US Politics Feedback Thread - Page 95

What about posters who genuinely have nothing against arabs, but consider Islam incompatible with 'western culture'?

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.

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.

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"

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.

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.

On January 27 2018 02:24 xDaunt wrote:

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.

On January 27 2018 02:27 KwarK wrote:

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.