I am for openness and honest debate as much as the next guy, but why do the mods allow these obviously racist, redundant, threads on a regular basis? There are always started by the same individuals positing the same merit-less claims, just from a slightly different angle. Then, you guys have the gall to warn people who correctly point out that these posters, who are (usually) admitted racists, are racist. At what point is it contingent upon the mods to stop allowing these threads, or to move them directly to the pit where they belong? It’s transparently clear that these posters are not invested in actually discussing “looming genetics crises”, or the merits of affirmative action. Rather, they want to use these fora to propagate racialism using pseudo-science. They have exposed themselves as spammers who, instead of selling products, sell vicious racist propaganda.
Now, I am sure you guys are saying, “well, just expose their folly through debate”. The problem is that we have. Time and time again. I cannot count how many hours I (and others) have spent exposing these people’s true beliefs and motives, and the worthlessness of their claims. But, I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect that I make that commitment given that frequency of these threads, and the relative difficulty of cleaning up all the shit these guys spew vs. them spewing it. I sincerely doubt you guys would allow a bi-weekly holocaust revisionist thread. Or regular threads where one poster “debates” about why Muslims are savages who hate democracy. Or GD threads about whether the mods are a bunch of cowards. Why is it okay to posit unsubstantiated, bigoted things about Black people on a regular basis? Why do you allow this site to be used for such obviously nefarious purposes? When you Google some of the racist terms used in these OPs, the Straight Dope is often on the first page of results. Is that something to you really want to give tacit approval to? Is that the kind of crowd you want to direct to the SDMB? At point will one of you have the courage to stand up for what’s right?
This thread, I’m sure. Without rearguing the topics themselves, it’s true that we have a few posters who harp on these subjects often and who frequently start the same kinds of threads over and over again without acknowledgment of how the discussion went last time - although that kind of behavior is not unique to those posters.
I’d rather not have certain topics be off limits. It’s counter-productive for one thing. “Why won’t TPTB let us discuss this? What are they afraid of?”
No one’s under any obligation to respond to any thread. Don’t engage with anyone you don’t want to.
Except that if this place is to serve any value to larger society, it’s not okay to just ignore such baseless claims. I do usually ignore the threads, but the frequency and negative consequences of ignoring them completely makes it hard for me to do. It’s one thing to ignore some of the laughably transparent threads, but when someone who is seemingly reasonable presents a bunch of seemingly legit pseudo science, ignoring means some non trivial number of people will buy into that bullshit, thereby making my real life more difficult.
So can I discuss how great whatever product I happen to be selling is? Should we allow spammers and trolls unfettered access because no topic should be off limits? Of course not. Can I start a thread everyday about how Jews are greedy and the Chinese are sneaky? I am not saying the topics should not be subject to actual debate. I am tired of the SAME HANDFUL OF ASSHOLES REGULARLY INTRODUCING THREADS WITH THE EXACT SAME THEME EXPECTING DIFFERENT RESULTS. They are not interested in debate, they are interested in proselytizing. Such behavior would not be acceptable on any other topic, so why is it okay when it’s bashing Black people?
Again, as I asked before, how many times to we need to retread this topic before we can all agree that it makes no sense to waste board space facilitating the spread of such ignorance? I guarant-fucking-tee the mods would not allow me to start Holocaust denial threads everyday where I present the same bullshit arguments time and time again Why? Because it’s completely unconscionable, AND because there no any real debate on the issue for most rational people. Yes, there are times when some has a genuine ignorance or misunderstanding of an issue. But when the same person continually posits the same asinine assertion phrased differently, there has to be a point where someone steps in to say their biases and compulsion should not be allow to infect the board.
What I suggest is that both sides come to an agreed “position statement” that each side is allowed to pick holes in, until all that is left is difference of opinion (that is to say that no facts are disagreed by one another). You could use a wiki to do this.
Then the debates should be on subjects not covered in this.
Eventually you could produce a FAQ.
