4629163

onlyanorthernsong has not logged in in almost 4 days.

4629189 Yeah and your point? If a user is banned they would have a line crossing out their username.

>rallying support against a ban that already expired

Man, I can't wait until I start getting called a creationist because I don't support abuse over religious differences

4629206
Maybe he went outside and was so awed by the various Things he saw in the bright light that he realized the dark inside would never feel the same.

4629286 I live by a river, the view is gorgeous from outside my balcony. Sometimes during the summer I might go for a quick swim.

4629230 Eh, less abuse and more "I really disagree with you and here is a really long strongly worded blogpost about why". Almost the same thing, I guess, when it comes down to keeping the site free of personal attacks...

4629286 No, don't say that! One does not simply venture Outside.

4629230

> "Man, I can't wait until I start getting called a creationist because I don't support abuse over religious differences"

⸘What‽

You have no idea what happened, ¿do you?:

Nopony supported abuse over religious differences. What happened is that RealityCheck made false scientific claims. onlyanorthernsong fact-checked the claims and corrected them, with citations.

Then Meeester banned onlyanorthernsong. 1stly, most that that Meeester mistook snark for attack and naming RealityCheck by in-real-life-name for doc-dropping (RealityCheck openly uses his real name, so this is not doc-dropping, but snarky "Oh Ed (Ed is not the real name of RealityCheck), ¿do not you know about the findings from Professor Robert Bakker from 1978?") and gave him a day-ban. While trying to work within the system to get the ban lifted, we learned that the ban is for 3 days and the reason is because Meeester believes that correcting scientific claims is an attack against the religion of RealityCheck.

This is when things exploded. Fact-checking and correcting scientific claims is not a religious attack. If an antivaccer would make scientific claims and somepony else would fact-check and correct the scientific claims of the antivaccer, complete with citations, ¿would the fact-checking and corrections be an attack on the religion of the antivaccer? The wrongful ban was excessive. Enter the Streisand-Effect. The overly long unfair ban lead to a campaign to get ponies to read the deleted BlogPost. I personally propagated the link to an off-site mirror and reposted the BlogPost as a BlogPost in my onsite Blog. When one attacks science and proscience-ponies, proscience-ponies fight back. The excessive wrongful ban of onlyanorthernsong lead to many more ponies reading the BlogPost than if Meeester would have let onlythemorningsong and his BlogPost languish in obscurity.

After over 3 days, onlythemorningsong still had not returned. I decided that I needed to do something to put pressure on the admins to unban onlythemorningsong. I realized that I would probably receive a ban, but since onlythemorningsong took 1 for science and skepticism, it would be cowardly of me not to do something, even if I get a permaban for mine heroism. I decided to start a petition-group and promote it.

I received a retaliatory ban, but onlythemorningsong is back, so it was worth it.

About the retaliatory ban, Meeester had a plausible reason for banning me; Meeester could have banned me for spamming. Although it would not be his real personal reason but because I had to resort to spamming*, it would be a real reason. The justification was that only 2 of 7 groups were appropriate. Just like personal attacks and DocDropping would have been a plausible reason for the excessively long ban, although it was snark and RealityCheck already uses his real name, but went with fact-checking and correcting scientific claims with citations, is an attack against religion, this was a dumb justification:

* Mea Culpa

I careful chose groups devoted science and skepticism or groups where onlythenorthernsong frequents. I chose those groups carefully for appropriateness. Once again, Meeester banned unjustifiably.

Nopony has been called a creationist for not supporting abuse over religious differences.

4632981

Nopony has been called a creationist for not supporting abuse over religious differences.

Ah, well, I guess you're technically correct because you called us creatards, not creationists, so... eh, technicalities, technicalities.

If you want to make the argument that the blog didn't count as an attack, then that's fine. I disagree with you, as do the rest of us, but at least there I can respect your position. What I can't respect is people making absurd claims like the ban went into place because we want to suppress facts.

