Recent increase in racist sentiments on WP

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... which could drive away people who could benefit from this community, or prevent them from ever becoming a part of it. It's important to decide if this is worth it.

Controlling the content of this website is not censorship, it's moderation.

But people can learn. Give them a chance, right? And wouldn't they also benefit from the community? It could be this very same community that rehabilitates them but if you deny them entry based purely on their views then this is no longer WP in my mind it's merely the same as the other planet they just came from.

I seem to remember a guy being very anti gay though he appeared to be gay himself. This was due to his background and culture. He has since learned to interact well on the site and come to terms with what was going through his mind.

Another user who I won't name is currently posting a lot of things that promote negative aspects of religion (including stoning to death). I think they should be given the same chance personally even if I find them rather offensive.

Then we have the huge wave of Anti-men and anti-women folk here who promote pseudo intellectual arguments as to why society will never work in their favour, and lord knows why. I have a huge problem with them but again they deserve to be here. And why not? We are all on the spectrum.

I think people forget that if you only want your world view to be represented there are already other sites dedicated to that echo chamber mentality which are safe spaces onto themselves and it is those sites people should go to. They shouldn't expect WP to emulate them because ultimately it would no longer be a safe space for all Aspies and deny Aspies the chance of learning to cope with anyone including people like them.

Then why not just delete the rules and let the moderators decide based just on what they think is right thing to do?

Killers kill is a blanket statement about a group of people. But outside of the that type of that situation why should you or the moderators outside of Alex get to decide which group is worthy of protection against blanket statements and which group is not? With the exceptions of descriptive groups such as as killers and some very small groups saying 100 percent of a group is anything is nearly always wrong. I do not understand why you think moderating to enforcing rules consistently is an impossible thing to do.

Other sites I use (even video game sites which are notorious for trolling) have proven they can balance on moderating political, social and personal views. WrogPlanet is blessed with a high volume of traffic but I think it's still achievable here.

See, I'm not disagreeing with that. This community should be open and inclusive... however, that requires that we do not permit people to post things that are not conducive to that goal... see...



I'm arguing that we could do a better job actually making this a safe space. When people are allowed to throw racist views around as long as they couch it in dog-whistle language (and often even when they don't), it can't be a safe space. There are scenarios where it may be necessary to choose between making this places welcoming to all aspies, or making it welcoming to ones who choose to express hateful ideas here. Those things are not compatible.

I agree very much with AJ. Racists are welcome here, but racist sentiments are not. We will not ban you for your thoughts, but for what you say on here.

My experience is that laissez-faire websites do worse than those which are moderated, and that the particular dynamics of autism communities are likely to amplify that.

In practice, I think an unmoderated congregation of racists and anti-racists would drive away the anti-racists quicker than the racists. Trolls are more persistent than good users.

We need to tolerate the hateful, but not their hatred.

From whence does this hatred come? That's what I always wonder.

Eloquent, and a view I can get behind!

Depends what kind of intolerance you're talking about. Race is immutable, something you are born with, but religion is an ideology people adopt, and it's a perfectly acceptable target for criticism. You don't get to promote intolerance and bigotry and hide behind a religion.

I'm totally with the OP on the race thing. I think Trump is bringing out the worst in people. I'm learning a lot about race relations on this forum. Of course, none of them think they are being racist, and perhaps that's true, but there is certainly so much ignorance and mistrust any time a group of black people get together for any kind of protest or activism. When the tea party does it, they are patriots, often armed, calling for revolution, and that's fine. But when a black person does the same thing, they are Marxist revolutionaries who want to destroy America. Or just become career whiners, which is just as bad an implication, the lazy black person that doesn't want to work, who is stupid and doesn't care about their own people, who just want to blame white people for all their problems. It's a kinder, gentler form of racism, and it's promoted by ostensibly respectable people.

Yeah I was rather vague, wasn't I. I'm not on so much about challenging belief systems. Debating religion and religious culture has benefits for both sides.

