The challenge of hosting contentious discussion on the interwebs — when some people want to shut you up ... and shut you down (click)

An interesting discussion has started about discussion forum PropertyTalk in the comments thread of my post about Linking to sources and the Sean Wood case study.

Two of my favourite PropertyTalk (ex) posters poormastery and exnzpat kicked it off last night in response to comments from Perry … with some pretty strong opinions… PT moderator Quentin/cube climbed in, and so did I … then this morning, a follow-up comment from poormastery is, I think, worthy of promotion to a post (I’ve left it out of ‘blockquote’ for legibility):

–START–
poormastery says:
March 23, 2011 at 1:31 am
Hi Peter,

I will accept that the propertytalk.com owners and monitors collaborated with the spruikers because they felt that they had no choice.

This plot reminds me of one of my favourite novels – La Peste (The Plague) by Albert Camus. I recommend it to you.

Although the book is superficially about a plague in Algeria, it is also at an allegorical level about French collaboration and resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II. Camus himself was an important member of the French resistance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Plague

“The plague comes unannounced and may strike down anyone at any time. It is arbitrary and capricious, and it leaves humans in a state of fear and uncertainty, which ends only in death. In the face of this metaphysical reality, what must be the response of individuals? Should they resign themselves to it, accept it as inevitable, and seek what solace they can as individuals, or should they join with others and fight back, even though they must live with the certainty that they cannot win? Camus’s answer is clearly the latter… Rieux argues that one would have to be a madman to submit willingly to the plague. Rather than accepting the natural order of things — the presence of sickness and death — he believes one must fight against them. He is aware of the needs of the community; he does not live for himself alone. When Tarrou points out that “[his] victories will never be lasting,” Rieux admits that he is involved in a “never ending defeat,” but this does not stop him from engaging in the struggle.”

Although Camus considers revolt to be the ideal, he is quite forgiving of the allegorical Vichy collaborators in his book. Indeed, Jean Paul Satre, Camus’ philosopher friend, barely spoke to him again after reading the book, so enraged was he by this treatment.

In my view, Camus was correct on both counts.

One should engage in the struggle and fight back rather than surrender, even in the face of overwhelming odds. Nonetheless, towards those that fail to engage in the struggle, or even join the oppressors, one should show forgiveness.

“Forgiveness is divine.”

Finally, I am willing to accept your point that propertytalk.com probably did some good work before the subsequent surrender and complete capitulation.

Appeasement is seldom the optimal policy.

Kind Regards,
*p*

–END–

Here’s my response …

One should engage in the struggle and fight back rather than surrender, even in the face of overwhelming odds. Nonetheless, towards those that fail to engage in the struggle, or even join the oppressors, one should show forgiveness.

Very nicely said, poormastery.

I conceptualise what you label ‘forgiveness’ in this case as empathy (my word for 2011) or understanding … the very same thought. It doesn’t ease the disappointment at times.

And of course, there’s a terrible ‘meat in the sandwich’ dilemma for PropertyTalk owners and Moderators. I saw this when I observed the high pressure campaign the United Federation of Property Spruikers commenced last year to convince PT it needed to ‘clean up its act’ and censor ‘certain posters’ and threads even more aggressively (leading to the sad denouement: “Why are we making these changes….because we have to – to avoid litigation”). Continue reading →