I am troubled by the closing of responses to the News Digest by Abstruse

"I’m shutting down the comments here due to a few instances of different posters violating the Forum‘s Inclusiveness Rules." (Dannyalcatraz)
I find this response chilling in multiple ways. While I understand the need to promote inclusion, and to take a zero tolerance stand against trolls who promote discrimination, I do not believe that complete silencing of all discussion is the appropriate response to a complicated and important topic. It comes dangerously close to encouraging a divisive scheme in itself.

With respect, not all discussion was silenced. Only discussion *in that thread*. There's still a whole thread on Harrassment, that covers much the same territory, that is still open and has been for many, may, many pages.

Did I use too big a hammer? Perhaps. But the thread was generating enough reports and was moving briskly enough that going case-by-case (my preferred method) would have been a bit like whack a mole.

*Deleted by user*

Well, it was open at the time I was writing.

But, the other thread does make the point - there is a point where policing individuals becomes impractical, to the point of possibly being unfair to some of the people in the discussion - that's a point when it is sensible to close a discussion.

Umbran said:

Well, it was open at the time I was writing.

But, the other thread does make the point - there is a point where policing individuals becomes impractical, to the point of possibly being unfair to some of the people in the discussion - that's a point when it is sensible to close a discussion.

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That seems to me to be a very targeted and political decision.

The moderation here has a clear bias. Look at the threads you're referencing. The first one was closed because people were asserting that the event with Larry was wrong and supporting him, the second one was condemning him. The first one had 20 posts over the course of two days, the second one had dozens. The first one was quickly closed, the second one was allowed to stay open. The difference between the two is that one was trending out of line with the politics of the site, the second was trending inline. So was it that it was hard to police?

I'm struggling with that. If the concern was policing people's posts, then why was the second thread allowed to stay open when someone started insinuating that anyone who didn't agree with their list of micro-aggressions was a sexual harasser? Why was it allowed to stay open when the posters accused anyone who questioned the article of being sexual harassers?

For that matter...

“Keep it inclusive: EN World is an inclusive community, and we encourage and welcome all people here. To that end, we strive to make it a welcoming place where nobody feels alienated because of who they are. You MAY NOT use the terms "agenda", "ideology", "politics", or "propaganda" in relation to the inclusion of people slightly different to you in gaming products or other media, use pejorative terms such as "social justice warrior" or "virtue signalling" to dismiss the opinions of those you disagree with, or post any message which is discriminatory towards those who differ to you in terms of skin colour, gender, gender identification, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, age, religion, or any other personal attribute. We do not subscribe to the argument that tolerance means that we need to tolerate intolerance or that inclusivity means that we need to include non-inclusiveness.”

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Why is the list of criticisms for left wing politics banned on this site, but not a single solitary criticism of center or conservative politics banned?

Why does that rule say "or post any message which is discriminatory towards those who differ to you in terms of skin colour, gender, gender identification, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, age, religion, or any other personal attribute" when this site ran an article and kept a thread open for hundreds of posts based on a Tumblr article "Gaming has a white male terrorist problem"? The whole sentence needs reworded so that it's clear the site's rule pertains only to non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual posters if that's the kind of site ENWorld wants to be.

Why is it that people can post endless far left political statements without any moderation, but the moment someone posts a Diversity and Comics link they get labelled "Alt-right" and kicked out? Why doesn't anyone ever get labelled "Far left" and get kicked out when we get endless series of proclamations?

Right now, it looks like the moderation and rules are extremely biased and only people with centrist and conservative politics are subject to moderation, it looks like the "Rules" aren't even followed by the moderators since they don't apply them to condemnations of the "Right" targets. If that's the kind of site that's wanted, that's fine. I would strongly recommend renaming the site to "LWWord" or something along those lines to make it clear the content here is politically driven, and update the rules to reflect that.

Otherwise, I'd strongly recommend that the site change it's content and policies to make politics strictly off limits, all politics, including left wing politics.

I would say it's fair to say that if the inclusiveness stance that I take when running this site is not to your tastes, there may be other sites more suited to your liking. This forum is clearly and deliberately inclusive (and not in the Popper's Paradox sense). I don't think I've exactly been hiding that fact.

Morrus said:

I would say it's fair to say that

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If you were to add to your list of "moderator trigger terms"
- 'racism'
- 'misogeny' (sp?)
- 'sexism'
along with 'social justice warriors' and 'virtue signaling', then you could shut off the things from both political sides that begin* the heated arguments.

You are compiling a body of data on the changes you made. If it's not working out as you desired, you can tweak the rules again.

P.S. When the 'Harassment at Cons' thread turned away from trying to solve society's problems and looked at on-site actions that could/would help, it brought out helpful ideas. It kept sliding back though.
Kudos to Umbran for trying to stay on top of it.

* in my experience; there may be other terms.

Eltab said:

If you were to add to your list of "moderator trigger terms"
- 'racism'
- 'misogeny' (sp?)
- 'sexism'

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If I were trying to arm racists, sexists, and misogynists, I’d do exactly that. But I’m not.

Rygar said:

That seems to me to be a very targeted and political decision.

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In the sense that it is intended for forward some agenda related to government? Not in the slightest. I am not of the opinion that what happens on this website has any impact on real politics. I am approaching it in terms of keeping the site operating smoothly.

Why is the list of criticisms for left wing politics banned on this site, but not a single solitary criticism of center or conservative politics banned?

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Because, ultimately, it isn't actually about politics. It is about people being safe when engaging in our shared fandoms.

Rygar said:

I would strongly recommend renaming the site to "LWWord" or something along those lines to make it clear the content here is politically driven...

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Let us have a reality check on this.

The current incarnation of the boards has some 7,172,000+ posts on it. The thread in question has rather shy of 1400 posts.

In that sense, that thread is about two hundredths of one percent of "the content" of the boards. Even if you were correct, it would be two hundredths of one percent of the content is politically driven. The other 99.98% of the site is about pretending to be elves, dwarves and sorcerers and stuff, and arguing rather nastily for pages and pages about the rules implications of a tweet. Unless you want to call the bad Scottish accents some use for dwarves a politically motivated thing, we give Ivory Soap a run for its money.