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The Paradox of Tolerance, or: When is it okay to punch a Nazi?

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Galemp:
When discussing enforcement of community standards we are faced with the same problem as society at large: that is, the Paradox of Tolerance.


--- Quote ---The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly paradoxical idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.
--- End quote ---

One of the proposed community standards is to create a community where all are welcome, specifically calling out race, sex, and gender. However religion and politics are not represented, and we need to establish--for our community, at least--where tolerance ends.


* How would the moderation team respond to a member being attacked for being Jewish? Muslim? Evangelical nondenominational Christian?
* How would the moderation team respond to a member voicing anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, anti-LGBTQ views?
* How is stating one's membership in that group different from espousing the doctrine of that group?
* Similarly, if one expresses affiliation with a political party or movement, how much tolerance do we have for that?

Galemp:
I see two positions here, either proactive or reactive. For the sake of argument I'll use the hypothetical polite Nazi.

Proactive
Firmly establish HLP as taking a position against certain behaviour and groups that espouse that behaviour: Nazis are not welcome. Board members discovered to be Nazis, or affiliated with Nazis, are banned. Prevent the infiltration and entrenchment of these groups. See the bartender story for reference.

Reactive
Moderation is based on behaviour, not belief. Give members the benefit of the doubt until they prove themselves otherwise. In this case the polite Nazi could continue to operate in the community so long as they don't break the community guidelines against hate speech--making it clear that Nazi symbols are considered hate speech. Regarding behaviour outside of the HLP moderation bubble, admins and moderators would do well to read up on some basic management training regarding harassment and a hostile work environment.

Personally, I don't think religious or political discussion of any kind belongs here on HLP. At all. Not in the current climate, anyway. We are all here together to mod video games and  should respect each other for our contributions to the community, regardless of views on other unrelated subjects. Where it crosses the line into harassment or creating a hostile work environment, it should be addressed, but until then we ought to keep things open.

Rhymes:

--- Quote from: Galemp on February 08, 2021, 12:58:36 pm ---Personally, I don't think religious or political discussion of any kind belongs here on HLP. At all. Not in the current climate, anyway. We are all here together to mod video games and  should respect each other for our contributions to the community, regardless of views on other unrelated subjects. Where it crosses the line into harassment or creating a hostile work environment, it should be addressed, but until then we ought to keep things open.

--- End quote ---

My thoughts on the rest will require some more time to articulate (also coffee), but regarding this, I'm going to quote Mongoose in one of the other threads we had on this just a couple days ago.


--- Quote ---My stance on this remains the same as it has been over the past several months: if people do not wish to engage in political discussion, then they are free to keep PolDisc disabled and to not engage in said topics. It's not even a particularly heated place, but if that sort of conversation is not your bag, then I fully understand! (If you want to see a real "lunatic asylum" of politics, check out GenDisc circa 2005 or so. Or rather, don't.) But there are many of us who have been in this community for a long time, who know each other about as well as one can in the context of a forum dedicated to a 20-year-old space game, and who enjoy talking with each other about the Big Important Things that pop up in the real world. Not everyone here is as active on the FS side of things as they may have been in the past, or may be in the future, but they still want to be engaged with the community they love. Discussions like this help that happen, and can help sustain a community during the inevitable lulls in activity that it experiences.

I think the most important thing to reiterate here is that none of the significant issues of the past several months had their root cause in political arguments, or if they were involved were tangential to an underlying issue which would have caused problems regardless. This is not a PolDisc problem.

--- End quote ---

Grizzly:

--- Quote ---Personally, I don't think religious or political discussion of any kind belongs here on HLP. At all. Not in the current climate, anyway. We are all here together to mod video games and  should respect each other for our contributions to the community, regardless of views on other unrelated subjects. Where it crosses the line into harassment or creating a hostile work environment, it should be addressed, but until then we ought to keep things open.
--- End quote ---

A ban on politics and a ban on Nazis are concordant, whether the enforcement of policy is active or reactive. This isn't some democratic debate about whether or not to raise the minimum wage. Nazi beliefs are incompatible with the policy of mutual respect that HLP supposedly operates on.

Phantom Hoover:
I really don't think we need all these posts about Nazis, honestly. Does anyone actually want to keep them around...?

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