I appreciate what you’re trying to do, and I *still *think it’s way out of line, unless you plan to apply this logic to every single thread on the board. (Which would be a ridiculous rule, and one that would drive a lot of posters away.) People make ridiculously hyperbolic statements here all the time, and the mods don’t call them on it. Consider, for example, every time someone or something has been compared to Hitler or the Nazis. I’d say genocide is about as serious as racism, wouldn’t you?
The point of hyperbole is that it’s, well, hyperbole. I don’t see how restricting it to non-offensive topics is remotely useful or necessary.
Fat is a very touchy subject on the SDMB. Any thread involving someone’s weight, and attempts to deal with it, is a lot more volatile than a thread dealing with a natural law, like gravity. I think that’s definitely part of what was influencing ACM’s choice of hypothetical alternative threads. People don’t get personal about gravity the way they do about weight or race, and there are no moralistic analyses that come out of someone’s opinions on gravity.
Well, that would be another example of the same thing. In any event it’s days after the fact so I’m not going to go back and edit anything now.
Just mentioning race isn’t a problem per se, it was just that this was a case of “why the ___ race sucks”. I appreciate perfectly the fact that you didn’t mean to imply actual support for racist beliefs; but the phrase taken out of context (like in a Google search) could suggest it.
Does this mean that people should now be censoring themselves based on what could appear in a Google search? Should I report posts containing things that could be taken out of context and searched for on Google?
I’d like to report your post, the part where you said “support for racist beliefs”. God forbid someone is Googling that and happens to be linked to your post.
Racist ideologies being supported on the Dope? And by a moderator no less!
And *a split-second glance *at the actual thread would tell anybody that the *point *was that the idea was incredibly distasteful and wrong. Moderating based on *what someone might be able to dig up by searching for the wrong Google phrase *is a terrible idea.
And yes, it’s *always *worth discussing these things, even “days after the fact,” because precedent is important. And, if I may note, **you **are the one who took almost a week to respond. The post in question was made on the evening of 7/25, and I commented on it here on the morning of 7/26.
Are you kidding me? The possibility that the thread could come up in a Google search is now a criterion for Moderator intervention. I am officially dumbfounded.
Compare what or whom to Hitler, for example? In any event that would be simile, and the appropriate context it wouldn’t be an issue.
Hyperbole is nothing more than rhetorical exaggeration used to make a point, and it’s usually not an issue, either. It doesn’t need to use sensitive topics to make a point.
It doesn’t need to use “sensitive” topics to make a point, but it was more effective with the “sensitive” topic* and until this case, there’s never been a rule (or even a guideline) against it.
His post wouldn’t have had half the punch if he’d written something like “I’m going to go start a thread: Why fuzzy-wuzzy bunnies are so icky! And only people who agree get to post in it!”.
And the “Someone on Google might see it and take it out of context” argument is so silly as to be laughable. Censoring our discussion based on what someone somewhere might someday think about it if it shows up on a Google search and then the searcher misreads it? No. Just…no.
If you can’t see the distinction between “why ___ suck” and “support for racist beliefs”, then I can’t help you. The latter is the way that particular attitude might be denoted in normal discourse, in an audience which is presumed to find it repugnant. To say “why ___ sucks” has the possible interpretation, when taken out of context, of choosing sides and preparing to fight. FWIW I hope it’s safe to say we’re discussing a general principle now, and not ACM’s post, with which I hope we’re done now.
I can see the difference easily. What i can’t see is why the results of a Google search should in any way, shape, or form determine how you moderate the boards. If someone breaks a rule or steps over a line, warn them or give them a note; if they don’t, then leave them alone. And this case clearly fell into the latter category, in my opinion.
ETA:
Let’s use your logic for a moment. Here are two sentences:
“I believe that, for the most part, black people are less intelligent than whites.”
“I’ve never seen a convincing argument that black people are less intelligent than whites.”
And yet, by the Google test, both would be equally unacceptable, because both would be equally likely to return a result for “black people are less intelligent.”
If this is the policy, you’ll have to get rid of the Pit and half of GD, basically neutering the board.
I’ll not start that thread on whether ethnic minorities are more likely to give oral sex, though.
The fact that we are indexed by Google was an argument after the fact, although still a valid one IMO. It would not, by itself, be a reason I would want to do anything, but was suggested as an undesirable aftereffect. Bottom line: I don’t believe we should be saying that an ethnic group “sucks” on this message board, even in the effort to set up a logical argument. I would extend and defend this position with respect to nationalities, age groups, or any other way you want to categorize humanity based on their heritage or other immutable attributes. FTR, I consider this to include sexual orientation. By contrast, your examples 1 and 2 here simply lead to debates about the issue, which is fine.
Who cares what something can be *taken out of context *to mean? That has *never *been a criterion of moderation on this board, nor should it be.
We’re looking at both. You can’t toss aside discussion of a specific incident of moderation just because you find it inconvenient–even if you did manage to avoid talking about it for long enough that you hoped it would be a moot point.
Unfortunately, your job is *not *to moderate what *you *think people should be saying on this board. It is to enforce the rules of the board, period. And there is *no rule *about using unpleasant hypotheticals to make a point.
(Oh, and “The fact that we are indexed by Google was an argument after the fact”? At the risk of being rude, no shit. It’s pretty apparent to me that you didn’t have a solid idea about why you were giving **ACM **a note at the time you did it, nor that you’d thought through the implications of what you were trying to do.)
IMO you overstepped, and you know you overstepped. But instead of admitting it and retracting the note, like I’ve seen moderators do here before, you’re grasping at a bunch of really terrible justifications.
As a moderator of a community, it is your job to, more or less, act like Kant would suggest: as though you wished all of your actions to become a universal rule. So, what two univeral rules have you proposed here?
1.) That we may not use unpleasant hyperbole to make a point; and, worse
2.) That we may not say anything that could possibly be taken out of content, even as a single isolated phrase, and even when in context it explicitly does not mean anything offensive (and even indicates the exact opposite).
I do not see *any member *of the SBMB staff but you supporting such rules. I would very much like to see their opinions on the matter. I’m sure your fellow moderators have no desire to get involved here–after all, it’s not their place to comment on another mod’s actions. But it would be great to get some commentary from an admin.
