I was reading a post at Why Evolution Is True that led me to Pharyngula. At the top of the blog right now is this post:
New Commenting Rules
What are they?
The ongoing meltdown in Thunderdome and the departure of Chris tell me we’ve got something that needs to be fixed. I don’t quite know how to fix everything, so let’s crowdsource it — you people leave comments here telling me what rules you think might work to get the knifey-bitey-smashy atmosphere to lighten up a little. Just a little.
I have no idea what Thunderdome is and I don’t know this Chris fella. However, I do know the answer to PZ’s issue: More free speech. Of course, FtB (and feminism as a general rule) is highly censorious, so this will never happen, but it’s the only reasonable solution. Let people duke it out until they get tired of it. It’s fair, it’s free, and it’s desired amongst those who value variety in ideas.
Filed under: Blogging | Tagged: Free Speech |
For the Sake of Science 
Totally unmoderated speech can indeed become a firestorm of vulgarity and insults, preventing all meaningful discussion or debate.
But a fair and evenhanded moderation policy (“no vulgarity,” for example) would hurt the radfem community that dwells on Pharyngula, depriving them of the privilege to hurl ‘clever’ insults and threats at those they despise.
What they want is a policy that lets them silence the dissenters while preserving their own right to be as crude and vile as they wish to everyone who disagrees with them… and it’s hard to spell out such a policy without being obvious in your hypocrisy.
Free Speech when the way of the dodo when Myers decided he was (retroactively) a life-long radical feminist when Becky got her feelings hurt and decided to go DEFCON1 because a few trolls trolled her over ElevatorGate.