I think we've done this before, but I figured it's easier to just start a new thread with my specific questions.

Particularly I'm interested in opinions from:

* The group of people that want bigots to be banned. Why do you post in PU instead of in Politics? Related questions for this group: Why not just ignore the 'bigots' if they bother you so much? Why not start your own self-modded thread where you can delete their posts?

* The group of bigots/trolls. What do you get out of it?

ikes makes every thread i'm even slightly interested in completely unreadable with his personal attacks and trolling. And since wookie has a raging clit boner for insulting ikes back, he's never going to go the way of deuces.

What about the other questions for you?

Like if you want to talk about Sexism without trolls, why not start your own thread where you can have any post deleted and any person prevented from posting in it?

I post here because at times it's amusing. It's nice to be able to debate things and not worry about getting banned for calling an idiot an idiot. Until he became boring, engaging with somebody like Deuces and not having to bother with the pretense of respect is fun. I liked being able to call spanky out on his persistent bull**** and not have to worry about catching a ban.

The fact that so much of the forum now revolves around yelling at should-be-banned bigots really takes away from what this could be.

Because I think this is a terrible idea and don't want to support it. The OP shouldn't get to define what happens with their thread, that's a terrible way to facilitate an interesting, evolving conversation. So many great threads in the history of 2p2 have spun out of threads where the OP was fundamentally flawed. The whole point of UNCHAINED should be unfettered conversation (with that One Rule) and the idea that somebody can control the arc of their thread is super super chainy.

Also it's not that I don't want to post in a specific thread with the bigots, I don't want the bigots allowed on the site. There's no benefit to their existence (and there's plenty of negatives). The idea that bigotry is some point of view that can or should be defended is just wrong. There are objective truths here, and marginalizing people for their race, gender, etc is objectively awful. We don't need to entertain these arguments for even a moment.

Can goofyballer go back after the fact and say he doesn't want trolls in the sexism thread?

Reasons for using this subforum rather than regular politics is that regular politics is in a lull of threads that aren't entertaining or interesting lately.

I've started ignoring the bigots/trolls now, so yay. As for why I don't post in Politics, it's run by the head bigot/troll, so that makes things difficult.

My thoughts and opinions regarding tax policy simply cannot be contained. RRRROOOWR!

Ok, cool.

No. But I don't really see why it matters. It's just a long running thread because its where people dump their sexism related posts - not because its one continuous story from start to finish.

If people like participating in your moderated thread - they'll post stuff there. If people actually like arguing with bigots more than having real discussions, they'll stick with the a thread with bigots.

It is really that hard to parse the difference between hate speech and insults?

How to the random yahoos that Mat selects to mod this place keep being people who can't figure this out?

Insulting people because of what they say != insulting people because of who they are. It's awfully simple.

Dids, you seem confused. The issue isn't that I don't know the difference, it's that I don't care in this particular context. Here's literally what I sent Mat before becoming a mod:

So this issue is just that I don't care how you want PU to be modded, not that I don't know how to mod it how you want.

There's a difference between discussion and allowing trolls to **** on discourse.

The problem is that every person has their own definition of this. Hell, I'd have banned Spank before anybody else because I think he's the prime example of ****ting on discourse.

I'd have temp banned everybody that participated in that ****ed up conversation about DiB because that clearly had nothing to do with improving discourse (and was clearly offensive to numerous groups of people).

And so on.

jjshabado for mod!

As for the question...

I post in PU because I am a flawed human being who is drawn to inane conversations which allow me to show how smart I am compared to others and thus feed my pathetic ego.

Perhaps I'll do better in the future.

the reason Mat picks people with certain attitudes about modding is because Mat has a certain attitude about modding unchained and what "unchained" means. Which seems fair enough to me.

I think JJ is fine. The idea that there are "objectively correct" modding decisions on a lot of this stuff is trivially incorrect.

Mat's attitude allows hate speech and is bull****. It's depressingly not surprising.

This is probably the best description of why I post as well. With a side helping of I actually enjoy exploring the more extreme ideas like ACism or Peak Oil and seeing where they fail.

In fact I generally drop out of a conversation/thread if I find that I'm starting to actually care about it too much since it generally leads to me feeling not great. And one of the things in life I'm really good at it is avoiding meaningless things that make me feel not great.

Well, it doesn't help you are kinda pussyfootin' around instead of cleaning up the place where subject matter is more vital to it than all of us poking each other in the eye. This place shouldn't become rigid like Politics, but it could be far better if there were maybe just some basic guidelines.

I don't think JJ is bad like spank. But the forum is problematic when issues are thrown to the side in favor of trolls saying sexist stuff for the lulz.

My problem with "basic guidelines" is that it quickly becomes a very subjective thing with a bunch of people bitching. Reading through the "Post Reports" for politics is absurd. Over half of them are just babies trying to out-gotcha other people, reporting posts they actually couldn't care less about but trying to use the rules to get someone else in trouble.

It's ****ing absurd, and I'm not getting into it.

But besides that we soon get to a point where we now have two politics forums with different rules but still with fairly detailed rules that piss off some group of people. That group of people how has nowhere to go.


I have no idea what the optimal type of modding is. But by having strict, forum wide, rules - its hard to experiment. Instead I'm keeping the overall forum rules very forgiving and letting individuals create stricter rule sets for their own threads.

If you think a discussion is helped by removing trolls - just ****ing do it.

If you think a discussion is helped by not letting people talk about racism - just ****ing do it.

If you think a discussion is helped by making every post contain a cite - just ****ing do it.

I agree very much with the two bolded comments.

As to the first comment, I used to participate in some of the epic ACists vs. Reality battles of yesteryear. I was very much in the libertarian camp in my 20s and had some zeal to lead others away from its seductive intellectual wasteland. There was a Godelian urge to show the incompleteness and inconsistencies in the logical framework. I pretty much avoid real politics now, mostly for the reason you identified in the second bolded comment. I would prefer to write a short titled "Pragmatism: The Real Unknown Ideal" through CreateSpace rather than rehash the same arguments in the forum. I probably won't ever do this but it would be a better use of intellectual effort.

Then explain

Because accusing me of posting offensive things seems like an interesting take.

Do you have some examples of hate speech being allowed?

I consider: Saying someone is an idiot, not treating someone with respect, and saying someone persistently posts bull**** - all offensive things.

Furthermore, you've said in the past that you're ok with using words like '******ed', which I consider offensive.

This isn't to say that I don't post offensive stuff either. But that I accept what I consider offensive isn't the same as what other people consider offensive. And that I don't care enough to not be completely unoffensive.