Skeptic Project

This post is not an attempt to start a conflict. My only goal is to say "I saw what you did there, and I'm not the only one." Because silence is the worst form of enabling when it comes to unacceptable behavior.

Recently somebody (I don't recall the name of the original poster, and it was not me) posted a thread that contemplated restructuring the TZM forum. These were harmless ideas that might have produced something useful.

Some invisible forum admin chose to be offended by this, and deleted the thread. No explanation, no accountability. Yes, I know it 's not an open forum, free-for-all to say whatever they want. If a thread is offensive, fine, delete it. Better yet, just move it to a new area called 'Unacceptable Threads' where members can see what kind of censoring decisions have been made.

Controlling the content of the forum autonomously and invisibly, is not ok. As a movement we must be able to organize ourselves in the same way that we propose the world should be organized. If we can't, then our credibility is out the window, and our ability to get the job done (the post-scarcity job) is non-existent.

I really hope the person who posted the deleted thread has not been banned to silence them. I could not, in good conscience, be part of a movement that would do that without some kind of due process involving the wider community.

Devon

Before this thread suffers a similar fate I'd like to add that I've had to face similar repercussions.

Although I didn't raise any objection because the subject matter of the thread I had created was far more frivolous and based entirely on conjecture. Regardless, this forum doesn't strike me as one that embraces the ideal of free thought. It's designed for the express purpose of discussing matters pertinent directly to the movement. I guess, even conversations about renovating the forum itself is not pertinent enough.

What makes this matter particularly unfortunate are the terribly fond memories I have of the long-winded and impassioned discussions we had in the not-so distant past in the previous Zeitgeist forum. Those were the days when the moderators and admins weren't worried about showing themselves in the open.

I was the one who posted the thread about restructuring the forums and I thank you so much for bringing this to my attention.

Just like Ozymandias, I actually posted 2 other threads (one recently about how we underestimate the ruling elite) that have been deleted without any sort of explanation.


I am an active member of these forums and I demand an explanation from the admin. I actually felt EXTREMELY pissed off that my last thread was deleted (regarding the ruling elite) and I realize that all the criticisms thrown at TZM about censorship were quite legitimate.

If we hope to be an honest, sincere and objective organization, we should learn how to tackle these issues head on. Its so ironic that our organization stands against censorship that happens as a result of capitalistic media, yet ABSOLUTELY unregulated censorship happens in our own forums.

It happened a while ago to when someone started a post questioning why the culture in decline series did not have the same popularity as the zeitgeist movies .... one minute it was there, the next gone .... again no explanation, hope the censorship doesn't become to prevalent.

I have a STRONG feeling that this is not moderation, it feels like a serious BUG in the forum codes.

This has never happened before and there are worst threads that didnt get deleted, I think this is an attempt by the forum's spam filter system to remove spam thread like "Brand new unlocked phone for 9.99 crap". Evidently it is buggy and end up removing legit threads instead.

That is a very reasonable explanation, and hopefully the right one. I think that the thread in question was up for a couple days, which would make it less likely to be a filter problem - but I may well be wrong about the timeframe.

We could test the bug theory by making sure we all keep copies of our posts on our own machines. If something gets deleted we can then point out what happened in a new thread, and re-post the deleted text or share it privately so that members can check it for words or phrasing that might be snagged by a spam filter.

It would be a great relief to me to find out this is just a case of imperfect automation.

I'm totally in favor of this idea. It would be pretty amusing to see what kind of content gets moved there.

It's most likely a bug, I don't even believe theres a big effort on moderation at this point, I've reported the spam thread promoting smartphones a couple of days ago and it's still there.