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Norway28606 Posts
A bit late to the party, but anyway, about the whole racism thing;
In theory, we don't tolerate it. However, sadly, in practice, we largely do - especially in the political threads.
This relates to several factors that I will try to explain.
Firstly, and probably most importantly, racism is a term with a very contested definition. We do consistently ban for using 'nigger' as an insult, this is such a clear cut case that there won't ever really be a discussion about 'whether this was racist'. (Although, when I described Testie as a racist in a recent thread, even that sparked a discussion. I got a couple PMs beside the posters who wanted to argue in that thread. ) Basically, even 'black people are genetically predisposed to crime' being considered racist - which so clearly is - sparks a big discussion about whether that is racism.
If most of the contested posts were in that territory, I'd happily say that we don't tolerate that and moderate more aggressively. Most posts about the topic are however not that clear cut. There are in fact a pretty significant number of posts from left-of-center posters arguing some form of 'we are all racist to some degree - we just want you to recognize it so we can try to alleviate the problem'. Obviously the guy who thinks black people are genetically inferior is racist. But how about the guy who thinks that african american culture to a lesser degree values academic achievement than asian-american culture, and who thinks this is negative? Obviously 'you fucking nigger' is racist - but what about a white 50 year old woman clutching her purse while walking past some african american 20 year olds in a slightly shoddy part of town? What about posters who think 'it makes sense that she would do that'? What about posters who genuinely have nothing against arabs, but consider Islam incompatible with 'western culture'?
Couple this, that it is often hard to define racism in a way that gets near universal agreement, and also that it's hard to define exactly 'how racist does it have to be actionable', with another factoid - the disagreements regarding 'what constitutes racism' largely align with other political opinions, and it becomes hard to moderate racism while maintaining the political threads as fairly neutral arenas for healthy discussion. This rang especially true for the 2016-17, where 'is Trump racist' and 'are Trump supporters racist for supporting a racist, if Trump is racist' were topics that were frequently revisisted. Adopting a hardliner stance against racism with a liberal definition of what constitutes racism would essentially lead to banning every Trump supporter - which would obviously make political discussions relevant to the current political climate impossible.
It's a balancing act, and I'm sure we have at some point(s) failed to moderate posts that 'should probably semi-objectively be considered racist'. But we've also been criticized by posters from the 'right' for being too harsh, resulting in accusations that we stifle political discussions. Furthermore, there is no denying that we overall have more posters who identify as 'left of center' (especially from an american point of view) - and at least from my point of view, insight into the conservative mindset is a very valuable element of the political threads.
We created the 'racism is not tolerated on teamliquid in any shape or form' rule a very long time ago, with a less mature community and a different internet-climate, and also during a period where politics was a smaller element of the general forum than it is today. Back then, it was very important to distance ourselves from the x17-y elements of the brood war community. Sadly, it is ever-relevant from a political point of view and banning all the posters that I myself think are 'some degree of racist' would definitely stifle potential discussion. We can always improve and pointing to specific instances where obvious racism was allowed to slide is fair game, but this is not something that is easy to moderate while maintaining a useful arena for real political discussion. I still stand by my opinion that this forum happens to be one of the places on the internet where 'conservatives' and 'liberals' still coexist, that it's one of the less echo-chambery places out there, and I think this quality of the forum is important to preserve.
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What about posters who genuinely have nothing against arabs, but consider Islam incompatible with 'western culture'?
That isn't a race issue at all, so that has no place in a discussion about what counts as racism. That's a religious issue, which generally is not connected to race (there's "white" muslims too). What does count as racism, kinda, is something that i asked in the thread a while back ("as soon as i hear that a terror attack happened, the first thought is islamic terrorists").
That being said, i feel like it's a cheap cop out. TL has a stance, either you stick with it, or you don't. If you don't, even with blatant racism, there should be no action. And yes, that includes "nigger". You can't action someone calling another "nigger" because that's "blatantly racist", but ignore obvious white supremacists arguing that africa should be grateful for being colonised, too bad that they fucked that gift up.
White supremacy is inherently racist. As racist as calling someone nigger. There's no difference, both are equally actionable (or non-actionable. if you prefer). The only difference is the "sledge-hammeredness" of the word nigger, where as white supremacy generally starts with "you know, i'm not a racist, but...".
And yes. It's good to have both sides of a coin in a thread, for a political discussion. There's non-racist conservatives, too. I feel like "well we kinda have to ignore the semi-objectively racist stuff sometimes because otherwise we lose that side of the coin" is a pretty cheap excuse. Most conservatives are against immigration. That's a valid stance, hell, i'd consider myself pretty liberal and i am against (especially uncontrolled) immigration, too. Some people are against brown people. That's different. And we have these people in the thread.
