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Thank you for posting this, I really appreciate it.
Personally if I was in charge and there was a mod decision that required a subjective judgement call, I would err on the side of extending leniency to posters with viewpoints that are underrepresented on this forum. I especially value posters like @guesswho who have alternative viewpoints on the "classic" culture war topics. It makes these discussions a lot more interesting.
I would not. It's the moderation equivalent of not putting BLM protestors in jail because they're on the side of the left.
Justice should mean equal treatment. If equal treatment leads to disparate impact because one side commits more crime, so be it.
In a world where you only had 3 BLM activists and wanted to hear their opinions then it becomes a bit more nuanced I think.
If we want this to be a place with multiple viewpoints represented then justice is not the only consideration.
Which isn't to say I agree with the proposal, just that i think justice is not a good argument on its own. Being just isn't one of the founding principles of theMotte.
I would argue against it from more of a broken window perspective, bad behaviour breeds bad behaviour and damages the level of discourse.
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It’s already been acknowledged that longstanding posters with lots of AAQCs will be given a bit of extra wiggle room, and I would simply extend that to posters with underrepresented viewpoints as well, because the mere existence of a rare viewpoint is its own type of Quality Contribution.
If they get AAQC’s, sure that makes sense. If it’s standard Reddit fare mixed with weakmanning, no, it does not.
I think people are interpreting what I said too broadly. I'm not saying that you should have free license to break the rules just because you're a contrarian. I'm just saying that I think it would be appropriate to give them a gentle reminder or two about the rules before the mods start escalating to warnings/bans.
In particular I've noticed a pattern where people with unpopular viewpoints are more likely to get riled up during debates, which makes sense, because when your views are unpopular it's easy to feel like everyone's out to get you. So they're more likely to get provoked into breaking the rules on civility. For the sake of cultivating a wide array of perspectives, which is a goal I value very highly, I think it would be appropriate to keep this in mind and extend them a small amount of leniency.
If they just seemed like a very dense poster and they weren't contributing anything except standard-issue moral outrage, then I might be slightly less lenient, but again as I already said at the beginning, it's a subjective judgement call.
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