The Streisand Effect isn't really an appropriate reference here because this wasn't an attempt to prevent people from viewing a piece of information so much as an attempt to stop someone from posting a piece of information because we don't support abuse. Which, again, is what the ban was about. If people want to distribute the blog off-site, then that's fine. I probably agree with most of the factual content of the blog (I don't want to read 16,000 words about science when I'm already an atheist and don't agree with creationism whatsoever) but it's not something we want to host on this site. It's almost like submitting a story that has no ponies in it, then putting it up on Fanfic.net when it gets rejected and then running around talking about how awesome the Streisand Effect is. We didn't suppress the story, we just don't want it hosted here. If you wanna go on a site that's okay with attack blogs, then go nuts posting this thing. But keep it off Fimfic, please. I can laugh off being called a "creatarded admin" because it's honestly a really funny, toothless insult, but I'm not okay with attacks being spread about other people. I don't agree with much of anything RealityCheck says, but I have defended his right to say those things on multiple prior occasions and I will continue to do so, because that's what freedom of expression is all about.

4633193

When I wrote that I was mad. It was full of vitriole. Mea Culpa. I just seen this sort of abuse from creationists far too many time. Now that I am calm, ¿was I wrong? I do not know. I do know that onlyamorningsong got a very long ban and the official reason, according to both onlyanorthernsong and Meeester is for attacking the religious believes of RealityCheck —— ¡not personal attacks!:

4d, 14h ago Meeester said:

Young Earth Creationism is literally a religious belief, and like any religious belief, we will not tolerate attacks against it on this site.

I am not going to debate the validity of anyone's belief as I left my tinfoil hat in my car. Take a chillpill and just ignore people you don't agree with. Or you will just end up in the same boat as your friend, taking a break from the site.

That is from Meeester. This is what onlyanorthernsong has to write:

#26 · 19h, 19m ago · 4 · · xoid

1933783

especially since my source for all of that was realitycheck himself, who openly uses his real name and has been telling his story on the internet for fifteen years. every single one of those details comes from something realitycheck himself posted online in a public place or forum.

oh and the actual reason for the ban was and i quote "attacking another member's religious beliefs"

not for publishing private info or anything like that.

Both Meeester and onlyanorthernsong indicate that this is about being banned because Meeester believes that correcting scientific claim with citations attacks the religion of RealityCheck. I do not know whether Meeester is a creationist, but Meeester does not know the difference between scientific claims and religious claims:

Religious claims are about belief without evidence. As an example, believong that a god exists and has 3 subparts which are connectedin an whole being is a religious claim.

Scientific claims are about testability, such as whether the Earth is round.

When religions make testable claims, such as the age of the Earth, those are Scientific claims and Science has a right to test them.

¿Would you want this scenario to playout on FiMFiction.Net?:

Antivaccer:
"¡Vaccines cause autism!"

Science-Proponent:
"The evidence does not support that claim. Here are citations."

Antivaccer:
"¡The Science-Proponent attacks my religion!"

Admin:
"I ban the Science-Proponent."

¿Why do not you matriculate Pineta into your ranks? Pineta knows the difference between scientific and religious claims.

Once again: if you don't view the blog as an attack, then that's fine, I can at least respect what you're saying. If something like this happens in the future, then please open with refuting that the blog was an attack. When you immediately jump to tin-foil hat conspiracy theories and write off our actions as "attacks on science" (and loudly blog about how we're all "creatarded admins") then you are going to get dismissed as a fringe radical.

I mean, maybe Meeester screwed up, maybe the blog wasn't an actual attack. That's not how I view things, but it's a possibility. Regardless, it was viewed as an attack and deleted on those grounds. If you challenge those grounds, you have a reasonable shot at getting us to change our opinion, provided your arguments are good. If you call everyone creatarded, fling "Streisand Effect" around willy-nilly, and start yelling about how the only possible action here was one in attack of science, you automatically lose the argument because that is patently absurd.

