Quote from: John Morrow;553088I don't think that's how it played out.  It wasn't so much a vote as an opportunity for people to make a case for and against to validate the decision.  Sort of like having this discussion but before the ban was finalized.

Your join date shows you've been here long enough to know that in the early days of theRPGsite, we tried that (the "public consultation" threads), and of course they turned out to be completely unproductive song-and-dance shows.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;553202Your join date shows you've been here long enough to know that in the early days of theRPGsite, we tried that (the "public consultation" threads), and of course they turned out to be completely unproductive song-and-dance shows.

That's not how I remember it.  I thought it was useful to let people vent before you banned people, even if you'd already pretty much made up your mind to ban the person.

Quote from: danbuter;553142I don't bookmark posts. If you want to feel insulted about racist crap, just search for his stuff from a few months ago.

I remember seeing him being accused of racism because he referenced supposed differences in intelligence between races. I remember him being pretty steadfast in what he was saying. So much so, in fact, that, out of curiousity, I Googled the topic and discovered that, in fact, he wasn't just making it up - apparently there has been some academic research on the topic, although, obviously, there's massive question-marks over how much of the difference can be attributed to differeences in educational standards, implicit bias in the intelligence testing methodology, etc.

Anyway, at the time, the accusations of racism struck me as being borderline and a bit knee-jerk but I didn't really care enough to get involved in the mud-slinging.

I just wondered whether he had displayed overt racism elsewhere.

Quote from: Dodger;553229I remember seeing him being accused of racism because he referenced supposed differences in intelligence between races. I remember him being pretty steadfast in what he was saying. So much so, in fact, that, out of curiousity, I Googled the topic and discovered that, in fact, he wasn't just making it up - apparently there has been some academic research on the topic, although, obviously, there's massive question-marks over how much of the difference can be attributed to differeences in educational standards, implicit bias in the intelligence testing methodology, etc.

Anyway, at the time, the accusations of racism struck me as being borderline and a bit knee-jerk but I didn't really care enough to get involved in the mud-slinging.

I just wondered whether he had displayed overt racism elsewhere.

My opinion is BT is a racist and was promoting racism in many threads on the pundit subforum. We had already had the discussion before, so I wont engage here on the validity of his sources. But I think it is painfully obvious to anyone who read his posts that he was a racist, a homophobe and basically someone who tried to use science to justify some pretty despicable views. And I am not the sort to see racism or intolerance everywhere.

My view is that therpgsite is a private forum run by Pundit and some others who are moderators by his fiat.
They can run it as they will.
We have the freedom of speech here but they also have the freedom to stop us or ban us, or tell us to fuck off.
We have the right to setup our own forum BBS.

It is not a public place, we pay nothing, this is a benevolent dictatorship.

But we don't have to stay here.

I run a BBS, we're so fucking nice I come here to swear. It is my place, if I wanted to be inconsistent then that's my right, I run it and pay the hosting fees.

For me that's the end of this whining drivel.

I'd have banned BT. But it's not my Board.

Quote from: tzunder;553410My view is that therpgsite is a private forum run by Pundit and some others who are moderators by his fiat.
They can run it as they will.
We have the freedom of speech here but they also have the freedom to stop us or ban us, or tell us to fuck off.
We have the right to setup our own forum BBS.

It is not a public place, we pay nothing, this is a benevolent dictatorship.

But we don't have to stay here.

I run a BBS, we're so fucking nice I come here to swear. It is my place, if I wanted to be inconsistent then that's my right, I run it and pay the hosting fees.

For me that's the end of this whining drivel.

I'd have banned BT. But it's not my Board.

100% agree with this.

Quote from: John Morrow;553225That's not how I remember it.  I thought it was useful to let people vent before you banned people, even if you'd already pretty much made up your mind to ban the person.

I think it did little more than give people the chance to either form a torch-and-pitchforks mob or to rally the anti-pundit troops (often both), and the threads tended to be repetitive. Worse, it was seen by some as being empty of "significance" because I had "already made up my mind" while for others it implied that I was weak or looking to "pass the buck" by trying to manipulate public opinion or something like that.

