Interesting happenings at a message board...

I used to frequent. If anyone has visited my site in the past few days would notice I took Democratic Underground off my list of favorite sites, and I did it for a reason, I was banned(called tombstoning over there) from that message board. Now, in the normal course of events, as an equitable enforcement of the rules, I wouldn't have a problem with being banned if I deserved it, yet, I must wonder, why was it that not only was I, but also 10 other members of the board, all of them either GLBT or GLBT-friendly?

In my own case, I haven't been disruptive in months, indeed, my only recent activity on the board was defending the existence of public libraries from 2 other members who were flaming a thread about Florida's decision to stop state funding for libraries.

Then a moderator over there called Raputin started a thread basically telling people to shut up about possible Supreme Court appointments and to trust Obama to make the right decision. Recently, one of the names floating around is that of an open lesbian judge, and as can be imagined, a lot of gays and lesbians were wondering what her chances are, and that maybe she should be appointed to alleviate some fears that President Obama's Administration doesn't take the concerns of the GLBT community seriously.

The reaction to these concerns from many members of DU was derision, and the slamming of what they call "identity politics", in other words, the minority should just be happy with what they have now.

This is where Rasputin's thread comes in, this moderator himself has a history of being hostile and snarky to GLBT members, in addition he also regularly violated the guidelines that Mods are supposed to follow, including staying out of controversial issues when possible. He's posted snarky locking messages, in other cases, for example, an innocuous thread on GLBT rights would get flamed, and he locked it and blamed the OP for starting flamebait, even though the thread itself wasn't flamebait, but was flamed by homophobes instead.

So this poster has a history, and so when he started his most recent thread, which was itself flamebait, people responded expectedly. Oddly enough, not many personal attacked, but pretty much everyone who did disagree with the post, no matter how polite, had the posts deleted and the poster was sometimes banned. Then Skinner, the big wig Admin, weighed in on the thread and basically defended the OP and said that anyone who disagrees can leave.

This was the last straw, so I finally posted in that thread(didn't before that time), with this message:

34. Hmm, well, I guess you are going to be modifying these guidlines soon as well?

Edited on Sun May-03-09 10:15 PM by Solon
However, when moderators participate in discussions that are unrelated to their official duties, they are expected to do so in a manner that respects differing points of view, and promotes left-wing solidarity rather than division. Even when they are not performing their official moderator duties, moderators are required to hold themselves to a higher standard than other members of this discussion board. With this in mind, moderators are expected to observe the following guidelines:

1. They are expected to behave themselves at all times in a way that reflects positively on Democratic Underground, and complies with all the Rules and Regulations of this website.
2. They are expected to share and help promote Democratic Underground's mission of left-wing unity and solidarity.
3. They may not engage in personal attacks against other members of this board.
4. They may not engage in attacks against other political, social, or minority groups, such as the Democratic Party, the Green Party, the Democratic Leadership Council, environmentalists, union members, gays and lesbians, Christians, etc. They are expected to avoid attacks against respected public figures in the Democratic Party or the political left.
5. They may not use their powers as a moderator to enforce a particular party line. It is not appropriate for moderators to threaten to ban someone with whom they do not agree.
6. They are expected to be fair and evenhanded at all times, especially to those with whom they disagree.
7. They are forbidden from discussing moderator business anywhere except in the moderators-only discussion forum. If it becomes apparent that a moderator has broken this rule, he/she will be relieved of moderator duties immediately, and may be banned from the discussion board as well.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/forums/moderators.html

Within about a minute, my post was deleted, and I was banned(tombstoned). My post may have violated a rule, particularly the rule concerning publicly questioning the moderating policies of DU, and I actually don't have a problem with this tombstoning, the only problem I have is that not all rule violators are created equal. Some of DU's many rules include support for GLBT civil rights, not attacking people based on race, sexual orientation, sex, religion, etc. and not participating in personal attacks, to give a brief summary.

However, many regular violators of these rules, including posters such as Hamdenrice, sampsonblk and many others can violate these rules with impunity, because they do it in defense of Obama's administration. They can attack gays, disrupt forums, start flamebait, etc. without suffering the ultimate penalty, being banned from the board. Hell, GLBT members of the board have been threatened with being suspended or tombstoned for alerting the mods to such posts.

So now, Skinner(David Allen is his real name) has laid down the gauntlet, for while Democratic Underground, in writing, has rules saying they support GLBT civil rights, they do not follow the spirit of what they claim, its a lie, in other words.

In fairness, I never expected DU itself to be homophobia free, trolls and the like always get through, nor do I expect the mods to be perfect, or to react to all such posts instantly, but when several different posters have a history of posting such posts, for months, even years on end, then something is seriously wrong with the moderation of that board.

This post isn't a whining post, indeed, I frankly don't care that I've been banned, what I do care about are GLBT activists who think they found a friendly place on the net to congregate to start participating in the board. My advice to you is this, avoid that place like the plague, you will be attacked, derided, any threads you start disrupted, etc. especially if you try to criticize any policies of the current Administration. The boards rules are only enforced selectively, GLBT people and their friends are second class DU members, period.

I'm not the only one to notice this, and its been a problem on DU from months, Lavender Liberal made a post, and another post was made about this at Pam's House Blend as well.

Oh, I forgot, I was DU member Solon.