Formal complaint against Suttacentral for unfair treatment and discrimination

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Slightly off-topic – mods can scratch it, or I’ll delete it if too far –

Currently well into a close reading of “Sects and Sectarianism”, and then noting the (now closed) thread “Thought experiment - a genderless vinaya”, the issues were highlighted for me by all the goings-on in Germany last week (all over the Deutsche Welle national media - sorta the German BBC) – October 31 2017 was the 500th anniversary, to the day, of Martin Luther’s nailing his “95 theses” to the door of the castle church in Wittenburg, and triggering the Protestant Reformation.

I scanned many of the numerous feature articles, and researched some of the history, as I’ve so far known little about what Luther actually did with his life (My maternal grandfather was Pfarrer / pastor of a German-speaking Lutheran congregation near Chicago, but by the time I came along my immediate family had converted to my (Polish) father’s Roman Catholicism.)

Apparently he objected to, reformed both doctrine (dhamma, so to speak), and Canon law (the procedural rules). Initially be was considered heretical, but the end result was, as far as I understand the term, a genuine schism. His motivation on both issues was actually sort of EBT-like – he wanted to go back and restructure everything according to what was in the New Testament, rather than 1500 years of institution and commentary.

Curiously though, and apropos the topic back in the “Thought Experiment…” thread, I also learned (from a TV documentary film about Katharina Luther – his wife), he s/w revolutionized the attitude towards women in his new religious system, on the basis that both sexes were equal before God and in faith. For one thing, he established, for the first time in German culture of that time, equal education for women, so they could also read the Bible as well as handle business (e.g. math). The overall tenor was a sense of equality of responsibility but still a separation of duties (managing the children and household vs external career), but he even pushed that a bit. In his will he left everything (large house and the business Katharina had built in it) to his wife, AND designated her as sole guardian of their children. That, however, pushed the social norms a bit too far, and the legal authorities would not allow that.

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Maybe a little off-topic, but thank you so much for sharing! :pray: If the mods want to split this off into a separate topic, that’s OK with me too.

Sometimes it is also good to look at developments in history and other religions. I remember some lovely encounters with a female Bishop and a female Pfarrer of the Lutheran church in Germany. They were warm and open and invited us, Buddhist nuns, to stay the night and gave us food (we were on Tudong at the time), even wanted to give us money! They were just so much more open and compassionate than the Catholic environment I had grown up in.

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I think one of the Biggest issues here has been a lack of diversity of thought. It is quite obvious and has been for a long time that the admin and mod team and many if not most of the regular posters are in general of one type of social ideology. this does tend to show in the “ganging up” that was mentioned above.

I have complained about this too. The problem of group thinking is always a problem for all forums even ones that do have diversity of thought. Those who think they are immune to it are the most dangerous. Notice the simptoms:

Type I: Overestimations of the group — its power and morality

  • Illusions of invulnerability creating excessive optimism and encouraging risk taking.
  • Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions.

Type II: Closed-mindedness

  • Rationalizing warnings that might challenge the group’s assumptions.
  • Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, biased, spiteful, impotent, or stupid.

Type III: Pressures toward uniformity

  • Self-censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus.
  • Illusions of unanimity among group members, silence is viewed as agreement.
  • Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions the group, couched in terms of “disloyalty”
  • Mindguards— self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information.

Sounds familiar ? I am sure all moderators here are good intended, no matter their flaws. Proof for this is the fact that they did not close this topic and have always been open to criticism, a thing I’ve always appreciated. The problem is, good intended people finding themselves in a group-think situation are the most dangerous, look at the communist for example. All the initial communist who started the whole thing were extraordinarely good intended. The same situation is true when it comes to terrorist. They actually are extremelly good intended and selfless in what they do, it’s just that the problem lies elswhere. The fact that they are good intended only helps to strenthen a person idea that his decisions are always correct and that he can never be wrong, cause he is good intended.

Real progress is done when one has the power to deal with the difficult problems not only the superficial ones. Such a battle might not bring too much external praise to one since no one can see it, yet it is a victory that nobody can take away afterwards. May the good will that one might have be used in such difficult battles.

What happened to basically all buddhist forums in the past (E-shanga, DW pre revolution, DW mahayana, r/buddhism etc.) should serve as a warning. Those who ignore history are bound to repeat it.

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@sujato, @Brahmali, @vimala, @cara, @anon29387788, @aminah, @tuvok, @stacey, @anon61506839, @sabbamitta

Thank you all for your kind words of support and encouragement!