Ultimately, I think it was futile, and I think that threads like this after the fact are probably (slightly) more useful than the old "public consultation" threads.  What I had hoped those old threads would be was not what they ever turned out to be; namely, I hoped that they'd be something that would allow for a kind of public forum of rational discourse on the moderation of this site, and instead they always turned out to be cesspools of personal agendas and attempts to argue in bad faith.

So yeah, I wouldn't see the point of going back to that.  Ultimately, what I learned from it is that most people basically trust me to moderate this site fairly overall, even if they don't agree with every decision I make. And those that don't trust me (or those others that claim not to, but really are just determined to be opposed to anything I do all the time) won't be swayed anyways.

RPGPundit

Is it possible to not have bans happen in the heat of the moment?

That the user is removed for a period of time, such as 24 hours, so that it could be debated and voted upon privately among only the moderators?

Again, I doubt anyone is saying BT should post here again, but it should have been for something other than "Duh".

Bans don't happen in the heat of the moment; they're pretty well always the product of a long slow buildup of problems, because barring the most obvious issues we don't ban at the first sign of trouble.  Most people who've gotten banned here were on their last of countless chances.

Nor is there a "vote" system here. I have sometimes asked the other mods for their opinion about whether someone should be banned; they've sometimes requested that I give my opinion on whether someone should be banned.  But I am ultimately the only one who decides if someone is banned or not (other mods may ban someone, in case of emergency, without seeking my prior approval, but if I didn't agree with that call the person wouldn't stay banned... fortunately, that's never happened thus far; probably because the mods have a very clear idea that we always give all the "benefits of the doubt" possible).

RPGPundit

Really something had to happen with B.T.

Some people seemed to be trying (for good reason) to hound him off the site (which wasn't working, it just gave him more and more of an opportunity to make threads about him and I'm not convinced that doing so is, in the end, actually better than simple banning.)

Either there needed to be a concerted effort to ignore him (which did actually happen in the last thread he started on the Pundit's forum) or he was going to end up banned.

I'm willing to bet that not only have people quietly left this forum due to people like B.T., but that even more have never even bothered registering here it in the first place because of them. There's no value in freedom of speech when it's only going to be heard by various brands of B.T., and the only response will be one of hostility. In fact, removing people like B.T. will likely encourage more people to speak freely.

Quote from: The Butcher;552683There's a huge excluded middle between RPGnet's stifling enforcement of an "emotionally safe" forum, and giving racists and violent chauvinists a soapbox for antisocial discourse.

Quote from: James Gillen;553200There is again, an excluded middle.  Having a moderation policy does not mean, as RPG.net seems to think, getting a ruler and scoping around every microsecond to see whose knuckles to whack for saying something the professionally offended consider objectionable.  Freedom of speech does not mean there are no standards.

Yeah, see, this right here.

There are limits. Certain kinds of hostile speech WILL shut down other kinds of speech, or result in a form or equally hostile speech that goes nowhere. And taken to its end, it becomes a bunch of people just yelling obscenities at each other Ad Infinitum.

I certainly don't want that for this site, but you're going to have to cull disruptive forces from time to time, however slightly, in order to prevent that from happening. The trick is in not going overboard.

I will miss BT. His posts about RPGs were full of interesting insights.

Quote from: Claudius;555063I will miss BT. His posts about RPGs were full of interesting insights.

too bad he had to fuck it up with being a tremendous asshat (to put it mildly) in his other posts.  he went on my IL after a bit, and i'd end up skipping threads if i saw too much of his blocks in it, or worse, folks wasting time replying to his idiocy.  don't miss him in the slightest.

I really, really don't like Banning people.

But I also don't think of this site as a public gathering place, but as a privately-owned and moderated site.  This is not a public place, but a private gathering spot, and the mods are bouncers.

B.T. was a decent gamering mind and a troll who enjoyed increasing the conflict in said private gathering spot.  The bouncers showed him the door.