I'm not familiar enough with him and his posts to have a position on this.

In other words, casual racism is okay, pointing out any casual racism is ban on sight?

Your "politics" section is nothing more than a far left mob ganging up on weak targets and removing the rest. It starts because of moderation. take a look at your moderator in that section. i don't read it regularly but i popped in to the tax reform thread to see what people thought. the mod was acting like every other obnoxious ideologue. great example. a poster in the BFI future thread linked to a discussion in "P" about communism. Imagine how insanely unqualified you are to be a politics moderator to be politically far left and absolutely clueless to the absolute horrors of communism.

what gets categorized as mean, rude, and nasty is based on political ideology. there is some weird thing going on where the truth doesn't matter and that if you claim you are being compassionate you are perfectly ok to call others nazis, supremacists, bigots, etc, completely absent of evidence. somehow speaking the truth has become a crime that isn't even worthy of discussion. what is interesting about the far left is that claim they are about social justice but if you pay attention to them, they are openly bigoted on just about every topic. they want to put people in group identities, and judge them differently based on group identity. they justify their bigotry by claims of group oppression. remove the claim of group oppression from far left positions, and you just have bigotry.

I lasted about 30 minutes in P before getting banned. i was unlike the pinatas they are used to ganging up on so it was obvious i needed to go. I got banned for sexism and trolling.

consider that womens studies perpetuated both the wage gap myth and the rape culture on campus myth that have been debunked to the point they exposed blatant dishonesty or less likely but possible group stupidity. the current curriculum in womens studies teaches its students about a lol myth about a patriarchy. its hateful nonsense. think about how it has become normalized to the point MTV produced the dear white guy racist nonsense and didn't even think it was going to be a problem. thats the direct result of being in a bubble and completely unaware of your bitterness, resentment, and blatantly obvious bigotry. thats what happens when you get taught about some fabricated patriarchy nonsense with zero challenge. currently womens studies (along with a few other popular SJW disciplines) is completely contradicting mainstream biology. its is getting completely loony. you have moderators that couldn't even let a discussion like that begin. they are so deep in the ideology bubble they have to erase without hesitation

Dear juan valdez,

You have received an infraction at Two Plus Two Poker Forums.

Reason: Sexism, trolling

thats the exact quote in my banning and 1 day adventure in to "politics". this absurd ideology not only creates rabid mobs with absurd beliefs, but its very nature is to silence opposition. their only tools are to hurl labels and silence. as someone running a discussion forum, you should probably realize that not only is poker dying a slow death, but other topics that can keep this forum moving along are being destroyed by snowflakes. eventually you're going to be left with the socially dysfunctional and anxious types who are sharing their outrage at the rest of the world and proclaiming their virtue

one interesting thing we have observed with anonymous people on the internet is just how many people are spouting nasty and hateful things on all social media platforms. the number of people in this state is staggering. we actually have a new level of this now, the SJW. instead of just hurling hatred at people and not being able to look at yourself in the mirror, you go and find people to hate and then join a mob attacking them. this way you get to hurl all sorts of hate at people but now you are justified and virtuous. is just a justification method for the same compulsion. just look at something on the mild side like the tax reform thread i mentioned. it is full of people attributing motives to other peoples economic theories and demonizing them. this justifies being an ahole to them. even the mod can't help themself

I think it's generally true that a portion of the user-base of 2+2, mostly associated with the politics forum, has become more concerned about strict moderation of posts related to social justice issues (racism, sexism, etc) over time. That's my perception anyway, I would certainly admit that it may be flawed. It's certainly true of myself, as I have personally become more interested in those issues.

Maybe more importantly, I think that it's become more common, especially after The BruceZ Affair, for complaints about posting/moderation to span forums, so as the politics forum has become stricter on those issues, politics posters have also come to expect/demand that the moderation standards of the politics forum be applied in the other forums. Not that it happens all the time, but it's part of all the recent events that caused you to start this thread.

I think it's also true that the politics posters who are in favor of more strict moderation related to racism/sexism/etc are more active in the mod forum or in ATF threads, maybe not more so than in the past, but relative to posters from other sub-forums. That probably has some influence on moderation decisions.

So, I don't think mrbaseball is wrong to notice something of a change, although I think he is probably exaggerating how much of an impact it's really had on 2+2 moderation as a whole. I think the question is basically about how much separate sub-forums should be allowed to apply different standards for what constitutes "hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable" posting. I think it's also obviously true that the large differences of opinion about what counts as objectionable posting in that regard reflects larger ongoing cultural divisions, and I doubt there's any really obvious solution that makes everyone happy.

It might be useful to establish some policy that sets expectations about how the different sub-forums might moderate these issues differently. Perhaps there could be some more concrete minimum standards, and an effort to make sure all forum mods are on the same page about enforcing those. The politics forum (or any other forum) would still be allowed to have stricter standards. I think that is reasonable for a politics forum especially. But having a more concrete site-wide policy might also help make it easier to resolve these kinds of cross-forum complaints.

What was he banned for? Was he banned for the posts DS found so distasteful, or something else?

You caught me, obvious previously banned poster, I do in fact not read every post in the forum, and no one reported it. Not sure what else to say.

Is this where we come to watch the left-wing internet lynch-mob led by Low Key and ACEG take out another poster? Hasn't been a good one of these since BruceZ. I'll get my chair and some chips.

2p2 is slowly losing posters because internet pokers has died off. Letting racist dickheads like TS post Sambo cartoons and white supremacist apologetics is probably not great for traffic, but I really doubt it has much of an impact either way.

