any argument about (or from) the poster in question will be dealt with by warning for failure to follow mod direction.
In case anyone is wondering, I don’t consider MrDibble to be junior modding since he was only clarifying the purpose of his thread. And he is correct. This is ATMB and not the place to argue with other posters about what they post. Take it to the Pit.
Note: Not an ATMB mod but this was going to go downhill fast so I felt the need to put the brakes on. An ATMB mod may come on and modify my instructions as they see fit.
nm
I was very surprised to see tomdebb participating in that thread. I don’t mean that he shouldn’t act as a poster rather than a moderator. But if any thread called for moderation, that one did. The OP was either a troll or mentally off (more than the rest of us) and the thread was full of nonsensical hate speech.
Just stop it. You’re being pointless.
I’ll repeat: hate speech is difficult to define and can easily cross the line into supression of ideas. That’s antithetical to the very nature of the SDMB. Were we to supress that what’s to keep us from suppressing other unpopular opinions? I’d prefer to err on the side of allowing such and counting on the TM to treat such ideas with the respect they deserve. In general, we do a good job of policing such. I’m sorry you don’t feel that way.
Don’t be shy about reporting posts, though. Again, speaking for myself only, many things can go into whether a post gets moderated.
I think your risk is roughly equal both from the boogieman and from some anonymous poster on the Internet.
Regards,
Shodan
PS - no backsies, I’m rubber, you’re glue, and don’t step on the black tiles - they’re lava.
No, because I didn’t consider most of what he posted to be hate speech, and when it came close, like his posts about women, I did call it out although I never needed to start a thread about it specifically, there were always so many.
On the other hand, this isn’t my first post ever about the modding of racism, nor the first thread like it I’ve participated in, so no, it’s not my understanding that it’s ‘always been the case’ that any old hate speech is OK so long as it’s not personal. The understanding I’d garnered from the mods was that some things, like scientific racism, weren’t considered hate speech (by them). This goes beyond that, so I was asking if they’d changed their minds again.
That’s not a yes or a no. And was that ‘stop it’ a mod instruction, because otherwise no, I’d actually like an answer to that question from a mod.
DTs would personally attack people who held different views; Construct doesnt. We dont have to like ideas that are expressed here but we are here to express ideas. The silencing of ideas is worse than the expression of the worst idea. Like a SCOTUS judge wrote…‘The antidote to bad speech is more speech’.
Mr. Dibble, your self awareness is dizzying.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18561333&postcount=44
That kind of conflicts with this, though:
Errm, Construct isn’t offering any ridiculous pseudoscientific rationale along those lines. I never said I’d laugh at racism. Just pseudoscience.
If all three of those rules were strictly enforced the SDMB herd would be thinned considerably. 
I think that Tom was giving the OP enough rope to hang him or herself with. I was rather surprised by how quickly it got shut down, but then the OP went off the deep end rather rapidly into some truly disgusting racial slurs (this leaves aside his or her statements about 'pink’s used for ‘shoe leathercattle’…I really love how leather and cattle are contracted into one word there :p).
The thing is, I’d rather see the mods allow things like that, at least for a while, instead of just shutting them down. You can’t fight ignorance if you simply shut down crazy people immediately, since it looks like you are afraid to engage and are shutting them down for that reason. I think hate speech is the same thing…it NEEDS to be fought against, lights blazing and with as much factual as well as scornful arguments back at it as we can do while still keeping things civil (well…relatively civil wrt GD anyway). You can’t fight hate speech or bug shit crazy crap like princess-whatever by knee jerk shutting it down, nor drop the mod hammer on it out of reflex. Instead, I think that the mods did a good job in that thread, shutting it down when it started to really go off the deep end as the OP spun out of control and started spraying a bit too much foam on everyone.
OK, what?
And was modded as appropriate…up to a suspension.
I don’t equate racism with “ideas I don’t like” - that’s stuff like Capitalism or pro-lifers or climate change denialism. And you don’t see me asking that those people get modded for just having ideas I don’t like.
Hate speech is a different beast altogether.
I disagree. Free speech should never be absolute, and some expressions of ideas are poisonous and should be modded, not debated.
See folks? He doesn’t hate them, he just dislikes them, and wishes they didn’t exist.
Who gets to decide what speech is poisonous? Who should be given the power to decide who should be silenced?
Edit to add In the larger sense…
[QUOTE=MrDibble]
I disagree. Free speech should never be absolute, and some expressions of ideas are poisonous and should be modded, not debated.
[/QUOTE]
This is one of those fundamental disagreements between us. While I agree that the mods have a role, and one they do well, I don’t think their role is or should be to stifle speech, even hate speech. You can’t combat hate speech by categorically stifling it, since it’s impossible to stifle. It can only be combated by combating it…and you can’t combat it if the jerking knee automatically locks the threads and bans the posters out of hand.
No, free speech isn’t absolute, and there are limits…but you are trying to put to strict a limit on things, IMHO…and by doing so I believe you are actually doing the opposite of fighting hate speech, you are in fact encouraging it through such actions, to thrive in the dark corners and spread it’s poison.