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I think we probably have to acknowledge, without in the first instance judging, that people get different things out of Barbelith, and have different expectations of it. So, some people who are very interested in the gematria will want to hear about the gematria, and will not be all that fussed if some of the stuff surrounding the gematria discussion is anti-Semitic in tone. Others will be very interested in conspiracy theories, and will again not see a dose of anti-Semitism, or homophobia or whatever, as a good enough reason to criticise somebody who is saying interesting things about conspiracy theories. Others again, who have limited interest in the gematria or conspiracy theories, might be more sensitive about the anti-Semitism, or less prepared to let it go in the interests of hearing about these things they find interesting.
(Having said which, if you honestly thing that Fetchy was claiming the PoEZ as anything other than the DIY manual of an international Jewish conspiracy, you are fooling yourself. Sorry.)
Likewise, people have different ideas about what constitutes harassment, and again that affects their expectations of Barbelith. At one extreme we have what is in effect stalking or person-to-person harassment carried from real life to the Internet or vice versa. At the other extreme we have.. I don’t know – trying to stop people using particular words or phrases regardless of context, although that doesn’t happen much more often than the other extreme. But within that we have all sorts of different interpretations and levels, and they all have a voice on Barbelith.
At present, the position on harassment is as Tom outlined it – harassment is a potentially banning offence (and I don’t mean getting married in Scotland), and harassment can be defined as making unsupported allegations or defamatory statements about a group or a person that will make any member of that group (or that person) feel uncomfortable with continuing to be a member of Barbelith. This, by the way, is why “the Jews are lying about the Holocaust” is probably more likely to be jumped on than “the CIA is lying about Osama bin Laden”.
To explore further, we have to go back to the very few instances of people being banned from Barbelith. In general, it requires pretty sustained behaviour identified as harassing to get banned, but let’s put a pin in that for the moment and consider that people who have been banned for harassment never believed that they were behaving in a harassing fashion and, complementarily, always believed that their actions were justified, whatever those actions were. Nobody sets out thinking “well, time for me to do some harassment”. That’s not how it works. To take an example, there is a thread in the Creation at the moment in which a member is attempting to pick a scab through the medium of poetry. This is not being considered by that person as harassing behaviour, but rather another perfectly reasonable and logical attempt to get the side of the story so cruelly suppressed by the bad guys out. The same member, in all probability, started multiple threads, then spammed the board using a series of sock-puppet suits, then enlisted his non-banned chums to set up an organisation devoted to changing the very face of Barbelith by… well, by throwing up a load of threads trying to claim the existence of a popular movement within Barbelith that would rise up and reorder the bulletin board, inviting our trolls to smoke a pipe of peace, and so on.
The point is that at every stage of that journey our friend would have said that his behaviour, where it was intemperate, had been forced by a relentless campaign of persecution by a group of spoiled elitists who were manipulating the well-meaning but easily led Tom, and that his every action was conditioned by a desire to make the board a better place. Because it is actually quite a complex position to keep in your head that the kind of Barbelith that you would be happier with is not necessarily the kind of Barbelith that would be better for everyone. Right here, a decision has been made that a Barbelith where, no matter how interesting the gematria may be, or how involved the conspiracy theory, libels against international Jewry are not an acceptable price to pay. That will not please everybody, especially because to get there you have to decide what counts as a libel against international etc. quo vide above.
The next step up from trying to force the board into sense is probably raelianautopsy’s “I’m not going to convert anyone, so I’m going to drop out of the discussion”. I think it’s a real shame if you feel that way – you may not convert people, but you might inform their thinking our change their perspective.
In this case, my own perspective is that I would wholeheartedly have supported locking the thread. I would have been more hesitant about banning the Fetch, but if I’m honest that would be for largely pragmatic reasons – because I would then have expected him to have felt increasingly free to share his views of Jews and homosexuals, with the moderators keeping a closer eye on him, and to troll and to abuse, until in the end it would have been far easier to ban him without so many people complaining about it because it would have been far harder to miss the hate speech, even for those of our parish most easily distracted by a shiny conspiracy theory or a bit of dazzling numerology. The only reason I would have had for keeping him around would have been to make getting rid of him easier later. Because I’m not a very nice person. By acting now, Tom has made his own life harder, I suspect, by acting this early rather than letting the Temple go to shit for a while before acting on it. Short of inviting the Fetch back, on condition that he not act like a nutbar o’hate, there’s not much to do about it…
Of course, we could always do that. The banning could be rescinded and a stern warning left in his PM inbox asking him to keep it off the board. Is that what people want? |
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