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I think that recently when people have said something that could be perceived as offensive to group X or group Y, they've been called on the carpet in Policy and been subject to what back in my left-wing activist days we used to call a "Maoist self-criticism session":
* Defend yourself!
* What was your intent when you posted X? Were you acting from ignorance or bigotry?
* Do you now realize that what you said was ignorant or bigoted? Admit it!
* Why shouldn't you be banned for what you said?
I don't know, Evski. I think this is pretty much entirely inaccurate. What I've seen is people doing pretty much everything in their power to _avoid_ banning people - the amount of soothing muscle massage given to potential bannees has been so extensive that it has in turn led to other people wanting to depart in disgust. In fact, the only time that you've really got something as you describe it here was Flyboy and Triplets, where banning was introduced as a threat early on and they were told what they needed to say to "make things better". I would generally say that treatment of racists, homophobes and misogynists is remarkably short on the exclmation-point-heavy caricature you present above.
In most cases, the purpose of this lengthy discussion is:
a) To provide those who do not regularly read the whole board with some form of context on why this problem has developed
and, latterly
b) Apparently, to establish whether there is any possibility that the person whose behaviour has necessitated the creation of the thread is, in the expert opinion of Barbelith, likely or able to a) understand what they are doing that is damaging the Barbelith experience and b) stop it. Ganesh has championed this appproach, primarily, and I've found its results interesting. In the case of our last two bannings, the eventual decision to ban was informed at least in part by a sense that the person was unable to self-reflect in any meaningful way, and therefore that they could not be expected to moderate their behaviour - which generally involved the insertion of off-topic statements which themselves demanded a response into threads which could not but be dragged off beam with them. However, in both cases I think it was fair to say that the relationship between that individual and Barbelith was subjected to a _lot_ of therapy in each case before it was decided that it had broken down.
Other bannings - well, from what I remember we had Hawksmoor (unapologetically and loudly homophobic), Zoemancer (Holocaust denier)... I don't see this as a flood, nor do I see it as particularly harmful. If anything, the length of time and the inconsistency of the banning procedure seems to be causing more problems than the bannings themselves.
However, this does not preclude people still being around whose views do not tally with the "Barbelith consensus" - not that there _is_ one, really. As I never get tired of mentioning, people who perform -isms but then deny that they are -ist basically make Barbelith melt down, which was why Hawksmoor and Zoemancer were pretty easy catches. Shadowsax and 33 were advancing dogmatic and offensive viewpoints, but they were also doing so in a way that made it very difficult to deal with them, because they did little but do this (33 was talking about how much he hoped that the Transformers wouldn't bum each other pretty much to the wire). However, it was made easier because they didn't really do anything else: when Shadowsax tried to start a thread on Ginsberg's Howl to show how much he had to offer Barbelith, it was notable for not actually containing any discussion of the content of the poem itself.
I think a lot of factors need to be fulfilled before somebody even starts being at risk of any but the furthest-out members and moderators of Barbelith talking about bannning. Dragon's contributions were basically racist, and did indeed lead to some very interesting comments and responses. So far, Dragon has not been proposed for banning, despite clearly being pretty much married to his own ignorance. The shenanigans Kay and Dead Megatron got up to here have at no point, to my knowledge, led to any serious suggestion that either should be banned, and again some interesting stuff happened around them. To be honest, a degree of hassle, misrepresentation and personal abuse from other members apears to be pretty much expected if you have any sort of profile on Barbelith.
So, yeah. I just don't see this ban-happiness that others do. On most other message boards with influxes of members from the broader Internet people are banned all the time - it's a routine occurrence. Those who are banned feel a sense of profound injustice, sometimes they try to get back in a few times, they get banned again. Banning is performed at the behest, usually the individual behest, of the moderators. Because we don't have that built in, and because any ban request involves a personal submission to Tom, banning feels like a much bigger deal. I like that, although I think that the banning discussions themselves may now be causing an unnecessary degree of rancour, which might profitably be addressed than the concern that we are banning unreasonably large amounts of people, which I don't think we are, or that we are subjecting people in general to these maoist self-criticism sessions, which I also don't think we are. Whether we're doing the right thing generally, however... that's tricky.
Oh, and since I started this monster:
Maoist self-criticism session or not, it occasionally appears to me that challenges to potentially offensive behaviour might be better served if not held in a public arena. I'm aware that moderators often seek to address matters in PM, however it might prove more beneficial if all initial criticism of posts and practice were restricted to PM. The open arena style of response has often led to upping of the hostility levels.
Yeah, that ties in with a lot of the stuff above - at the moment we actually seem to be losing more genuinely good posters than we are getting rid of bad posters, and we're tying people up in the Policy when they could better spend their time raising the quality of the other fora.
It's tricky. There used to be a Barbelith_mod LJ forum, for example - that could be made friends-only, and moderators could get LJ accounts and join up. That does have advantages - not least that a group discussion would take place without the absolute openness of, say, a Policy forum. On the other hhand, what would it lead to? A thread in Policy saying "we moderators have reached a consensus that x should be banned/should not currently be banned/should try to improve these elements of hir posting style"? And how about if soomebody who was not a moderator wanted to highlight behaviour which they thought was potentially ban-worthy? Would they post in the Policy, and then that thread would remain silent as the moderators conferred about what to do next? |
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