So, yeah. Again, either you take a stance, or you don't. Arbitrary actioning based on a gut feeling and mood, that's bullshit and actually hinders a debate. That's why every good debate club has rules in place, rules that get enforced. If you don't, you just have a clusterfuck and people screaming at each other.
Which is pretty much what the USPOL thread is most of the times.
edit: there's also the option of warning people, we're not just talking bans here. I feel like that's a pretty powerful tool to point out "borders".
edit2: to point out the flaw in your argument, or rather, the fact that it works against you as well: the term nigger isn't always based on hate for black people. The same way people call chores "gay", they're not inherently homophobes. Idiots, sure. But if using "nigger" flat out confirms someone as racist (which i'm fine with, i don't care - i don't use this term for anything, although i do call some things "gay" sometimes, while fighting and voting for lgbt rights), then obvious white supremacist "speeches" do too.
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On January 07 2018 23:42 Liquid`Drone wrote:A bit late to the party, but anyway, about the whole racism thing; In theory, we don't tolerate it. However, sadly, in practice, we largely do - especially in the political threads. This relates to several factors that I will try to explain. Firstly, and probably most importantly, racism is a term with a very contested definition. We do consistently ban for using 'nigger' as an insult, this is such a clear cut case that there won't ever really be a discussion about 'whether this was racist'. (Although, when I described Testie as a racist in a recent thread, even that sparked a discussion. I got a couple PMs beside the posters who wanted to argue in that thread. ) Basically, even 'black people are genetically predisposed to crime' being considered racist - which so clearly is - sparks a big discussion about whether that is racism. If most of the contested posts were in that territory, I'd happily say that we don't tolerate that and moderate more aggressively. Most posts about the topic are however not that clear cut. There are in fact a pretty significant number of posts from left-of-center posters arguing some form of 'we are all racist to some degree - we just want you to recognize it so we can try to alleviate the problem'. Obviously the guy who thinks black people are genetically inferior is racist. But how about the guy who thinks that african american culture to a lesser degree values academic achievement than asian-american culture, and who thinks this is negative? Obviously 'you fucking nigger' is racist - but what about a white 50 year old woman clutching her purse while walking past some african american 20 year olds in a slightly shoddy part of town? What about posters who think 'it makes sense that she would do that'? What about posters who genuinely have nothing against arabs, but consider Islam incompatible with 'western culture'? Couple this, that it is often hard to define racism in a way that gets near universal agreement, and also that it's hard to define exactly 'how racist does it have to be actionable', with another factoid - the disagreements regarding 'what constitutes racism' largely align with other political opinions, and it becomes hard to moderate racism while maintaining the political threads as fairly neutral arenas for healthy discussion. This rang especially true for the 2016-17, where 'is Trump racist' and 'are Trump supporters racist for supporting a racist, if Trump is racist' were topics that were frequently revisisted. Adopting a hardliner stance against racism with a liberal definition of what constitutes racism would essentially lead to banning every Trump supporter - which would obviously make political discussions relevant to the current political climate impossible. It's a balancing act, and I'm sure we have at some point(s) failed to moderate posts that 'should probably semi-objectively be considered racist'. But we've also been criticized by posters from the 'right' for being too harsh, resulting in accusations that we stifle political discussions. Furthermore, there is no denying that we overall have more posters who identify as 'left of center' (especially from an american point of view) - and at least from my point of view, insight into the conservative mindset is a very valuable element of the political threads. We created the 'racism is not tolerated on teamliquid in any shape or form' rule a very long time ago, with a less mature community and a different internet-climate, and also during a period where politics was a smaller element of the general forum than it is today. Back then, it was very important to distance ourselves from the x17-y elements of the brood war community. Sadly, it is ever-relevant from a political point of view and banning all the posters that I myself think are 'some degree of racist' would definitely stifle potential discussion. We can always improve and pointing to specific instances where obvious racism was allowed to slide is fair game, but this is not something that is easy to moderate while maintaining a useful arena for real political discussion. I still stand by my opinion that this forum happens to be one of the places on the internet where 'conservatives' and 'liberals' still coexist, that it's one of the less echo-chambery places out there, and I think this quality of the forum is important to preserve.
It’s helpful to see this actually stated. I had gathered as much from the resistance to ban when people were demanding bans.
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Norway28606 Posts
to be honest, I'm not going to claim to represent a consensus of the moderation staff. I personally don't moderate the thread because I participate in it. But even if I were to, then I would personally be very hesitant to moderate racism that isn't nearly universally recognizable as racism. My post there should however not necessarily be considered site policy - rather my own opinion on the matter. Kwark is also a moderator and I think he disagrees with me on several points.