I was referring to the extreme efforts to purge belief systems by any means necessary like what happened centuries ago in other religions, or what is happening in the Middle East today.

A thread title that I'd nominate in PPR would be "time is running out..." - nothing racist before clicking on it, but instead of some metaphorical hourglass in a dreamy landscape we get some supposed template of a 'white Christian'... with one person fearing the 'great big black unknown'... which turns out to be Catholics, who knew. People who think along racial lines have some of the most basic of psychology... I wonder if they ever tried MRI or EEG, hm...

Sometimes, Mootoo makes sense; other times, he's totally incomprehensible.

It is a very racially tense time in the US, worst it has ever been in my albeit young life. It is very hard to discuss anything about race without somebody pointing a finger at you, there are too many zealots out there that are unwilling to have any discussion and a lot of these people seem to specialize in taking offense on others behalf. I've seen some comments that are iffy for sure but as long as it is in the context of the topic and not a troll then I don't think it warrants a huge response, racist arguments are pretty easy to defeat. Do I notice any increase in racist sentiment? You have to be more specific because I don't know what is being defined as racist here, I will say there is definitely an increase of single post bomb throwers which I wager to bet are existing members on a different account.

The internet gender wars have always been around, I don't think this site that bad in this regard and is not nearly as sexist and misogynistic as a lot of places on the internet are. I think the issues here is more frustration and part of the condition more than it is genuine hate. There are more trolls in this area than anywhere else it seems, some people really get their kicks from causing issues.

I think people are probably more than anything else are 'triggered' by support of Donald Trump and that is something that they're just going to have to learn to deal with. Not too many seem to actually try to argue this racist angle(they might assert it) all too much because it doesn't hold much water, it's usually whatever controversy or character assassination attempt of the week straight from the talking points. It is a special interest of mine and I have more stamina/energy in these debates which I'm sure is another point of frustration. If you're going to have a politics forum then it should be expected that things may get more heated during election season, it always has, but once is over things tend to die down for awhile at least until that next election. People are the spectrum don't all have the same views, we're every bit as diverse in opinion as anyone else and we actually like to argue so I enjoy it. If it is a topic is too hard to discuss without you losing it then I recommend avoiding that topic. A lot of topics I avoid because I feel they 'too close to home' and I don't think would be good for my mindset. I support Donald Trump and if anybody wants to argue that his policies are racist then it's an argument we can have, I can say with absolute certainty I am not a racist and I resent anybody that makes that assertion

People need to learn to discuss things respectfully with each other, that's the key to everything. If somebody is making a fool of themselves then don't become an even bigger fool getting down in the mud with them.

If somebody thinks a post of mine is racist or in anyway offensive then send me PM and we can discuss it there, I am not a prickly person and like finding middle ground with people.

One thing that I think doesn't help is that there are always like 5,10, maybe more threads active on the same topic at the same time. Concentrating I think would help a lot, too many of the same arguments with the same people. A larger consolidated thread I think would lend it's self to better discussion and fewer incendiary snipers.

Because what we decide to do is always rooted in the rules.

What you're asking for is that we simply delete/ban/moderate any comment anyone perceives to be racist/sexist/whatever in the name of "fairness," which will not work.

Lastly, the people who are moderators have been picked to be moderators precisely because Alex feels we're capable of making these decisions. Like it or not, a degree of subjectivity is necessary, especially in a website of this nature.

Well-said!

I've been on "unmoderated" forums before, and the rational and the reasonable are quickly drowned-out by the trolls a sh_t-posters.

They're hardly a paradise of free-thought and expression.

Um OK. Better understand where you are coming from which is the big picture when my mind is more specifically on the blanket statement about a group rule. As I understand it, it is within the rules to be able to say something like the muslim religion is anti women, conservatism is a hateful philosophy but the rules prohibit saying muslims are misogynists, conservatives are dumb etc.