The most forgotten rule of Tildes, and why I'm leaving
I considered sending this only as a PM to Deimos, but since it actually involves the community and Deimos has no real control over it, I think it's better suited as a public post. Users are always...
I considered sending this only as a PM to Deimos, but since it actually involves the community and Deimos has no real control over it, I think it's better suited as a public post.
Users are always quick to point to the "paradox of tolerance" clause in the Tildes vision:
Tildes will not be a victim of the paradox of tolerance; my philosophy is closer to "if your website's full of assholes, it's your fault".
But I believe there's an even more important clause, right in the actual Tildes Docs:
If people treat each other in good faith and apply charitable interpretations, everyone's experience improves. (emphasis mine)
A lot of users here, including some well-known power users, are quick to call "Hate!" where there is no actual hate. Controversial statements are quickly interpreted to their most extreme. Yes, there have been some hateful incidents here and I won't deny that, but a lot of well-meaning discussions are lumped into the mix and shut down because they might lead to hate or because they are associated with hate.
Honest discussions, political or otherwise, can't be had in a climate like this. Echo chamber, hivemind, circlejerk... call it whatever, but that's where things are heading.
For the record, I absolutely agree with this part of the Tildes vision, as written by Deimos:
I believe that it's possible to support the ability to freely discuss important and controversial topics without also being obligated to allow threats, harassment, and hate speech.
Threats, harassment, and hate speech have no place anywhere. But sadly, instead of supporting controversial topics as written, it seems certain topics will have no place here because they are controversial. Tildes right now is not the Tildes we were promised, and seems to be veering further away by the day.
If this is the Tildes everyone wants, that's fine of course. But to me, it's no better than Reddit.
There's a huge difference between "Ban all political discussions because they tend to get messy" and "Ban discussion about this particular thing because I don't think it's a tenable position." Sure, it's not an either-or situation, but it definitely sounds like you're very close to the latter end of the spectrum.
In general, the wider the ban category, the less likely it's influenced by bias and therefore easier to defend:
I don't think we should be allowed to decide which positions are debatable or not. If we're going to ban something, pull back and ban the category.