As part of my studies, I have on a couple occasions been engaged in group work across borders (with students from germany and luxembourg - the ones from luxembourg were from 15 different countries again) where we attempted to create a working modern definition of racism. Most people involved in these debates were of the young urban european liberal leftist breed - but even here there was significant disagreement. (in particular with regard to whether racism had to be based on genetics or whether considering cultures inferior or superior was sufficient). With the luxemburgian students there were representatives from Brazil and China too - those students again had very different perspectives from what we saw among the european crowd. The experiences I had during these meetings to me really highlighted the difficulty of defining racism in a way that an as international and opinionally diverse forum as this could agree with - and I think it would be very difficult to moderate it more heavily without alienating a significant portion of our user base.
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On January 09 2018 00:31 Liquid`Drone wrote:
to be honest, I'm not going to claim to represent a consensus of the moderation staff. I personally don't moderate the thread because I participate in it. But even if I were to, then I would personally be very hesitant to moderate racism that isn't nearly universally recognizable as racism. My post there should however not necessarily be considered site policy - rather my own opinion on the matter. Kwark is also a moderator and I think he disagrees with me on several points.
As part of my studies, I have on a couple occasions been engaged in group work across borders (with students from germany and luxembourg - the ones from luxembourg were from 15 different countries again) where we attempted to create a working modern definition of racism. Most people involved in these debates were of the young urban european liberal leftist breed - but even here there was significant disagreement. (in particular with regard to whether racism had to be based on genetics or whether considering cultures inferior or superior was sufficient). With the luxemburgian students there were representatives from Brazil and China too - those students again had very different perspectives from what we saw among the european crowd. The experiences I had during these meetings to me really highlighted the difficulty of defining racism in a way that an as international and opinionally diverse forum as this could agree with - and I think it would be very difficult to moderate it more heavily without alienating a significant portion of our user base.
He's stated one contrary view on multiple occasions. You're the first in the moderation staff that I've seen comment on racism policy as it applies to accusations/defenses in the US Politics thread to hold a contrary view. The de facto rule has been that current discussions have not risen to violate TL rules on the topic.
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Is there any enforcement of the "show, don't tell" guideline in the title page? In my view that thread has become nothing but "tell"
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That's a bit hyperbolic; there's certainly a lot of telling, but posters like ChristianS do lots of showing as well. Conversations also develop in a way that make it difficult for third parties to ascertain specifically who has said what when.
Everyone can always do better, though.
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On January 17 2018 23:29 Aveng3r wrote:
Is there any enforcement of the "show, don't tell" guideline in the title page? In my view that thread has become nothing but "tell"
no there is not. most of the guidelines are unenforced and ignored.
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Honestly, if everyone tried to put in the work to really justify everything that they say in the thread, it would be exhausting to try to read. I think people should have an instinct to lay more groundwork when they're saying something especially contentious, or if they're trying to have a discussion with someone who thinks very differently than they do.
Otherwise that thread would be such a chore if every post was a treatise.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On January 18 2018 00:52 ChristianS wrote:
Otherwise that thread would be such a chore if every post was a treatise.
We used to do that. It sucked. Thankfully that doesn't happen and we're now the Twitter generation.
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The Age of Twitter was terrible. For some reason tweets used to load with a small delay, which made refreshing pages with lots of them pain in the butt.
I'm using past tense because now tweets don't load at all. Big thanks to whoever is responsible for this bug (not using any blocking software so I assume it's a bug). Please don't fix it.
Some screenshots: + Show Spoiler +
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
Someone decided that twits were ads so adblock affects them.
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On January 26 2018 10:49 Seeker wrote:
The conspiracy talks stop right now. Anyone who continues the conversation after this post will receive a temp ban. We do not condone that shit here on TL. Either drop it or go somewhere else.
I wouldn't mind clarification about TL's policy on conspiracy theories when someone gets a chance. I try to follow the rules and wouldn't have asked GH about his beliefs if I knew it wasn't tolerated. But more importantly, I think conspiracy theories are becoming a bigger and bigger influence on US politics so a clearer enumeration of the policy might become necessary for the thread.
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United States42270 Posts
I think it varies between moderators and attitude of the conspiracy theorist. Whenever anyone new comes in with "wake up sheeple" shit I'm in the one warning then the bans start camp. If their starting point is so incompatible with everyone else that it just shits up the topic and all they can bring is youtube videos about steel beams then that's a no from me.
That isn't what GH is doing. Hell, xDaunt kept trying to push the Uranium One conspiracy theory in a "I'm not personally saying it's true but all these other people are so let's listen to what they have to say" way and he never got actioned for it.