The TS banning had nothing to do with the politics subforum, afaict, but thanks for reminding us all you're still carrying water for the abusive racist ex-mod.

Dude you are seriously trolling in a thread about figuring out how to keep this forum alive? And you're a mod? You understand that your own posts in this thread are a perfect example of what people are complaining about?

You've been spending way too much time in politics. TS is a relatively minor racism offender. The worst things you're describing that he did were clearly tongue in cheek. His racism is that he doesn't believe racism is all that real. This comes from his background more than anything. He's also incredibly arrogant, which is the price you pay for dealing with extremely smart people. He does call people cucks, which lately seems to be his preferred form of trolling. He's getting less tolerant at the same time you are from the opposite direction.

Calling people 'casual racists' is pretty far out there dude. You need more than borderline posts to make it stick, and honestly it's the kind of name calling that is damaging the forum.

He's also the best content creator in BFI. If you don't want him in your subforum that's fine, but keep your hands off him in ours.

I mean, absolutely. The real world has become hyper-polarized. It's unsurprising that the effects of this are being seen on the site.

mrbaseball's post is ridiculous. For sure, the politics forum has way more liberal posters and conservative posters. Some of those liberal posters are very far left, but the majority are basically mainstream democrats. I doubt many would consider me left-wing (in many European countries I'd probably be considered a conservative, or at least right of center) and I am able to post in the politics forum with no trouble and no concern about being banned or exiled.

That being said, I am actually opposed to banning or exiling posters for racism, misogyny, etc unless one of the following is also present:
a) The racism, misogyny, etc is extreme. I don't think we should allow actual St*rmfr*ont style posting here.
b) The posts are trollish/low-content in nature.

I still think having an alternate politics forum is a good idea (I would even volunteer to mod such a thing, although I suspect my posting history may not be extensive enough for that to be considered), because I do think that the current politics forum cuts off some of the range of discussion that probably needs to be had in this era.

I mean, I think a huge part of the problem is that the statement "this site has allowed...bigotry" is considered to be a bad thing.

For sure, some level of bigotry was allowed in PU/P7, and even to a lesser degree in other politics discussions on the site, but this is basically a natural consequence of having political discussions. "Bigotry is 100% banned" is not compatible with political discourse. Like it or not, bigotry and its opposition are a huge part of politics.

I don't see how 2+2 has encouraged bigotry.

It seems extremely important to have details about why TS was actually banned in order to opine on this.

I've seen enough of ToothSayer's posting to feel pretty comfortable concluding that he is a racist. I personally would not have wanted him banned, based on what I remember seeing. But it's impossible to comment on his actual banning without know what post(s) got him banned.

I think it depends. Posters posting overt/extreme racism should probably be banned from the site. But I don't think being exiled from politics should imply a site-wide ban.

Maybe this should be directed at the person who actually banned him?

Isn't your avatar a bit sexist?

^ this

Uh, not in the places I saw him post. Maybe in BFI he's only minority racist, but that wasn’t the case in chezfront.

Lol no

Baaaahahahahaha

I guess if a murderer doesn’t believe murder exists, then that excuses any murder they’ve committed?

No, I’m not trolling, but TS pretty much admits he was, so...

I already acknowledged how those people are hypocrites, dunno what else there is to say.

Do you think it might be an indictment of your forum that posts like this go by every single day without comment? Do you think it's odd that what currently passes for "debate" is a lifelong dem getting called Hitler by a gang of ten far-leftists, including the forum moderators?

Does it ever strike you for one second as odd that the primary moderator in that forum is a far leftist, that you are a leftist, that 99% of the posters in that forum are leftists, that you all post hateful or content-free gibberish all day and then have the audacity to ruin all other forums whenever you leave your leftist containment forum?

Or at the very least, putting aside subjective opinions for a moment, do you ever get a hint of self-consciousness from being objectively wrong on essentially every statement, proclamation or prediction you've made over the past 2.5 years since Trump started running? Doesn't being objectively correct on any issue at all count for anything in your world?

"^" ?

Yeah, completely unmoderated politics forums degenerate into nothingness really quickly. I occasionally look into the one on a sports forum I look at and it's just nothing but trolling.

I think the poster has already been banned, so probably not. Plus, they got an entire subforum nixed last time, so individual posters would be boring.

I would be in favor of banning people who post these completely unreadable text walls. Like, trying to read any single juan valdez post is a herculean effort.

Mat,

Do you want business advice, moral advice or how do I shut these complainers up advice? It's 3 different solutions imo.

I wish I could search previously banned posters and sort by frequency of using the word "leftist," because I’m 100% sure you’d be at the top.

I think the people that are saying racism, sexism etc should be allowed should provide some concrete examples.

Very good question.

given your previous posts, it seems you think that this happened in the Programming forum.

I went back and reread the threads and, unsurprisingly, you were called no such thing. not even by myself, who went hard at you in that thread.

anyway, relatedly, I think one of the biggest problems with this forum currently is the repeated lies and the distortion of the situation. you can see this Rafiki's posts and in mrbaseball's.

Hi Tooth.

I mean I think banning someone who doesn't agree with you has to be the worst way to validate your side... that is the whole argument behind free speech... I didn't really see him post anything racist but I didn't see all his posts. People got really offended by his post about poverty and poor people specifically in one thread but I think his views are shared by a large portion of the population on that front and were actually logically portrayed. This is the whole point of a forum is to discuss ideas in a civilized manner.

I mean, like, this isnt even close to true. none of it.