Since we have former moderators of GAF on here, please tell me how the other moderators responded to/debated the public revelation that Besada engaged in purging out long-time users from GAF based on his personal animosity or just wrong-think?
Surely that most have triggered intense debate amongst the sophisticate group of high-minded individuals?
I don't feel it's my place to name names, but I will stress that I was strongly against Besada's position and so were a few other moderators. Not necessarily the majority, however.
What made the conversation more awkward was that most of us superficially agreed with Besada -- for example, I am personally liberal and identify as a feminist. I am "on his side," as it were. But that doesn't mean I believe alternative viewpoints should be purged, and it is that issue which personally divided me from some other moderators.
It's also worth appreciating their perspective here. Take an extreme example to see what I mean: let's imagine some poster was openly a Nazi, and not in the vague way it's often used now, but literally a Nazi advocating for the extermination of Jews. Would I support that person's right to spread their views on NeoGAF? No, I would not have. There is a line, and it looks like this forum also has lines. The question is
where you draw that line. From their perspective, they were keeping cruel/bad positions off of NeoGAF: from my perspective I believe the line was drawn far too aggressively, curbing all sorts of dissonant views. Perhaps worst of all, certain wrong or bigoted views were excommunicated, but other wrong views were not, simply because those bigoted views happen to leftist ones, or which appealed to leftist sensibilities. For example, you might see someone engaging in misogyny be banned, but someone engaging in misandry would not be. These wrinkles made the conversation difficult to engage in, because it's hard to impress on someone that you agree with their conclusions but not the manner in which they are executing on those conclusions.
