Can we talk about AH?

Pawwed Rig wrote: »

So toys out of the pram then. Gotcha.

I looked up the reported posts you made by the way. I found only 2 and both were complaining about the same issue.
Now personally I do not see someone calling religions homophobic as racist. This is because religions (Abrahamic at least) are homophobic. Luckily most of the followers ignore the nuttier elements of religion and go about their lives in a decent fashion.

Now you got a yellow card for attacking the poster rather than a post. This is the lightest punishment possible for a fairly standard breach of the rules. So instead of complimenting the moderator for enforcing rules, which you were asking to be done above, you come back on to moan. So everyone should follow rules except you, is that your point?

It is sunny outside. I would recommend stepping away from the internet for a while to get a little perspective.

This is just piss poor. Passive aggressive shïte.

Baggly wrote: »

Where is the list of things that are and aren't definitely racist or bigoted. Can you accept what you find thus may not be found thus by all?

If you want an echo chamber where everyone shares the same opinions, go to twitter or fb. Boards is a discussion forum where people with different viewpoints discuss things. As such, eventually you will encounter people with opinions you don't like or find distasteful, just as others may find yours distasteful.

So which groups should we censor and which should we allow forum a community?

I moderate breaches of rules, not opinions.

Hey, how's about you try to think about this from the perspective on one of the groups who come up so often?

Imagine being a traveller, a muslim, a welfare recipent, a transgender person, an immigrant, or one of the other popular targets.

Would After Hours be a better, and probably more lively community if it offered a place where everybody, (even muslims! even trans people! even travellers! even immigrants!) felt that they were welcome and would be treated with basic respect?

As it is, After Hours has become a community that is only welcoming to people who want to talk about how dreadful muslims, or travellers or immigrants or trans people are.

It's an increasingly exclusive community and increasingly toxic one.
It's already 90% of the way towards being an echo chamber.

Baggly wrote: »

So by spouting you mean what: shouting it out loud and disturbing others.... Or having a discussion with someone where they tell them their opinions? Because they would be thrown out no matter the subject of what they are saying for the former, and would be allowed do the latter.

If you haven't heard people be racist in pubs, maybe you just aren't going to the same pubs as them, because as galling as it is, they are out there and some of them aren't shy.

With regards to your HR example, I don't see how it corresponds to a discussion forum. A workplace is for doing work. Hence discussions on the kinds of topics we find in Ah are not a requirement to complete work. Hence all the employment laws in place for this.

AH isn't a workplace. Its a discussion forum. Hence all opinions are allowed, as long as they obey the rules. So barring discussion on a discussion forum is massively counter productive. Like what would be the point. It would just be people agreeing with each other and not seeing any new viewpoints.



People have the right to have opinions! Why are you so keen to curtail this.

As I have said what if mods decided to censor you because you made others uncomfortable. It's the same logic you are suggesting. Would that be ok?

Clearly I'm wasting my time here. If you don't think there's a problem with the way After Hours has changed, if you think it's not up to the moderators of the forum to moderate the place so that it isn't a sort of knockoff stormfront then there's nothing I can say to change your mind.



It's a real pity, Boards used to have something special -a discussion board with a uniquely Irish slant.

Plenty of groups deserve criticism at times - I don't get this objection to criticising traveller culture. There are lots of things to criticise about it, and it's frustrating when people ignore the stats as if they're all just poor little victims.

But I agree that there is a lot of hate on After Hours too. Criticism - even robust criticism - is possible without hatred and aggression and dismissal. Like Sinead Burke - people were trying to outdo themselves with dickishness regarding her. It's cool to be nasty and sneery towards vulnerable people now. You must look tough because you're a "snowflake" to show empathy and compassion (unless it suits of course).

Sneery, complacent mods here is so not a good look.

Baggly wrote: »

You aren't giving me a lot to discuss here and don't seem to want to engage with what I'm saying, so I don't know what to say to you.



I'm here for a discussion. I've outlined my pov and have tried to respond to anyone that wants to discuss. I don't see what else there is to be done beyond that.

You’re right, I don’t really because I’ve quickly realised there’s no point. I’m glad the exchange exists though because it gave me some insight into AH moderator thought processes and if I found it insightful, others might too.

The real problem with the thread on the attacks on the lesbian couple in London is that it has become, without any evidence at all, a thread for attacking Islam. There’s no evidence the prepretators are Islamic.

Now if the thread was starting with some other topic like the opposition to the LGBT education in Birmingham by some muslim groups then attacking the religious nature of this opposition would have some justification.

Imagine that there was still significant anti Irish sentiment in England and when something like this happened the internet over there started blaming Irish catholics without cause - would you not suspect racism even if Catholicism were homophobic? - which it is.

The bigots might luck out and it might turn out that this attack was by Muslims, however it’s unlikely given the demographics of where the attack happened that this is the case.

It’s not only that though; prior to Muslims being blamed some of the trolls denied that the homophobic attack was in fact homophobic. That was deliberate and clear thread derailment but at least it was dealt with.

The Islam bashing is clearly off topic either way, and moderators do have the power to guide the topic back to the original topic, with warnings or bannings for people who disregard instructions, even if the individual posts themselves are not otherwise actionable. At the moment it is a sh1tshow.

Baggly wrote: »

This is the one. What I quoted vs what's there now.

I can’t actually remember if I posted that in one block or added a bit as there is no edit timestamp underneath. But if I did, it was clearly added very quickly (because... no timestamp) when I probably hadn’t even seen a reply from you.

C’mon, you know if there’s no timestamp underneath that if I did add something, it was very quickly. I often do add quick edits to posts because I never really expect very quick responses.

It’s actually annoying that you’ve undermined me here with little evidence. If you don’t know and I don’t know and you have no extra tools to tell, you should retract that accusation.