Rules update

Yo John, I'm man enough to agree with you here, I, for one, fully understand this is a private social site/club and that the rules may(or may not) be enforced in any way, shape or form that the administration sees fit. I don't even care about "fairness" of equal application. My only point is that it's completely apparent why it's being done and it's not being admitted as to why. I have little invested in this site and to me it's no different than what I saw at TBBS. So there you go. Posters on the right, deal with it.

Unless you equate posters on the right with racist (I don't), then you aren't reading this correctly.

You are going to declare people you dislike racist even if they are not. You have the track record and your motivations are perfectly clear. I for one am sad to see the free speech experiment end but the writing was on the wall the moment you got the keys to the place.

Why would you have expected anything different?

Can we clear this up? Chup seems to think the new rule is targeted at @Dinner, and that he will have to change or be banned. Is that the correct interpretation of rule 8?

I figure Dinner will be affected if he doesn't change his behavior, but I don't see it being targeted as specifically against him. Like I said, I'm fine with rule #8. We need less racism and bigotry here at Wordforge.

He will most certainly have to change or else he will be banned.

You can't interpret Rule 8 any other way because to do so means Rule 8 is meaningless.

Guess we know who the new whipping boy is. Unsurprised.

Start involving yourself in more than low level trolling and start paying the bills for the place and I might care what level of free speech you think this place should have.

Yes, I agree. My support of the rule does not mean I will support the misuse of it. I personally think it is very clear what it is meant to address. Not some of the ridiculous examples of supposed dehumanisation that you and others are bringing up to pretend they're what it's targeted at.

Maybe so. But a misuse of a rule does not mean the rule itself should not be there....and can we please wait until he actually misuses it before the drama? If he misuses it I will be the first to criticse it. It is precisely because of the scattershot bullshit we have seen recently that I have called for an amendment to the rules so that we don't get bannings for undefined reasons. It is clear they want changes, which as private owners they have the freedom to make, so I think it should be done as fairly as possible, and having a rule and letting people know which direction the board is going is a lot fairer than random nonsense like the gturner affair. I am sure that the mods will clarify that such a rule is only to be used in extremely and/or persistent cases of overt bigotry. @gul , @Christopher, @Dr. Krieg?

It's their board. Deal with it. They want to change the place to get rid of or reduce the worst unsavoury content. That is their right, so we can either try and find a compromise between the rule-less bannings and poor modding and your version of an ideal board, or we can just carry on whining? That is the difference between trying to find a solution and drama for the sake of drama.

Indeed. I would expect nothing less.

Well, this all depends on whether or not you consider him a racist. Evidently you do.

Why shouldn't he change anyway? He isn't banned. Dinner claims his objection is only to Islamic ideology. Well, if that's really true then he is perfectly capable of advancing arguments without the need to use bottom of the barrel slurs and stereotyping, stereotyping which often relies on racial and cultural traits that are apart from religion. Dinner isn't so stupid that he doesn't know what a stereotype is, and haven't you noticed that he's stopped using the slurs since gturner was banned, so don't tell me he doesn't know the difference. I don't agree with religion myself, but you don't see me going around saying, for instance, all Catholics are rapists do you?

There are only three possible reasons for Dinner's bigoted rhetoric - shock value trolling, hate speech or a combination of the two. He is still perfectly free to articulate his objections to Islam and/or other religions without stereotyping and slurs.

I'm not sure what your point is.

Something must have been lost in the Queen's English to American English translation.

Nothing to do with "posters on the right". Is Dinner a "poster on the right"?

Perhaps it is a testament to the proliferation of bigotry and acceptance of mainstream prejudice amongst the populist politics of today that you conflate bigotry with a political position. But then that doesn't surprise me when in your country religious belief has somehow found itself way into being deemed politically conservative. I mean, you defend your own prejudices, such as your homophobia and dismissal of other religions and non-believers as a political position, when it really isn't at all.

Less a point, more of a question. Is it unreasonable to expect posters to make their arguments without the use of overt prejudicial stereotypes and obvious, constant hate slurs?

If I say "I am concerned that the level of crime among Black Americans is a cultural trait" accuracy aside, that is not in of itself a racist comment and is a lead in to a debate. If I say "blacks are criminals because they are all illiterate backward animals savages" that is a racist remark. Do you not see the difference?

I don't know Dinner's complete politics. I do know conservatives are targeted here, just as they were at TBBS.

Trust me, I do not fear homosexuals, lol. And I am not the one judging those separated from God. That's already been worked out.

John: apples are orange
Face: apples are not orange.
John: idiot. In my house oranges are orange.



You're not talking about free speech. You're taking about private restrictions on speech which makes the speech not free. It is restricted speech. Please stop talking about "free speech that is limited." That's not what you're talking about.

