Rules update

I still think the general Don't Be An Asshole rule is better. The triad is a good explanation of that. I believe we all understand why what Ramen did last was different than many other instances of arguable racism, including @Dinner's political views, and I don't think what makes it different and unacceptable would be impossible without racism.

Mindnumbingly stupid post. Seriously. I expected better from you.

So if an overt racist doesn't think he's racist, and racism is being brought into the mainstream we must suddenly tolerate it because somehow they might have a legitimate debating point by offering a stereotype? Fuck off with that total nonsense. Since when do you consider a stereotype a legitimate starting point for debate?

Find the members of the new US administration who make overtly racist comments that are akin to Dinners or rely on pictures of lynchings to target black people.

Spare me this utter nonsense. Like I have said twice now, which you have twice avoided, why are you not calling for gturner to be unbanned? Damned double standard hypocrite. Disgusting.

This is a joke. All the recent drama has evolved out of lack of rules to deal with certain things. Many of the complaints have been bannings not covered by the rules. But your solution is as vague a rule as possible that just assures maximum possible drama as soon as mods try and use it.

Brilliant.

Precisely.

People wanted rules spelled out, so there you go.

And to reiterate: no, Dinner wasn't being targeted. We noticed with all of Volpone and Ramen's bullshit that having a rule about this was probably a wise thing because the Internet of today is not the same as it was in 2003. Unlimited speech has never existed here....anyone remember when Cass was hosting the site in Austria and how some asshole spammed the board with Nazi flags? Some people have posted under their real life names and that's still searchable on Google. I wish we'd have kept the Violet Room to keep certain threads from being indexed, but since we can't have that here we are.

I don't believe anyone who knows your record is dumb enough to believe that.

Apprently @Dinner disagrees with this list and maintains that stereotypes and slurs are the only way.

What you and others fail to understand and the administration fails to tell you is that they owe you nothing. No reasoning. No explanations. No consideration. For the same reasons that targeted posters have no right to complain about rules applying only to them, the populace as a whole have no right to view any of their discussions or to hold them accountable in any way. None.

And disagrees with this as well...

Hey very confused apparently.

Sorry, but where did I assert such a right?

I think you are a very confused young man. Advocating a method for the mods to win the support and trust of the membership, or otherwise controlling offensive content, is not claiming a right to anything.

I post on a privately owned board. I can and will protest what I see as unreasonable or unfair. But do not assume I think I have the right to anything. Posting on WF is a privilege, not a right, and it has been that way under every owner.

In that I think they are clearly racist, but the speaker insists they aren't? Donald Trump, for starters.

How incredibly disingenuous. The whole point of everything I said was to distinguish one from the other.

Alrighty. I'd like to say that this rule change is a welcome development, to me. I, too, shared Anna's concern about Google indexing, but was also incensed at recent developments. Yes, Wordforge has a fine tradition of free-ish speech, but when has the sort of spamming and posting of fucked up pictures ever been cool? Remember Zodiac? He got banned for posting giant swastikas, black penis and clowning the holocaust. I don't remember the uproar over his banning. Even Tasvir never took his hot garbage that far. I'd also like to say that I appreciate the staffs efforts in this, and all the feedback from the community thus far. That is all.

And now every political disagreement that involves racism according to one side will be settled in a Help Room Thread. You realise that everyone who criticises Israel's government is called racist by some, right? That most of @oldfella1962's neighbourhood and family stories seem to gravitate towards racism? That from a European continental point of view, any government form that asks about race is racist? And from an epistemological point of view, the assumption that races exist is racist?

Racism is itself a controversial term. Including it in rules that are supposed to govern a place for controversial debate is a bad, bad idea.

And you just know the next asshole who wants to get under everyone's skin, unless they manage to exploit this rule along those lines, will just find a different and new way to be an asshole and then defend themselves by saying there was no rule against it.

Ha ha. That you're reduced to Dayton's cherry picking strategy on what to replay to says it all.

Third time of asking, why aren't you calling for gturner's return if you think this rule (which nobody has been banned under) is harsh?

Just, ugh.

Like I said, people wanted rules spelled out. So now, they have it.

Blame idiots like Volpone and Ramen.

"No overt racism" equals "ridiculous rule changes" in your POV? Interesting.

Oh look, the lawyer thinks we don't have enough rules. Color me shocked.

Right, expectation, whatever. Protest all you want. When the rules aren't applied equally there will be no trust or support. You sir, are spinning your wheels.

I don't think that the rule is harsh, I think it suggests the wrong criteria, resulting in both too harsh and too mild likely implementation. And I don't see how gturner would be banned under it at all.

If I did support specific detailed rules rather than a general Don't be an asshole rule, then I would indeed have to call for his return, and I would still have to do so after this rule has been added.

He disagrees that he disagrees!

I'd rather blame idiots like gul.

