Maybe the larger issue is that we don’t treat people over the internet as we would treat those in the same room.
If we were all in the same room, and I pointed out that you were humiliating a person with a disability, would you silence me before I finished speaking? Would you disagree with me using the language of your last post, or maybe be a bit friendlier? If I told you I have a background in psychology would you go on about how useless that is and continue to humiliate a man you know nothing about? He did turn out to have a disability, based on (your words) “fairly convincing” evidence… now it’s “largely specious”. Sorry I called a “sub thread” a “thread”, I’m a bit new.
There’s people on the other end of your computer screen, and many of them are well intentioned. Cutting off a conversation because you think everyone’s points have been made is extreme censorship. Humiliating someone infront of millions is unspeakably cruel, often makes people suicidal. It ruins lives Rob, and it’s punishment usually far beyond whatever crime has been committed.
Removing that kind of post respects the harm principal of free speech, which I’ve mentioned a few times in this thread, and is a widely accepted limitation.
This is about principal, not being moderated: I’ve been moderated before and not cared, but you are an advocate of free speech. If David Suzuki littered on my lawn I’d care very little about my lawn, but it would really bother me that that someone I admire for environmentalist values would litter. You can act as a proponent for free speech, and you can end conversation on your blog when you think it should end… but you can’t have both and not admit the irony.
