05-19-2019, 07:16 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-19-2019, 07:44 PM by Jade.
Edit Reason: did my math wrong!
)
The words "deplatformed" and "fascist" seem a little dramatic to me, especially considering the actual reach of this forum, but I understand why you feel that way. The thing is, we do have an agenda here as moderators, and that is to try to cultivate an atmosphere of acceptance and service to others. If the three (or four) of us moderators agree that we need to 'deplatform' someone, well, that's what we're here to do, because we're not going to sit by and let our soft and squishy and trusting and beautiful members be treated disrespectfully. As I mentioned before, actual bans are very rare, and the removal of posts isn't very common either.
In fact, it was easy for me to do the math. Out of 247,373 posts in the two main forum groups (Bring4th Community and Bring4th Studies), we have removed 1,072 posts. That's .4% of posts that have ever been removed. Of those 1,072 removed posts, there were 57 threads that were removed in their entirety - so, many of these removed posts were not singling out a poster. In fact I think several of these are threads that had to be removed after an old member who was the OP of these threads edited their OP and all their followup replies to the threads making them essentially useless. So sometimes people choose to deplatform themselves.
Anyway, I see the valor in your good fight against authority, I've definitely fought your side of this fight before, but I don't see us easing up any time soon on what we allow people to post here, because we actually get way more complaints about being lenient than we do about being fascist. We have a set of formal rules, and a set of suggested guidelines. They are actually fairly strict for the average internet forum that most of us are used to, but reasonable given the philosophy. We all agree to post under these rules when we create an account here. If you see someone you think is breaking the rules, please let us know (citing the rule and specific place in a post helps a lot). We actually aren't always here nitpicking the threads. But, this forum wasn't created to be a Law of One free will debate club, or even to be a "serious" study of the Law of One. This argument on "what type of group Bring4th should be" is as old as the forum, and we will always err on the side of cultivating an atmosphere with a harmonized goal of love and support, that is, focus upon the green ray. It is even our name, of course. Bring fourth/forth, if there's anyone who hadn't noticed the pun yet. Maybe one of you who is firm in their convictions of what they want this forum to be should create a Bring5th.org (or think of some other cute pun, I'm not good at this) where we could have serious study with democratic moderation (or zero moderation) and a focus on wisdom over love. This platform isn't unique, it's quite easy to create a replica. It would be an interesting experiment. Not saying I'm keen on doing that here, but I definitely don't believe that anyone's thoughts should be scoured from the internet/existence and banned forever.
In fact, it was easy for me to do the math. Out of 247,373 posts in the two main forum groups (Bring4th Community and Bring4th Studies), we have removed 1,072 posts. That's .4% of posts that have ever been removed. Of those 1,072 removed posts, there were 57 threads that were removed in their entirety - so, many of these removed posts were not singling out a poster. In fact I think several of these are threads that had to be removed after an old member who was the OP of these threads edited their OP and all their followup replies to the threads making them essentially useless. So sometimes people choose to deplatform themselves.
Anyway, I see the valor in your good fight against authority, I've definitely fought your side of this fight before, but I don't see us easing up any time soon on what we allow people to post here, because we actually get way more complaints about being lenient than we do about being fascist. We have a set of formal rules, and a set of suggested guidelines. They are actually fairly strict for the average internet forum that most of us are used to, but reasonable given the philosophy. We all agree to post under these rules when we create an account here. If you see someone you think is breaking the rules, please let us know (citing the rule and specific place in a post helps a lot). We actually aren't always here nitpicking the threads. But, this forum wasn't created to be a Law of One free will debate club, or even to be a "serious" study of the Law of One. This argument on "what type of group Bring4th should be" is as old as the forum, and we will always err on the side of cultivating an atmosphere with a harmonized goal of love and support, that is, focus upon the green ray. It is even our name, of course. Bring fourth/forth, if there's anyone who hadn't noticed the pun yet. Maybe one of you who is firm in their convictions of what they want this forum to be should create a Bring5th.org (or think of some other cute pun, I'm not good at this) where we could have serious study with democratic moderation (or zero moderation) and a focus on wisdom over love. This platform isn't unique, it's quite easy to create a replica. It would be an interesting experiment. Not saying I'm keen on doing that here, but I definitely don't believe that anyone's thoughts should be scoured from the internet/existence and banned forever.