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Atheist Nexus (Hearts) Women

The trigger here is a blog post titled "Atheist Nexus Hates Women." The post is short and sweet; the poster says she's leaving A/N because she's "sick of people who think rape is funny."

Don't know how long the link will be good since when she disables her account, the blog will disappear, but I haven't paraphrased. That's pretty much the entire blog.

Note the conspicuous absence of specific threads or posts where she feels people have crossed the line in tactless discussion of rape. That's fine and certainly someone's choice to put something so general out there, but the title of the post seems to imply that it's the whole site and the site creators and moderators who are the problem.

Personally, I don't see it. I'd bear-hug Brother Richard and the lot of them if I knew where they lived and could get a bear-hug discount airfare to make the trip.

I have seen some rude comments here and there. With 10,000 members, someone is going to get their emotional toes stepped on. But I don't think those handful represent the entire group.

My question here, in the context of Free Speech Atheists, is how far a community like this one should go to police itself from flamers, trolls, and the just plain overly rude?

We are for non-Theists only, so it's reasonable to ban someone as soon as they start Witnessing to us. But otherwise, I'd personally rather let people cross a line once in a while if only for the sake of discussion and reflection.

Much as I can't stand the Glenn Becks of the world and think they are truly inciting violence, I would be slightly more disturbed if they weren't allowed to speak their mind at all.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by It's just Matt on October 26, 2009 at 5:04pm

In the past, when the trolls come out the woodworks and deserted parks, we let them spam away until they cross the line of civility...which normally does not take very long.

I use to be on the chat regularly and have chatted with most of the long time members. Anyone trying repeated humor at rape of any kind is defintely the exception and far removed from the norm.

I am sure our resident troll busting wizard, Felch Grogan, could quickly whip up the links to show this users posts as fallicious, indeed he may already have.

While I myself may have posted 'controversial' statements, I never intend to harm anyone and I hope I would be earnest enough to realize when I did and quickly make amends for it. I am also well aware that we have a very good self-correcting body and if I was to 'go off the deep' there would be plenty of users quick to point out and bash my harmful remarks.

Permalink Reply by Trance Gemini on October 26, 2009 at 5:29pm

My question here, in the context of Free Speech Atheists, is how far a community like this one should go to police itself from flamers, trolls, and the just plain overly rude?

We are for non-Theists only, so it's reasonable to ban someone as soon as they start Witnessing to us. But otherwise, I'd personally rather let people cross a line once in a while if only for the sake of discussion and reflection.

Much as I can't stand the Glenn Becks of the world and think they are truly inciting violence, I would be slightly more disturbed if they weren't allowed to speak their mind at all.

I would agree with this.

IMO too much is made of what amounts to disagreements and people getting upset over them and then starting to make accusations about the other person.

If someone says something out of line, the solution is to call them on it, not ban them.

Unless the person is blatantly trolling or flaming like the thread (now removed) that was started earlier today about atheists being pansies, people should be left free to express themselves even if their views are offensive to some or they're being annoying, etc.

As atheists and freethinkers the only real thing we have in common is our lack of belief.

We are not a cohesive community which is going to agree on everything (or anything).

And everyone has a right to their opinion, no matter how offensive.

That's the true test of Freedom of Speech.

Permalink Reply by Susan Stanko on October 26, 2009 at 6:41pm