Scans_Daily

No. My point in that particular conversation is that some of us, be we disabled, gay, str8, whatever, acclimate differently - we have different experiences, sometimes we use the r-word in different ways, sometimes we don't. My experience is as valid as anyone else's, but I do respect not using the word around here. But what I was saying earlier on yesterday was that just because I use it in my everyday life does not mean I am encouraging my own oppression. I don't feel oppressed in the slightest when I say something like, for example, "Lost was a [word omitted] show." You may see it differently, and that's fine, but I can still think you're way off and wrong.

But that's all beside the point. My major problem with what's become of the comm is extremely lax moderation and a tendency towards allowing open flamewars and back and forth poster abuse for fear that anyone, anywhere will be offended if they can't "get the rage out" in some therapeutic way, which generally translates to saying whatever you want about whoever you want for as long as you want without any real rules or restrictions.

Me, I tend to err on the side of typical forum moderation for adult human beings - if, on average, you can't handle your emotions without being way over the top and vituperative, even to people who just don't get it and never will, then you shouldn't be in a shared forum. That's why we used to ban some people back on the old s_d, remember? Not because they didn't have a point, but because they could never express it civilly.

This is the Internet. There will be dicks. On most forums, if someone's a dick, they get dinged, maybe there's some education, maybe an apology happens, maybe it doesn't, but one way or another the situation is rectified with a minimum of bloodshed. And it's done. When things get out of hand and turn into flame-hurling back and forth - even if one person has a valid point about someone's ignorance - then the community threatens to become unhinged and permanently disrupted, and generally a mod will step in and say okay, to your corners, don't do X, Y and Z, let's move on.

Is it a perfect system? No. But it prevents a great many long, drawn-out ordeals of back and forth poster abuse which turn a forum into a circus. Yet here, the circus is apparently what we're looking for. I respect the idea of educating people in a comm. But I simply don't feel enough people are being educated by this practice, if you can call it that, where anything you say is valid if someone rubs you the wrong way and you can tear them apart on a whim without any fear of any moderation, because moderating would be violating your safe space. That's not what safe spaces are about. Even safe spaces in RL have some form of moderation to avoid frenzy and disruption like that. People are frightened. They don't want to post. People have left. Things exist in a state of disruption. Where's the education?

The moderators came up with a very simple, nice idea in theory - let people express themselves however they need to when faced with an issue - that does not work in practice when this self-expression is often taking the form of angry screaming matches, and you are supposed to be a moderator of a larger community which, sorry, is not totally focused on each individual's subjectivity. Not mine, yours, or anyone else's. We all know how we'd like the world to work. We can all try to improve on it. But we still have to deal with the world, and people, and that means we have to all give a little.

If I make someone feel unsafe, I sincerely apologize. But I'd love to understand just how the suggestion of more uniform and even-handed moderation in terms of basic civility is a threat to anyone's safety.