It's not the theory that's actionable to me, it's the posting style of the conspiracy theorist. As always, just my own feelings on the matter, other mods may feel differently. We don't get a universal mod guide when we get the hammer, we've just been on tl for a while and have a decent grasp on what the standards are.
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Thanks, I appreciate it. It seems like depending on who you ask, the "other side" in politics is obsessed with conspiracy theories these days (Russian collusion on the one side, FBI secret societies on the other) and it would seem like a pretty big change of policy if mods started trying to take a heavier hand with it. Sorting out the crazy in US politics does not sound like a job TL mods would want to take on.
But at least if other mods feel similarly to you, it's less about sorting out which conspiracies are crazy enough to be actionable, and more about how people argue for them, which makes sense to me.
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I'd like to think that the vast majority of the mods are able to see the difference between WTC theories that GH was peddling and a story that is being reported on by major media outlets and investigated by the DOJ. I get that Kwark can't ... but call me an optimist.
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United States42270 Posts
If you were stupid enough to believe in the Uranium One conspiracy theory then you'd come out and say it, and tell us all the fabulous tale of corruption, intrigue, and fucking time travel. The fact that you insist upon repeating the words of others without taking any ownership of them suggests that you're smart enough to know that the Clintons aren't time travelers. And given that you yourself don't seem to believe in the Uranium One shit I suggest you shut the fuck up about it.
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On January 27 2018 02:17 KwarK wrote:
If you were stupid enough to believe in the Uranium One conspiracy theory then you'd come out and say it, and tell us all the fabulous tale of corruption, intrigue, and fucking time travel. The fact that you insist upon repeating the words of others without taking any ownership of them suggests that you're smart enough to know that the Clintons aren't time travelers. And given that you yourself don't seem to believe in the Uranium One shit I suggest you shut the fuck up about it.
Matters being investigated by the Department of Justice aren't newsworthy? Really? Nevermind the extensive reporting on the story. This isn't some conspiracy theory being peddled in a vacuum of evidence. But you seem intent on pretending otherwise, so go right on ahead.
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United States42270 Posts
On January 27 2018 02:24 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On January 27 2018 02:17 KwarK wrote:
If you were stupid enough to believe in the Uranium One conspiracy theory then you'd come out and say it, and tell us all the fabulous tale of corruption, intrigue, and fucking time travel. The fact that you insist upon repeating the words of others without taking any ownership of them suggests that you're smart enough to know that the Clintons aren't time travelers. And given that you yourself don't seem to believe in the Uranium One shit I suggest you shut the fuck up about it. Matters being investigated by the Department of Justice aren't newsworthy? Really? Nevermind the extensive reporting on the story. This isn't some conspiracy theory being peddled in a vacuum of evidence. But you seem intent on pretending otherwise, so go right on ahead.
I've repeatedly challenged you to tell us all who the people involved in the conspiracy are, what their motives were, what their roles were, and what they got out of it. You never do because you know you can't because you know it's all bullshit.
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On January 27 2018 02:27 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On January 27 2018 02:24 xDaunt wrote:On January 27 2018 02:17 KwarK wrote:
If you were stupid enough to believe in the Uranium One conspiracy theory then you'd come out and say it, and tell us all the fabulous tale of corruption, intrigue, and fucking time travel. The fact that you insist upon repeating the words of others without taking any ownership of them suggests that you're smart enough to know that the Clintons aren't time travelers. And given that you yourself don't seem to believe in the Uranium One shit I suggest you shut the fuck up about it. Matters being investigated by the Department of Justice aren't newsworthy? Really? Nevermind the extensive reporting on the story. This isn't some conspiracy theory being peddled in a vacuum of evidence. But you seem intent on pretending otherwise, so go right on ahead. I've repeatedly challenged you to tell us all who the people involved in the conspiracy are, what their motives were, what their roles were, and what they got out of it. You never do because you know you can't because you know it's all bullshit.
How am I supposed to know exactly what happened when the DOJ doesn't even know what happened and is actively investigating the matter? Weren't we just having a discussion about how TL frowns upon conspiracy theories? And doesn't TL frown upon arguments being made in absence of evidence? I like how clueless you are regarding how absolutely asinine your question is.
I posted plenty of articles as they came along noting what facts were "known." Given that I don't have superpowers, my knowledge very clearly was limited to what I was citing in the articles. In short, there was nothing remotely wrong with my posting, other than the implications were disagreeable to you for political reasons.
Here's an idea. Why don't you direct your currently misdirected inquisition against me towards all of the posters in the US Politics Thread who keep pushing the Trump/Russia collusion narrative well-beyond known/established facts? I'm sure everyone would enjoy an extended stint with non-hypocritical Kwark.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://preview.ibb.co/g1cLNR/t_hanks.jpg)
