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Do you plan any moderation to combat climate deniers?
by perfunctory 7y ago
Do you plan any moderation to combat climate deniers?
- ericvanular 7y agoWe have baked-in anti spam moderation to the community. In regards to climate deniers coming on and brigading the community, I felt that it would be better to let moderators & the community treat those on a case by case basis with counter arguments and voting as necessary What do you think? I'm open to suggestion but I feel like suppressing free speech goes against the ideals of the community
- vcdimension 7y agoAbsolutely agree with that, but the problem might be people not having the time to follow up on long discussions, and source information to disprove climate denier arguments. In fact my experience is that many climate activists are not that familiar with the science & economics themselves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qaJKM77j00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qaJKM77j00 (she should have quoted Martin Weitzman's work on the fat tails of the climate sensitivity distribution). I would suggest having a repository of clear arguments and counter arguments with links to reputable scientific sources, that we can refer any climate deniers to. For example: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2018/06/will-climate-change-bring-benefits-from-reduced-cold-related-mortality-insights-from-the-latest-epidemiological-research/ http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2018/06/will-c...
- ericvanular 7y agoI'm hearing you loud and clear. That's a great idea to keep the conversation focused. If you're willing, we would love to have you put forward this idea on the platform itself!
- perfunctory 7y agoI am just worried that your platform might turn into a debate forum with endless back and forth arguments instead of being a "community for discussing positive climate actions". Discussing actions assumes you already agree on what the problem is. If you want to be successful, focus is the key. And to enable focus, you need to guard your community. Heck, HN is successful and heavily moderated. edit: If you are serious about solving climate crisis, there is no time for counter arguments. Arguing with deniers and "sceptics" is a distraction and a waist of time. They are already a minority anyway. The majority of the population, both in US and EU, supports climate policies. The task is not to convert sceptics, the task now is to get the pro climate majority off their butts, away from their keyboards, and to "the streets".
- ericvanular 7y agoVery valid concern. Thanks for your feedback! I'd suggest that you post that on the community Meta section and we can determine a standard approach for dealing with climate deniers transparently out in the open. What do you think?
- briandear 7y agoWhy would we want to “combat” different opinions? Contrarian opinions are healthy. Dogma should always be challenged — if anything, such challenges help people better define and strengthen their own arguments. Most of us “deniers” don’t deny climate change, we just disagree with the causes and the proposed solutions. Science isn’t static, data isn’t always conclusive and outside agendas aren’t always disclosed.
- ericvanular 7y agoYou've eloquently stated my position in better words than I had used. Thank you, please feel free to chip in these thoughts on the platform
- joshypants 7y agoWow, this doesn't instill confidence in your moderation abilities. You need to show people who "disagree on the causes" the door.
- ericvanular 7y agoConversely, I think that heavy censorship of opposing ideas shows a lack of confidence in one's own opinion. If we can't debate effectively the merits of climate action in a community designed for it, then we need to work on our messaging
- joshypants 7y agoyou're going to let a bunch of astroturfing people wreck your platform and it's not going to be useful to anyone. you're being naive.