Philosophy Now Forum

Question: Was the thread eliminated because of the opinions expressed in it? Is 'derailment' a code-word for 'opinions not liked'?

Obvious Leo, Uwot, Hobbes: You participated in that thread and quite a bit of what you wrote was off-topic (way off topic). Do any of you have an opinion? While it is clear that you hold me and my ideas in contempt, should my posts be eliminated because you don't like them?

Should your posts be eliminated because I don't like them?

The question is really a general one, as it could happen to anyone, couldn't it?

Are you comfortable and do you support ethically the elimination of opinions that you don't like?

Glad you are enjoying the 'trial' duszek. What is the underlying and the most important aspect of the issue in your view? The rock-bottom as it were?

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:
Are you comfortable and do you support ethically the elimination of opinions that you do not like

As someone who believes in absolute free speech I certainly do not support such a ridiculous proposition
And especially not on of all places a philosophy forum that should exist to debate ideas not censor them
And far from suppressing opinion we should be encouraging it like the freethinkers that we should all be

The moderator made the decision on what to do.

Gustav can spin this however he likes (and he will) -- this was not about suppressing opinions that anyone didn't like. And this was not a case of a simple derailment, as happens frequently and is completely understandable and welcome (from my perspective). This was an ongoing and repetitive monopolization of a thread being misused for your own personal off-topic platform, Gustav. I had asked you repeatedly (as did others) to move your discussion. The fact that people got to that point should tell you something. It's too bad that you couldn't offer the simple and easy consideration/cooperation requested. Why are you blaming everyone else for the result of your own lack of regard?

There is value in maintaining some amount of order and consideration for ALL. If one person repeatedly disrupts this order and ignores/disregards others, what is the appropriate resolution?

Well, I suggest that you are not being perfectly truthful here.

None of what you say - as excuse for your request to have an entire thread deleted - has any bearing at all, and cannot excuse your decision and your choice. You cannot assign blame to a moderator.

The actual fact here is that you did not like my opinions and my ideas and you arranged to have the entire thread deleted. To all appearances an act of revenge.

The thread is gone and cannot be recovered. Are you happy with your choice? Did it help you to feel better? Is this what you wanted? These are good questions.

My question is: Is this ethical? Should this be allowed? And do others here support the elimination of threads, or posts, or posters, whose ideas they hold in contempt?

You do not have the right to decide that my ideas and my opinions are off-topic. I do not in any sense accept your characterisation. Everything I wrote was related to the topic in very clear ways. Hobbes, Uwot and even Leo wrote posts there with NO RELATIONSHIP at all to the topic.

There is value in maintaining some amount of order and consideration for ALL. If one person repeatedly disrupts this order and ignores/disregards others, what is the appropriate resolution?

Well, let us turn the lens of examination around:

If someone, for spurious reasons, as a result of pique, or to silence opinions and ideas they don't like, manages to get moderation to eliminate an entire thread where many other people have contributed their time and thought, what should be the consequence for that person?

What is the 'appropriate resolution'?

You are turning this around and quite inaccurately, and not to say unfairly. This entire issue is yours. You made this problem. And it is you who don't want to 'accept responsibility for your choice.

How to respond to an insult : Certainly do not eliminate the thread! That's my vote.

Does nobody read the 'About this forum' when they join'?

Third one down.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=394

If you start a thread please take responsibility for it. If you think posts are off-topic or irrelevant to the subject you raised PM me and I will, upon reasonable consideration, remove them. On the whole I will look favourably upon such a request.

I suggest that every post of mine was largely on-topic to the conversation. The answers I gave were not those that some wished to hear, but they were related, they were written clearly, and they were not spam.

There is a larger issue here and it does not have to do with deleting a single post, or giving a warning to someone. This has to do with the elimination of a 33+ page thread.

Numerous people participated in that thread, and numerous people, it could be said, went quite a ways off topic. This is what happens on all threads. Here are a couple of examples:




The reason Lacewing chose to get the thread eliminated is because she did not like my ideas and my opinions.

In any case, I am done on the topic. Make of it what you will. I felt that this needed to be aired. Cheers.

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:...
Numerous people participated in that thread, and numerous people, it could be said, went quite a ways off topic. This is what happens on all threads. ...

And if the thread instigator complains I'll look favourably upon their request to remove them but most don't bother.

AMod wrote:Does nobody read the 'About this forum' when they join'?

Third one down.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=394

Oh! Oh! Me sir! I've read it!

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:Obvious Leo, Uwot, Hobbes: You participated in that thread and quite a bit of what you wrote was off-topic (way off topic). Do any of you have an opinion? While it is clear that you hold me and my ideas in contempt, should my posts be eliminated because you don't like them?

I won't speak on behalf of anybody else but my answer is no. I've been around various science and philosophy forums for many years and this sort of thing goes on all the time. Threads go off topic but quite often they go off topic in a new direction which spontaneously suggests itself in response to a post. In my opinion this can be a very good thing because this is a perfectly natural evolutionary process in the free exchange of ideas and in my view such evolution is stifled if the relevance of any individual commentary is too rigidly moderated. I congratulate the mods of this forum for their understanding of this principle.

However, having said that there are other considerations here which ought to be taken into account and Lacewing's thread is a good example of these additional considerations. If a person initiates a topic then she has a right to expect that the subject matter of her topic should be addressed. If the topic digresses and she is content with the digression then I see no reason why this should be the concern of anybody else, including the mods. The digression might turn out to be both more fruitful and more interesting than the original topic was. However if the topic digresses and she repeatedly insists that she wishes the original subject matter of her topic to be addressed then she has every right to do so. This is what happened in the example being used here where Gustav deliberately sabotaged Lacewing's thread to pursue an agenda of his own which was wholly unrelated to the topic. He was repeatedly asked by both Lacewing and others to stop doing this but he consistently ignored these requests, becoming steadily more strident in his obstinacy. The robust exchange of ideas got understandably heated but I have no problem with that. We give as good as we get in the cut and thrust of debate and if we take these things too personally this could well just mean that we are temperamentally unsuited to the philosophical discourse.

