Indigo™ wrote:Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
- also Benjamin Franklin -
actually, Dale Carnegie
About this thread
I've read all 7 pages and have decided I have some things to say:
1. Stay on topic
For some reason in a thread about forum policy, there is talk about rascism, other threads, rivalry, old fights, past affairs, WW2 (as in Godwin and not as in godwin), Israel and the definition of uglyness.
Instead of members discussing the topic at hand, there are a few post of people giving their opinion on the matter and complete rants of people discussing completely unrelated manners. to those I want to ask, either start a new thread or keep your discussion going in pm's. All these post just inflame emotions and hide the real arguments in the discussion.
2. YOU can be wrong
Part of the people in this thread are extremely convinced of their right and of the wrong of another. This is in my opinion a stupid way to act, always remember we are all people with different points of view and are not infallible. You can be wrong and it is nothing to be afraid or ashamed of.
And now on topic
First of all I want to remark that I think any person with power should be extremely suspicious about their own power. Power corrupts and thus the first thing one should do when getting power is to mark the borders of that power clearly. I think Sephar0x has done a great job in making this clear, both in the forums and in the webteases. This may not result in the perfect website, but it does result in a consistent and stable website.
I think that when (personal) insult will get deleted, this consistency will be gone and will make place for a more hypocritical system, were some post stay up, while others are taken down.
Note however that I think something can and should be done about trolling and bullying, both of these things are events that occur not at one moment but continuously. When person A is bullying person B, this can be seen in multiple post throughout a certain timeframe. The only real difference I see between bullying and trolling is that the first is aimed at someone, or maybe a group, in particular while the latter is just aimed at everyone around.
I think Sephar0x also is correct when he point out that there is no clear line between a heated discussion and an insult, it's more like a gradient. I can understand really well that a mod, a person with power, acts only when the clear line is crossed, thus on the end were Sephar0x now acts.
I also want to add that this website is a community consisting of adults. As adults we should be able to take our own responsibilities and be able to acknowledge that there are assholes in this world. We live with them on a daily basis in our real life, they are in the government, the police force, in healtcare, they are everywhere. Why should a website, where humiliation is part of the deal, take the high ground and censor a part of the assholes away. This is a public place, as public as any.
