One important difference between the Forum and most other fora is the strong vote—a minority faction can use their strong votes to keep things in circulation unless the majority acts the same way. The Forum is also small enough for brigading to be a major concern.
I think encouraging people who take the view to just strong downvote race science material off the Forum poses its own set of epistemic problems for the Forum. And encouraging them to “merely” downvote may not be effective if the other side is employing the strongvotes.
Maybe this proposed solution would be more viable if there were special voting rules for current topics at mod discretion—e.g., 500 karma required to vote, no strongvotes allowed? I’m not sure, though. If all the race science folks vote and everyone else mostly stays away, the result is a false sense of community views.
Still, I support a ban—race science is off topic, there are other places people can go if they want to talk about it, and these discussions cause significant harmful effects. If discussions of why the New England Patriots and New York Yankees were a scourge on humanity were causing these problems for the Forum, I’d support a ban even though I believe those teams are. :)
One important difference between the Forum and most other fora is the strong vote—a minority faction can use their strong votes to keep things in circulation unless the majority acts the same way. The Forum is also small enough for brigading to be a major concern.
I think encouraging people who take the view to just strong downvote race science material off the Forum poses its own set of epistemic problems for the Forum. And encouraging them to “merely” downvote may not be effective if the other side is employing the strongvotes.
Maybe this proposed solution would be more viable if there were special voting rules for current topics at mod discretion—e.g., 500 karma required to vote, no strongvotes allowed? I’m not sure, though. If all the race science folks vote and everyone else mostly stays away, the result is a false sense of community views.
Still, I support a ban—race science is off topic, there are other places people can go if they want to talk about it, and these discussions cause significant harmful effects. If discussions of why the New England Patriots and New York Yankees were a scourge on humanity were causing these problems for the Forum, I’d support a ban even though I believe those teams are. :)