General

Okay, so I'm going to stop you right there.

I am a WOC. While most people on this site are normal human beings, I have experienced discrimination on this platform. I've experienced everything from death threats and slurs to creepy people sexually harrassing me.

I do report it when it happens. And admin has taken action. But that can take time since I have to take screenshots and send an email to people in a very different time zones. So in the meantime, confronting the bigot is important.

I remember about a year ago, we had this extremely unpleasant user who'd be super gross in chat all the time. Complete menace to society. Admin had told him to get his act together more than once, but he didn't care.

One day, he snapped and went on a racist tirade. Started using all the slurs and saying a bunch of really messed up things. He locked on black people and Jewish people specifically. Numerous people reported him, but it takes time to get a response back.

In the mean time, the community rallied together. A few tracked down a mod while everyone else pushed back against his awefullness. There were a handful on black people and Jewish people in chat at the time. So it was really nice to see white people step up and push back against it too.

You do not and should not tolerate bigotry. Yeah, it's nice to be gently corrected if you accidentally say something bigotted. I think everyone has said something bigotted without meaning to be. But that isn't something you're owed. And you especially aren't owed that grace if you say it with your chest.

Also, I don't think it violates TOS to check a bigot. I've done that several times, and when I seen admin forum links or screenshots with full context, I've never been told I was in the wrong. And some of my reports were viewed by the site owner.

If someone is being overtly hateful and targeting other members, then yeah, that kind of response is totally warranted. Guys like that deserve it. I do recall seeing a case like that in the past where a guy was proudly calling himself a white supremacist, and had to be removed, but in the meantime people were shutting down any conversation that started going in that direction.

The only problem I see is in the grey areas where what someone says isn't anywhere near close to that, but some people feel inclined to start dogpiling anyway because they have a personal zero tolerance policy toward anything that smells of bigotry or what they interpret as dog whistles, even if that wasn't actually the person's intent. I've personally seen quite a few cases like that happen too. I think in general it's just a good policy for people to err on the side of civility and take people at their word unless proven otherwise. Even if I strongly suspect someone is arguing in bad faith, I will usually try to give a genuine response anyway.

I guess to answer the OP’s question in a different way, threads get locked because mods don’t have a lot of other tools at their disposal. They can’t discipline individual users, so locking threads is the only real tool at their disposal. I’m sure admins have more tools to use, but there are fewer admins. Threads can be unlocked.

As an alternative to locking threads, having a way to mute individual users for a period of time might be helpful when one person is harassing or spamming, etc. A stop gap until an admin can review the situation.

Are you in community with any minority groups? I am genuinely curious.

I feel like muting a user would be extremely helpful. I've seen a lot of instances where everyone is having a lovely time, and then one person comes in and shits all over the place. Muting could be a useful tool until admin is able to review the situation.

I also think users being able to mute another could be nice. Sometimes, you just don't jive with another user, and not seeing their posts could be nice. When you mute them, you could see they've posted, but not what they posted. Then you could have the option to see a specific post or not. I'm thinking it would work like posts tagged NSFW on social media sites.

I’ve always been confused why blocking users on this site doesn’t work that way. It’s odd. It seems like it would make a better experience for everyone.

I'm Jewish, bi, and diagnosed on the spectrum. Yes, I've been on the receiving end of anti-Semitic and ableist comments before. It's not something I'm vocal about because I don't want it to affect how people perceive me, whether that's for better or worse.

Suddenly things are making more sense.

No shade my guy, but not all of us jive with the whole lay low and play it safe. This is especially true for people like me, whose minority status is visible for all to see. I'm dark-skinned with natural hair. I have to deal with this mess all the time irl and online. I've decided I love myself too much to tolerate people who aren't treating me like a person.

And since I won't tolerate it for myself, I'm not tolerating it for other people.

Huh, you must have really misunderstood me.

I never compared myself to you, nor assumed we have a similar experience online, nor insinuated that everyone else should feel the same as me about their minority status. I don't agree with any of those statements. I don't think you should tolerate people who don't treat you like a person, in fact I said people who target and harass others deserve the response they get. My point revolved solely around false positives, i.e. people who are actually innocent of what they're being accused of. I think this might be a good illustration actually. I must have miscommunicated somewhere, because it seems like you think I'm making arguments for positions I don't actually agree with. This kind of thing can easily happen in online discussions. Plus I'm exhausted, so that may be contributing.

I'm referring to this statement here:



I think you have a misunderstanding about how bigotry works. A lot of times, people will say bigoted things without realizing what they are saying is bad. Sometimes, they'll say something they think is a compliment or a joke but is actually deeply harmful.

Sometimes, if you are lucky, you can explain why what they said was harmful, and they will apologize and learn from it. But most of the time, they'll minimize or dismiss what you're saying. And if you push the issue, it's common for them to go mask off and say something really bigoted.

Now, I have seen well-meaning people accuse someone of bigotry when they weren't being bigoted. However, that is rare. In the two years I've been on this site, I can count the number of "false positives" on one hand. And, once again, not understanding why something is bigoted isn't a "false positive."