I agree with most of what you're saying. I do want people to get along. I feel the way to do that is through truth. Sometimes the truth hurts. If you are hurt by the truth then you shouldn't be discussing politics. If you think that I personally don't have the truth and am just talking nonsense then there'd be no need to insult me or get upset over my political opinions because they're baseless and shouldn't affect you.
Which is again why I keep coming back to my "bluelight is not a political forum" point. If we were, I'd probably agree with the point you're making here. But our primary purpose is harm reduction. Presumably people don't join bluelight because they want to hear some political truth. They join to get help with substance abuse questions. Some of those people will be likely to have mental health issues. And our purpose is to help them with their substance abuse related issues as best we can. If having a heavy political subforum does harm to that, all I can think is maybe it'd be better if we just didn't.
Now I don't think any of us want to get rid of CEPS... but my point is that true or not, lines have to be drawn to keep political discussions getting out of hand to such a point that people get hurt. If we were a political forum, I'd say that there should be total free speech and if you can't handle it perhaps you shouldn't join in. But that's not our purpose. Politics is just an additional activity included as part of the social community functions of our primary purpose.
It can be a tough call to decide what should be allowed and what shouldn't. But that's ultimately why there's censorship. Because it goes against our mission to permit discussions that could cause psychological harm with no benefit. And personal attacks to individuals, or groups who individuals here are likely to be part of, is what's particularly at risk of doing such harm.
See this here is problematic. Because the truth hurts, it can be perceived as "hate". And in the world that Lefists have created they feel like they are the arbiters of what is considered hate. And the bar is set extremely low and always in their favor. As an obvious examples of our time, hate against whites is generally accepted especially white males.
I don't expect the staff to be perfect all the time just be fair and if an altercation happens then you should penalize/warn the person who instigated it. Because what is considered an "insult" is very subjective.
It is subjective, you're right. And sometimes we make mistakes. But I hope you can understand that sometimes a mod may feel that if somethings potentially harmful, they should err on the side of caution by deleting the post, and then notifying the other mods so it can be discussed as a group. At which point it may get undeleted, or modified and undeleted. But unfortunately the regular bluelighter doesn't see that process. So they could well think that deletion is the final decision.
Sometimes mistakes are made not simply in the course of action, but simply in how it is communicated. But I suspect that's why this thread is still going. To try and bridge the gap and explain more about the staff point of view and help everyone better understand each other.
I have had people accuse me of being hateful in my life. Some people on the far left are very extreme I agree. And yes this can all be very subjective. Which is why the staff tries to come to these choices as a group, and tries to keep a fairly diverse set of views represented by the staff members. And yea sometimes it takes a little time to come to the best course of action.
The idea isn't to censor anything that could possibly be seen as hateful, but to prevent people saying things that are likely to be harmful to some of the people reading them. Because ideally bluelight should be a place where people can come and have their drug issues be the thing they're worrying about... not that they're gay or a jew or something.