I do not agree that the thread should have been deleted, although I do agree that Lacewing had every right to complain to the mods about such a willful sabotage of her thread. When such situations have arisen on other forums I've been involved with the preferred action of the mods has simply been to lock the thread from further discussion if he finds in favour of the complainant. The thread itself remains intact, at least for a reasonable period of time. In my view this is a better way of policing such eventualities but I'm not presuming to tell the moderators here how to conduct their affairs. In the main I reckon they get the balance about right.

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote: Well, I suggest that you are not being perfectly truthful here.

Well as usual, you are not incorporating the broader scope of information before making your assessments.

Here was my complete original request to the moderator:
"Can you please move Gustav's ongoing off-topic discussion to another thread of his own? He has refused to do it himself despite repeated requests, and he is monopolizing this thread as his very own platform for whatever he wants to talk about."

I would have been fine with this... if it were an acceptable/doable solution.

Later, after further thought about giving the moderator more options for handling it, Gustav, I followed up to add that if the discussion could not be moved, that the thread (I had created) be deleted. It was up to the moderator to decide what to do... IF ANYTHING. And that's what they decided, as ONE of the options. I am guessing that if the moderator thought my request was unreasonable and off-the-wall, they would not have done anything at all.

I have been straight and clear with you, but you apparently hear what you want. This same dynamic is probably why a string of other people have stopped interacting with you. You seem to think that everyone else is invalid. Your discussions are of no issue to me, because I do not need to be involved... HOWEVER, when you plant yourself in my topic and continually re-direct and monopolize the discussion for your own purposes... while ignoring my requests that you stop and create your own thread... then I feel it is perfectly reasonable for me to speak to a moderator about it. And that's what I did.

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote: In any case, I am done on the topic. Make of it what you will. I felt that this needed to be aired. Cheers.

Good. And I've responded (again) as clearly as I can. Let's move on.

A final note:

Lacewing wrote:I followed up to add that if the discussion could not be moved, that the thread (I had created) be deleted.

And they took you up on your suggestion. Pages and pages of writing by many people.

A month's work, many scanned pages supporting my perspectives gone, and now we 'move on'. Hmmmm.

I would remind you both that each of you removed yourselves from the thread by firmly stating withdrawal. No one made you do this and it was your free choice. This happened fairly early on. Weeks went by. The thread kept moving forward with other's contributions. You had both abandoned the thread. It was not 'taken' from you.

I appreciated your post for numerous reasons, Leo, except (as you might guess) I don't accept these characterisations by either either you or Lacewing: 'sabotage, derailment, obstinacy'. Anyone can use terms like this, and anyone can *feel* that they are not being respected. Anyone can *say* such things. It does not have and should not have much weight.

In actual fact I did not ever deviate from the general topic of that thread. However, you and Hobbes and Uwot did. You characterised me as doing that, and you used your characterisation as an excuse to go off-topic, and you stated it as such. I took a contrarian stance to the thread but remained on-topic. You and others do not like my ideas or opinions.

Others who participated there, more sympathetic perhaps to my general outlook, may not have felt that I was off-topic. So, whose characterisation should stand? And therein is the problem. You don't have a right to oversee or to judge my contributions.

I understand from my own conversation with moderation that he was busy and really didn't want to sort through the issue. So, deletion seemed the best solution. I do not agree with this choice and I am relatively certain that there was prejudice there. That is one thing that these over-rhetorical characterisations result in: misrepresentation and prejudice.

I put a considerable amount of time and energy into each of the posts on that thread as did numerous others. No part of it was spam, and in fairness no part of it can really be said to have been off-topic. Except your and Hobbes and Uwot's contributions (in a particular section of it). But who ultimately decides even that? What happened resulted in a chilling of speech and was completely reprehensible by any standard. The lesson should be plain to everyone, IMO.

Greta wrote:What's the beef? Is it them? Is it you? Both?

duszek wrote:Pardon ?
What beef ?

"Beef" is a colloquial term for "complaint" or "gripe". If someone insults you then they obviously have a gripe with you.

If someone has a gripe with you then it's a matter of working out if it's you, ie. a legitimate complaint - or them, ie. they are just lashing out and you happen to be a convenient target or hit one of their hot button issues.

My point was that it's not necessary to be immediately defensive. In PhilX's, the provocation is extreme and pretty clearly not Phil's problem. He's normally so lad back I was shocked at some of his responses to HH here - like Mary Poppins telling the family to go fuck themselves :)

Greta wrote:

Greta wrote:What's the beef? Is it them? Is it you? Both?

duszek wrote:Pardon ?
What beef ?

"Beef" is a colloquial term for "complaint" or "gripe". If someone insults you then they obviously have a gripe with you.

If someone has a gripe with you then it's a matter of working out if it's you, ie. a legitimate complaint - or them, ie. they are just lashing out and you happen to be a convenient target or hit one of their hot button issues.

My point was that it's not necessary to be immediately defensive. In PhilX's, the provocation is extreme and pretty clearly not Phil's problem. He's normally so lad back I was shocked at some of his responses to HH here - like Mary Poppins telling the family to go fuck themselves

I'd love to see Mary Poppins lay into the family. Unfulfilled bucket list.

Dalek Prime wrote:I'd love to see Mary Poppins lay into the family. Unfulfilled bucket list.

This is about as close as you'll get for now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGmmiMbflc4