Anonymized @hotdogprincess at their request.
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@singletona082 has been given a brief timeout to reflect on how personally one should take discussions here.
Itās been a rough few days for anyone who cares about equality and inclusiveness. Iād recommend to everyone to try and take a moment for themselves, maybe outside, and breathe a bit. The battles will (sadly) still be there tomorrow.
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FYI:
This will come as a surprise to no one, but tempers are a little flared up with the recent US political events and recent tragic loss of life. These things are important to a lot of people, for good reason, and someone who disagrees with you may well feel much more personal over the next while as a result.
A friendly reminder from your mod team that online discourse and itās (mostly) anonymous nature tend towards hyperbole and intellectual brinksmanship - but itās still just an online discussion. Remember to step away if you feel your stress meter building. Focus on your family/friends/whatever makes you smile, or our last few beautiful days of summer. Or even better, channel that energy into supporting the issues at hand! Donāt let the BBS stoke your ābut someone is wrong on the internet!ā flames. Believe me, that way leads to dragons.
Stick to debating the topics discussed, and donāt assume bad faith on the part of fellow posters (or flag if you feel they are genuinely trolling. Thereās more around right now and weāve sent more than a few packing the last few days).
That being said, because tensions are high, moderation is going to be slightly stricter in politicized topics as a result. I strongly recommend flagging rather than replying to the inevitable bad-faith posters who are going to come out of the woodwork, as removal of their posts almost certainly means removal of replies as well.
Thanks.
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@Max_Blancke is no longer welcome at the BBS.
This was a careful and considered response on my part, in large part after reading the topic What to do with Confederate statues? which showed a continued pattern of Max using false equivalence to try and suggest that the narrative of a topic was invalid because #NotAllSomethingSomething (in the case of that topic, that not all those who want the removal of statues are acting in good faith).
There has been a consistent pattern of this behaviour, and it always leads to the same thing - complete derailment of the topic by pointing out that a few bad actors donāt change the fundamental facts, and that those bad actors are usually not relevant to the original post anyway. These positions are often double- or triple-downed upon.
I leave it as an exercise to the reader if such represents ātrollingā in the classical sense, but it does, unquestionably, represent toxic discourse we do not need to be having on the BBS, hence this decision.
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@Nickle has received a short ban for ābrinksmanship trollingā the Confederate discussions despite repeated flagging.
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Iāve always felt that Max is an intelligent and creative person, who though misinformed in many ways could be reached, engaged, and perhaps eventually enlightened. I am sorry to lose the opportunity to continue to try; I think Texas needs as much enlightenment as it can get, and I learned many interesting things from his non-political posts.
I am aware that others do not agree. 
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I felt similarly to you as well, but recent events made it clear more time or effort was not going to change the overall pattern of behaviour. I find that fact disheartening, but it also made the actions taken necessary.
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as a multigenerational native texan who is also a far left liberal democrat i can only agree with your sentiment. for a while i felt as you did about max but over the past couple of years as i watched the ratio of threads in which he could be reasoned with to those in which he couldnāt be drop from 1 in a 100 to 1 in a 1000 i pretty much gave up on engagement.
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not his first time out, probably wonāt be his last. at least we can count on him to show up only for his pet peeves.
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Iām running out of space for my hobby horses and grinding wheels.
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You donāt happen to sharpen knives with those, do you?
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axes mostly
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Carry on then.
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And old saws!
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No, the account was closed for inactivity. Iāve reached out to try and consolidate them under one account.
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Oh, I get it, I misinterpreted the account consolidation because posts were disappearing and Server 500 errors popping up. I see theyāre back now. Thanks!
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@wisconsinplatt anonymized at user request.
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[posts]
[post is (quite correctly) flagged and hidden]
[post earns a 30-like Good Reply badge, while hidden]
[post is (quite correctly) nuked by friendly neighbourhood admins]
Well, thatās some mixed messaging, right there, guys.
In no society or community is there perfect alignment of laws and ethical principles.
In every society there are situations where a distinction must be made between what is legal and what is right.
In the better communities and societies, the distinctions are few. But sometimes, you need to choose, because the distinction is real, and the stakes are high. Sometimes, you need to ask a question: when confronted with genuine evil, will I follow the rules, or will I do what is right?
In this thread, there is discussion about whether it is moral to engage white supremacists using methods that may sometimes run contrary to commonly-accepted community behaviour. In this thread, multiple posts that engaged white supremacist apologism have run contrary to the community guidelines.
That is way too meta before my first cup of coffee.
Yeah, well. We tried not engaging for a while in the 1930s. Itās the one thing we know doesnāt work. Eat what you gotta eat.
And thank you!
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