Skep tickle wrote:Better leave the Welcome mat out in the 'pit.
The "Thunderfoot puts out a new video" thread at atheism+ forum has led to 1 ban-after-1-post, and the person who started that thread, kitsy, has apparently had a temp-ban for "doubling down on a strawman" (to quote SubMor).
kitsy's question after returning from that temp-ban is per protocol and is going over "well" with the mods there (plus is worth a grin):
http://atheismplus.com/forums/viewtopic ... 200#p61099 (bolding added)
The whole A-Plus movement and the people in it are dysfunctional and broken. It hurts my brain every time I read anything from that forum - they will never achieve anything meaningful because *every tiny goddam word* has to be analysed, probed, checked for privilege and, most importantly, weighed up against the person saying it (!). It's easier for them to kvetch and bicker endlessly for days rather than go out and achieve something meaningful in the real world.
How can you possibly get anything done in an atmosphere like that? The forum is a "safe space" for the damaged and delicate radfems to enact their revenge on the perceived bullying they've suffered all their lives.
If an outsider enters their "safe space" and doesn't immediately comply with the hive mind then it is
attacked, belittled, mocked and abused by the performance warriors.
If they want to grow their movement, this approach to newcomers will never work. If they're rude, sarcastic and downright
hostile to anyone who questions, asks for evidence or disagrees with the Borg collective then they're going to drive allies away. They have tried to completely polarise the debate and force people to take sides. They're like George W Bush's "with us or against us" stance. The world is more nuanced. We don't reject Hitchens' arguments about the existence of God because we might disagree with his stance on US Foreign Policy. They're not being "inclusive" or "compassionate" if they drive away people who dare to suggest that sometimes men are the victims of sexism too.
Another reason why this civil war has dragged on as long as it has is because there is no debate. There's arguing, and there's banning but there's no debate. Thunderf00t and Dillahunty could have settled a lot of their arguments quicker if they'd had a live webcam debate and thrashed out their differences. Would they have agreed on everything? Of course not. Would either of them have softened their positions slightly? I think so. Would it have saved months and months of endless dragging-it-out in forums, as well as back-and-forth Youtube videos? I think so, yes.
We, as skeptics, are not always as rational as we like to think we are. And we make mistakes. We form bad arguments, adopt an incorrect position, and sometimes we find it difficult to say "I was wrong about that". This polarisation makes it even harder for either side to concede ground. I doubt very much that Dillahunty will watch Justicar's recent videos and make a video response saying "Sorry, I was wrong about accusing Thunderf00t of being dishonest for raking up old screenshots because I mocked Ray Comfort by putting a banana on the screen". Likewise Thunderf00t is unlikely to make a Potholer54-style Errata video where he corrects any mistakes he's made and re-hones his arguments.