The_Walrus wrote:
Again, that isn’t remotely what I said. What I said was that I wish we could treat everyone with kindness. Unfortunately there are users here who rush to defend comments that could reasonably be construed as racist, while rushing to condemn anyone who makes post critical of racist sentiments. Some users have even engaged in emotional blackmail to attempt to get others to leave the site, and one or two have gone so far as to emotionally blackmail the moderators into banning users they dislike.
If you or any other individual isn’t engaging in the bullying or emotional blackmail then that’s fine. No problem with you. But I’m a moderator - my job is to stop people from bullying each other. Remaining silent was not an option. I had hoped to inspire some mutual soul-searching and maybe people would be nice to all of our black sheep, rather than just one of them.
I’ve said on several occasions - we have one user here who is a deliberate, knowing, ideological white supremacist (although I think he would call himself a “Eurosupremacist and believer in human biodiversity” or something like that). He hasn’t participated in this thread as far as I am aware. And as long as he doesn’t actually start making explicitly racist statements then he’s welcome to stay.
As I said - standing up for someone who made a clumsy remark is a good thing. But when some remarks are defended and others are used to bash and bully, that’s not acceptable. If you’re not doing that then great! But some people, and therefore the community as a whole, absolutely are, and that’s not acceptable.
The role of a moderator isn’t to be popular, it’s to stop people breaking the rules. When people start bullying an unpopular user then I can’t just shrug and say they deserved it. There are so many kind-hearted people here, but if someone isn’t in the cool kids clique then the kindness is cut off, and that’s really sad.
Maybe you should sort out these issues with "some posters" privately instead of starting this kind of drama in the public forum, which BTW is in your job description to prevent?
For everybody else, as I know how agitated people can get when they read insinuation they don't understand: Nobody emotionally blackmailed me to leave, surprisingly enough I can think and make such decisions for myself and the reasons were clearly stated in my post.
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"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." Aldous Huxley