No, none of them contribute anything here and have made very clear that they would never extend the same consideration to any of us. In fact, our mere presence is enough to send them into fits so I don't really feel like inviting trouble back in. Plus they all had really good reasons for bans, and it takes a lot to make it happen here (unlike our notorious counterpart group).


They've declared war on the non-believers here on DU, every olive branch we've tried to extend has been snapped and thrown in our faces, two hidden threads today shows their feelings.

Would it perhaps be worthwhile to have a path to reinstatement/reconciliation? Without an eye toward specific individuals that may or may not be eligible.

To have a mechanism for it, as part of the group sop?

I would think forms of probation, or sponsorship wherein, for instance, I would have to risk my own access to sponsor in another individual, and therefore would be expected to manage the sponsoree's reintegration.

but there are so few blocked here that it's really not necessary, imo.

I do like the mechanic in the initial setting you described, but whenever I have tried something like this online in the past they just show up and remind everyone why they were banned in the first place.

Were they banned on their 1st disruptive post?

Their second?

3rd?


4th?


Are they TRYING to get banned? (so they can complain about how elitist and close-minded we are?)

More in relation to some bitching I have seen by one or more of the banned.

Hope springs eternal, and I'm a gullible idiot, but I suppose in some way, I think ,maybe a path to reconciliation being available might better channel those individuals energy into something other than being a bitter refugee.

Edit; ducking piece of shot autocorrect

But I don't think I would object to your purposal if in addition to the stipulations you laid out, that said disrupters made a public apology for their behavior and a public promise to abide by the rules of this group.

I do believe everyone should be given an opportunity to make amends if they sincerely want to reform. It should not be an easy process though.

All that said, (and with one exception for a poster I could not find the block notice for) I don't see any of the posters on that list reforming anytime now or in the future.

otherwise no, sorry but the remainder, the active posters on that list, would do nothing but cause trouble. What benefit would allowing rug, starboard tack, cbayer, stone space, and struggle4progress to post here bring to this forum? When have that set shown anything other than animosity towards us?

They aren't interested in discussion, despite their pious whining.

Last edited Sun Aug 24, 2014, 03:34 PM - Edit history (1)

All they need do is understand how the aberrant behavior led to their ban, promise not to engage those activities in the group, and make a request via PM to one of the hosts. If they refrain from the behavior that got them banned in the first place, there's no reason they can't be good members of the A&A community.

I don't see that happening, but I could be wrong.

In this group, we've never banned someone who simply enraged people with there mere presence. In fact, those banned engaged in bad behavior AFTER being warned - in some cases, repeatedly. They appeared to double down on their maliciousness. Seems unlikely anyone who behaved like that would be willing to mend fences.

Especially not with a sponsorship. The next thing you know, there would be banned DUers who would want to get you (or another good-hearted A&A member) banned as well because you sponsored them.

I tried to have a conversation with one of them in another thread explaining how their tone is always that of contempt and animosity towards us. Instead of actually engaging he played some silly "gotcha" word game with me and threw in a Hitchens quote out of context instead. The whole thing convinced me the individual isn't worth engaging for any reason ever again. I am sure he was proud.

But I hold out the slight hope that he'll read the above post, recognize the interaction and come to some kind of self realization. I really don't like writing anybody off as hopeless.

They can't even act civil in their OWN "safe haven," so you think they're going to act in a decent manner in ours? They were banned specifically because they did NOT behave properly in our safe haven.

These folks have numerous ways that they could show their good intent. They don't do it in the R forum, they don't do it in I forum. They're certainly not going to do it here.

I totally get what you're saying---I do. These people are toxic. They are not interested in *ANY* dialogue. THey said they were, and the Atheists/Agnostics rallied behind them to get Interfaith going....which should have a tumbleweed .gif embedded on the home page. When A/A's go to have a conversation there, we're told to fuck off, we're called assholes, we're repeatedly called homophobes by one precious poster....

They feel that saying "oh we'd LOVE to talk, but we can't as long as so many of us are banned from your group...sigh..." Bullshit. They don't want conversation. They want DOMINATION. These folks don't give two shiny shits about your feelings, or how you view the world as an Atheist, or your thoughts on religion. They just don't, and they've said so in different words a variety of times.

What they DO want, and what they have made clear with their constant bleating of "choose your battles!!!" is for Atheists to admit that Atheism is bad, and that we are an organized group with as much, if not more clout than all the major world religions combined. They want us to say that the pope is good, and Richard Dawkins is bad, and that he is our leader and we take our orders from him. They want us to admit that really, what's so bad about religious invocation before city council meetings, and really who cares if the 10 commandments are on display in a courthouse, and that Atheists have never suffered persecution because in order to suffer persecution you have to have been killed in large numbers or tortured and by the way, what about Stalin.

They want us to admit that no one wants to live in a society without a religious basis, and that morals come from religion, that the bible is true when they need it to be and allegory when they want it to be.

They wan to post bullshit without question. They don't want to be reminded of religion-based scandals because SECULAR SCANDALS TOO!!1!.

That's what they want. They have plenty of places they can have it but they can't have it here.

They don't want discussion with you. They want to CONTROL the discussion you are having with them. and if you disagree with them, well you're a bigot. If you agree with them, well, you're family now

... have been met.

Like maybe,

Public apologies.

A complete discontinuance of alerting in groups from which you are banned.

Feel free to add to the list.

Pledges to not alert anymore are worthless.

I have no desire to mass amnesty people. If they want back in, they can contact me.

And I kind of want to keep the people on the blocked list that have been PPRd. I know it does no purpose to keep them there but it gives a pretty good indication that we know what we are doing when a good percentage of our blocks ended up getting blocked.

But instead, I'll just say No.