Something to consider.

4633208

In my day to day life I am an attorney, and thus I am familiar with judgement and I know judges are forced to sometimes just draw lines in the sand to get things under control, and these lines, by definition, are arbitrary.

I also know that being a moderator in a place like this has to be a thankless job. This isn't easy.

Having said this, and given the opportunity to speak directly to a moderator... can I say that if the goal here is to preserve " freedom of speech" or of expression, perhaps you are handling this the wrong way when it comes to the particular and individual case of RealityCheck?

RealityCheck is not a person who tolerates dissent or criticism. He is right you are wrong, period, and the sooner you realize this the sooner he can save your soul. If you go on his blogposts and disagree with him, he will talk down to you or berate you . If he cannot scare you off, if you show the smallest bit of backbone, the smallest bit of determination, or worse, if you bringe gasp! evidence to back up your argument he will delete your posts and block you.

Don't take my word for it. go look at any of his controversial posts ( even before the great appledash meltdown of July 2014 brought him notoriety) and count how many deleted comments there are. more often than not it is literally dozens and dozens.

Here is my point, certainly RealityCheck has a right to express himself in any way he wants on any subject he desires, but the rest of us ALSO have a right to express our approval or disapproval. Freedom of expression is not a one way blast, it is a two way street, in which I can say whatever I want and you can respond to what I said.

But realitycheck brooks no disapproval. He blocks you and censors you no matter what. Look at me. I was actually one of his earliest and most vocal fans back when he was starting out and did not yet have the courage to bring his stories to a dead stop so talking magical horses could parrot his beliefs. He wrote a story called Nightmare Night and Nyx back when Past Sins itself was still not on this site. If you look at the comment section you will notice at least one wildly positive comment by yours truly for every chapter, RC and I discussed story elements, i even helped shape the story and RC thanked me for it.

But one day in a blogpost RC complained that in HIE stories humans always listed the crusades in the list of ills that ail humankind, but never " the actions of atheist dictatorships like Nazi Germany". Now I am a huge history buff, so I knew that the Nazi's where not atheist. and I said as much. he simply deleted my post. I called him out on it. He replied something like "Of course I deleted it and I will delete any posts that are at a similar level of absurdity, the Nazis were the epitome of Humanism and atheism"I replied by linking a youtube video of young nazi officers swearing loyalty to the fuhrer " with god as our witness", pictures of the " Gott mitt Uns" ( " god is with us") belt buckles all the soldiers in th whermacht wore, and transcripts of a speech in which Hitler said that his work fighting against communists and Jews was a continuation of the struggle Jesus began. When RealityCheck saw this, he deleted that post and banned me, for committing the sin of bringing evidence to bear in support of my position.

This is the way he operates. He makes explosive statements, he demeans and berates anyone who disagrees, and then he blocks and bans anyone who has evidence or does not cower before him. This is a pattern of behavior he has exhibited for well over a decade. This man had his own Encycopledia Dramatica page about him before the first episode of MLP:FIM aired. As you surely know RealityCheck is a webcomic artist. he used to have his webcomics hosted on a site that kicked him off for abusing his mod powers, namely for blocking too many people for minor issues. he had to host his own website out of pocket as a result. And of course anyone who disagrees with him there gets banned as well.

So given that one is not allowed to post a critique or rebtuttal on his posts, how does one react to Realitycheck posting things like " my religion has been proven by science, whereas evolution can never been proven by science?" I think it is perfectly valid for me to rebut this on my own blog. I do not see how this in any way infringes on RealityCheck and his ability to say what he wants. it does not infringe on his freedom of speech and expression. after all no one is forcing him to read my blogpost. He can express his viewpoints as is his right, and i can repond to his viewpoints, as is my right. Allowing RealityCheck to label response posts to him as " personal attacks" leading to the ban of the poster prioritizes the speech of RealityCheck at the expense of anyone who disagrees with him he gets to block all criticism of him on his own blogposts and can reach out to other peoples blogs and censor those as well, meanwhile we who disagree with him are not even allowed to express our disagreement in our own blogs except through roundabout methods , like not mentioning his name.Do we now have to live in fear of this man?? clearly our freedom of expression is worth much less than that of RealityCheck!

