They also have that stupid-ass disengage rule that they weaponize to suppress criticism & dissent as they slip in the last word when the established approach of simply ignoring responses/ceasing to answer them has always worked without shutting down discussion for anyone else: example.
(In that example, I then took the liberty to edit my last comment from an incomplete Socratic discourse to a fully contained criticism, which I encourage everyone to do in that situation.)
They seem terribly confused about the relation of liberty to anarchism or whom public discourse is for.
Public commentary is for the public, not their authors: unlike private messaging (concerned with communicating directly to authors), public discourse is specifically for the public to engage ideas & to present ideas (including contesting ideas) to the public.
Especially on an anonymous public forum, authors are peripheral/irrelevant to the public consideration of ideas.
By granting the author discretion to suppress criticism of their public commentary, it represses the liberty of the public to decide for themselves whether they get to see such criticism or contribute some themselves.
It gives a commenter rather than the public undue control over the direction of public discourse, which isn’t liberty.
Encouraging commenters to get possessive about their public comments & make it about themselves (which their rule does) detracts from the public interest & focus on ideas.
It misleads participants to focus on themselves instead of on the public interest & to mistakenly believe public discourse belongs to any particular individual rather than the public.
None of this serves the public interest for free & open discourse to competitively deliberate ideas.
The disengage rule is really bizarre, and they don’t follow it themselves. For example, I used the disengage rule with one of their admins, so the admin instead brought the comment chain up in a different thread, which apparently isn’t a violation.
So you can disengage with someone, talk shit about them in a different thread, and if they come in to try to explain themselves, they’re now in violation of the disengage rule since they’re engaging.
They also have that stupid-ass disengage rule that they weaponize to suppress criticism & dissent as they slip in the last word when the established approach of simply ignoring responses/ceasing to answer them has always worked without shutting down discussion for anyone else: example. (In that example, I then took the liberty to edit my last comment from an incomplete Socratic discourse to a fully contained criticism, which I encourage everyone to do in that situation.) They seem terribly confused about the relation of liberty to anarchism or whom public discourse is for.
Public commentary is for the public, not their authors: unlike private messaging (concerned with communicating directly to authors), public discourse is specifically for the public to engage ideas & to present ideas (including contesting ideas) to the public. Especially on an anonymous public forum, authors are peripheral/irrelevant to the public consideration of ideas.
By granting the author discretion to suppress criticism of their public commentary, it represses the liberty of the public to decide for themselves whether they get to see such criticism or contribute some themselves. It gives a commenter rather than the public undue control over the direction of public discourse, which isn’t liberty. Encouraging commenters to get possessive about their public comments & make it about themselves (which their rule does) detracts from the public interest & focus on ideas. It misleads participants to focus on themselves instead of on the public interest & to mistakenly believe public discourse belongs to any particular individual rather than the public. None of this serves the public interest for free & open discourse to competitively deliberate ideas.
The disengage rule is really bizarre, and they don’t follow it themselves. For example, I used the disengage rule with one of their admins, so the admin instead brought the comment chain up in a different thread, which apparently isn’t a violation.
So you can disengage with someone, talk shit about them in a different thread, and if they come in to try to explain themselves, they’re now in violation of the disengage rule since they’re engaging.
It just serves for them to silence others.