Anyway you are always going to be fighting the assumption that races do differently in part for genetic reasons so long as races do, in fact, do differently. If you want to convince racists to think differently you basically have to focus more on why the differences in racial intelligence don’t matter much (i.e. that races are a very wooly concept which makes the science suspect OR that there is more diversity within races than between them which means it’s a waste of resources to care). I think that is more effective than trying to argue something inherently unprovable yet very easily falsifiable - if “they” find a gene that 99% of black people have and 1% of white people have that changes intelligence then you’re stuffed, perfmanetly, otherwise.
This is a ridiculous exaggeration of what’s going on. Chief Pedant has two threads in GD now, only one of which concerns race. The other concerns doping in sports.
Well, I am one of the next guys and we had a meeting last night of The Next Guy Society and none of us were too sure what you meant.
But we talked about it and decided that we should tell you to take a look at that thread where it was discussed why Diamonds02 can only post one new thread per week.
Diamonds02 got a warning from the mods and it seemed to us to be a rather mild kind of warning. But it resulted in a huge explosion of anti-moderator feeling in that thread.
Did you see that? A whole bunch of people called some of the moderators many nasty names. Or at least, they called their actions names. Or whatever subterfuge they used to get around whatever rule it is that you can’t be mean to the mods.
So, the point is that the tighter the mods screw down the lid on things, the bigger negative reaction they get.
They have to balance the fact that we still have free speech in this country against the fact that racism is illegal, ugly and stupid. Am I allowed to say stupid in this forum? I would check the rules but there are so many rules here that I just don’t have the time to go through them all.
Anyway, the level of racism in that sample post that Marley posted was pretty well disguised. You want it to be more disguised? It wouldn’t be hard to do that. But the more rules and more restrictions the mods impose, the bigger the backlash will be and it seems to me we already spend way too much time quibbling and arguing about how to run this board.
If the mods screwed the lid down any tighter, it seems to me a very large proportion of the threads would become arguments about how tightly the lid needs to be.
And IMO, there are way too many of those threads as it stands. But that is just my opinion. OK? I’m allowed to have an opinion. Right?
The fear is that if everyone who can legitimately debunk the racism follows that advice, we end up with some nasty-ass racist threads hanging out in our forums unchecked and poor uncritically thinking lurkers may swallow the bullshit and, I dunno, go commit a hate crime. What I suspect the OP would prefer is if a mod would shut it down immediately with a note saying, “Don’t bring your nasty-ass skinhead shit up again. We thrashed your ass on it here, here, and here.” which would ideally teach them not to be racist pieces of shit and also be educational for anyone in the peanut gallery who thinks race is something meaningful biologically. I can see the appeal.
If they didn’t automatically ban the S…front folks until they stepped over the line back in 2002, they’re not going to ban the current crop of racists until they step over the line ( spew direct insults, post large chunks of copyrighted text, spam offensive links, promote board wars, etc. ). That incident was before your time ( at least by registration date ) but believe me the “race debate” arguments run all the way almost to the start of the board. Some tediouslinks, including some bloviating about whether to tolerate the white nationalist invasion of not.
Ultimately, “I was pretty certain that you were not talking about the immigrants that they are flooding the country with. I call it dumbing us down and darkening us up. Of course me and mine are keeping our distance in our little town that is still bright and light,” to quote one of our charming WN visitors from that period, only really differs in tone from what Chen019 is peddling in this thread. But tone seems to count.
No, the issue is not whether “we still have free speech in this country.” Anyone with a message board has the right to ignore the level of free speech allowed by the law. The question is to what extent the owners of the board want to create a forum that promotes the free exchange of views while balancing other considerations.
Right. I agree that these threads are exceptionally aggravating, but we don’t have a forum full of them. brickbacon’s summary of the debate tactics is mostly accurate - although I don’t think these posters expect different results in the argument; they may expect that people will just get bored and stop debunking their posts = and to that end they can be moderated for being one-trick ponies or for hijacking threads and other jerk behavior, and have been in the past.
Oh please. So if you hadn’t signed up here, then these racist claims would go unanswered? Well thank god you showed up!
Seriously, get the hell over yourself. If you cannot resist opening these threads, then the solution isn’t for us to not have the threads. The solution is for you to leave.