I have to commend iiandyiiii’s and others resilience, fortitude and overly generous patience, but ten days and 779 posts seems like a long time to call out Gack’s intransigence (I’m being polite) and finally end this tragedy. Surely, once a few of coup de grâce posts should have enough, then a mod issue Gack an ultimatum once and for all.
I wondered if there might have been some reading the thread who had doubts about The Holocaust but were genuinely open-minded. I was directing my (very few) posts to them as much as to Gack.
What was the harm in letting him rant? All his points were easily countered, I think as long as people were willing to listen and counter then let it go. Otherwise he will just claim censorship.
also, I learnt somethings I didn’t know about the holocaust by reading the rebuttals. I never once doubted anything about the holocaust but following the thread made me actively read some source material I wouldn’t have otherwise. So take some comfort that Gack achieved the opposite of his intent. He educated people about the holocaust.
I agree. But I also agree with the closing of the thread. Once Gack had circled back around to Oprah (where he started), I think there was nothing new going to happen.
We don’t like closing threads just because of the content, unless it’s overtly racist/sexist/etc.
While it’s arguable that Holocaust-denial is inherently racist, we tend not to close things unless the racism becomes explicit. There is a (potentially) legitimate discussion about some minor points of the Holocaust, for instance. And we also allow theads such as “Why are blacks better at basketball than whites?” or “Why are so many Jews in prominent positions in Hollywood?” or “Why do Italian stereotypes include Mafia-like qualities?” or “Why are women such bad drivers?” or …
In short, there are (possibly) legitimate inquiries here, even if the answer is that the stereotype is dead wrong, and we’re (usually) willing to let them go until/unless bigotry explicitly rears its ugly head.
To tear back the veil a bit, I’ll say that we discussed closing it early in the game. We being me, I suppose. However, a poster with an interest in the holocaust sent a note asking for it to remain open so those reading it could learn more about it through the debunking.
However, I monitored it and eventually enough is enough. Y’all fought the good fight, but it wasn’t going anywhere and a mercy killing seemed justified.
IMO, the denier didn’t step over the line until right near the end, when he just started repeating the stuff about Oprah that had been debunked hundreds of posts ago, started saying that his own cites were untrustworthy parts of the conspiracy, and started trotting out increasingly convoluted ways to sidestep incontrovertible evidence (i.e. it’s impossible to burn someone alive because they’ll just climb out of the fire.)
Just to echo Jonathan, we generally tend to move slowly rather than too quickly. It’s a deliberate policy. If we move slowly – even too slowly – then almost everyone is on board and agrees with us. If we move too quickly, there will be some who are unhappy. We’re not trying to make everyone happy, but it’s nice when the vast majority of the posters agree with us.
Similarly, we tend to move fairly slowly on banning (suspending, etc), to allow sufficient evidence as to be beyond shadow of doot.
Personally, I consider denying the Holocaust to be “overtly racist.” I honestly don’t believe anyone questioning it does so with an open mind but rather with an anti-Jewish agenda.
But don’t you sometimes just know that someone is headed for banning? I mean, Gack is on rails that are going straight to Bantown. We all know that. He’s not the first and he won’t be the last but such deleterious nonsense can be minimized when it’s obvious where it’s headed and banned.
I was thinking about starting a thread to ask about this, but sure it’s probably been done to death. When a Gack or sentrix or similar, semi-sentient being starts accumulating mod warnings and/or pittings before they’ve been here for 2 weeks, what are the considerations about giving them rope versus keeping the signal to noise ratio on the Board at some reasonable level?
Quite a bit, actually. Though in my (limited) experience it varies.
For my part, before I recommend anyone get banned I like to try to communicate with them and see what they say. If there’s a chance to save a situation then I was it to happen. That also allows the poster in question to respond reasonably or to dig themselves in deeper.
Honestly, I think it was timed about right. Despite the OP it was an immensely educational thread, not only in the sense of debunking denialist memes but in providing a lot of detail about the Holocaust many had not seen before. I agree that it deserved to be closed at the point it did for the reasons Smapti mentions, but before it happened it fought some ignorance and that’s a good thing.
That said, thanks for sending in SEAL Team Cecil and putting a bullet in the head of the “Did Obama kill Osama?” thread, as it didn’t look like we were even remotely likely to get any actual facts to support the OP’s assertions.
Speaking in general, not about the specific cases you mention: the thing that often takes the most time is getting the opinions and votes of the other mods. Aside from simple spammers and the like, we don’t do bans without a reasonable consensus of the mods, and that can take time.
