Dear Kosmos,
Sorry for this meta diary, but there's something that desperately needs the attention of the larger community as it doesn't appear either normal community moderation or admin is able to take care of this.
Every forum on this site should be freely accessible to those willing to engage in some form of productive conversation- we obviously have rules to ensure this. Forums covering Israel and Palestine should be no different and despite MB's constant efforts and attention this forum has fared little better and is now going straight to hell.
This forum is important to me in many ways and I certainly can't remake it on my own, nor, would I, as probably anyone, want to bother Meteor Blades on a constant basis to baby-sit these users and this forum.
Therefore, I'd desperately like your support in remaking this forum such that valuable voices and discussion can be heard by all and by reducing or eliminating the problems associated with the users who constantly trash it.
Let me get to the point- sometime ago, a user began a new thread in an ordinary diary calling a woman a slut, or some derivation of the word. He was called on it, his friends, who were unwilling to downrate his comment, were called on it as well- MB has in the past specifically pointed out comments of this nature should be hidden by all, but that failed.
So what happens? Said user finally gets called on it when MB shows up, then writes a diary calling for moderation to the hysteria he started but somehow conveniently forgot, and, assumedly, nothing becomes of this. So, what next, and after what appears to be MB leaving the moderation role? A total ad hominem troll festival led by said user in subsequent diaries. No one obviously wants to deal with such crap and with most of the responsible users gone or avoiding it altogether, the chaos reigns and is becoming so psychotic... so far past anything related to reality...
Honestly, I don't want to wonder who people are or what problems they have when they bleed them out all over threads. Why they are here and if I should trust what they say. What meds are they on or probably should be taking, could this person be a psycho, pedophile, troll, racist, bigot, victim of abuse or abuser, control freak, misogynist, social outcast or someone who has some unresolved issues from high-school, or earlier, or someone who is simply immature, someone who can be spoken to or reasoned with, or not, someone who should be avoided, or banned, and trying to figure all this out within the fragments of holy mother of meta thread-jacking comments involving users I respect- and would normally want to read, but, don't dare to- when they are engaged in conversation with possibly one of the above. And this has nothing to do with empathy for people.
Comments could simply be what they are, hopefully something with some insightful information, but not the constant ad hominem invective that seems to come from people obsessed with attacking other users as if their life depended on it- for whatever reason. This just simply needs to go away.
In this case, do I think it's racist, bigoted, or rather islamophobic? Yeah, actually, it seems so to me that at some level it might be, and if I'm wrong, it'd be wonderful to know why, otherwise, I don't really could care less. I certainly don't want it to be, I'm certainly not wishing or trying to make it be so, but I just wish we could diagnose why it seems that so often it is next to impossible to recognize reality and the suffering connected to any group of people, by other people, and why in the heck do we have to waste our time helping people 'get it?' I would otherwise think it is a pretty simple concept to grasp for next to all Americans- we're part of a very mixed and vibrant culture, we're part of everyone and everything, so I'd say.
The current rules could work if people would just enforce them, if this forum hadn't taken on a reality of it's own long before I got here. The rules pertaining to thread-jacking, ad hominem, and stalking still apply here. We could specify further that comments directed at other posters be forbidden, or that users who engage in this behavior could be prohibited or un-invited to participate in diaries or in comments to users offended by their behavior.
As such, I've both reported 3 users to MB for stalking and have made comments asking to be left out of their ad hominem comments- it hasn't worked. And as I mentioned above, it's become much worse.
Maybe you have some ideas- if so, I'd love to hear them. But perhaps we could use a few more Meteor Blades in this forum to straighten it out once and for all. I, for one, would certainly love to find a mature community here some day, something that would definitely make me feel that supporting this community would easily be worth it, before, or after, other important upcoming things.