In regards to your return example:

the matter is the difference between the absolutes of theory and the practical limits of a culture.  It is amusing to note that the primary arena we see this sort of clash between the absolute of theory and the practical limits of culture is the Arts, wether it be Maplethorpe photographs or poetry about child sex.  Artists have taken it upon themselves to be the testers of the waters, and tend to be the ultimate proponents of 'freedom' in so many regards. I for one tend to value this service, even as I wince at the quality of a given work or shake my head at the choice of subject matter.

The practice of exiling those who's presence in a culture is disruptive is quite old. The greek city-states enjoyed it.  More recently our culture has been reluctant to do it, prefering to make criminals and jail those we can and tolerate however bitterly those we can't... yet on the internet the practice has revived itself via banning.

As for not having to deal with groupthink as a dictator for life... who do you plan to use to enforce your anti-bigotry laws? Who do you intend to inform you of who is or is not a bigot?  No dictator for life exists in a vacuum.

Ah, but since I'm only dreaming about it, so of course it would work perfectly for me. I'm fully convinced that if everyone held my moral and ethical standards the world would be a wonderful place. The only way to change that conviction would be to prove that something I hold as being good is actually bad, at which point I would change my belief and all would be right again.

That would require much more than being dictator for life, but one is equally as likely to happen as the other.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for artists exploring new boundaries (within my moral strictures of course). But I'm also all for people that want to enforce the things I agree with (like no child pornography in their website). Write about it all you want, just don't expect others to let you display it in their homes.

See...

You are woefully underprepared for the eventual, possibly accidental, ascention to Dictator-for-lifehood, should it be thrust upon you by the whimseys of fate.

For shame, James.  Were you never a Boyscout?  Why aren't you prepared?

I was a Boy Scout, but they tossed me out. Of course, I stuck another kid's hand in the little hand-crank generator we were using for an experiment, but I didn't force it, just talked him into it.

I've been preparing for Dictator for Life since I was a wee lad.

No no... that's training, James, Not preperation.  

Me? I have a blueprint of my government all laid out, with notes and cross references.  Of course, i am forced to keep most of it in my head, with a few bits ciphered for security so people don't steal 'em.   Of course, I prefer 'Most Benevolent Ruler of All Mankind' to the prosaic 'Dictator for life'...

Too much work for me. I'd rather spend my time spanking myself and shooting lightning bolts out of my ass. When the glorious day finally arrives I'll simply give everyone on the planet one of those 1,000 question psychological exams. Everyone that didn't answer exactly as I did will be shot. I'll then shoot half of the remaining group as an object lesson to the rest.

I guess the inclination is to work at what doesn't come most naturally.  Of course, it is easy to be a dictator for life if all your subjects are dead. No chance of revolt.

Of course, this presupposes you don't get Romero Revolution! Mort le revolucion! Or something. I don't speak the lingo to do it justice...

Who cares? By that point absolute power will have corrupted me absolutely and I'll be living in my underground pleasure bunker with my harem. Let the dead have the world, I won't need it anymore.

Quote from: SpikeGiven that this thread is arguably about the Tyranny of the Majority, the RPG.net is an interesting example, in microcosm, of what happens  when it is allowed to progress unchecked.

Is it? I'm not so sure. I remember when RPG.net had no moderation, not even the level practised here. I remember that people used to argue the trolls and the bigots away, not have them banned.

It was when RPG.net developed a commissariat that things started to change. I don't think that's tyranny of the majority.

Quote from: droogIs it? I'm not so sure. I remember when RPG.net had no moderation, not even the level practised here. I remember that people used to argue the trolls and the bigots away, not have them banned.

It was when RPG.net developed a commissariat that things started to change. I don't think that's tyranny of the majority.

Having a commisariat enforce rules and standards of behavior is not in and of itself proof of the existance, or non-existance of a ToM.  Prior to the existance of such a body of power, if you will, it was simply mob rule, nothing more, though I'll have to take your word for it that it was or was not like that. I've only been a forum user for about a year and a half.

The specific facet of behavior I use for my judgement of the ToM catagory is how the minority is slowly disempowered, disenfranchised and gradually eliminated.  If you express an unpopular belief, the majority pressures the moderation to force you out, which they do under the edict of keeping the peace and enforcing the community standards. Without a voice in the politics of the place, the minority viewpoints shrink, reinforcing the majority opinion. Of course, that majority opinion gets narrower and narrower as dissenting opionons are weeded out.  Like anything else its a process not a state of being.

