Reply #48: Since now I don't have to send this back channel in an alert

[Creideiki]

"If you actually don't know what is permitted and what is not, here's the basic idea: You can post links to other posts on DU, and you can even go so far as to discuss the content of those posts. But once you start posting personal attacks against other members of this website, then you have violated the rules and you your post might get deleted (provided that it comes to the attention of the moderators)."

Really? Seriously?

I told you before that I'm a moderator at a board roughly this size that has one core rule, civility, and three basic principles that allow us limit the times that the issue comes up--no discussion of religion, politics, or anything that would upset the owner's grandmother (usually sexual content, but also profanity). We can do that there because we're a role-playing game website. Even then, it gets difficult to dance around, because we've got a huge body of active posters, an extremely small moderator core, and there's no way we can visit every thread, as the moderators have jobs and lives. With all that, I almost left the moderator core when one of the moderators let it be known publicly that he had no interest in backing me up and made that lack of interest public.

So I understand moderators and admins presenting a unified front.

I'm going to ask one thing. Re-think this. We can't post to the stuff here because simply by bringing it up, simply by making a post that someone is espousing homophobic beliefs, we're "breaking the rules". This is an awful catch-22. It's similar to the people who argue that we shouldn't be supporting the California Supreme Court's recent decision because the courts shouldn't engage in judicial activism even though the people in charge of every other possible access to equal treatment tell us that the only possible avenue for redress is through the courts.

Really, understand I have a lot of empathy.

I have a couple other very small forums I go to which are good and they put up with me venting once in a while. But what I really need is a larger forum where I can interact with my GLBT brothers and sisters and our straight allies than I have available there. I've been coming here for years--mostly just lurking (and for periods of time while I was teaching, there was no time to breathe much less anything else). So after all these years, I've got essentially a low post count. I don't make "me too" posts. For me, DU was that larger forum, but the constant attacks on me because I don't feel like coming to a place where the unabashed prejudice against me because I'm a "minority" and therefore somehow deserve it for whatever reason make it so I've been looking for someplace "else" to go.

So if anyone knows of any forums that have a pretty good population, that can handle discussion of political and religious discussion because it's "on-topic", where I'm not going to have to deal with the constant belittlement because I'm a member of a minority, let me know.