And especially a huuuge thanks to the mods and the admin team who have spent days dealing with the aftermath of this incident! We are all so grateful to you. :hugs:

:open_mouth:
Well, we all know that I advocate for an independent bhikkhuni sangha. So I’ll have to stay away, just to make a point…:grin::grin:

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@pasanna, @gabriel, @brenna, @anyone I forgot:

Thank you so much.
Please see my post above. I was only allowed to mention ten users per post…

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What do you mean by this? (Just being curious, given my experience there)

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@SarathW1
:heart_eyes:

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There was a shakedown at DhammaWheel and some mods unpopular with some got the boot, AFAIK. Some people who had a very negative relationship with those mods celebrate what they see as a transformation in DhammaWheel’s moderation tone.

I myself have never had issues with DhammaWheel’s moderation. I will admit that I find DharmaWheel’s more than a bit heavy handed, but the only issue I have ever had with moderation here is wanting to have a proper conversation in the Watercooler and being told that it sounds/comes off as aggressive/mean.

It usually confuses me more than anything, as I generally (typically) don’t really understand what is being moderated or why, but usually whatever I was going to write in the Watercooler wasn’t terribly relevant anyways.

I think being moderated can be an excersize in just letting go of whatever “super important” tidbit one had to share.

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Re: Watercooler: should we have an ‘armchair and coffee’ section, I wonder where more serious EBT related material could be discussed, or not at all?

with metta

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img-thing
WHY DIDN’T I THINK THIS THROUGH?!!!

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I think I got unwillingly tied to the “shakedown” you mentioned and subsquently welcomed the new moderation style. However it has since become less than perfect over time, prompting me to leave for good, as I do not want to be part of a community that normalizes islamophobia.

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I agree with what you say about StC, I too felt the same as you regarding things moderated and not even phantoming the reason for why that happened and people calling you rude for no reason.

As for DW, I know you are a fair and rational person so I have expectations from you Coemgenu. Don’t let the fact that you disagree with the new mods in charge on political issues make you see white instead of black. If you are to judge moderation, judge it by how fair the moderation itself is going, not by how much you agree or not with mods political opinions.

The guys before were as brutal as brutal moderation can get. You’ll hardly find anything remotely similar anywhere on the internet. Anything slightly contradicting goenka was censored. Straightforeward criticism of goenka would get you instatly banned and they would electroshock you if they could for something like that. They even edited or removed posts that said random stuff randomly contradicting goenka, like claiming that “buddhist path is a gradual path” for example, because that contradicted Goenka boot-camp approach. Goenka is a cult and people into it have full cult mentality. The goenka center in my country, holder of international retreats, approved by Goenka himself, has 70 slaves working on the guru big farm, to say nothing of the sexual abuse, child abuse, drug orgies, etc. etc. that is going on there. It’s almost identical with MISA from the past, the guru being a MISA leader himself in the past. You can’t have cult members running a forum. There are problems now with Nanananda/Nanavira censorship, a thing I am complaining about ever since the moderation change, but they are 5%-10% of what was going on with Goenka censorship.

As for political opinions, they were as censored as they get and they get. To give just an example: The “Victims of communism” topic was closed for no reason and after I told the moderators that many people including my parents suffered all their lives brutal opression due to it, etc. they put the URSS coat of arms at their avatar for the rest of the day, like to try to anger me in a childish way, only embarrasing themselves. I have print screen as proff. Moderation there was as ridiculous as it can possibly get. Now, even though you might not like a moderator right-wing opinion, at least they don’t instantly ban you for expressing your left wing opinion. As a matter of fact, the lounge is as free and fair as it gets, there is zero censorship going on over there. It’s only Nanananda/Nanavira problems that exist.

Please be fair when speaking about these problems Coemgenu. I just had a big scandal on DW regarding Nanananda censorship being very close to getting banned again for criticizing him, but you will never see me saying those guys that were rulling the place before were better than the ones we have now. If you want to judge moderation, always judge it by the fairness of moderation itself, not by how much you agree with a mod political opinions.

Until you get banned and get your posts deleted + the moderators putting the svastica at their avatar after you complain about the closing for no reason of the victims of nazism topic cause your parents were jews living under nazism - until you see that kind of stuff going on, please stop comparing the new moderation with the old one. As far as I know, not even a single post ever got deleted from the lounge area and of course no bans and no svasticas at the avatar. It’s only Nanananda/Nanavira that are above criticism.

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Hi friends,
There has already been one reminder on this thread to keep it on topic.
This thread will now be closed.
Thank you.

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