badger

Abashed the devil stood and felt how awful goodness is,

and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely;

and pined his loss

I think my opinion is pretty well advertised at this point.  I do think that our collective tolerance of a high volume of hate speech targeting minorities is a drag on our site's image as a home for rational discourse and a giant KEEP OUT sign for exactly the kind of  academic or competive debaters to which this site is supposed to appeal.  Instead  of hosting  a place where speech and reason can be refined as an improvement to democratic soicety, we're babysitting the  sad compulsions of a small number of low information antisocials with nothing better to do all day than to entertain themselves with the harm they inflict on strangers.   I think we've all learned the tough way that such individuals always believe they are victims of society and culture and nothing reinforces their victimization narrative quite as effectively as the enforcement of rules.  The behavior is meant to provoke punishment which in turn reinforces the narrative of persecution.

As a liberal, I want to encourage the free expression of opinion, even dismaying opinion, even fake opinion.  As a moderator, I want to improve the atmosphere and intellect of this site but I believe the most effective means is probably not a more rigid interpretation of the code of conduct.  The most effective means I know is posts exactly like this- long time DARTers speaking up about the harm that anti-social, anti-democratic, anti-intellectual speech inflicts on a democratic society which is the only kind of society that upholds free speech and fair debate.

Consistent and extreme voices can cause harm to a site. Is that happening here? Well, I agree with OP, DART compares negatively to the site it emulates. I think there is an argument to be made that some users intentionally rely on heavy rhetoric, propaganda, lies, dishonest tactics, etc. all having the effect of killing an honest exchange and comparison of ideas and ideologies.

would any of us have stayed or got caught if the mood of DDO then was what DART is today?

I’ll admit that I would not.

While there certainly were plenty of assholes shitting all over the place in DDO, I was always confident the normal people outnumbered them by a wide margin; and there were dicks like Imabench around fucking the assholes.

Plus when I joined DDO I was in university, needing lots of writing practice.

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I’ll freely admit I’d prefer to just be rid of anyone I consider to be morally intolerable. From there it’s be a slippery slope to banning people I find intellectually intolerable (which is to say utter morons and gaslighters).

I of course rarely put bans in place (aside from the countless ad bots, which are unworthy of being mentioned in the public log). I try to moderate based on the will of the site, with only limited attempts to manipulate the site zingiest (pushing legibility to replace spelling and grammar as an example).

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I should mention that this site doesn’t have true freedom of speech, nor should it. However, we must not let it devolve into an echo chamber either. We need room for controversial opinions, as disagreements are core to our value proposition. IMHO, striking the right balance should be the near-term goal.

I think we have some general agreement going on here. I think you guys could start with deleting all those ugly threads in the Society board.

Similar to Barney, I'm not fond of the direction this site has gone, but there's a limit to how we can (or should) intervene based on the existing rules of the site. Deleting all those threads requires a basis that either exists in the current rules of the site or would be added to those rules. I agree, I've got problems with a lot of those threads, and I suspect that yes, they are having some effect on people considering joining the site and/or staying here. I've got my issues with certain users as well. That doesn't mean I'm going to start removing those threads or banning those people.

As they exist, I don't think the rules disallow the kind of posts that are being made, and I'd like to be sure that if we choose to expand those rules, we do so carefully.

He is also right about the site being held back because it is being dominated by varying levels of bigotry. Don't get me wrong. People like Roosevelt are also very harmful to the site, but he is just a different flavor of bigot than those on the right here. Also I am not using bigot in a negative way and making a value judgement.

I am saying that when the site is nothing but these extreme positions than there really isn't much to debate. Bigots should be welcome here, but once they reach above 20% of the site it kind of ruins the experience.

People like Roosevelt and TWS should never be welcome on the site but with a more mature membership their threads would be ignored and they would just leave anyway.

It's my opinion that tyranny is a third world phenomenon only these days. Capitalism has killed it in the first world. We're all bought and sold by Apple and friends now, for better or worse, and it's just far too delicate an infrastructure to go moving armies over. There's no statesman can offer anything against what we have anymore, the lever of tyranny is scarcity.