Intolerance on BPL [serious thread]

There have been situations on BPL where I feel that people have been using intolerant language. I struggle with how to manage those situations. As a moderator, I feel that I am left with two choices:

A) I can edit or delete the post.
B) I can let the post remain and let the community respond to the post.

My inclination has been to avoid Aption A. I am reluctant to sanitize intolerant speech. I don’t want to make it go away. I want other people to see it and respond to it. I want people to speak out in these situations. I want the person to hear many voices telling them that what they said is not acceptable.

I have proposed to Ryan that we add a statement to the Forum Guidelines that says something like the following:

“BPL encourages its members to take a position of tolerance towards other people, lifestyles and choices.

From time to time, a member of our community may express a viewpoint that could be considered intolerant or insensitive by other members of the community. When this occurs, BPL and its moderators prefer to let the membership discuss the situation openly rather than deleting, editing or otherwise sanitizing the conversation by editing/deleting posts. “

I have proposed that when an incident happens, the BPL moderation staff will post this new policy to the thread along with a link to the Forum Guidelines. This would let the other members know that the moderation staff is aware of the incident and would hopefully encourage others to share their thoughts on the incident.

My suggestion has been tentatively accepted by Ryan. He has given me his blessing to open this discussion up to the community. Thank you, Ryan.

So my questions here are:

1. What do you think BPL’s moderators should do when someone communicates in an intolerant manner?
2. Can you propose better language for the proposed addition to the forum guidelines?

Leaving it there is condoning it. Whether you intend to or not, you are saying this is tolerated.  What, in your opinion, should get left on the site: swears, vulgarities, racists terms, homophobic terms, sexist terms, pornography, child pornography?  I don’t think any of these belong on a backpacking sight.

The moderators seem to fearful of being called the PC police.  People can communicate their ridiculous, heinous beliefs in a respectful manner. Asking for civility is not PC gone astray on a private sight trying to earn money.

I do find it interesting, that you think the talk it out policy is best, yet you have locked the particular thread in question.  How exactly do we talk it out?

Just “delete” and remind the original poster to repost up to standard like Bruce T explains later

Ed:brevity 

I think that the answer is pretty simple. Backpacklight is a brand: what do you want it to represent? The audience for Backpackinglight is International and the site exists to provide knowledge, education and understanding. Additionally, to grow the site, it has to be viewed as having integrity. We are here to talk about gear and techniques and philosophy.

Discriminatory remarks have no place in a forum like this.  I have very strong opinions about this due to an experience at another backpacking forum. I made a lot of contributions to expand on the knowledge base and was an active member. I was just start to grow my cottage industry and this was a great launching point. Unfortunately, some people on the site started to post political comments about immigration as well as what they considered religious jokes about events in the Middle East.  At that point, I decided that I no longer wanted to be associated with that forum and left. I was not the only one who left the site as several other contributors felt the same way.

“BPL encourages its members to take a position of tolerance towards other people, lifestyles and choices.”

Calling someone an A$$Hole or a D$CK that’s name calling. Not professional, but I can let that pass. Volleying those comments back and forth, I just tune out. Climate Change comments? Put them in Chaff.

But are you saying racist comments are a person’s lifestyle or choice and that we should be tolerant? There I do not agree with you. Saying comments that are belittling and bullying? Not acceptable.  My 2 cents

Ben, Thank you for your response.

The examples you give are all pretty black and white. I don’t think I’d leave any of those up.

The situations that come up are often a bit more nuanced than that. In one incident a person mentioned how a particular organization was being ruined by the inclusion of specific groups. I disagreed with the opinion and found the ideas to be homophobic and sexist. Multiple forum members spoke up and the person eventually edited their post. I was glad to see the forum take care of the problem and I suspect the message had more impact coming publicly from multiple people rather than having me delete a couple lines from a post.

I locked the thread because I wanted to open up a larger conversation about the subject. I stated my intent when I locked it. I have received messages (plural) in support of my choice to lock the thread.

In the locked thread a term was used that is on the wikipedia’s list of ethnic slurs. What specifically do you think I should have done in that thread? Should I have deleted the entire post? Should I have deleted the word and typed in XXXXX? Please be specific.

Proposed rule: Any use of terms on the wikipedia list of ethic slurs gets deleted. I’m ok with that. Do I delete the whole post or just the word?

“A) I can edit or delete the post.
B) I can let the post remain and let the community respond to the post.”

C) You, as a moderator, can respond, in-thread, in a thoughtful, measured way.

D) You can, by example or by PMs, encourage selected non-moderators to chime in as well.

My son, since early in high school, did this very well on social media in our small, rural, conservative town which is not exactly a hotbed of tolerance (e.g. there’s a pick-up truck at the high school flying a 4′ x 6′ Confederate Battle Flag).  My son didn’t refute objectionable posts directly, but his own thoughtful, more expansive views were in stark contrast to the OP and seemed a very effective appeal to anyone in the middle ground on an issue.  Now in college, he moderates a sub-Reddit, keeps it within that sub’s pretty strict guidelines and redirects some posters to other subs where their behavior would be allowed.

Thanks for your response, David.

“C) You, as a moderator, can respond, in-thread, in a thoughtful, measured way.”

Agreed. I’ve been reluctant to do so because the lines between Matthew the moderator and Matthew the person. I think that having a more clear policy from BPL will help with this. Then I can quote the guideline as a moderator and then say X, Y and Z as a person.