Clearly what has been learned is that @El Chup hates Free speech as much as he hates @gul when it means he can use it to ban people he considers racist. Like @Dinner


Or... @Dayton3

Of course I see the difference. So why are you harping on me about it?

You're just being a pedant. It's a qualified freedom of speech and expression, and such qualified rights have long be defined as such in both your own domestic and international law as you well know. Simply because he doesn't know the precise terminology doesn't mean it's not obvious what he's saying, which is that there is no reason this board's freedom of expression shouldn't also be qualified.

I am talking about free speech, you're just not listening because you seek an out that isn't there. @El Chup is correct, you're being a pedant, nothing more.

Well, you seemed to be worried about the application of the rule and saying that Dinner is surely destined for a ban. I'm trying to illustrate what the rule is, or should be, addressing...and how Dinner can quite easily avoid a ban.

I have no desire to see either banned, especially not Dayton (who I don't think is knowingly malicious).

I have a desire to see the back of overt and persistent racist and bigoted content of the kind that is obvious. Or are we now arguing that Dinner is a poor shmoe who has no choice but to post stereotypes and slurs?

They're no different at all. Gturner was pushed off for his manner of expression...and now you're arguing that that's not a good reason to ban someone, so why don't I hear you calling for his return?

I don't think you can make that argument until or unless Gul uses the new rule as tenuous justification for an action, especially as I don't believe these new rules were driven by him as you seem to think.

[Azeem]You whine like a mule, you are still alive![/Azeem]

I don't have a problem with the rule. I have a problem with Gul whose actions show bias towards those he doesn't like. This is part of why I pointed out that Tuckerfan broke the rule. Gul not only did nothing but laughed at Tuckerfan's post. Now if it was Dayton3 who posted that picture, for example, about John (assuming John had a foot issue) would Gul have let it slide? Or would he have brought up Rule 8 and told Dayton3 to back off?

Gul's previous actions do not inspire confidence in me that he will not use this new rule to harass board members.

Well, I can't say what he would have done. But I think it's clear what the rule is intended to address. My view of Gul's imbalanced approach is well known, but that doesn't mean a reason not to have the rule...and it's also not a reason to kick up a stink before it's misused if you otherwise agree with it.

Personally when it comes to people like Dinner, Gul should not solely be involved in any decisions made to take action against him, if at all. Those decisions should only be made by the mods/owners collectively as a whole or by significant moderator majority. In fact I believe that all decisions relating to bans and official warnings should get approval in his manner and that this should be made known to the members. Also, all discussions of possible warnings or bannings should happen in The Shelter, so that in due course the membership can feel confident that decisions are made collectively once Shelter releases happen down the line. No more PM only discussions.

It's already been misused through Gul not only not acting when Dayton3 was dehumanized but Gul laughed at the dehumanization.

Not acting when a rule is broken because the target of the harassment is someone you don't like is a misuse of a rule.

So my stink was kicked up after Gul did nothing but laugh.

I have no problem with that.

Oh please. That's a lot of nonsense and you know it. The rule is designed to deal with repetitious, overt and/or malicious bigotry of the kind that I have described, not the odd comment here and there, especially one that was clearly intended as a pretty mild joke (and btw, Dayton is not disabled). If they had acted on that, particularly Gul, you, Faceman & co would be kicking up a stink about how the rule was overkill, oppressive and a dangerous precedent has been set, which would "prove" this place had become too much like TNZ with overmodding. Part of having such a rule is to use common sense over what is notably dragging content down and what is the unintentional odd mistake or gaff here and there. So why don't you just admit they're damned if they do and damned if they don't because whatever rule changes there are, someone will complain in some way or another because of this perfect vision of what WF is supposedly meant to be. That's the price of changing the rules and trying to get rid of content the owners don't want to see.

There is a new rule, it has yet to be used. As such there is nothing to cry about. When the poster who posted that supposedly heinous comment about Dayton spends week on week out spewing nasty bile about disabled people and nothing is done about it, then come back to be and talk to me about favouritsm. Right now you haven't proved anything.

It's targeted at nobody. It is a foundation for banning or sanctioning people for racist posting. It's not a definition of how such a post would look, and it's not a count allowing this many but not more. It's a statement by board administration that we don't want to see flagrant racism and can act on it when we do. A racist like Dinner may well be affected, but that's up to him.

@Dinner doesn't think his stance is racist. Many would agree with him, though I wouldn't. That disagreement refers to one of the main political controversies in the world right now. You realise that in implementing this rule, you will have to take a side and make that political stance part of WF policy?

I think you're painting yourself into a corner in which you will either have to declare that the likes of Dinner, and the likes of the supporters of the new US administration, aren't racist -- or render WF off-limits for one half of the US' politics.

Well, not really in my opinion. The rule was written specifically as a consideration of how the behavior interacts with the other things we consider important to this community, hence the language about a triad. But if you have a suggestion, I'm sure everybody would be interested in seeing it.