But, you do not have the right to abuse and threaten other users here. You also do not have the right to incite violence. Whether that be upon other users here or people at large. You can call people names all you want, even though you shouldn't (You should attack the argument, not the user/person), but you can.
However, telling someone to straight up kill themselves will not be tolerated as that was the original rule when I joined the mods ranks. Attack the argument, not the person. I'm not going to tolerate that shit and you will be temp banned. Other mods can chime in or PM me about it if they agree or disagree.
We are supposed to be a community here who help each other spread and seek truth. The only people I can see doing this type of negativity here are nefarious forces that are against those of us who wish for a better future. If you see comments like these, report them. I'm not talking about name calling... I'm talking about straight up calls to violence and abuse of other users here.
I'm sorry, but like many users have pointed out, we currently have no rules here, beyond what the the admin have laid out. What your describing are the general rules of effective debate, which I totally agree with and generally strive to abide by myself. But they have never been deployed as the explicit rule set here - ie. set out as rules in the sidebar.
I didn't feel right to lay out rules, being the only regularly active mod for over a year, so I left the rules undefined, despite some users demanding it. The majority of users have been happy to not have a set of rules explicitly laid out by the mods though. The admin have laid out their rules, and I added the link to them in the sidebar.
I'm often not happy with what I see here either. But is it the purpose of this forum and what it's users post here to keep me happy? For example, the flat earth shit here really bothers me, so I polled the community if they wanted me to get rid of it - but they demanded zero censorship, as absolute free speech as legality permits. I've have tried to abide by that.
You are incorrect. We have always had the golden rule here along with site wide TOS. This was decided before you were even made a mod. I had this discussion with Axo on what rules we were going to enforce. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure we even had that on the sidebar at one point. This was never meant to be a place with zero rules, just very lax one. If you truly feel like you (or users) need the right to attack and abuse other users, then, I'm not sure if you should even be a mod here. Who the fuck wants it's user base constantly being attacked and abused? Like, what the fuck?
You never put rules in the side bar, every user here who has been here from the start knows this. It has come up many times in discussion among users on this board.
Since I've been mod I've worked practically completely alone, with Axo (who installed me as mod) briefly dipping in now and then. That's fine, but there has never been the opportunity to communicate with other mods about installing rules in the side bar so I left it blank till the opportunity for that discussion arose.
And since there are no rules I decided not to enforce arbitrary rules of my own, and stick with the sites own TOS which are very fair and reasonable, by far the most fair and reasonable of any board website I've been a user on. And they specifically call for mods not to be overbearing.
I don't think users have to the right to attack other users, but I don't consider words on a screen to be an "attack", as long as they are not explicitly inciting a person to commit specific violence on a specific other person or group of people. You consider the "kill yourself" to fall under that banner, and banned the user accordingly. I have no issue with that.
In defense of my position: As another user has pointed out to you "kill yourself" as been a meme online for many years, and thrown around by childish and lazy debaters countless times, even on reddit back in the days before mods became more censorious. In keeping with this websites ethos (of rejecting the censorious direction other websites such as Reddit and Facebook have gone) I chose not to censor Tallest skill or many other users, despite their comment being reported.
The TOS encourages users here to make liberal use of the websites tools to get rid of the things they don't want to see on this website. That includes entire communities and indeed, blocking other users. Every user here can easily block tallest skil or any other user they find unpleasant, and I encourage them to do so. If I were not a mod I would make liberal use of the block function myself.
I do think it is a better solution than calling for other users to be banned, it's like personal moderation, since the actions of a mod can never please every user. There will be multiple users here who disagree with your banning of tallest skill, and indeed the reason he was present here at all was that one such user made a personal plea to me to allow him despite his "intensity" as a user.
Thank you for explaining it further, and I'm sorry for flipping out on ya'. I apologize. I can be that way some times. I get your stance, but, I'm going to have to disagree with you that we never had that golden rule. Me and Axo discussed this very thing when Axo first created this forum and modded me. This was in the beginning when I verified who I was on Voat. I've been away/hands off for a bit, but I was here in the early days. We (me and Axo) agreed on that rule. Whether it was unwritten or not, I'm not sure. But, I'm positive we made that known to the users/community.
I've always modded in that sense. Attack the argument, not the user. I even made it more lax than /r/conspiracy and allowed name calling and shit talking. However, I never allowed straight up abuse or threatening other users here. That was the rule me and Axo agreed upon, and I 'm sure I have PM's to verify that. Or, Axo can chime in.
If you know anything about me, and my history with this forum and Reddit, then you would know my stance on Free Speech. I'm damn near a Free Speech absolutist, however, I will not tolerate violence and abuse against other users here. I've made the distinction clear on what is and isn't. Constant abuse from one user to another has always been considered stalking/trolling.
These rules (whether written or not) have always been the ethos of this forum. As I said, it stems from our Reddit days.
I hope I've cleared somethings up.
Ya i remember when you lost that Flat earth ban vote. so you just took it upon yourself to run a vote because someone was posting FE too much? i think there are only a few of you die hard cog dis globies here. most of the FE people i met here took off because of the FE narrative you and few regulars perpetuate.
Flat earth shit only bothers you because you are too stubborn to take it seriously. I have seen you get schooled by flat earthers and you dont even reply. If you actually applied yourself, and truly looked into it, it would warp you so hard you would be crying in the corner.
Is that what happened to you? If it's any help, you were duped. World not flat. Hope that can bring you some happiness, help find your way out of the FE darkness. I'm gunning for ya.
We've had this discussion before, it ended with you dont know enough about flat earth to declare its not true. My guess is you stumbled across the fake flat earth society, or watched some globe youtuber who cites the rediculous shit on that fake society web page.
You are the one who is duped my freind. All you have to do is read and take it seriously to know for sure.
Your whole world may be a lie, but THE whole world is a very big spherical planet. I don't engage with FE users because FE users are an endless time sync of madness and delusion.