For what it's worth, mods/admins -- thank you

Background Pony #4EED
Guys, I think you are getting a bit off topic from what this thread is supposed to be about. Is there no other place you can have this discussion?
Background Pony #8636
Yeah thanks Derpi mods/admins for dividing this community with stupid infighting unrelated to horse. We really needed that.
rainbowdash42

@Filiecs  
I think you’ve made clear the core of where our disagreement lies.
 
You claim, as an axiom, that barring strong, empirical evidence of a link to some extremely deleterious effect of a particular sort of speech, ‘censorship’ ought not to be imposed, even in private spaces. (Or perhaps your argument is limited to communities like Derpibooru; the core of the claim is the important thing here.)
 
There’s almost certainly no way for me, or anyone else in this conversation, to convince you otherwise of this point. Further, it’s an opinion on what is right or good; it’s not something that I can ‘factually’ disprove. From this axiom, you construct an argument which logically and reasonably concludes that Derpibooru ought to reverse its new rule.
 
I also have an axiom I’m using in this conversation. My axiom is that communities ought to be proactive in ensuring that hate, and hateful ideologies, do not proliferate through them and on their fringes. A further axiom is that, when communities are opt-in and do not hold governmental power, they ought to be permitted to set limits on what content is permissible in that community, especially when there is reasonable evidence indicating that such limits will reduce the spread of hateful ideologies in, and on the fringes of, the community. (Reasonable does not require or imply strict, empirical evidence; humans are fickle creatures that are hard to generalize about, so I think it would be essentially impossible to prove or disprove the idea that cute drawings of a Nazi pony can soften perspectives towards Nazism, with complete scientific rigour. Reasonable indicates suggestive evidence in related literature, as well as collections of case studies.)
 
There’s almost certainly no way for you, or anyone else in this conversation, to convince me otherwise of these points. And it’s also an opinion on what’s right or good, so it can’t be ‘factually’ disproven. And from these axioms, I can construct a reasonable and logical argument concluding that Derpibooru ought to maintain this rule.
 
Can you see why I didn’t want this thread to turn into a debate? We disagree on a core principle. Neither of us are objectively ‘wrong’, per se, but we can both conclude, if drawing from our own principles, that the other is wrong. If we are in an environment where tempers can flare, where we have an ‘audience’, where said audience can join in and fan the flames, we’re not even going to learn anything useful about the other side, much less have any chance of coming to some sort of consensus.
 
I have described a pipeline that (a) has lots of anecdotal evidence of its existence, (b) has at least some literature modelling it, (c) matches, in broad strokes, the well-studied model that we see real-world hate groups construct, and (d) the first steps of which have demonstrably come to pass in this community. That’s enough for me to say that this community should do something about it. But even if you were to agree with these four points, you would come to a different conclusion.
 
That’s totally fine. But it means I have little interest in attempting to convince you of those points. I’m sorry.
Background Pony #CC30
Thank you, mods and admins, for removing content promoting hate ideology!
 
This has been a long time coming - I’m still not sure why it took until now to start seriously thinking about divesting ourselves from some of the kinds of negative and toxic content that goes directly against the grain of all the show stands for - but that makes it even more satisfying to see a willingness to do the right thing finally prevail.
 
I hope you will remain vigilant as this cleaning process continues into the future. I look forward to, hopefully, a Pony community free of the foul undertaste of hate!
Background Pony #6B3A
@Background Pony #8636  
And thanks for still not addressing the issue 5 days going and we’re left with even more shitflinging! We really needed that tooo!  
@Potluck  
Woot was doing that still less than a year ago.  
The internet right now is filled with people cancelling people for mistakes they did years past.  
It’s really, REALLY hard to not see everything he’s doing now as not a grasp to get Twitter outrage followers, like many are doing.
Background Pony #6B3A
@Background Pony #283D  
Is this thread designed just to praise the moderation? Because that sailed long ago. And regardless of the rule I keep saying that this silence of them has made things far far worse.
Background Pony #CC30
@Background Pony #6B3A  
Maybe the mods are silent because people whinging about how awful it is that promoting Nazism is off the table now have put them in a no-win position.
 
They tell you they’re sticking to their guns, Nazi apologists just keep whinging endlessly about “Muh freedoms! Don’t censor me bro! But COMMUNISM WAS WORSE!!!!11!1one!”
 
