Banned
Well tonight I was banned from the TSA's IRC channel, my place of hangout for about a decade. The reason is, to put it simply, that the admins decided that it was against the rules for me to discuss politics in any way shape or form, once they decided that I figured it was only a matter or time. I'm not going to go into anymore detail beyond
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While I am not one to easily change my beliefs, I'm pretty much fine with agreeing to disagree, plus I have a rule not to take differences in opinion personally. Getting emotional over a difference in viewpoints is in my point of view a waste of time and energy.
That's all well and good so long as you know when it's time to pull out, and in the eyes of many your ability to recognize this has not been adequately demonstrated, unfortunately.
As for last night, basically a political discussion occurred on its own without prompting from me, during which I was almost entirely AFK during the entire affair. I came back, made a comment about there being a politics channel, which I had just opened and was preparing to move the discussion into to avoid violating my probation, and I was then informed that I had just violated my probation and was banned fairly promptly.
Hrm. I'd be interested in seeing the chat logs of that, if that's possible. I may ask around. My supposition, though, based on what little I know, would be that the terms of the gag order involved no discussion because they frankly don't trust you to handle said discussion in a mature and intelligent manner (whether or not you get emotional about it or not, if you're unwilling to adapt ideas and/or consider alternatives, that is immaturity in a debate, so giving that impression - or worse, actually being that way - is a kiss of death), and so if I were in that position I would have at least double-checked with Jessie and/or Kristy if special-purpose channels were OK. (And for my part, I would have defended that, because the continued conversation that frustrates folks with you does so in large part because it clogs public channels; if people want to talk to you and aren't frustrated by your debate style, why not let 'em? ;) )
So no I don't believe my willingness to change viewpoints had anything to do with the last incident, nor the incidents leading up to it really. Such factors may have eventually led certain parties to being so intolerant towards me in the first place, but really that's just speculation.
I can't say on the last incident 'till I've seen what happened and had the chance to make a call myself, but the incident immediately prior (our ANWR debate) was kind of a direct result thereof. I went into that debate we had initially as a fun little side topic, and it started to turn into "Can I get him to at least possibly concede the idea that this may not necessarily be the cure-all he started out selling it as?" I would have been perfectly happy with something like "Okay, so maybe it's not the special future of the people of Alaska, but I still think it's a good idea because of X". Your phrasing never really approached this format; whenever a new idea was brought up, it was just brought up without any reference to the prior idea. I was willing (to some degree) to assume that this just meant you were exploring alternative reasons why ANWR Drilling Is Good, but a lot of folks will take that as unwillingness to compromise - and realistically that is NOT an error on their part because that's how most people who won't compromise ACT.
I'm not saying that you're all wrong and some kind of idiot for bringing it up; I don't believe that for a moment. I'm just saying that your debate skills need a heck of a lot of work, and that in their current state they are severely detrimental to whatever argument you may be making, and that's the ultimate reason you were banned. (The final determination of probation warning may have been slightly different - again, I wasn't there, so I can't say for sure yet - but frankly at that point you'd stretched things so far that just about any further slip on your part would have broken the camel's back.)
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