A quick word on "Overwhelmingly Negative Influences"

[KevinM1]

Several people have voiced their opinions regarding members that staff has been reluctant to ban under the "Overwhelmingly Negative Influences" rules, despite the fact that members sometimes say very upsetting and even abhorrent things to other members.

To understand why we ultimately came to our decision (not to invoke the rule), one must understand both the purpose of the forums as a whole, and also the purpose of the rule.

Starting with the former: the forums were created in order to allow people from all religions and religious backgrounds to discuss their beliefs without fear of being banned for holding them. At the time, too many atheist forums would simply ban religious members for saying things that went against "common decency", and likewise, religious forums would often ban atheists for being confrontational. When discussing deeply held beliefs, whether you are an atheist or a theist, discussions often get heated as disagreements get thrown back and forth. AtheistForums.org was set up to allow people to discuss their conflicting beliefs, allowing the debates to get heated, but with some rules in place to prevent all-out anarchy (e.g. flame wars). We've wavered from that purpose several times in our history, but I tend to think that overall (and certainly in our current incarnation) we've done a pretty good job holding to it.

This is a place, and should continue to be a place, where people can express their beliefs, no matter how abhorrent or upsetting they might be to other members, provided that they do so in a discussion.

The purpose of the "Overwhelmingly Negative Influences" rule is to allow staff to remove members who are not contributing to discussions, but are rather disrupting discussions. This behavior goes against the very purpose of the forums, and is the reason why we implemented the rule. Disrupting a discussion can happen in many ways, but one way in which it cannot happen is when a member posts their own opinion in a relevant thread. We aren't in the business of telling people what opinions they can or cannot post, especially if those opinions are about the thread subject in some way. The "Overwhelmingly Negative Influences" rule is not intended to get rid of people with "undesirable" opinions, because in the context of the purpose of the forums, there are no undesirable opinions.

This is all well and good, but at what point do you worry that the inmates will run the asylum?  Because while the person in question hasn't violated those rules you mentioned, he has, with stated intent, deliberately written atrocious things simply to piss people off.  I mean, shit, I reported one such post where he admits it in the thread that started this whole drama.

And yeah, we can ignore, use the ignore feature, etc., but that has never been a real solution.  Why?  Because some people don't like ignoring others out of principle.  And someone quoting an ignored person has that ignored person's text in the non-ignored person's message.  And there's always some newbie who, not knowing the personalities here, engages and quickly finds themselves bombarded with bullshit when all they want is support.  I mean, shit, how many times have the old vultures circled around kids who were just barely getting comfortable with the mere idea of questioning their beliefs?

I dunno.  I'm *this* close to saying "fuck it" myself.  Because we shouldn't tolerate someone like the person in question being able to run off other, positively contributing people from the community.  I'd rather have 100 Mamacita's than Drich.  I'd rather have 1000 Robs than Drich.  And that it's even up for debate is, frankly, idiotic.

And, keep in mind, no one is saying "Drich is a Christian!  Get him!"  What we're saying is that he intentionally tries to hurt people, and that when he succeeds you guys are like "Whelp, nothing we can do.  Deal with it yourselves" which is utter bullshit.  Get off your asses and mod.

There's more to modding than getting rid of spammers and sock puppets.  I know, I did it at another place for 5-6 years.  And, yeah, sometimes it's difficult.  But you need to do it, otherwise you'll have no forum left.  Because people don't want to deal with his kind of bullshit all the time, and like I said above you can't just ignore it.  Not if you're actually trying to stay engaged with the forum.  And, really, fuck the idea of making those of us who don't make (many) waves have to curtail our behavior on here in order to tolerate the existence of the utter assholes.

You know what?  Fuck it.  I'm out, too.