I think they clearly expressed they were going through some hard times. I don’t think that’s necessarily a sin. And I don’t think one comment we all disagree (landlords) is a good lone reason to ban. Did I miss something? Not trying to stir the pot I just think patience and compassion should always come first.
Like others said, he had some very negative views in his comment history. He had them for a while now and he was spreading a very negative message from time to time.
That being said, he also mentioned he was going through some hard times.
To me it always seemed like he was genuinely confused about some aspects of ML. I don’t think he acted in bad faith. He simply didn’t understand some things and coupled with some mental health problems he may not have been able to always see the point we were trying to make.
I’m not a mod/admin, so I have no say in this, but I personally think a ban is too harsh. He had some good contributions to the site as well, be it through posts or comments. I don’t think we should start banning people just because they don’t always agree with the popular take. Part of why I like this place is because I feel people can always discuss things, which is a great part of how we can learn over here. Engaging in debate is something that gets mentioned here a lot but somehow a user disagreeing with some points gets banned. I don’t think that’s right. Especially when the user is, in my opinion, not acting in bad faith.
Yes, we need to be better than the larger platforms that drove us for this exact reason (r/communism, Reddit in general, etc.). I remember forums like r/communism being much more diverse and open to differing opinions even a few years ago, and it was what made the community so accessible to a larger audience that wouldn’t have otherwise bothered. I feel like we need more of that here. We need to be more tolerant of people’s different takes on ML and socialism in general, while also using facts and evidence to disprove them.
I am also very in favor of this because of radicalization. I have absolutely no experience running or moderating any sort of online community so I can appreciate that this might be dumb, but to me I wouldn’t even ban openly belligerent liberals or fascists in hopes of working the long game and changing their perspective slowly behind closed doors (or, at the very least, the minds of silent lurkers represented by such people representing their ideologies having their points torn apart). I know the risk of corruption though, if for example GZD or lemmygrad had done that I would have been a severe risk of slowly losing its ML backbone, there’s definitely pros and cons to it.
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I can see where you’re coming from. I saw his comments on landlords too and I even thought out a long reply disagreeing with him, but I didn’t post it (don’t know why really, probably because it was late already). I also don’t want my reply to be seen as a somewhat pro-landlord reply. I am 100% against landlords.
Maybe I am too kind for him. I try to look for chances in people and to me he did not seem lost or something, just in a bad place. But then again I have a lot of patience with people, sometimes maybe too much.
I still don’t fully agree on banning him but like I said, I’m not a mod/admin so I don’t have a say in that. It’s too bad because there were also good intentions from him, but I agree that he should also put in the effort to improve himself. We can only do so much. I hope he can adjust his visions and find some peace of mind.
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I can see merit to both sides of this conversation.
I guess to show all my cards this is just very personal for me because in several different ways I was a shitty person for a long time in my life. It took me a long time to change and a longer time for it to be obvious to an outside observer. I’m not a total idealist “all people can change!,” I know plenty of people IRL that if given the best resources that humanity has to offer for the remainder or their lifetime they would still likely be just the same, and the reality is people DON’T have the time nor such resources. But I try to repeatedly give people the benefit of the doubt and try really hard even when there is no surface level changes because I know how long it can take for something like that to manifest into positive change.
To be cold and pragmatic, “But is it worth the effort?” is also a reasonable question to ask, although it’s also hard to gauge somebody’s “worth” especially on the internet (not that I like thinking under such terms either).
Like I said, I can see both sides. I’m still not feeling about the ban but I’m not gonna throw a fit over it either and I respect whatever the final verdict is and the reasons behind it.