Because Gurder's moderating as heavily as Ophie ever did:
Ariel, you say:
As I see it, the issue is not disagreement, but *focus*. A person X writes a (reasonable and normal) comment disagreeing with a person Y. Fine. Then X writes the second, third … eleventh comment disagreeing with Y. Hmmm, also fine. Then X writes hundreds of comments – a mixture of (reasonable and normal) criticism, taunting and photoshopping, a huge series, which betrays X’s concentration on Y and his constant monitoring of Y’s activities. Is it also fine? How should one treat it, especially given the information that Y finds it awful and asks X to stop? And what if it’s not just a single X, but a whole group engaged in such a behavior? Eliza, in this context “disagreement†is really a red herring. It’s not about disagreement and criticism, even if many comments contain just that; even if many of them – taken individually – can be assessed as reasonable. It’s about focus. It’s about the pattern. I don’t really mind criticism, but I must say that I understand Ophelia. I wouldn’t want to have X monitoring me. It would probably end very badly for my state of mind. I don’t know how I could stand it. How about you?
However, that's kind of a strawman. First, almost no one amongst the "antis", or possibly "SPs", unless they start making fake IDs, is commenting on Ophelia's site. She actively moderates and bans people, as do Pz, Greta, and the rest of that core group. So the number of people successfully commenting on Ophelia's site from the SPs is quite low.
Should they be even attempting to comment? Well, I don't know, but I can understand why they would. When you have PZ slagging, (and that is the only word for it) everyone who doesn't agree lockstep with *his* version of feminism, and Ophelia allowing people in her commentariat to:
1) Threaten people with violence if a "bad" word is used, specifically Julian's "if you call me a spic, I'll snap your neck". That one not getting any kind of a reaction other than 'tut-tut' is especially hypocritical given Ophelia's multi-year freakout over Franc Hoggles VERY similar comment.
2) Offer to dox people so they can vandalize their property as part of an intimidation campaign, aka the 'maybe if they start seeing blue butterflies spray-painted on their driveway, they'll back off' schtick.
3) Compare members of the pit, in all seriousness, with serial killers.
I can see why someone might wish to defend themselves. I'm not among that group, I have no more hope for any form of dialogue with Ophelia et al that doesn't involve everyone bowing and scraping to her than I do an in-depth discussion of various computer programming topics with my cat. It's a fun mental 'what if' exercise, but in real life? Not happening.
Secondly, there are actually a lot of people in the pit who don't engage them directly. We don't @-message them on twitter, we don't send them email, we don't try to sneak in comments. What is our "great crime", the one that even you talk about? We sometimes read her blog posts, (although I've stopped even that. Outside of Ally Fogg and Aron Ra, there's no one at FTB doing anything I'd classify as "thought" of any kind. Reactions, yes. Responses, occasionally), and we make comments on a web site or web sites that she is perfectly able to *not read*. In fact, that's one of the refrains from FTB: don't like what we say, *don't read our site*.
Again, why does that advice never apply to them? Ophelia complains about being "monitored" when it's pathetically obvious that she is monitoring the HELL out of the 'pit and various people's public twitter and FB accounts. She's not the only one mind you, but there are days when the time between a comment in the 'pit and a post on FTB is measured in hours. Not days. Not weeks. Hours.
If she wishes to complain about monitoring, perhaps she should do less of it herself. But then, applying their own rules to their own behavior is not something they're real good at.
I have mixed feelings about (3). If your complaint is that the pitters are banned, then you should take into consideration that the bloggers reject not so much your comments (because, disagreement!), as *you*. See my answer to (1). But I find your story about Atheism+ forum troublesome, hence the mixed feelings. I have never commented there and I don’t really know this forum. Seeing the citations you provided, I don’t know why they banned you.
Of course they ban the person. Because if they don't, there's a chance that person might turn out not to be the demonized other image they have created of them. There's a lot of othering going on at FTB.
As for (4), yeah, demonization happens. And Setar’s comment was inflammatory, sure. I participated in those threads on Stephanie’s blog and I remember it well. It seems to me that I made even some remark about Setar. But please, if you can, don’t demonize Stephanie. It’s just too easy. Her situation was quite difficult. There was a strong opposition criticizing her for participating in the dialogue (yes Eliza, opposition on FtB!); there were also fears that admitting the pitters’ comments on her threads will radicalize the regular commenters (Stephanie wrote this somewhere quite explicitly. I say this from memory, but I can find the link if needed.) Starting a melee about an inflammatory comment in such a context? Sure, and good luck to everybody! As I see it, it’s not a black and white story. Please, don’t try to make it look as such.
Wait, so now we are responsible for zvan's regular commentariat behavior? That if allowed to actually defend ourselves, THEY might react poorly? Oh dear lord. That's exactly like arguments against equal rights for {insert minority group here} being a bad idea because those racists over there would get upset, and then we'd have a problem.
And given how much Zvan demonizes all the SPs in the 'pit, i'd say that asking people to not demonize her is weak. If she dislikes demonization, she should cease doing it herself. Heck, fairly recently, she and the Canuck once *again* took it on themselves to slag Justin Griffith for publicizing Laden's threats against him, because he clearly "missed the point" that greg was trying to "patton slap" him back into proper thinking. Justin's crime? He refused to demonize Abbie Smith.
I have little concern for Zvan's feelings about demonizing people when she so gleefully and enthusiastically does so herself. It's actually quite black and white. If you don't like being demonized, don't demonize others.
Ok, before I say something about (5), a few remarks. In my opinion (1)-(4), as reasons for not giving people a break, are very weak. Just to make you understand my perspective: as it happens, *the place* for me on FtB is Greta’s blog. It’s the first I found; it’s the first I usually check. And my “criminal record†on this blog is quite extensive. Quite often I have disagreed or even quarreled with Greta. She hasn’t banned me for this (yet! ) and I must say that I like both her and her blog. Now: if she bans me tomorrow for mere dissent (unrealistic given the past, but let’s assume it), I will be upset. Since I’m not an angel, I could indeed go to some other place crying havoc, making angry, snarky or taunting remarks. But that’s it. After that, finished. I wouldn’t become her shadow, I wouldn’t take a mission of criticizing and ridiculing her on a regular basis. The very idea seems outlandish to me and that's the reason why I find your war difficult to understand. Unless … yeah, unless I had a very strong reason. And this brings us to (5) at last.
One time, I made a single comment that was actually something of a defense of another FTB blogger on greta's site. It took less than ten minutes for her commentariat to tell on me to mom that I was a big mean poopyhead on other sites and so I was banned. Not for my comment on Greta's site, but for my comments on other sites.
Many people find rape, or even rape fantasies extremely triggering. Would you support them banning Greta from their sites solely because she's written books that contain rape fantasy? I kind of doubt you would. You might *understand* it, but you wouldn't *support* it. So why do you support Greta's similar behavior? Do forgive me if my impression of her intellectual and ethical standards is somewhat less than yours.
I think I am safe in saying 99% of the 'pit's objections to the FTB core crowd/Skepchicks/et al is based on two things:
1) The *massive* zero sum thinking they not only engage in themselves, (THERE IS ONLY ONE CORRECT OPINION), but *require* everyone else to engage in.
2) Their continual hypocrisy in demanding standards of behavior from others that they refuse to impose upon themselves.
Until they start dealing with those two issues themselves, actual communication with them is impossible. you can't dialogue with people who operate like that.
