[Boston-editorial] flamewars

[Matthew Williams]

Yeah, I was probably overly heavy handed in hiding the posts I did, as 
I would say Tim was too. It's certainly allowed them to make hay from 
our mistakes. I guess I'd be OK with seeing how things go by avoiding 
that sort of mistake again. On the other hand, my attitude towards hate 
speech tends to be one of zero tolerance, extending to hiding anything 
ambiguous. (We have actually agreed on this policy vis-a-vis conspiracy 
theories involving Jews or Zionists, agreeing to treat them as 
anti-Semitic even if it's not one hundred percent clear that they are.) 
I suppose that zero tolerance attitude is what caused me to go 
overboard in this case. -- Matt

On Mar 11, 2005, at 8:00 PM, Pete Stidman wrote:

> Actually I feel that both you and Tim are being drawn
> into very dangerous territory.  I think that
> especially on the black panther article you were
> unnessecarily heavy handed matthew.  I agree with your
> side of the argument of course, but by censoring you
> gave sid credibility he wouldn't have had otherwise.
>
> I saw that post earlier and let it go since most would
> ignore it.
>
> We need to take a stand some places, but we have to be
> careful and keep the bar fairly low or else we will be
> criticized by right wingers for being very heavily
> biased.  I think we should avoid that possibility.
>
> The thing to do would have be refute their claims by
> asking for solid proof.  And then deconstructing their
> answers.  We must prevail with reason, not censorship.
>  I t looks bad on us otherwise.  It looks like we are
> trying to hide something.
>
> -Pete
>
>
> --- Matthew Williams <mw21 at mindspring.com> wrote:
>> Hello all --
>>
>> We seem to have a couple of trolls going by the
>> names of Zoltar and Sid
>> who are provoking flamewars, perhaps deliberately.
>> Both Tim and I have
>> taken the bait--see the features at
>>
> http://boston.indymedia.org/feature/display/33529/index.php
>> and
>>
> http://boston.indymedia.org/feature/display/33596/index.php
>>
>> respectively. For the most part, what they're saying
>> either doesn't
>> violate policy or falls into a gray area. Given the
>> trouble they've
>> been causing though, I would like to propose that
>> they be classified
>> under the "disruptive individual" clause of our
>> editorial policy and
>> all posts by them be hidden, as we've done with
>> other trouble-makers in
>> the past. Do you all think this makes sense? Or am I
>> reacting too
>> quickly? Should we let them post a little longer and
>> see if they keep
>> on provoking flamewars or if these two sets of posts
>> are just
>> aberrations?
>>
>> -- Matt
>>
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