Or to flip it around. I wrote a post on my blog about my deconversion from christianity. Assume a christian tries to respond with a defense of his religion and I block him and delete his posts. Assume he then creates his own blog post, linking to mine and rebutting it point by point. Can I go running to the mods to get this guy banned because he is attacking my ( lack of) religious beliefs?

And now in the last few days guess who out of the blue decided to follow me? did you guess RealityCheck? the answer is RealityCheck.Do you think he follows me because he wants to read my Nyx stories? Yeah, No. I am sure we can all agree that he follows me because i " attacked" him and he wants to monitor my blogposts for the moment I step out of line ( in his definition of the terms) so he can go running to you guys claiming that I attacked him again.

RealityCheck is simply put an authoritarian. He comes from an authoritarian environment. He grew up as the son of the pastor, and in his church if you disagreed with the pastor you had to go. Similarly realitycheck expects people who disagree with him to go away. Banned out of his church, his website, his blog, and if their blog can be shut down good to. Yes if he can convince the modsof this website to ban people who have stood up to him he will do so in a second. He would love to have you his dirty work for him. He is a bully claiming to be bullied, a persecutor who claims to be persecuted.

It also seems to me odd that in your attempt to stop the drama you stop the people reacting to the bombthrower, not the bombthrower himself, not the guy who is generating the drama but those who react to the drama. If RealityCheck had not written his homophobic appledash rant, there would have been no blogs " attacking" him. I would not have written a rebuttal of his creationist post if he had not written said post to begin with. The " attacks" do not come out of the blue sky. They are reactions to specific acts by realitycheck.

So what can you do about this?
I am not a fan of censorship. So stopping him from blogging is not the key. Here is what I propose. Tell realitycheck that he is welcome to keep posting controversial topics in his blog, but you will remove his ability to block users or to delete comments on those blogposts. This maximizes RealityChecks rights to express himself and also maximizes our rights to respond to his points. The current balances prioritizes RealityCheck's speech over those who disagree with him, he gets to say whatever he wants, and to stomp out all who dare raise voices of disagreement. Unequal rights are not rights at all!!
I presume the point of blogposts is to generate discussion, not as vessels for divine uncontestable missives to be spread to the unenlightened masses. So this change would maximize the usablity of this function,it would make it function closer to the original intentions.

At the very least do something to minimize the drama buy addressing the SOURCE of it yes??

And please can you make him unfollow me? I do not appreciate that a reactionary man who keeps whining about political correctness is now breathing down my neck in order to enforce his own brand of PC on me. I would rather live without the RealityCheck thought police.

Again i wish to express my understanding at the difficulty that you and the rest of the mod team are placed in by this situation.

Yours very truly,
Only a Northern Song.

4637874

So what can you do about this?

You could try ignoring him. It's what I do.

4637874 Jesus christ that's a lot of words. I really don't want this to become a whole big thing. I'll give this one solid reply out of respect, but then I'm gonna have to just be done. It's not worth this. Nothing is worth this.

Don't take my word for it. go look at any of his controversial posts ( even before the great appledash meltdown of July 2014 brought him notoriety) and count how many deleted comments there are. more often than not it is literally dozens and dozens.

I've seen all this before, and while it's certainly behavior I don't remotely respect, it's not against the rules. My advice to people who are faced with this is to walk away and just go do more productive things than waste breath worrying about these kinds of people. I don't respect the opinions of people who censor critics enough to really worry about what they have to say. I think the site would be better if more people followed that example.

