Yeah, true enough.Not the thread for this.
Yeah, true enough.Not the thread for this.
And yes, advocating for secession falls under this. As does advocating for positions that would violate the U.S. constitution in a substantial manner. While it may be nothing more than really idiotic spleen venting, I can see why there would be a decision to just lock it down outright and upset forum members rather than have to deal with the shitstorm permitting it to continue would cause, and having to explain why it was allowed to federal background investigators, or, worse, federal law enforcement officials.
Lol, no he didn't. You realise Australia and NZ are separate countries, right? Our PM is a right wing member of the hillsong Church, and the only time one of our MPs (NOT the PM!) has worn a burqa to parliament it was a racist idiot doing it to make a "point" about what a threat they are to our security.In Australia and New Zealand, the Left is pretty much in control of their governments -- the idiot Aussie PM actually walked into their parliament wearing a burka to show "solidarity", for fuck's sake.
Yes, I do know that Australia and New Zealand are separate countries -- hence the "in control of their governments". Plural. Learn to read.Lol, no he didn't. You realise Australia and NZ are separate countries, right? Our PM is a right wing member of the hillsong Church, and the only time one of our MPs (NOT the PM!) has worn a burqa to parliament it was a racist idiot doing it to make a "point" about what a threat they are to our security.
I watched those threads and I didn’t notice anything so “toxic” as what you describe. There may have been questionable claims in that thread, links to questionable sources, but that is the world we live in. We have left wing propaganda and anything that isn’t that is a conspiracy theory. I’m sure there were a few rude remarks, but most of what I saw there wouldn’t even rise to the level of needing moderator intervention, or at most a temporary thread ban.Put it this way, the election thread and election fraud thread wound up becoming so toxic that they’d probably qualify as Superfund sites. Not to mention the discourse was at QAnon/4chan levels of ‘quality.’ And it was starting to spill over into other threads.
Lol. Yes, she is. But she's definitely not a leftist idiot. It was Pauline Hanson, who's best known for idiocy like "A truly multicultural country can never be strong or united." or "I can see in Donald Trump a lot of me and what I stand for in Australia" or there was the time she decided to climb all over a site sacred to the aboriginal people to prove she could whilst it was debated whether it should be legally protected, but got too tired a couple minutes in and had to give up. Or, there was her parties clandestine meeting with the NRA, in which they sought millions of dollars in return for relaxing Australian gun laws, including talks on how to sell a massacre for maximum political points, and ways to infiltrate and manipulate the media. The burka-wearing bullshit came after she warned Australia was in danger of being swamped by Muslims, a call back to her senatorial inaugural speech where she'd warned we were in danger of being swamped by Asians.Yes, I do know that Australia and New Zealand are separate countries -- hence the "in control of their governments". Plural. Learn to read.
I stand corrected on the burka-wearing MP not being the PM, though -- that was a fail on my part for misunderstanding. She's still an idiot for doing that, no matter her reasons.
Yeah, I can safely say I was wrong there after reading up more on the woman. She's an utter nut.Lol. Yes, she is. But she's definitely not a leftist idiot. It was Pauline Hanson, who's best known for idiocy like "A truly multicultural country can never be strong or united." or "I can see in Donald Trump a lot of me and what I stand for in Australia" or there was the time she decided to climb all over a site sacred to the aboriginal people to prove she could whilst it was debated whether it should be legally protected, but got too tired a couple minutes in and had to give up. Or, there was her parties clandestine meeting with the NRA, in which they sought millions of dollars in return for relaxing Australian gun laws, including talks on how to sell a massacre for maximum political points, and ways to infiltrate and manipulate the media. The burka-wearing bullshit came after she warned Australia was in danger of being swamped by Muslims, a call back to her senatorial inaugural speech where she'd warned we were in danger of being swamped by Asians.
In short, that you'd use her of all people as an example of how "the Left is pretty much in control of their governments" is laughable, and makes it pretty clear you don't know the first thing about the subject.
Well, I'm glad that despite our disagreement on the latter part we can at least be united in ridiculing Pauline Hanson. And I will agree to drop the derail, with apologies to all.Yeah, I can safely say I was wrong there after reading up more on the woman. She's an utter nut.
Still, Australia aside (though the whole "bash men"/misandry thing is still pretty rampant out there, sadly enough), my point still stands about Western civilization being rotted at the foundations. The next ten years or so are going to be interesting.
The problem is, how can we encourage that? I don’t think that banning or discouraging political discussion is the way to do that.
