Those kinds of things definitely were hateful, disrespectful, and discriminatory in the context of BLM. Just because they formed some words that were not immediately identifiable as hateful and those words left them room to argue with people who did not understand the nuance of the situation, doesn’t make those words any less hateful.
It seems pretty well defined to me. What is there to question?
Okay, in reading your reply it sounds like we either want people who are completely aligned in our political beliefs or we don’t want them at all.
And again, I don’t think this should be a forum where politics should even gets discussed as it avoids any distractions and just focus on the code/distro etc
But I’m not sure it’s clear to you that your stance seems it’s more than just being about a “safe space”. It’s about being politically aligned with the person you’re working with.
Well you certainly read that wrong. No idea where you’ve gotten that idea.
How?
If an entire introductory course could easily be dedicated to explain what harm is, then you cannot expect someone to not accidentally cause harm. Thus all the more reason for the one-warning policy.
That’s great, but there are people here with decades of community participation experience, who cannot commit to real-time Matrix discussions and who’d also like their concerns to be considered. Thank you.
My Uncle (also black) was against BLM and was a Blue Lives Matter person. His stance was about Law and Order. He was born in 1960, definitely had his experience on the wrong side of police harassment. But he didn’t think the proper way of going about it was the way that BLM was approaching the matter. It was completely a political stance. It wasn’t meant to be hurtful. He hated discrimination but his politics aligned more with law and order.
No, I could have taken it as hateful but I didn’t, I realize it was just ignorant to my political stance.
As I have now repeated several times, there is no zero-tolerance policy in the general case, only for those who have a prior history and therefore have already had an opportunity to understand harm. This is simply not a relevant point.
Then you can participate in the governance discussions, under the set of rules specified, and play a role there in determining the community policies going forward.
No one is forced to participate in this community. Those unwilling to abide by the code of conduct are welcome to spend time elsewhere.
I know and it seems you’ve forgotten the whole context. I am arguing that it is a relevant point because those people who you’ve suspended (like Jon) can easily cause what you consider to be harm (since they didn’t take any course about harm, so you can’t expect them to know what it is) and risk getting banned permanently. Thus causing the chilling effect. Thus giving more weight to the one-warning policy.
I have never been banned from anywhere and yet I don’t understand what you consider to be harm, given what you said previously, i.e. that even when someone is unlikely to post something hateful and even if they did, it would only be posted once and the post would be removed, that it would still be harm.
That’s great but I’m saying that if I were Jon, I wouldn’t risk doing that because you are threatening to ban him permanently, from all platforms, without warning, due to an incredibly complex definition of what harm is, such that it could fill an entire introductory course.
Edit: I also don’t think these people had an opportunity to understand what you consider harm to be, because they haven’t taken any such course.
I know you don’t agree with Jon’s opinions but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask you to put yourself in his shoes. I am also trying to put myself in other people’s shoes (i.e. the minorities that were offended by his comments) and yet I don’t think the one-warning policy is unreasonable.
We’ll I’m sorry he fell victim to thinking that (1) BLM was about lawlessness and (2) that he doesn’t realize how Blue Lives Matter is harmful.
If you can’t understand how Blue Lives Matter or All Lives Matter is hateful, then I’m not really sure where to go, you might have a hard time in the larger discussion that is happening here.
I would also like to point out that it’s very frustrating when multiple people here are expressing the same concern and yet it gets ignored, while I’ve seen that in the real-time Matrix chat history, all concerns were taken seriously and decisions were easily changed without almost any debate.
It’s not very inclusive to only consider opinions of people who can participate in the real-time chat (which is really, really long btw, due to all the chitchat) and not in more thoughtful opinions of people here who have have even taken the time and energy to justify them more thoroughly.
If you had bothered to actually quote the whole sentence, you could have easily seen that nowhere does it claim than “an entire introductory course could easily be dedicated to explain what harm is”:
Taking Jon as an example: they’ve had ample feedback on how their actions have caused harm. Arguably, of all those who have ever been suspended in this community, they have received the most feedback and offers for help, with some distance.
The ‘chilling effect’ is deliberate, as explained above.
Then the zero-tolerance policy does not apply to you, and as such there is no problem, because it means that people will engage with you in a de-escalating manner first. You will have the opportunity to understand the problem in the course of any disagreements. This is already provided for.
As explained above, Jon has had ample opportunity. I know this with certainty because not only have others attempted to provide that insight, I have myself tried to do so repeatedly, to no avail. So yes, they have had the opportunity.
To reiterate: the alternative is that people like Jon do not have access at all. There is no option where they get to join like any other member with a clean track record. It was never on the table.
In fact, I was one of the people arguing for increasing access to those suspended.
I’d appreciate it if you didn’t put words in my mouth.
Regardless if they’re intentional or not, they still hurt you. If they were unintentional, then the person should be open to listening to your grievances and reforming their view.
So he should change his politics because they hurt my feelings? 
He doesn’t have to change his view because his political beliefs hurt my feelings. Maybe my politicals hurt his feelings. Do I need to change?
This sounds like a very slippery slope. Decisions are going to be made. That won’t affect me personally. So my stance and all this is just philosophical at this point.
So I digress. But I really hope we think about what we are doing and how we are treading. Because on the surface it sounds like we want people politics to align with our own.
I agree with many of the concerns voiced here and in particular I find myself in alignment with what @dedguy21 says.
Given how the conversations are going, I completely understand why many people feel frustrated and even hopeless about the process outcome. Nonetheless, I encourage everyone to participate in the process and try to make a positive impact, no matter how unsafe or unwelcome you feel about it right now.
Sounds like you two should talk it out, maybe you can both make some progress. That doesn’t involve me and we’ve moved to think which are no longer pertinent to the discussion here.
We have worked it out. He keeps his politics. I keep mine. We don’t disrespect each other. And quite often we just don’t discuss politics.
He’s lived a life I can’t imagine and has come to the conclusions he has come to. I respect him as an individual even though our politics don’t align.
I think it would be dangerous to silence him because his politics don’t align with mine and hurt my feelings.
And that’s what it sounds like we’re trying to accomplish here, because of course I’m right and he’s wrong.
Excellent, glad to hear you worked it out.
Now if we replace “your uncle” with “everyone here” and remember:
Then it sounds like there is a way forward, that is, when you know your opinion is hurtful to others (and you’re not open to changing it) then you just don’t say it.
Then drop it. But seems like you really do want to re-litigate it