You'd rather blame gul than the people who actually posted racial epithets and images of black people being hanged? Why? Doesn't personal responsibility play into this at all? I mean, I presume Ramen and Volpone are adults. Surely they can take the blame for their posts?

How about we blame the racists who post racist stuff for their racist stuff, and the owners who come up with bad rules for their bad rules?

No, no, John, it's clear that gul edited those posts in a desperate attempt to discredit the courageous resistance leaders.

It was bias on the admins part that caused this mess, and while you and Anna (seemingly) stepped down, gul is just keeping that train of fail right on going.

No seemingly about it.

I'm not paying for an alt right echo chamber.

Because what Ramen and Volpone posted were clearly racist screeds. You don't have to like the new rules, but they're not inherently bad just because you don't like them. In fact, I think the rules are good rules. What it all boils down to is that Ramen and Volpone decided to be a part of the pointy had brigade. Wordforge, as a response, chose to join the 21st century by expressly standing up against that mentality. I will take the latter over the former any day.

Bias is in everything. I'm biased, you're biased, they're biased. The question is in which direction does the bias lay. In this case, the bias lays against posters who seek only to stir shit, cause trouble, and engage in tactics to disrupt the community. Now, you can argue "disrupt the community" until the cows come home, but that's because we live in a domain of words. In real life, if you were to shit on my carpet, and then proceed to tell me that I'm biased against having shit on my carpet, such a statement would make you look like an utter fool, but because we live in this domain of words, and ideas, the idea gets to be bandied about as a philosophical exercise instead.

You say it's bias that caused this mess. I agree. It was bias in favor of a wild west atmosphere, where anything goes, and if you don't like it you can leave. The problem is that there is no such thing as "leaving" anymore. If you quit Wordforge, your username, your email, your posts, are all accessible via Google, the search engine that sees all and catalogues every post, every tweet, every like, every suggestion, every racial epithet you've ever made, or ever been associated with on the internet. Welcome to 2016, where the Wild West no longer exists. The internet has been tamed, commercialized, indexed, and exploited. This group of Administrators has decided that the bias needs to be redirected, and so they have. They've adjusted the bias to be against racists, and shit-stirrers.

I still believe the Violet Room was a good idea. In many online communities, it would be considered reasonable, maybe even positive. Here, though, with a community so entrenched in their roles that any change is decried as despotism, it is rallied against. Several posters even go so far as to openly threaten members of the Admin, one of them with racial epithets that would be seen as heinous anywhere else, but not so much here. Why? The posters engaging in casual racism, and misogyny as well among other things, were entertaining, and we can deal with a little casual racism as long as it's entertaining. So the Violet Room had to go.

This isn't something I've made up, though I'm sure there are plenty of people who would deny that the Sun existed so long as I posited that people were getting sunburns. The flesh could be charred, and they'd demand I recant on such an unsupported position, so I know what I say here won't open up every mind. It will only reach those who already know that we've been sacrificing ethics for entertainment, that it's worth a little hurt to others if we get a laugh out of it. I'm guilty of it, but I'm trying to change, because I can see it. I can see the massing cruelty ahead that is the inevitable outcome of this path. I'm not the only one, either. This board needs this change, and the Admins see that. I saw it when I was on staff. @Anna saw it as well, and she tried to find a way to make a change to benefit everyone, and possibly prevent that future from happening. She got resistance, which is perfectly okay, but then she got implied threats, and she got to see people defend those posters who made such ugly statements. She gets to see it now, people who want to argue every jot and tittle of what it means to be racist, or whether this rule means this or that, or what the definition of "is" is.

All of this gets recorded. The internet never forgets. Wordforge needs this change, or it will become a worthless community full of people trading laughter for cruelty.

I've said my piece on this whole issue. Do what you will.

That is essentially the Red Room, and really, I think you are the odd man out when it comes to being against that and wanting to reform it. So, as you said yourself:

Of course you do. In spite of the backlash and it being explained to you how idiotic it was, how patronizing it was, how it went against what Wordforge and the Red Room in particular stood for, but you have it in your head that it was a good idea, and no amount of discussion is going to change your mind on that. Instead you're going to point at other boards having something you consider to be similar, and which, for whatever reason, you consider as something positive that Wordforge should try to emulate. A lot of people are here because of TrekBBS treating them this way, yet you seem to see TrekBBS as something you want to make Wordforge into, and in the process you've actually made us a bit more like TK.

No it doesn't.

You sure are dense, aren't you? I can only think of one person who more than halfheartedly defended what Ramen posted. Everyone else is just concerned about censorship in general. I mean, shit, Packard and I hardly agree on anything, and he's actually expressing a lot of my concerns there. But in your head, this is somehow twisted into everyone is defending the threats and racism.

As I said, do what you will. If nothing will change your mind, so be it.

John maybe this board isn't for you. Maybe you should open your own restricted speech board where you can feel safer.