Jeremybriangreen?
Looking up that user, his last post, which was on Feb 1, was “this forum blows”. So I’m not sure if polite and engaging really applies.
If you want my opinion, and I kinda feel like nobody really does, the real problem is the core posters in P&R are all liberals traumatized by the horrifying state of the world and are looking to commiserate, not interact with people they see as, essentially, evil.
I don’t post in P&R but I’m a traumatized lefty myself and am 100% fine with putting a liberals-only sign on P&R if that’s what the community really wants. You would have to make a strong argument to convince Tom, though-- he is progressive also but believes in very light moderation, as close to Usenet as possible.
I think perhaps the best path forward would be to amend the rules to explicitly say something like:
- No racism. No cloaked racism, no gas-lighting racism. This includes advocating protecting “white culture”.
Well, having spent time trying to engage with him I’ll say he was very like gman.
I personally don’t like that idea because it seems like giving up.
Never made the Usenet connection but I see it now.
Sounds fine to me.
To be fair, I’m pretty sure the large majority of Qt3’s conservatives view P&R as an asylum for traumatized leftists already. Labeling it as such wouldn’t change much.
The beauty of the racism rule approach is that it wouldn’t impact most conservatives at all.
a) Progressive? I’m outright liberal!
b) The “close to Usenet” approach only applies to P&R. And even then, given the way the alt-right uses social media, that’s no longer my opinion. I can only imagine what a cess pool Usenet is these days. Actually, I don’t need to imagine; I’ve seen Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. It shouldn’t be news that Alex Jones’ accounts were shut down. It should be SOP.
We will absolutely ban anyone who shows up to spout racist nonsense and if that needs to be made clear in the rules, we can do that. But do you guys really think we’re going to allow open racists to show up here? What about anti-Semites? Heck, it’s my opinion that there’s some serious Islamophobia going on in P&R, but as per Sharpe’s excellent post on the Sarah Jeong controversy, some things need to be addressed with proportionality. I don’t think anyone in P&R is as Islamophobic as, say, Alex Jones. But I would still use that word even if I don’t see any need to moderate or close their accounts.
Anyway, if you guys feel it needs to be made clear in the rules that Qt3 won’t tolerate racism, I’d be interested in hearing from you. And if you guys want to discuss this in relation to gman, we can revisit the discussion in one of the P&R threads. Feel free to ping me with an @tomchick if you’d like to revive one of those threads.
-Tom
EDIT: I went ahead and put this in the rules:
Happy to see @ArmandoPenblade and @Nesrie and @Rod_Humble, and I hope in the end they decide to keep contributing here. That’s all!
I think that’s a good boilerplate to add to the rules, Tom. We live in strange times, where clearly a group of people we all hoped were gone have been emboldened to step out of the shadows. It’s an obvious backlash against the eight years of a black man as President. It’s disgusting and ugly and I have a hard time relating to people I encounter in daily life who turn a blind eye to it or worse, engage in it.
We need to stop treating it as an unwritten rule that bigotry and racism are unacceptable and just put it out there, with our “friends”, relatives, and even the random shmoe who turns up in every day life spouting that evil and hatred. It’s the right thing to do.
This reminds me of the big foofawraw a few years back when a Boeing executive died of internal injuries received while engaging in sexual congress with a horse. Folks were blown away to discover that this was not, in fact, illegal. There oughta be a law! some cried, and now there is. Because some people need to be told that no, you can’t fuck horses.
So @tomchick, if these rules had been in place when gman first started posting, do you think it would have caused you to ban him earlier?
/hugs
Cheers!
I was glad the guy was eventually banned, but if someone decided to leave and continue to not post on Qt3 after he was banned then it’s clear the person would have had numerous issues with the forum. The delayed banning may have been the ‘last straw’, but I can’t imagine someone leaving a community they have participated in for years for only that reason.
Since it’s a voluntary association I think people can and should leave forums for whatever reasons they have because there’s limited time in life etc. etc., although there are many here I would miss if they stopped posting, new people will probably come along too. So it is great for me to see people return and start posting again, but of course they should do whatever makes them happy. Since I think Qt3 is great and I have no strong issue with anyone here (at least now), for me that’s to keep posting!
Of course not, because the rule was in place. It’s nothing new, even if it is more timely. But it’s been a given for as long as this forum has existed. If it’s helpful to some folks to see it in writing, well, there it is.
If you’d like to discuss the specifics of the gman issue further, I’m not being snarky when I say we can revisit that topic, but I’d rather do it in one of the existing topics. Feel free to bump one of them if you like and ping my name so I see it.
-Tom
I don’t have much to say other than I’m glad to see Nesrie again and no matter what you ultimately decide it was good to hear from you again.
And things wont be the same without our God Emperor, but the same goes for you. We need smiles these days and your interjections always seemed to provide that.
Well, but do we really need laws covering every single thing that should be covered under common sense?
The horses, on the other hand, apparently did have a law, and the punishment was a swift kick to the
Yeah… then you have the people who oppose the laws…
I suspect someone who thinks fucking a horse is a good idea is not going to be much impeded by the law.
From what I’ve read, Tom was not in favor of banning him, period. 2/3… out voted.
That was how it started out, but in the end everybody agreed.
I thought the long post I read from Tom said he was dissenting and then he went on with a lecture about Trump supporters and still doesn’t believe that gman’s lingo and his view is taken straight from white supremacy talking points.
He doesn’t want us to get into it here, so I won’t go on. But no, this isn’t an over issue. This will happen again, probably same sides, same disagreements and this weird idea that any of this had anything to do with Trump. There will be fewer around for the next one and probably less after that, and it won’t matter if Trump is in office or not.