Posted on 10/27/2003 11:53:33 AM PST by SJackson
Wednesday, August 13, 2003 at 13:41
Attack of the Nazi Trolls: A Lesson for Message Board Moderators
In a recent blog entry titled, "I've Been Red-Baited!", I wrote, "I'm not familiar with LibertyForum.org, but it appears to be an anti-Bush, anti-war message board with a distinctly anti-Jewish undertone."
A member of LibertyForum.org named Max Soldo (aka "thoughtcriminal") has responded by e-mail and provided further clarification of LibertyForum's political orientation. He writes:
This forum is a libertarian forum, and is devoted to the libertarian concept of unabashed free speech. With that principle in mind, most posters aren't libertarian as many fringe types have taken advantage of this policy (which includes a no-banning policy) to run amok...hence the preponderance of anti-Jewish posts on this forum.
All of this raises interesting questions for any message board moderator -- such as myself -- who has tried his best to allow a relatively high level of free expression. Inevitably, Nazi trolls find your forum and begin probing your defenses. If you allow them to post messages, they immediately spread the word to other Nazi trolls and soon your message board is infested.
At that point, all the normal people stop posting. It's a bit like when a fight breaks out in a bar and everyone stops talking and turns to watch the fight, transfixed. Suddenly, your message board becomes an arena for Nazi trolls and people arguing with Nazi trolls.
This is called "free speech."
I decided long ago that allowing Nazi trolls to occupy my message board and drive off everyone who does not share their idiosyncratic obsessions is a very poor method for encouraging "free speech." Therefore, I make frequent and forceful use of such allegedly un-libertarian methods as censoring and, when necessary, banning troublemakers, brownshirted or otherwise.
Apparently, the decision-makers at LibertyForum.org have adopted a different approach. As a result, their self-styled "libertarian" message board has become, by Mr. Soldo's description, a playground for non-libertarian "fringe types" to "run amok."
"It does get quite ugly at times, but that's the price one pays for sticking to one's principles," writes Mr. Soldo in a subsequent e-mail.
Well, if that's the price, I don't think I'm willing to pay it. I will add the sad fate of LibertyForum.org to my growing list of reasons for rethinking whether or not I wish to continue calling myself a "libertarian."
You got it :-))
But you can see from the posts since your suggestion that we're already divvying up nicely already.
Truth? You can't handle the truth.
I do what I can. It's a calling...
You could say it's a gift.
While you're up there, would you mind checking for polyps?
BTW, I did help launch the Challenger - I was sitting at the C-9 (instrumentation) console for that one - tape recorders and such. I still recall the screen in front of me freezing on the loss of downlink. The booster chamber pressure readings had fallen off on one side. It was an emotional time.
The next day I walked throught the VAB and the Discovery was hanging there in the horizontal, preparing for ET mate. I wondered if I would ever see it launched.
Eighteen months later, I did. I got the entire STS-26R crew to sign my pilot's logbook ;-)
Nice that I could to have stumbled upon a phrase, no matter how tranparently facetious, of which you display complete understanding in the end.
Thank you very much for your attentiveness to my humble commentary. Your feeling compelled to add a postscript was particularly gratifying, with your syco's bonus adding, to your compliments, subtlety unsurpassed since Sherman's march to the sea.
Or a cry for help.:>)
In what way...
Chad, you walked right into that one....I'm beginning to feel the start of a bwahahahaha comin' on.
Ya just HAD to go and ruin the moment, didn't you ;0)
It's a gift, a special special gift.
I got it from trout.
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