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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023

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This is not a ban worthy post whatever patterns you're seeing. I personally think moderation should be uber-light. It is the overall community we need to trust in maintaining standards, not moderation. There should be a ban line at explicitly inciting hate, but not at allusions, dog whistles etc. I may be naive but I just don't see how a broad base community like this will get swept up in a descent to all out racism or whatever. People will counter till they will get bored and then disengage. A small minority will feed off each other's posts potentially but I think it's worth being radically open here given what is happening internet wide with censorship.

This post alone may not be, but the user is well-known for making "edgy" top-level posts which are mostly copy-pastes of articles elsewhere without any original commentary, performing minimal to no engagement in the discussion generated, and usually deleting the post within a few hours. You can argue for any position you want here, but you have to actually argue for it, not just stir the pot. He seems like he's either pot-stirring for the lols, or is some sort of "researcher" trying to generate comments that can be taken out of context to paint the whole forum as some kind of racist cesspool.

I hadn't appreciated the broader context, as I said was judging off the post itself, not 'pot-stirring'.

The problem is not with dog whistling or allusions. The OP was not banned for dog whistling, he was banned for being a troll who's not engaging in good faith. That is precisely what will undermine faith in community standards.

I guess I don't have the visibility of the pattern to judge. The post itself looks quite normal to the untrained eye...

He's posted eight top comments, of which 4 are deleted, since the beginning of the previous week, all of which were racially related, many of which were reposts of large swaths of external articles with minimal commentary, and has been warned or temp-banned at least three times in that duration.

Oh well, I defer to the better attuned mod. I think I probably tend to skip those posts and so don't notice.

To be clear, I'm not a mod, if that was referring to me.

And you're right that this post was better than the last two, I think.

No, was referring to original mod post. I guess I'm curious as to what happens if you have a very low ban bar, it could all go to shit quickly of course, particularly if the community population changes, but if the community is broad-based and stable it's just on the margins might it just get ignored or rebutted.