I just finished reading Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson recently and it's one of the best sci-fi books I've encountered. Without giving away too much of the plot, Martian independence is a primary story line. Highly recommended.
I personally think what they said was pretty fucked and am okay with them being banned
What you personally think doesn't matter. We need consistent application of rules, not personal feelings, dictating punishment.
but it’s not good for someone to see a truly fucked comment persecuting their religious beliefs, identity, race, what have you.
I don’t understand why removing the comment isn’t enough? I guess I don’t understand what banning the user accomplishes versus just removing the comment.
I don't understand why removing the comment isn't enough? A user being Islamophobic is obviously a reason to ban someone (I don't think Amorphous was being Islamophobic), but if someone says something Islamophobic out of ignorance I guess I don't understand what banning the user accomplishes versus just removing the comment.
They made the point that if it were transphobic it wouldn’t be tolerated
Everything above applies the same for transphobic statements, imo. I've personally had more encounters on this site where someone says something transphobic and they are corrected and learn from the experience than ones where the user is actually malicious.
I wish there were a better way to handle situations like mine where the community clearly doesn't feel the ban was necessary. I don't know what the solution is, but it's disappointing from my perspective.
If you truly think this person is an Islamophobe (which I don't, personally, even if I disagree strongly with their views) then they should have been banned outright. You said they were banned for what they said in mod chat, but you could have just removed them from mod chat and that problem would be immediately solved. You're confusing story is only making it seem more likely that this ban was done for personal reasons, and not based simply on enforcement of the rules of the site.
Just imagine it was someone with a transphobic position. They wouldve been banned from the start without even a moment to explain themselves.
I think this has proven to be a problem as well. Assumptions are sometimes being made about the views of Chapos based on way too little information, such as downvote patterns and bad takes. There's a difference between being Islamophobic and making an Islamophobic take. They're both problems, but they're very different problems that deserve different solutions.
For what it's worth, having encountered plenty of anti-religious anarchists, I've found that the best way to convince these people is to show them that they already don't hate religion, they hate the institutions of religion. Almost every anti-religion leftist I've encountered has no problem with "personal spirituality", only with "organized religion". I think promoting the idea of liberating, democratizing, and/or removing the hierarchies within religions is a really easy way to convince our confused comrades to change their views, or at least their rhetoric. Plus Christian Anarchists are just cool as hell!
I’ve been very vocal about my disapproval of how the downvote ban wave took place in the modchat.
I think it'd be good for the community to see mods have some of these discussions publicly. Seeing mods disagree with each other, especially when it's civil, only serves to instill confidence in the mod team.
I did leave the site for awhile. It felt pretty nice to be take a break, tbh.
I’ll mention something next time I see beatnik on.
Thank you.
I defended you in a few threads on userunion. Always thought you were cool in the modchat.
I don't mean for this to sound aggressive, but how can you continue to help facilitate these "purges" when you know first-hand that the false positives are leading to these sort of situations? I understand that the goal is to protect trans people, but it's really hard for me not to feel like it's performative when I'm literally a trans person being victimized by the bans. This is what I thought was ironic about your rhetoric in this thread: from my perspective you need to take a break and do some introspection.
This shouldn't be a thing. We don't want mods having personal vendettas against users. The rules should exist, and they should be enforced. Mods shouldn't let their "short temper" influence their moderation practices.
Either Amorphous should have been banned for Islamophobia or not, but banning them for secret messages in mod chat that you aren't even claiming broke any rules is absurd.
Agreed. Maybe we could come together as a community and come up with a better plan that helps to combat transphobia without (accidentally) banning comrades in the process.
I thought the StonedApe thing was resolved already but I could be wrong.
I'm AStonedApe. It's not resolved, unfortunately.
I didn’t like what happened with them either.
Then say something. This is the sort of shit that sows distrust in the mod team. If a mod (or especially an admin) makes a mistake, they should be held accountable by the other mods. KinoEye, Based_Ball, and Flirty_Fawn are the only mods who defended me in any way.
If you would’ve taken the L and used the power of the internet instead of a modchat to introspect on your shitty belief there wouldn’t have been a problem.
This is the most ironic thing I've seen anyone say in years. 😂
I'm AStonedApe, you can find a few of my threads on u/userunion from a few weeks ago when I was banned and falsely labeled a transphobe by Beatnik. I tried to argue my case and the admins made it very clear they're more interested in protecting their egos than they are in protecting the values they proclaim to hold.
I'm done. This site is awful, it honestly may be worse than raddle.me and that's saying a lot. I'm just here until Beatnik apologizes or makes it clear he won't apologize, then I'm fucking out.
I got Geo-libertarianism, which is surprisingly accurate.