So given that one is not allowed to post a critique or rebtuttal on his posts, how does one react to Realitycheck posting things like " my religion has been proven by science, whereas evolution can never been proven by science?"

You walk the fuck away from your computer, or go to a different website. That kind of absurdity is not something you're going to talk people out of. You cannot win that argument any more than you can beat a pigeon at chess. Why you'd even try is just beyond me, because at best you're just going to make a ton of noise and get a lot of people angry when you could have just gone and played video games or written horsefic or watched paint dry for 14 hours or literally anything else. It is not physically possible to do something less productive than argue religion on the internet. No endeavor you could possibly undertake has less frivolity and pointlessness than internet religious debates.

I think it is perfectly valid for me to rebut this on my own blog.

It's fine if you attack the argument, but not so fine when you attack the person. I didn't exactly want to sit and waste an evening reading 16,000 words of stuff I probably already agree with, but Meeester apparently did and judged it to be a personal attack on RC. I'll stand by Meeester's judgment as I trust him in these matters.

[various things about RC's speech being prioritized over those who disagree]

Again, maybe Meeester screwed up, maybe it wasn't a personal attack. I don't know, I didn't read the whole thing. But that's the argument you should be making, that what you did didn't constitute a personal attack. In which case you might get an apology from Meeester. That's about all you can hope for at this point, since the ban has already expired and there's nothing anyone can do.

Interpreting a ban over a personal attack as an attempt to suppress freedom of disagreement is really the wrong way to look at it, because no, you're absolutely allowed to blog about your beliefs so long as they don't attack people personally. I think it's unbelievably, insanely stupid to waste your time doing that, but hey, go nuts.

I am sure we can all agree that he follows me because i " attacked" him and he wants to monitor my blogposts for the moment I step out of line ( in his definition of the terms) so he can go running to you guys claiming that I attacked him again.

So let him. If you don't actually attack him any more, then any reports he files will get dismissed and he'll eventually get banned for filing false reports. That's kind of a win for you, right?

He would love to have you his dirty work for him.

Good thing I don't, then!

He is a bully claiming to be bullied, a persecutor who claims to be persecuted.

No disagreements there, but in my experience the last big one was a blog where he said he didn't support gay rights. Which, hey, freedom of speech. Apart from deleting comments and generally being a tyrant about criticism, he handled himself pretty respectfully. The people who, inexplicably, decided that it was a good idea to try and persuade someone that these deep-seated beliefs of theirs were wrong, over the internet of all things, resorted within days to personal attacks on his character and name-calling ad-hominem. It was actually really sad to watch, because the side I actually agreed with ideologically handled itself so poorly that I was actually on RC's side. As a non-heterosexual atheist who hates censorship, I felt RC handled himself better than the other side. That's saying something.

If RealityCheck had not written his homophobic appledash rant, there would have been no blogs " attacking" him.

Ha. Earlier you said:

Or to flip it around. I wrote a post on my blog about my deconversion from christianity. Assume a christian tries to respond with a defense of his religion and I block him and delete his posts. Assume he then creates his own blog post, linking to mine and rebutting it point by point.

Ooooohhhh man, gotta remove the bombthrower!

I'm not going to ban someone for voicing a controversial belief. If people want to respond to that belief by attacking the guy personally, then they're the ones in the wrong.

Tell realitycheck that he is welcome to keep posting controversial topics in his blog, but you will remove his ability to block users or to delete comments on those blogposts.

You realize that the purpose of comment deletion is that so that people can police stuff like trolls and spam comments themselves, right? I'm not going to strip those tools on a case-by-case basis because authors don't know how to use them properly. The correct thing to do in that situation is to walk away and stop paying attention to people who act like idiots with their comment deletion function. I don't understand why this is such a difficult concept for people.

