I would love to have a forum where subtly destructive patterns are moderated as much as openly insulting ones. Often the most damaging posters are people who are generally polite but who never quite manage to respond to what you have written and/or refuse to acknowledge that a criticism has been mentioned, let alone respond to it, often simply repeating their assertions, people who confuse expressing opinions with mounting a cohesive argument, strawmen lovers, appealers to authority and so on. Someone who makes a lot of racist statements or insults people can be very disruptive, though it should be noted that if the rest of the community responds intelligently, there is no problem. Of course if you insult people, it tends to set of worthless to the topic responses, but then that means we have a community problem not simply an individual problem. It is also, I find, easier to ignore, than someone with the vague form of rationality who draws you in but never acknowledges or concedes anything that might trouble their view. Of course, I bear responsibility for being lured in when I am.
If I look around the forum I see a lot of opinion making and really sloppy arguments, with the occasional interesting post. Keeping away right wing extremists may or may not have lead to more focused discussions, but really I find it hard to imagine that this is the case, given the current state.
It is easy, and understandibly more appealing to no doubt busy moderators, to focus on CONTENT. But pattern of interaction is really more destructive.
I think shaming is good. I wish the community would shame not content but inability to carry out coherent dialogue with integrity. I mean, it does happen. A number of people have reacted to Prismatic who is a classice example of someone so sure they are right, they cannot acknowledge the slightest mistake and commit many of the sins I mentioned above. AT least three people have bluntly commented on his shortcomings here, after trying through many, many posts to have a rational dialogue with him. I think that kind of shaming is good. In fact I would like to see more shaming and less banning. Not that it has worked in Prismatic’s case, nor am I optimistic with some of the people mentioned earlier in this thread.
I also think people should be encourage to ignore posters. Right now there is this weird conception that it is a sin or weak or cowardly to put people on ignore or otherwise ignore them. Jesus, do people listen to just random podcasts and radio shows. Just flip a coin to decide what books to read, what friends to have, who to have deep discussions with? No. We all make choices. More people should be ignored. Don’t feed the trolls, regardless of whether they are polite impervious idiots or rude people. If you cannot learn from them adn they cannot learn from you, what the hell are you wasting your time talking to them for?
Announce you will ignore them - shaming, factual information, a nod to your colleagues - then ignore them.
Make shame and shunning the core natural consequence punishment here. Shaming itself is fair and gives the person good feedback. Then when they are shunned, get little response, they understand why. Shaming will not make changes or much, but shunning after shaming will.
And we don’t need Carleas to do this, though it would help if he saw the wisdom of this.