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It has been a little while now that this fledgling community has been around and it remains one of my favorite stories about communities. A splinter of a much larger community took it upon themselves to challenge the rest and make a move to a new home. Shedding the shackles that were being placed on them was a bold move, but one that has been fantastic.
The community here is great, but here is my question. Overall, we are amazingly tolerant of others, of the choices they make, and of their beliefs. I would then be curious, if we are such a tolerant group, how do we address intolerance in our ranks? I recently came across what I can only say filled me with pity and sadness. I find it saddening that in this day and age, and especially in this group, there are still such hate-filled people.
But this poses a question: how does a group that is tolerant deal with intolerance within it's ranks? Does our acceptance of others extend to accepting someone that has thoughts and beliefs which are far from the norm within this community, or is there a limit placed on how far from our own values a member of the community may be?
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Aighearach on Sunday April 13 2014, @08:07PM
If you boot out the disruptive haters, you don't have to worry what they "thrive" on. In that case calling them out is effective.
Ignoring racist haters does not make them go away. It means every single post will have disgusting comments attached. Privately engaging them is not useful or productive.
In my opinion, your blind acceptance of hatred, and encouragement to force the targets of the racist hatred to suffer it quietly, without any encouragement that they're welcome or that the view is not the view of the group, is not well thought out. Actually that is so silly, once you start thinking from the perspective of the victim, that I would suggest perhaps you have fallen into this viewpoint and recite it when the issue comes up while "turning off your brain."
(Score: 2) by physicsmajor on Sunday April 13 2014, @08:30PM
"Booting people out" works only in the real world, where absence of physical presence is actually a real barrier. The question was asked in the context of an online community, and furthermore an online community of tech-savvy users. It's actually quite difficult to boot any real entity out of such a community; VPNs, Tor, and many other tricks guarantee that individual has more ways back in than you have bandwidth to try and keep them out.
I never encouraged anyone to suffer quietly. I never promulgated blind acceptance. I simply pointed out that in communities like this one, certain viewpoints thrive on ATTENTION alone - calling them out is counterproductive. This is what some want. Furthermore, there was no target of the post in question! It was a rant directed at nobody in particular, archiving one man's observations. I responded as such. Again, I reiterate: there was no victim, and the original post is edited to reflect that it does not apply to all or even most individuals of any particular ethnic background.
I would like to draw attention to how you ignore all of the actual points of my post, while continuing an indirect ad hominem against both the original target and also attempt to conflate and group myself with that individual. Actually, your response constitutes more raw hatred than the original which prompted this front page story. You are directly attacking myself and the original poster, whom I may not agree with but has done nothing to harm you directly. These are logical fallacies. I refuse to engage anyone in discussion who stoops to using them, because once you do it is no longer a discussion; you are no longer engaging your mind in reasonable discourse.