“D) You can, by example or by PMs, encourage selected non-moderators to chime in as well.”

Again, agreed. It hadn’t occurred to me to hit up other members and ask them to chime in as well. That’s a great idea.

I wish I had your son’s ability to write the type of post you describe. I don’t feel like I am a gifted writer and my time is short right now (new job as a HS teacher. I’m *really* busy). That said, thank you for sharing the idea. I can try to share my thoughts without directly engaging or arguing the objectionable post.

Thank for you reaching out!

In many situations where there is no clear black & white decision to be made, I have found the following advice to be invaluable:

1. Create clear rules
2. Yet, always allow room for exceptions to the rules to occur (to be evaluated on a case by case basis)
3. Create rules to govern the exceptions
4. Pay attention to intention vs. impact

The problem is that some folks may have reasonably good intentions, but the way they communicate may be interpreted as either hurtful or intolerant. Perhaps the first step would be to reach out off-line to the person to inquire, and ask the person to consider editing their post, and offer them the reason why. If people know that their posts could be governed in that way, they might use more discretion.

Regarding your specific example, I still believe that the original poster should have a “right” to amend their post first, but agree that if they don’t comply within a certain amount of time, their post will be removed. I think as a moderator, you can either compel the poster to edit their post, or you can remove the whole thing. A “line item veto” doesn’t sit right with me.

My two cents…

On many reddit forums –

“We enforce a standard of common decency and civility here. Please be respectful to others. Personal attacks, bigotry, fighting words, otherwise inappropriate behavior or content, comments that insult or demean a specific user or group of users will be removed. Regular or egregious violations will result in a ban.”

This replaces the offending language or entire comment, leaving the rest of the thread intact. Everyone gets the message. I’m not exposed to someone’s BS.  I don’t need a civics discussion in the middle of a thread.

what David said

do a minimum of deleting posts

do the right thing, and don’t listen to complainers

+1 Greg and David

I missed Jon’s post earlier. Thank you for sharing your experience on the other forum.

Thanks to Matt, Greg, and Jerry. You all raise useful points.

Reddit’s guidelines are clearly written yet allow some room for interpretation. They aren’t too different from what BPL says but they do address a couple of issues that our guidelines leave out. Perhaps we can roll a couple of those into our guidelines.

Thanks to everyone for sharing their perspectives so far.

Ben, ….The examples you give are all pretty black and white. I don’t think I’d leave any of those up…

Then it really amazes me that you have left ethnic slur up in the thread being discussed.

In the locked thread a term was used that is on the wikipedia’s list of ethnic slurs. What specifically do you think I should have done in that thread? Should I have deleted the entire post? Should I have deleted the word and typed in XXXXX? Please be specific.

In that specific case I would have XXXXX’d out the word and maybe added a parenthetical (moderated… let’s not use ethnic slurs on bpl and be respectful of all).  I would done that in this particular case because the poster did not intend to use the ethnic slur (wasn’t even aware he was using one) and it was not important to the point being made.  A post that is a slur filled diatribe should just be deleted as being irrelevant to bpl with a note to the poster explaining why it was deleted (plus increasing repercussions for repeat offenders).

I have a bit of a problem with language being a bigger issue for folks here than pretty much anything else. Insinuating or outright saying someone is a liar, a psychopath, a fascist, a wimp etc, that does not seem to cross the line but boy say that four letterr word and now you have done it.  I know this is me and things will cntinue as they are but to me there is much worse out there than foul language. It’s a bit of a classist thing…doing dirty but keeping your hands clean.

Ok. Thanks for responding, Ben.

Kat, I’ll PM you for more info.

Wrong thread and likely wrong forum to express my frustration about the particulars I mentioned above. It’s well beyond BPL.  Ignore…

Ok. Please holler if I can assist. I’m trying to be helpful. I’m not always good at it but I try.

I will but here I just stumbled and messed up. Didn’t realize what this thread was about.

Matthew,

I appreciate you bringing the topic up and creating a space for us to discuss it.

The original thread, to me, didn’t seem out of hand. A word which has racist implications was used and the user was called out. I would have appreciated if the poster who used the word (who seemed to be a good faith actor) had rescinded their usage of the word without making excuses and I also would have appreciated if the user who called them out originally (who also seemed to be a good faith actor) had done so with a sense of persuasiveness.

I appreciated Wisner’s response because it both corrected the remark and used banter to do so. That, to me, seems an appropriate way to navigate the issue.

–

Outside of that specific instance it seems that simply using an “XXXX” on racist, homophobic, and sexist slurs coupled with a private PM citing the infraction is more than reasonable. The person isn’t publicly shamed (which promotes defensiveness in the moment) and provides a clear notice that such language is impermissible.

Here is the link to the thread that has been referenced several times:

https://backpackinglight.com/forums/topic/lightest-possible-spinning-reel/

[potentially humorous comment edited out of a serious thread – MK]

[just keeping this conversation on track – MK]

I hold the opinion that language still matters.  When I read that term in the thread that triggered this discussion,  I was taken aback, having grown up knowing that word was definitely NOT a compliment.  I don’t thing the moderators can or should judge intent on the part of those who post, but some kind of heads-up or AHEM as a warning ought to be issued.  Additional violations should be treated with appropriate severity.

If I had used that term at work, I’d have been out the door in 5 minutes.