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We had Impassionata (or a pretty good impersonator) here not long ago. We do occasionally have very leftist posters here making anti-right arguments. And yes, they get downvoted and reported a lot, but they only get modded when they get insulting.
You're not entirely wrong that that's how we'd like conversations to go, but we are not a social project. @FCfromSSC and other people arguing that cooperation is pointless and the other tribe is bad and we have no common ground is allowable, because our "goal" is not to foster cooperation, it's just to host discussion and arguing of ideas.
Then don't. No one is required to engage with anyone.
You aren't alone - @FCfromSSC has provoked similar reactions before. But if we took up your suggestion, we'd just be creating a different kind of echo chamber, where anyone whose views put off too many people gets silenced. We do have a bit of a problem here in that we are leaning ever-more rightward and fewer left-leaning people see much value in participating. I think that's a shame, but frankly (as a left-leaning person) I think the problem is not that "righties say unacceptable things" but "lefties cannot tolerate hearing things they don't like." That's certainly not a problem this forum can solve, but if as a left-leaning person you're going to insist that you won't participate if right-wingers get to say right-wing things... well, case in point.
Any joe can host a discussion website. Hosting a site where /good/, /quality/ discussion occurs is much harder, and that I think is the aim, is it not? And that absolutely does require some level of cooperation between participants engaged in that discussion.
Is this supposed to be some kind of gotcha? So lame. Anyway. Perhaps I did not articulate my point well enough, as it does not concern "things I don't like". I read a hundred things I don't like every time I sign on to this site, yet I singled out FC's post in particular. My point concerns behavior that erodes the norms that enable quality discussion.
I don't see how. I am not advocating for modding conservative viewpoints in particular. You already taboo a good number of posting styles /and/ content in order to keep the quality of discussion high. You don't allow trolls, intentional sophistry, or, I believe, outright Holocaust denial. You of course don't allow name calling. For the sake of the argument, why not? Who are you to say that someone shouldn't be able to express their sincere and honest belief that person X has literal shit for brains? And if anyone gets offended by that, well, we can't silence that person just because he puts people off; the problem is people cannot tolerate hearing things they don't like, etc. There are of course real forums where this kind of free speech absolutism is a deeply held principle, but they are almost universally terrible, for obvious reasons.
You get to call the shots at the end of the day. I've said my case about as clearly as I can, so I'll leave it here. Thank you for at least considering what I have to say here.
Trolls and intentional sophistry (i.e., bad faith arguments), no, Holocaust denial, yes. Though outright stating "The Holocaust is a hoax" would be subject to our "inflammatory claims require proportionate evidence" rule, there is no explicit prohibition against Holocaust denial, and it has not been made a special case of unallowable arguments.
Because that would be unnecessarily antagonistic, which is against the rules. Attack the argument, not the person.
If I sound dismissive, it's not because I don't (somewhat) sympathize, but because I've had this argument so many times before. You are not the first or only one to object to accelerationist-posting. We're not going to prohibit it. We do take a close look at anything that veers towards fedposting.
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