I presume the point of blogposts is to generate discussion

Some of the time. Some of the time it's because the person wants to show off the plushes he bought at Bronycon. Sometimes it's because the guy wants to ask if anyone wants to play video games with him. Sometimes it's because he wants to inform people of some news that's going on with one of his stories. It's not always to foster discussion. If RC is using them to dogmatically blyeh about his beliefs, and you don't want to be blyehed at, then ignore him and the problem is literally SOLVED.

At the very least do something to minimize the drama buy addressing the SOURCE of it yes??

It takes two to tango, mate. A controversial opinion blog is not a drama factory in itself. The drama comes from how people react to it. You're the source of it. You're the problem. So we are currently addressing the source of it by banning people who post attack blogs. It works.

And please can you make him unfollow me?

No, we can't remove followers.

Again i wish to express my understanding at the difficulty that you and the rest of the mod team are placed in by this situation.

I appreciate it, but it's really not difficult. In this one specific case, going off how some other people have responded to threads about the incident, I concede that maybe it wasn't a personal attack and was just a long-winded rebuttal blog. If it was, then maybe the ban was in error. Certainly a possibility, though I generally trust Meeester's judgment. No, I don't want to review a copy of the blog myself to see, because there's nothing I can do to overturn the past and I really just hate arguments about religion on the internet. However, that's the only argument you have to make here - that it wasn't actually an attack blog. This whole "persecution of free expression" argument makes no sense because it's not what any of us have said, ever, at any point in this discussion. We have always maintained that expressing your beliefs is fine but attacking others is not.

But really, I cannot stress this enough: you are wasting your time. You aren't going to win the argument. There is nothing you can do to persuade him you're right. It cannot be done. Why you'd want to type up a big argument that he's just going to dismiss outright as "absurd" is, frankly, even more absurd. Just knock it off and go do something else with your life, please, because holy hell these ridiculous arguments are going to be the death of me if I have to keep dealing with them every time RC breathes out of line and the atheists decide they need to warm up their science.

4638250 * sigh* this really depresses me, because I read this and I just see someone who completely misunderstood my point.

You keep telling me that you do not understand why I argue that this Prioritizes RC's speech over mine because none of you said that is what you were doing. Well no, I never argued that the moderators intended to prioritize his speech over those of people who thought different. What I am arguing is that prioritizing his speech over those that oppose him is the effect of the current status quo. That is RC is allowed to post his viewpoints and then he is also alllowed to delete and ban those viewpoints that are against his. In other words his voice survives whereas his opponents voices are quashed ( now granted his opponents seem to greatly outnumber his supporters, so it is not like you do not hear any criticism of the guy but still). So again given that his speech is more protected than our speech, his speech has higher priority than ours. Simple. It may not be what you guys intend, but it is indisputably the effect that the system currently generates.

Now I do not know if you guys can ( meaning whether or not the website physically allows) you to modify this situation, If not I guess we are up the proverbial creek without a paddle. As to why just not ignore him, well that seems to be a basic misunderstanding of how propaganda spreads, and if you think RC is not using his account here to " witness" or " preach to us" then you are sadly deluded. What he wants above all is for people not to challenge him, to ignore him. I have no delusions that I will be able to undo 40+ years of brainwashing. I do not challenge RC for RC's sake, but for the sake of everyone else who is watching and listening .

4638867 Your speech is not being suppressed, nor his prioritized. We don't tolerate personal attacks. Your blog was viewed as a personal attack. Therefore it's a problem.

When RC personally attacks someone, let me know, because we'll absolutely do something about it.

And like I said, if you want to throw away time arguing with the dude, go crazy. But creationism and religion in general are not rational beliefs. People who hold them are not doing so because they rationally consider all options. You cannot persuade ANYONE against holding those beliefs by appealing to rationality and reason, because that does not address the actual foundation of the belief. You go to war with someone who has a strong air force, and in an effort to cripple it you start digging up roads and sabotaging rail lines. You can argue religion for years and have absolutely no effect because you're appealing to rationality where none exists.

But whatever, just stop personally attacking people and it's fine.