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You're the second person who has had to reach back literal years to find a relevant example from the left. Without access to those posts I cant evaluate whether they are a valid counterexample. Suffice to say im unconvinced by your assurances but I think we'll have to set that aside.
Presumably the rules by which you moderate are designed produce some outcomes and accomplish specific aims in the tenor and culture of this forum. Probably these are things like, ensure the average comment quality remains high, keep inflammatory and emotionally triggering posts to a minimum, encourage thoughtful and respectful engagement, etc.
One of the aims which I thought the rules were designed to achieve was establishing some cultural norms that encourage the consideration of cross-axis views in a charitable and good faith way. Correct me if I'm wrong.
FC's post contributes to the erosion this norm. By publicly advocating for the wholesale and categorical defection against liberal institutions, he is sending a signal that he believes cooperation with blue tribe is pointless. Therefore, why should I engage with him, a public defector? I simply won't. It would be irrational of me to do so. That is a potential cross axis engagement point that has been eliminated. And the more similar attitudes I see, the less likely I am to engage overall. And I think many people would respond the same way.
I think this forum highly benefits from this norm of cross-axis charity (luckily most have internalized it I believe). The alternative is an echo chamber, or one filled with ideologues. Even with a veneer of politeness, there is no value, for me at least, in a place like that.
We had Impassionata (or a pretty good impersonator) here not long ago. We do occasionally have very leftist posters here making anti-right arguments. And yes, they get downvoted and reported a lot, but they only get modded when they get insulting.
You're not entirely wrong that that's how we'd like conversations to go, but we are not a social project. @FCfromSSC and other people arguing that cooperation is pointless and the other tribe is bad and we have no common ground is allowable, because our "goal" is not to foster cooperation, it's just to host discussion and arguing of ideas.
Then don't. No one is required to engage with anyone.
You aren't alone - @FCfromSSC has provoked similar reactions before. But if we took up your suggestion, we'd just be creating a different kind of echo chamber, where anyone whose views put off too many people gets silenced. We do have a bit of a problem here in that we are leaning ever-more rightward and fewer left-leaning people see much value in participating. I think that's a shame, but frankly (as a left-leaning person) I think the problem is not that "righties say unacceptable things" but "lefties cannot tolerate hearing things they don't like." That's certainly not a problem this forum can solve, but if as a left-leaning person you're going to insist that you won't participate if right-wingers get to say right-wing things... well, case in point.
Any joe can host a discussion website. Hosting a site where /good/, /quality/ discussion occurs is much harder, and that I think is the aim, is it not? And that absolutely does require some level of cooperation between participants engaged in that discussion.
Is this supposed to be some kind of gotcha? So lame. Anyway. Perhaps I did not articulate my point well enough, as it does not concern "things I don't like". I read a hundred things I don't like every time I sign on to this site, yet I singled out FC's post in particular. My point concerns behavior that erodes the norms that enable quality discussion.
I don't see how. I am not advocating for modding conservative viewpoints in particular. You already taboo a good number of posting styles /and/ content in order to keep the quality of discussion high. You don't allow trolls, intentional sophistry, or, I believe, outright Holocaust denial. You of course don't allow name calling. For the sake of the argument, why not? Who are you to say that someone shouldn't be able to express their sincere and honest belief that person X has literal shit for brains? And if anyone gets offended by that, well, we can't silence that person just because he puts people off; the problem is people cannot tolerate hearing things they don't like, etc. There are of course real forums where this kind of free speech absolutism is a deeply held principle, but they are almost universally terrible, for obvious reasons.
You get to call the shots at the end of the day. I've said my case about as clearly as I can, so I'll leave it here. Thank you for at least considering what I have to say here.
Trolls and intentional sophistry (i.e., bad faith arguments), no, Holocaust denial, yes. Though outright stating "The Holocaust is a hoax" would be subject to our "inflammatory claims require proportionate evidence" rule, there is no explicit prohibition against Holocaust denial, and it has not been made a special case of unallowable arguments.
Because that would be unnecessarily antagonistic, which is against the rules. Attack the argument, not the person.
If I sound dismissive, it's not because I don't (somewhat) sympathize, but because I've had this argument so many times before. You are not the first or only one to object to accelerationist-posting. We're not going to prohibit it. We do take a close look at anything that veers towards fedposting.
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That is in fact the point of the rules. You think I'm wrong, and further, you think the way I phrased my statements is unconducive to further discussion. That's true; I was replying to a specific comment in a specific way, not trying to have a conversation with the room generally. Is there elaboration or background I could offer that would allow more of an entry into conversation? Or would you like to lay out why you think what I proposed wouldn't work, or why it is objectionable on general principles?
I certainly do not think liberal institutions are worth preserving, and I do believe that attempting cooperation with Blue Tribe is pointless. If you're looking for conversation, either of those are a reasonable place to start. Why do you think liberal institutions should be preserved? How do you define "cooperation", and why are you confident that Red/Blue cooperation is possible?
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I, on the other hand, am starting to become unconvinced that you are unconvinced. If you were here long enough to remember Ozy's post, or the "downvotes aren't an 'I disagree' button" mantra, you should be familiar with Impassionata, with MarxBro, with the defenses for BLM riots, etc.
You are yet to argue that this constitutes a violation of the norm. Many ideologies argue for a wholesale and categorical defection against liberal institutions. Communism, monarchism, anarchism, uncle-Tedism... are all of these supposed to be off limits?
Literally no one is asking you to.
Charity does not mean you should unconditionally cooperate with liberal institutions. It means you shouldn't caricature what your opponent is saying, or that, out of all interpretations possible, you shouldn't pick the one that makes him look the worst.
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