We simply need more members. There's not getting around that. Sometimes I try to be more active in the "Media and Fandom" subforum, making threads and going on a small posting spree, but I don't get many replies.Something I would like to see is more non-political activity here. It’s great that this is a place for right-leaning geeks to talk politics, but I think it would also be nice if there were just as much discussion about movies, games, sci-fi, fantasy, etc.
For some of of larger sister sites, that is how it is. SB is mostly apolitical content, with a leftist undercurrent.
The problem is, how can we encourage that? I don’t think that banning or discouraging political discussion is the way to do that.
I've resolved to simply throw out some content and see if like will attract like. It seems to be we do need a sort of board culture that takes notice of such things though. It's not encouraging to produce here when I see say, a map by Culsu that must have taken hours get 4 likes and no comments while a zero-effort repost of a political tweet gets 10 likes and five comments. But we can't exactly force people to like things either so I don't know how to get the community involved in that way.Something I would like to see is more non-political activity here. It’s great that this is a place for right-leaning geeks to talk politics, but I think it would also be nice if there were just as much discussion about movies, games, sci-fi, fantasy, etc.
For some of of larger sister sites, that is how it is. SB is mostly apolitical content, with a leftist undercurrent.
The problem is, how can we encourage that? I don’t think that banning or discouraging political discussion is the way to do that.
This.I don't think it helps that you have some members here that seemed content with it being an anti-SB political echo chamber first and content (Or even activity) 2nd I once commented that this was less a forum and more of a haven for SB refugees for a reason.
We simply need more members. There's not getting around that. Sometimes I try to be more active in the "Media and Fandom" subforum, making threads and going on a small posting spree, but I don't get many replies.
True, it is good for us to try to post non-political content, because it’s a self strengthening cycle of sorts. Less content leads to less content, more content leads to more content. More members help this, us posting more would help too.I've resolved to simply throw out some content and see if like will attract like. It seems to be we do need a sort of board culture that takes notice of such things though. It's not encouraging to produce here when I see say, a map by Culsu that must have taken hours get 4 likes and no comments while a zero-effort repost of a political tweet gets 10 likes and five comments. But we can't exactly force people to like things either so I don't know how to get the community involved in that way.
There is no free speech when perma bans are handed out for said speech with no warnings. The mods banned criticism of certain topics. No more commenting on the election.Well, the truth of the matter is that we are refugees from SB. If the PM hadn’t both been discovered and the members unfairly maligned, vilified, and/or punished then there likely would be no Sietch.
That doesn’t mean that we should allow that event to thoroughly dominate the nature of the forum, we shouldn’t. We should grow beyond the negative event that lead to our creation, though we also can’t entirely forget what happened at SB or what separates us from them - otherwise why even have the Sietch?
As for us and free speech, we are pretty open with it. We have the basic rules against hate speech and pornography that you see in most places, you can’t be a Nazi or Stalinism, though you can be a fascist or communist. Until relatively recently when we had a bit of a moderation meltdown, I think that we did a good, if not perfect, job supporting freedom of speech. We have had a number of communists here who argued against us and we allowed them to have their say. Moderators have probably cracked down harder of right wing speech than left wing speech, which puts us in the same place as 99.99999999% of internet sites.
Of course, if a communists comes here, they are outnumbered. They are outnumbered and the nature of the debate isn’t as cordial as could be desired. But what can anybody else expect? We are a right leaning forum, if we do not remain a right leaning forum then we become a left leaning forum and then just a less populous version of SB or SV. If one ideology is over-represented on a forum then people who disagree will be a minority and that can at times be unpleasant. However, while the communist on this site faced lots of arguments against them, were their hands ever unfairly tied by the moderators? Could our right wing members insult them and then the left wingers got infracted for defending themselves? That was the state of things in WH and pretty much every other geeky forum in the net.
Are we a bit on an echo chamber? Yes, we are and the are disadvantages to that. Then again, everywhere else is an echo chamber too, just one which excludes us.
Is free speech better served by there being 99 left wing sites that censor or restrict right wingers and one right wing site that censors and restricts leftists, or by 100 left wing sites that restrict or censor right wingers? Maybe free speech is better served by embracing our biases, by recognizing that if this isn’t an explicitly conservative nerdy forum that there will be no nerdy forums that welcome conservative people. I’m all for free speech and I honestly think that TS should be even more unrestricted than it is, but it’s a bit hypocritical for anybody to say that we only want free speech that we agree with when you consider how conservatives are treated on virtually every geeky forum on the net.
True, it is good for us to try to post non-political content, because it’s a self strengthening cycle of sorts. Less content leads to less content, more content leads to more content. More members help this, us posting more would help too.