1. You can't say I didn't warn you ages ago about the direction of the forum with the moderation approach.
2. I was involved with a "free" discussion forum years ago and they all inevitably become a bastion for intolerance. Tolerating intolerance gives people with regressive views a safe place to congregate, so they flood the gates and overrun these sites.
3. You can't reason or rationalize with them because they are not having discussions in good faith. If they used reason and rationality or understood the philosophy of ethics, they wouldn't be bigoted in the first place.
4. You thought I was being chicken little and exercising hyperbole but look at where that forum is today compared to 10 years ago. It is exactly what I said it would become.
1. I don't remember being warned, but I was always concerned that the level of dialogue would deteriorate if we didn't find a way to contain the conspiracy virus. Of course, there's a line to be drawn with regards to expression vs. trolling and for my part I pushed for rules that would draw that line in a way to encourage good information. That's as much as I will post now about my relationship with policy on MLW.
2. We are discovering a McLuhanesque lesson: we are contained within a channel, which doesn't simply convey "free speech" as the right was envisioned. We are like captive fish who have realized that we are in a tank. So we learn that the tank needs to be cleaned, the garden needs to be tended etc. If "freedom of speech" drives out 1/2 the voices then it subverts the reason why we establish it: to allow for a meritocratic market of ideas.
3. They are not creatures of the age of reason. They are interested in winning and imposing their culture on others. I get it, because I start to feel that way with them too sometimes.
4. I doubt that I thought that. I may have said "we'll see..." but that doesn't mean that I felt you were wrong or felt it wasn't a danger to happen. I don't really remember this discussion, though, so if you have other ideas I'm open to hear it.