They cave in and roll back, now they’re allowing hate speech again because a few Nazi apologists demanded it, and that’s an absolutely horrible look (not to mention the wrong thing to do).
 
You don’t really want firm policy action and answers from them - you want to get your way, and you want them to give you something to endlessly debate and harass them with until they give you your way.
Background Pony #6B3A
@Background Pony #CC30  
You are being extremely disingenuous with the strawmen with that post. You can’t claim to know what I want. I don’t want a mass exodus of people I was following, most of whom never posted a single aryanne pic. Aryanne was so unsignificant to this website I don’t really care what happen to her.  
And they put that rule, the best they could do is at least clarify it. Their own mod team wasn’t on the same page. The fact that they didn’t do this BEFORE enforcing the rule is a giant faux-pas from the administration IMO.
Background Pony #4C6F
Thank you mods/admins for causing the most exciting drama to happen all week.
Armagedonus
Duck - Thinks minorities should make their OWN ponds if they want to swim.
The End wasn't The End - Found a new home after the great exodus of 2012

Am I the only one who finds it funny that pro-censorship thread is just 6 pages long and anti-censorship threads are 29 and 32?  
It nicely shows powerlevel of both groups XD
Background Pony #6B3A
@Armagedonus  
Well, the other thread has more discussion, this thread (as the OP keep saying) want to AVOID discussion.  
95%+ of people on the website don’t care. I feel if they made a global website poll about it people would vote for the rule rather than against it, but they seem to not even try that and keep everything under wrap.
 
But at this point I just don’t know anymore, judging by Derpi’s message. I feel a few of them would love to just close everything and ban anyone who complained at this point.
rainbowdash42

@Armagedonus  
@Background Pony #6B3A
 
People complain when they don’t like things. When people do like things, or are neutral, people generally just carry on. Anger is a much better motivator than care or hope or happiness or whatever, for most people in most situations.
 
If an informal, online poll was run about this issue, those who are angry – i.e., those who disagree with the rule change – will be overrepresented. Those who don’t care won’t bother responding. Those who agree with the rule change (probably the vast majority) probably won’t even come across the polls, since many of them have probably been driven away from discussions of this issue by the tone of the discussion.
 
Informal internet polls are profoundly bad at getting a good sense of what a population thinks.
 
I can tell you one thing – if I wasn’t the one to start this thread, I sure as heck would not be involved in this conversation anymore. If the mods stick to their guns and keep the rules, I’ll be satisfied, regardless of what happens in these forums or on alternative fandom image sites.
Background Pony #0C72
@Derwol  
That’s a bit wrong, logic wise. They have upvotes in the hundreds at tops, not thousands. The positive scores just reflect that more people enjoy them than dislike them.
 
The average user doesn’t care about it either way. Like with most things.
 
Still, I personally find Aryanne distasteful and I’m still protesting against the ban, though.
Background Pony #6B3A
@Derwol  
Thats for the people who bother, with the way the poll would be handled and named, I’m sure most people will just vote against because “dem nazis” and whatnot, again most people don’t care (some ACTUALLY USE THE FILTERS too!).
 
@Background Pony #0C72  
As I said elsewhere, Aryanne is such a minuscule part of the site, at this point I’m protesting everything that the moderation is doing behind door. It feels like they are being silent on purpose at this point.
rainbowdash42

@Derwol  
Filtering. These images are filtered out by default, and I would feel fairly comfortable asserting that many people who have changed off from default filters and who don’t like Aryanne probably chose to filter her (or related tags) shortly after seeing what she represents for the first time.
 
@Background Pony #6B3A  
Those who don’t care won’t bother responding. And it would still be a hurdle to get ‘normal’ people who are in favor of the rule to actually respond, compared to the organized effort that passionate/angry folks will create to ensure every single one of their voices are counted.
 
I’m not saying this about angry/passionate people as a bad thing, for what it’s worth. The mobilization of anger, frustration, and general coming-to-the-end-of-one’s-rope is how a lot of amazing social progress has been accomplished. It’s just the reality of day-to-day human interaction. There’s a reason so many campaign ads are negative.
 
I agree that the mods could have handled things better, in the sense that the rationale and the explanation of the new rule could have been clearer (subject, of course, to rule #n). I think there continues to be room for improvement, and I hope whatever announcement is coming in the next few days will accomplish some of that improvement without defanging the rule. But I wouldn’t say that their behavior has been unprofessional, by and large.
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