An SGer suggests a Clean Speech exception:
Now BB is back on Twitter, we may need a special CS exemption for quoting him. Basically impossible otherwise. Globe, payments for male encounters, you get the idea.
My response:
No exceptions, no exemptions. In fact, if you were a moderator, you’d lose your position just for suggesting this. This sort of special exception is precisely how the rot always begins.
Now, there is nothing wrong with a SocialGalactic user throwing out ideas, regardless of whether they are good or not. The site is an autocracy and the users have absolutely no power to change anything. However, it’s important to understand that sort of suggestion is a red flag and the mindset behind it is potentially very dangerous because it is precisely the way that infiltrators always begin the process of changing an organization.
The problem is that most justifications for initial change not only sound reasonable, they are reasonable. But that is why those who are in charge of enforcing the rules need to be indifferent to reason and deaf to reasonable appeals to relax them. If you give ground on one core principle, you have laid the groundwork and provided part of the justification for the next retreat.
I would rather permanently ban every single UATV creator, including myself, from SG than relax its Clean Speech policy by so much as one emoji. I don’t care what Owen says on Twitter or on Gab; if anyone on SG wants to know what he has said, they can follow him on those alternate social media sites. Clean Speech is one of the most important attributes of SocialGalactic, and it is not a policy that is open to discussion or modification.