@CJmacie , I have a question for you: Imagine if you were born in an ex communist country still poor because of communism. Imagine if you lived more than half you’re life in 1600$ pib per capita. Imagine if your parents lived in even lower pib per capita, a famine that lasted a decade and unimaginable represseion. The older generation in such countries, including my parents, are still traumatized and have a “communist mentality” meaning extreme fear of the police or of breaking any unimportant rule or being non-conformist in any way. All their lives they lived in fear that anything can put you in the labor camp, and you can also be put there arbitrarely, or for disturbing some important person, or for a neighbour that doesn’t like you lying to the police about you. Even though they were against communism, they still have this fear and paranoid mentality. They were trained all their life to be like that. The older generation is also much shorter than the new one, cause of malnutrition.
And now imagine you are on a buddhist forum in 2016 and the mods there close the “Victims of communism” topic and put the URSS coat of arms at their avatar for the rest of the day (I can provide print screen) because you, as a member unjustly banned, posted a message that only mods could see about how bad communism was. Put yourself in such a person shoes.
Would you feel like a Jew on a Nazist forum or not ? Is it normal that on a buddhist forum, to feel like a jew on a nazist forum ? What does buddhism has to do with radical ideologies ? I have no problem with radical people, there is room for them too under the sun. But don’t make marxist or nazist moderators on an international buddhist forum where victims of marxism or nazism can be present too. Send them to a political forum, not to a buddhist one. Don’t you think that DW needed to be made more inclusive to a different variety of people ? The owner of the forum has made it clear that when he started it, he wanted to create an international BUDDHIST forum, not a marxist subreddit.
Also, what do you think about the constant insults thrown by them, including the “stupid cough syrupe guy” when they banned the whole forum for messages that only other mods could see, but no forum members so their image was safe anyway ?
I know the current moderation might not be perfect. I agree there is a little too much focus on politics. But at least you can discuss the dhamma. Before, you could not discuss the dhamma. You could not say things in contradiction with goenka and mahasi. You would get banned and your posts deleted. Even posts unrelated to goenka, posts containing “gradual training” suttas (MN 117, MN 48 etc.) were edited cause they remotely contradicted goenka. Today, only Nanananda and Thanissaro are beyond criticism but even there, there is much more liberalism than it was before. As for the political side of the forum, it was much more political than it is today, maybe you do not remember well. And you would get banned for absolutely anything in that section. At least now you have the right to speak.
Say what you want about the new moderation, but please don’t say the last one was better. Until you see the new moderation closing the “Victim of nazism” topic and putting a swastica at their avatar, don’t say they are worse than those before. Have a little respect for the liberalism they brought to the biggest buddhist forum on the internet. As you may know, I am banned there for criticizing Nanavira and got my topic closed for no reason, same as the Thanissaro topic. But that won’t make me ever say that the Gestapo moderation was better. And at least those topics were allowed a couple of pages, not deleted in 30 seconds + ban. Even now they are not deleted, just closed.