The gman account has been closed. I had wanted the closing of the account to be a group decision voted among the moderators where I was the lone dissenting voice, because I was the last hold-out in terms of whether to close the account. But it’s clear to me that it simply can’t remain open, regardless of my own feelings about the matter.
So I’ve closed the gman account based on the simple fact that it’s too disruptive to the community. I’m deeply disappointed the community couldn’t handle this on its own. I’m deeply disappointed this required moderation.
There are Trump supporters out there in the wider world, and we need to learn how and whether to interact with them. We need to acknowledge them as part of the political mainstream. We need to find something other than accusations of racism if we disagree with their politics. We need to realize they will be a fundamental part of social media, because it’s a tool they use frighteningly well. We cannot cede that to them. We furthermore need to figure out how to respond to the right-wing media, which has been meticulously engineered to create a narrative for millions of people.
We had here the opportunity for all these things in a contained environment with a rational person who could take a lot more abuse than anyone I’ve seen online. He had honored the purpose of P&R, which is to firewall contentious discussions from the rest of the site. He had avoided the meltdown anyone else would have had by now in the face of insults. He was a textbook example of modern articulate non-idiot Republicans and how they’re going to talk to people. And most importantly, no one here was in any danger of having his or her mind changed. He was effectively harmless in terms of swaying anyone’s politics. Everything he typed here was something he wasn’t typing somewhere else. Furthermore, how many Trump supporters will acknowledge when they’re wrong? I have no idea, but I know there used to be one on this forum.
Accusations that the forum was somehow tainted by association are unfair. The United States is similarly tainted by association and you don’t have the luxury of demanding that those 50 million-ish people leave. In fact, the world is tainted by association. So that will be true of the entirety of the internet. Facebook, Twitter, the corner of Hyde Park, Quarter to Three. They are forums, not agendas. They will include ideas you disagree with, and maybe even ideas you find reprehensible. We are a medium, not a message.
So anyone who decided to leave (the equivalent of “moving to Canada”) or pronounced the forum toxic or pro-racist has a pretty low opinion of the people who post here and the people who run the site. If you don’t trust that we can absorb the impact of one mostly reasonable guy confining himself to one subforum…well, actually, you were right. I now share your low opinion. What’s going to happen the next time someone supports Trump here? Are you going to raise the same objections and then leave? Are you going to antagonize him until he has a meltdown and leaves the forum? Or are you going to learn to deal with the political reality of the modern world and the resurgence of the right-wing?
A few things to address from the other thread:
On the contrary, this forum has the utmost respect for privacy. When that respect was violated by a mod publicly mentioning the location of an account’s IP address, the mod promised not to access user data any longer. When that mod then accessed user data to Google someone’s real name and harass that person with the fact that he had the information – as far as I know, there were no threats of doxxing – that mod’s admin access was permanently shut down.
Those were definitely failings on my part and I take responsibility. But I’ve done everything I can to make sure they don’t happen again.
I feel very strongly that politics is part of entertainment. Since this is primarily a site about entertainment, it will necessarily involve politics from time to time. The best we can do for people who don’t want to engage in or even see political discussions is to offer a firewalled area, but I still believe it’s an integral part of this community. I wouldn’t close P&R any more than I would close the Games subforum.
I like this idea on the surface and it would be easy to implement. But it would mean P&R’s membership is basically frozen, and I don’t think any of us who post here would want that.
-Tom