Michael Doyle5 said:I have to say, I'm feeling pretty discouraged by this constant, intentional lack of respect. The rules. It was brought up by several users (Philosophy, croat22, pilot program, and Ludwig), along with some of the moderators (wiredangler5 and Uncle Strile).
bluecyclist64 said:The moderators rarely show up on the PDF, and when they do, they seem strangely lenient.
I accept the complaint against myself. You're both right, and honestly, that's just the reality of things right now.
I’ll be straight with you about why things are the way they are right now. I’m not trying to dodge responsibility—you're right about how things stand—but I want you to know it isn't because we don't care. There are just a lot of different reasons behind this.
I’ve been away from the forum for quite a while. I needed to take a break after moderating for several years—it was getting to be a bit much—so I decided to focus on other parts of my life for a bit.
If I didn't feel like diving back into the history subforum, I wouldn't bother at all. Honestly, why put myself through those intense debates? They just end up being a massive headache.
Life hasn't been this boring in a long time. It would be masochistic of me to complain, but I'm not quite crazy enough to miss all the constant fighting we used to have on here.
Honestly, things were exactly like that right before I left for my military service and summer vacation. As soon as I got back home, I jumped straight back into work. I ended up spending quite a few days out at the farm helping my parents get enough firewood ready for the winter.
To top it all off, I walked into a nasty surprise at work today. For some reason, our server admins blocked our access to Index, Morning, Daily.hr, and a bunch of other sites. They even cut off Forum.hr, which wasn't an issue before.
Every time I try to log in here, I just get hit with a message saying that... Siemens' safety protocols. They won't let me access this site. Now I'm losing a good chunk of time I could've spent on the forum during work, since my job actually lets me get away with it.
That’s eight more hours shaved off, plus the eight I spend half-asleep. That only leaves the eight hours I have to deal with real-life stuff. As it happens, my brother is getting married tomorrow, so I've spent most of my free time over the last two weeks helping him get ready.
Look, like I said, what I wrote isn't meant to be an excuse for what you guys pointed out. You're absolutely right, and there’s no point in lying to ourselves about that. I just wanted to be upfront and say it's not because we're being sensitive or anything.
The same goes for Uncle Strile, who’s getting dragged on dozens of pages and is rushing to respond as fast as he can. Just keep in mind he also moderates Religion, which is an incredibly complex and massive subforum that requires him to spend hours monitoring it every single day, much like History.
I’d probably bet a hundred bucks that he’s actually a little pissed off and hurt because I showed up to take his job. ☕
All jokes aside, there really should be more people around here. But honestly, we'd probably just need to hire a bunch more moderators to actually cover everything.
That’s my honest take on it. I’ve voiced my concerns, so now it’s up to you guys—thumbs up or thumbs down on whether you actually get where we're coming from.
The same goes for the folks over at the Military History and Tech forum. That sub-forum is also a total mess, so we just drop in whenever we can.
Alright folks, I'm going to be completely open and honest here. No holding anything back.
bluecyclist64 said:We should probably mention that some users here openly push Nazi ideologies—take detector, for example. The mods rarely show up in this sub, and when they do, they seem strangely lenient. Honestly, those kinds of posts should have been moved to Politics a long time ago. See ya later.
When someone shamelessly brings up Hitler's... Second one. That book is pure fiction, painting Jews as monsters responsible for everything wrong with the world. Honestly, he should just go back to posting on Stormfront.
History has become a total joke lately. People just keep citing nonsense from shady neo-fascist sites, while actual, credible sources have become almost impossible to find.
I get what you’re saying, and I see why it’s so frustrating. I notice a lot of people on the forum romanticizing that era and trying to spin it as something vital for the nation. They always fall back on the same old excuse: "Yeah, but the other side did this too." It's just a classic way of shifting the blame—trying to justify one monster by pointing at another.
I get what you mean. A lot of people write on really slippery ground, hovering right on the edge where their ideology is obvious even if they don't say it outright. They just wrap everything up in this polished, sanitized way. I know you can see right through that to what they actually believe. I see it too.
You know what the issue is? It’s just really hard to actually enforce the kind of penalties you'd want to hand out for most of the stuff being reported. Or for a lot of others who are also holding back on their reports.
Look, we missed some things because we weren't around. I try to check every single post, even if I just skim through those massive walls of text, but it happens. Some stuff is clearly nonsense, but a lot of it actually deserves attention. You probably get most frustrated by that third type of thing—it makes you feel like we're being too soft, like we're letting people walk all over us or that we simply don't care.
It's not really any of that, bluecyclist64. To me, punishing certain opinions or viewpoints just because they don't align with ours feels a lot like introducing verbal crimes.
I’m never going to go there. I don't want to play games like those politicians who hunt down and punish anyone on Facebook just because they wrote something that doesn't align with their specific agenda.
There will always be different viewpoints and political parties. You'll always have people who think exactly like certain local leaders, but then you'll have those on the opposite side who would label anything that doesn't smell strictly like communism as being just as bad as Stalin—maybe even wanting to bring back something like the Red Guards to wipe out anyone who dares to disagree. There's just a bit of everything.
Is it illegal for people to think this way? It isn't. Just like how right-wing groups in Germany can march through the streets, regardless of what we think about those rallies. Then Antifa shows up with a counter-protest in response—both sides have that right.
Look, if someone starts waving a Nazi flag or shouting "Sieg heil," then yeah, they deserve to be shut down immediately. But until that point, everyone has a right to their own opinion, even if we hate what they have to say. Suppressing views just because they're unpopular isn't the answer. Romanticizing history based on which side you root for isn't a crime, either—you just beat stupidity with better arguments. You see this perfectly in how Zoran Oštrić handles debates; he lays out his case with every argument he's got, always keeping an ace up his sleeve to land the final blow exactly when it counts. Your other options are pretty limited: either jump in and deal with the headache of arguing against someone's romanticized nonsense, or don't engage at all. There really isn't a third way.
What the detector posted about that book you mentioned smells like revisionism to both of us. If he thinks Jews are monsters, I’ll just let him think that. I feel the same way about Americans sometimes—there isn't a worse group. But when someone starts glorifying Nazism, denying the Holocaust or Jasenovac, that's a whole different story. You tend to dance on that line too, on the other side. You don't deny Bleiburg, but you often push the limit by suggesting those people didn't deserve better because they were all criminals. You've even said they probably got what was coming to them. Look, I don't support that view either, but you're entitled to your opinion. If someone denies Bleiburg actually happened, then we have a problem, just like denying Jasenovac.
That's the point, bluecyclist64, we can't punish everything. I know some people are right on the edge and I know how they think. But if I start doing that, we'll end up banning everyone, because radical distortions exist on both sides—left and right, in local and global history.
I agree that a lot of it is borderline, but I don't intend to radically punish personal opinions; everyone has a right to their views. Even you, since you think we're being too soft. It's your absolute right to feel that way, and I don't mind if you call me out a hundred times for not reacting enough on the sub-forum because you see Nazism everywhere and get allergic to even a hint of it, reporting posts at the first sign.
You're free to face people like that with solid arguments, or even be a bit more aggressive if you stay within the rules.
I'm not planning any purges over opinions or borderline views, no matter how much they differ from mine. Everyone gets the same treatment. That's how I handle your views too, even when they're borderline and could earn a bigger penalty. But you don't get one; you have the right to your opinion, no matter how much it raises people's blood pressure or how much I personally dislike certain posts of yours.
There, once again, being honest and without holding back. This response is a bit long, but it's my general answer to all the reports you've filed and why you've called us out for tolerating extremists.