Re: Ali_Syed feedback
Sub log itne garam kyun hain bhai logo, please thandi lassi piyein sub!
Right, this is going to be a detailed reply and I really hope it won’t be misunderstood as me taking you on, Yazdi bhai. I only posted what 3 lines in Shamraz’s thread, not attacking him in any way, and still I’m being told I’ve somehow disrespected him. So in case this lamba sa reply gets mistaken as something else, just a disclaimer that I’m only writing this because your opinion matters to me and it seems like I’ve majorly upset ye so this requires a proper response out of respect for you. I don’t think you’d be able to point out a single incident in all these years where I’ve been disrespectful to either of you or ever held your views against you so I feel saddened with the whole new team vs us thing going on. I always held ye in high regard and I wasn’t aware of this apparent divide between us. You need not remind us of your years of extraordinary services for us to continue to respect you. As far as I’m concerned, you’re not only an asset to GS but to the country as well.
Now I understand there’s some major heated debate going on in Society that has resulted in tensions between the liberals and the religious-minded but why is the team being held responsible for that? If there’s an influx of “internet mullahs” on GS, why should that be a problem as long as they’re debating within the boundaries of the forum? If there’s anyone I expect to be tolerant of opposing views, they’d be the liberals and yet you’re telling me that they’re disappearing because they’re put off by the conservative views? Contrary to your observations, 3 years ago when I was new to the forum, there were hardly any atheists, secularists, liberals around (of Pakistani origin) but today there are plenty or they’ve become more outspoken than ever like Ali said. In fact, just going by the poll results of the PA thread, there are more secularists and moderates around than the so-called mullahs.
Now if the mullahs start complaining that there are too many liberals roaming around, I’d say more power to the liberals. Why are we being expected to filter one group out because the other group doesn’t like them? Extremists obviously have never been allowed to use GS as a medium to spread hatred so no this forum will never turn into a jihadi terrorist forum. But other members, conservatives, liberals and moderates, have every right to express their views even if they don’t see eye to eye. Unfortunately, not all of them manage to keep their cool at all times as you’d know quite well and the foul language/personal attacks is what the mod was editing, it had nothing to do with the posters’ views. Like Shak said, so much of right wing clutter is being removed daily and the right-wingers could easily turn around and play the victim card. I can’t do much about that, I’m sorry. Those who trusted me with this role must have had faith in my integrity that if I did see something wrong happening, I wouldn’t cover it up.
“Let the people from diverse views make their point of view and let the readers decide who is making sense.” Again referring to the same PA thread as an example, everyone freely posted their opinions, did they not? Was there a single secularist liberal poster who was silenced just because a mod didn’t like his views on the topic being discussed? Have your views ever been censored? I actually had to PM some of the conservatives asking them to tone down their views, I haven’t done that with a single secularist poster. The person PMed me back saying we give liberals way too much leeway and here you’re saying it’s the other way around. Ab mein kis ki sunun?
As for me posting something disgusting about protecting some mentality… yeh kub hua? If you’re referring to extremist, intolerant, hateful mentality, how is that religious mentality? The people I’m backing up are the conservatives, not the extremists. There I am saying that we will continue to enforce the policy that everyone should be respected regardless of their views, that if a team member was being hateful towards others, he’d be let go and not protected, that we have not discriminated on the basis of religion, race, nationality etc when hiring team members, that we’d never hold anyone’s views against them and still I was being disgusting? Really? Mein karun tau kya karun, ap please mujhe batayen. The religious lot are getting offended because the atheists are making fun of their beards and the atheists are also feeling super victimized by the religious lot, or beech mein hum phis rahe hain. We aren’t perfect, we’re struggling to strike a balance and we’d like to count on you guys to bear with us, to be patient with us and to guide us as you’re more experienced, more mature.
Finally, whether the team is old or new does not have anything to do with the orientation of the forum because the forum and the entire team is always overseen by the same people who’ve been looking after it since the 90’s. I’m new but I’m not a dictator who gets to do as she wishes and destroy the years of hard work put into the forum. If you don’t trust me, at least have faith in the admins to keep the forum steered in the right direction. Again, I really hope this post hasn’t enraged you in any way as this wasn’t my intention at all. I just wanted to address all the points you raised in detail as I’m positive that good will come out of such discussions.
Honestly, ye are the last people I want to see unhappy. We would be the ones at loss if you were disappointed with us.
You have completely misinterpreted something I said, no way on earth would I say it’s okay for Muslims to insult others because it’s a Muslim dominated forum. Hell no. You shouldn’t even be worried about this because we’re absolutely on the same page with regards to this. Someone who I consider to be a right-wing extremist here has already collected 40+ infraction points within a matter of 10 days. What does that tell you? We have zero tolerance policy towards hate-mongers be they leftists or rightists or whatever. But if the mods do miss a post that you feel is inappropriate, please do report it and we’ll take prompt action.