MOD POST: So I fucked up by asking for and approving silveradept's post and I apologize

[the_future_modernes]

Hello members, subscribers, lurkers and anyone else who reads,mods, posts on or checks this blog. This is an apology post in reaction to the very problematic blog post that I posted downstairs.

So I read a post by silveradept about the space program and I did not read it clearly enough, and so asked him to crosspost to politics. TRIGGER WARNINGS for colonialist mindset and VERY problematic concept of exploited people are expendable and should be killed for the progress of all. If you are in a fragile mental state I would suggest that you don't read this one. And I have asked him to put at least some of it under a cut when he returns. A clearly marked excerpt of the article and a bit of my discussion is under the cut:


He writes that if space travel is to progress that people need to accept that people are going to die in the pursuit of new ideas, and then blah blah blah cakes colonizing planets etc. I thought from what I read that what he was saying was that we need to understand that sometimes science can lead to collateral damage and thus while we must and should make sure that as much safety precautions be taken as necessary, deaths will happen sometimes, and that should not stop us from exploring. carefully. I caught the colonialist rhetoric, which in hindsight should have stopped me from reccing this right there. What I missed was the part where:



ARTICLE EXCERPT

If we want to give ourselves an out in case people get really stupid on Terra and render it uninhabitable, we've got to be willing to send some people off-world to start building, colonizing, and dying while they get everything situated. Mars is a three year trip at current speeds (last I knew), so we'd need to provide supplies for that plus a bit more to get things going - fabricating the buildings, getting the gardens growing, seeing if some sort of artificial environment can be constructed so as to begin the sustainability cycle, with some occasional care packages from home. Maybe later we find a way of kickstarting the core and getting the necessary spheres generated to begin trying to make Mars habitable to Terrans. Which is going to require lots of failed experiments and data-gathering before we succeed.

If science wishes to proceed, it's going to have to start killing some people, deliberately, instead of through malfunctions due to old equipment or overlooked things. As callous as it sounds, those places that are already rife with overcrowding are probably also rife with people who have the necessary brains and disciplines to be able to make a one-way mission successful and transmit their data back so we can build the better mousetrap and send again. If nothing else, we should have enough material sent in intermittent missions for later missions to be able to cannibalize and use to make their work that much better and easier.

I really have no idea how on earth I managed to miss those especial paragraphs at all, and I would seriously like to apologize for that carelessness and the subsequent blindsiding hurt that it caused readers. I should have paid closer attention to the article both when I read it first and when I approved it for publication, and letting it through was a big mistake.


When I first got custody of this community from the previous owner, I wanted it to be a somewhat like the vibrant comm ontd_political. That comm has several people a day posting various mainstream media articles which are then discussed by the members. The articles are from a wide part of the political spectrum, from actual socialist newspapers to right wing newspapers, though the comm is mostly liberalish and so the critique tends to flow in that direction. And yet, I forgot one thing. ontd_political has user post up that explains what the comm is about and lays down some rules of engagement. I did have a post from last year of some very simple rules but, but I have not gotten around to working with my co-mod and the community to either add that to the profile and perhaps add more specific stuff to define the comm's direction. Hell, I didn't even remember that it was there!


While the community was on a "post a news article basis" , that lack of guidelines didn't really come up. However, last November I asked the comm what would encourage more people to post and interact more with us. And among the answers were: allowing people to post their political blogposts. I and my co-mod have therefore been working on getting people with interesting posts to link or crosspost their stuff here. silveradept is on my friendslist and he usually posts very interesting linkspams and thoughtful politically-minded blogposts. Which is why I asked him to join politics and from time to time request that he post links and blogs that I think will fit in with the community norms. The problem is that the community norms are not explicitly written statements that everyone in the comm can be pointed to, has looked at and agreed with and so use as a basis when they participate in the comm. It is an norm that is implicit in and can be teased out based on what most posts on the comm are about and where they are sourced from, and for those comm members who know me and la_vie_noire, what they expect of us based on our political stances elsewhere. The fault in this case is entirely mine for missing the problematic aspects of silveradept's post and in not writing down what approach the community takes towards political discussion, so both he and I could have a ready reference as to what we are doing here.

Now re: the post itself. I have PMed silveradept about it and asked for a cut, at the very least (which he has done). I am waiting on his reply and both la_vie_noire and I will be in dialogue with him and between ourselves on how we can resolve this. I'd like to apologize again to you all for this mistake.

And I'd also like to take this opportunity to open the floor so that we can codify what type of a political community that we are and how we will enforce our policies so as to make this comm a good experience for everyone. You are welcome to make suggestions, toss rocks at me for my carelessness and otherwise express your opinion on where we go from here.


EDIT: We have spoken to silveradept and we agreed that the post should be cut and warned for and my apology post, this one, be linked to on top of the entry. Thoughts?