Quote from: SpikeWhat they want, then, is a site that does not tolerate prejudice, racial, sexual, or religious, from it's posters. It wants to oust the bigots, both actual and accidental.[...]

How does that jibe with Jimbob being banned then?  Other than some vague anti-american rumblings he's pretty damn unprejudiced...

Actually, I have many prejudices. It's just that you see me talking about rpgs, and those prejudices are irrelevant to the discussion; as for off-topic stuff, I don't see why anyone would want to hear my views about this or that culture.

In the Trouble Tickets thread discussing my banning, several posters accused me of racist, sexist, and homophobic comments. Not one moderator backed them up, but they didn't tell them they were wrong, either. I once picked up a suspension for mocking furries. On what basis? I asked. "Mocking a sexuality", they said. Which is funny, since in the past people had been been criticised by furries for saying that furries were a sexuality...

The prejudice I did express which the moderators didn't like, was scorn for Bitter Non-Gamers, and for people who posted only to Tangency Open, and who had no interest in gaming. "If you're not interested in the topic of this site, what the fuck are you doing here?" is vile prejudice and must not be said!

Quote from: SpikeSo, is RPG.net polite then? Not according to most of the expats... they've got more snark and bitter hatred simply covered by a veneer of civility.

The hostility, unexpressed, is merely sublimated. It circles beneath the surface like a shark. Everyone knows who hates whom, that's no mystery. It just doesn't come out into the open. In the short term, this is good, since it keeps things more or less polite; in the long term, not so good, since the bad blood remains.

Quote from: SikeGiven that this thread is arguably about the Tyranny of the Majority, the RPG.net is an interesting example, in microcosm, of what happens  when it is allowed to progress unchecked.

It's more like, "tyranny of those who give a shit." The people who hit the report button and write PM and emails are those who determine the moderation style of the site. If it were down to a majority vote, I would not have been banned - only half a dozen posters would hate me enough to want to ban me; much the same goes for almost anyone else banned from the site. But a few active posters write emails and hit the report button, and there you go. Redredredderreddest, eyebeamz and Amado G. have got their wish; Tangency is now an "emotionally safe environment", at least if you're a fat white male geek who likes h4wt chixxorz pics and can't get a game group because he's a dork.

The same sort of thing happens in our own democracy. Few people write letters to their MPs, so the few who do have a disproportionate effect on policy. Here in Australia we have a loud-mouthed right-wing chat radio guy, Alan Jones, he writes about 1,700 letters to the Prime Minister alone each year. There's a "Minister for Alan Jones" - a secretary whose entire job is to deal with his correspondence, answering the points raised by him. That's because if he's not answered, Jones will speak about it to his hundreds of thousands of listeners, and those people all vote.

The majority don't consider their vote, or policies of society or a forum. They don't give a shit. Because they don't give a shit, they cannot enforce a tyranny. It's a tyranny of those who give a shit.

Jimbob, that was a long ass post to say: Democracy only supports the (pro)active members of it's constituency.  Which is perfectly true and valid. And if the majority of voters lobby for laws prohibiting bigots from walking down the street... it will pass only if the framework that guides that democracy permits it.  Without that framework, the majority of people who actively oppose bigots... and I don't mean oppose bigotry but think the bigots themselves should be second class citizens (at best) can impose a tyranny of the majority upon them... presuming they are not outnumbered in the voting booth by people who presumably fear being labled a bigot...

Not that I am exactly known for short posts...

Cool, when do we have the vote for who we want to be second class citizens? I'll definitely vote for bigots, but they're not at the top of my list.

Quote from: SpikeJimbob, that was a long ass post to say: Democracy only supports the (pro)active members of it's constituency.

Yes, but I also wanted to talk about me.

Me me, me!

But seriously, I just wanted to illustrate what I was saying with an example. Since we were talking about democracy being the tyranny of the majority, and you mentioned my banning, well... it seemed a natural example.

Quote from: James McMurrayCool, when do we have the vote for who we want to be second class citizens? I'll definitely vote for bigots, but they're not at the top of my list.

But you see, James, under the current Democratic model, just as Bigots must find their right to discriminate circumvented by laws to protect their targets, so too must people like you find their ability to cast laws against bigots circumvented.  You cannot have this cake and eat it too. Without the legal structure protecting the bigots, we would not have had the legal reforms necessary to bring about widespread realization that their bigotry was in and of itself a bad thing. We'd still be living in a pre-civil rights movement society.