Quote:
Originally Posted by Flash Walken
You aren't going to reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
There has always been a contingent of the population that is not interested in engaging in thoughtful discussion and debate.
There are posters in this thread who embody this, who routinely fail to even read contradictory information let alone respond to it.
It would be nice if the moderation team would use a bit of common sense when looking at a posters post history to determine if they are an honest broker or not, but they seem to favour looser moderation over more constructive discussion, so it's up to the individual posters to show some reason of their own and stop screaming into the wind.
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I'll address this, since you are mentioning (criticizing?) the moderation team for how this thread and similar past threads have been handled.
We've tried a number of strategies for moderating political discussion. The fact is, it's very difficult. Most people (of any political stripe) smdont realize when they are being unfair, or when they are treating argument as fact, or engaging in various logical fallacies. Confirmation bias is real, and it's a human trait, by a right- or left- wing one.
Moreover, these discussions can be heated, especially online. Sometimes people are hyper-partisan, and can't see the flaws in their own "side", and other times people who see an issue differently come at it from incompatible ethical/moral standpoints. For instance, liberals tend to believe that our society is predicated partly on shared values of collective duty to the polity and tolerance for individual difference, while conservatives tend to believe in individual responsibility to fixed moral and ethical codes.
One issue is that moderators aren't immune to that either. Who am I to tell someone that their view isn't welcome here, simply because it doesn't accord with what I believe, and isn't based on values that I share? We don't censor political views, and as for whether posters are "honest brokers," we see that some posters are less intellectually honest, and less anchored to the world of "facts", but trust that this will be sorted out through the process of discourse. If your ideas are plainly better, more supportable by facts, and more supported by them, that will be plainly seen by anyone who reads this thread. We can't enforce that kind of "intellectual honesty" anymore than we can enforce adherence to one political stripe or another.
With all of that said, we will (and have) banned and penalized posters for being obviously and needlessly provocative, for insulting one another, or for being rude, or casting aspersions on the board as a whole, or pretending to be victimized by the fact that many others don't share their views. We also draw the line at racism, sexism, homophobia, and intolerance.
And in the end, this isn't easy--we have discussed is as a group a number of times. I'm not sure what else we can or should do, but if you have suggestions, send me a PM and we can have that discussion offline.
In the meantime, I can also tell you that we are currently watching this thread, and will lock it if certain behaviours (relentless ad hominems, obvious trolling, insults, etc.) continue.