@FaheemMitha Regarding the whole RMS thing, I think this best sums it up. RMS said:

> We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates.

But the Medium article reported it as:

> …and then he says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be “entirely willing”.

The very definition of contextomy.

please stop

@MichaelHomer This is twice you mentioned that you disliked this topic. What problem do you have with it?

Is a controversial topic important to FOSS not relevant to a *nix chat?

@MichaelHomer If you aren't willing to engage in a discussion, or aren't interested in a discussion, you can ignore it instead of interjecting because you don't like it. I can only see there being a problem if the discussion is beat to death, but that doesn't appear to be the case. So please stop interjecting yourself when someone mentions something you don't wish to discuss.

That is all.

On an unrelated and potentially less controversial note, this is great: contrachrome.com

please take it somewhere that isn't the main room of the site instead of insisting on repeatedly discussing child sexual abuse in here where anyone may come in

What? This is the first time I mentioned that topic or linked any quotes. A topic relevant to FOSS is relevant to this chat room.

I'd appreciate it if you didn't mischaracterize the situation.

@prosody-GabeVereableContext You know, I've seen you in almost every room but I've never seen you talk.

Why do you join so many rooms?

thingsquare.com/blog/articles/rand-may-call-malloc

lol IoT

@forest It seems that is the same Scott McCloud that wrote "The Sculptor". Adam Cadre, whose blog I follow, wrote an approving essay about it.

adamcadre.ac/calendar/17/17405.html

I've not read it myself. It sounds interesting, though dark.

Though I may be drawing more conclusions than are warranted from your comment. Here's Adam's review - adamcadre.ac/calendar/17/17405.html

Quote:

> Because, to me, it seemed clear that McCloud was simply observing that this is an interesting thing that humans do even though it does nothing to change our bleak circumstances.

"this" being art, of course.

I've only read about McCloud in Adam's blog.

(Sorry, I see I linked to Adam's review twice.)

@FaheemMitha you and I need longer edit times. Why "All edits under 5 min", sheesh... I want technology regulations of/for edit_time_limit. 0:) Advocacy from time.com/6164702/twitter-edit-button-elon-musk is too late, I mean why are govs/laws not just coding Specifications? (Well, I should have "Replied.." function in the chat to at that other user, instead of just @ sign, otherwise not all users can see what is replied to. Just realized, for the record, I did not edit that formally.)

@forest That is the wrong question. If someone tells you a subject makes them uncomfortable, you stop discussing that subject. The reasons why it makes the other person uncomfortable are completely irrelevant. As is the specific subject. If you're discussing tomatoes and someone asks you to stop, you stop, and you don't ask the other person to justify their dislike for tomatoes.

@forest And this is also unacceptable. Again, if someone asks you to stop, you stop. You don't tell them to not engage in a conversation. Everyone has the right to ask for a conversation to stop. Nobody has the right to insist on continuing a conversation that makes someone else uncomfortable. That's the only way to maintain a civil conversation across different cultural and personal norms.

@prosody-GabeVereableContext Hi. Did you mean to address me here? If so, I'm not sure what the context is. Though I agree that the edit times are on the short time, though I understand the rationale for them.

@terdon By your logic, anyone could stop anyone else from engaging in a conversation about anything. Including, perhaps, topics that are actually on topic here, since your "someone asks you to stop, you stop" doesn't actually specify.

If you don't take the point, perhaps I should (though I probably won't because it's insane) ask the next people who engage in an off-topic conversation here, or even an on-topic one, to stop to talking about what they are talking about "because it makes me feel uncomfortable".

@FaheemMitha Yes. Precisely.

I mean, if you really want to take it to extremes. And yes, this is a flawed system, but it's the best we've been able to come up with. So yes, if someone tells you a conversation is making them uncomfortable, you stop.

@terdon Wow. I'll like to see any Stack Exchange policy documentation for that. At all.

The most I've heard is something about "be nice". Which is itself pretty vague. But at least it's a criterion, of sorts.

@FaheemMitha Do I really need to justify common courtesy now? If someone asks you to stop discussing something that is clearly innocuous, we can deal with that then. But seeing as this was triggered by a discussion that was at least tangentially related to the broader subject of child abuse, I really don't see why an explanation would be needed.

@terdon In case it's not completely obvious, I totally disagree with this. Random people who enter the chat don't get to arbitrarily censor what people are talking about.

@terdon Child abuse? We were talking about the abuse and vilification of the founder of the Free Software Movement.

@terdon What you describe isn't common courtesy, no.

@FaheemMitha The request to stop was made when the subject veered to the specific statements RMS had made about child abuse. That seems like a text book example of the sort of subject that should immediately be dropped if someone objects. You do not know what traumas people may be carrying and how uncomfortable any such discussion could make them. And neither you, nor I, not anyone else gets to tell them they should suck it up.

@FaheemMitha Agreeing to stop discussing a subject when one of the people present asks for the subject to be changed is absolutely common courtesy.

@terdon Statements about child abuse? He was defending his friend. Did you read the same discussion I did?

@FaheemMitha Yes. Please read it again.

@terdon Except that anyone in the whole world could be present. This is basically a public forum.

@FaheemMitha Precisely.

@terdon Well, maybe you could tell me what I need to read again.

It is not "our" room versus "random people entering the chat".

It is a public forum where everyone has equal right to be here.

@terdon So a random person entering the chat could stop any conversation any time, by your logic?

@FaheemMitha The block of messages here: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/60854759#60854759

@terdon OK. Stallman says nothing about child abuse. The quoted message from the Medium article does, yes. But @forest mentioned that as an example of how what Stallman wrote was distorted.

@FaheemMitha Yes. If they feel uncomfortable with the subject being discussed, and ask nicely for it to stop, we should stop. If it ever happens that the person asking is clearly being irrational, we can cross that bridge when we get to it. However, the vast majority of cases are going to be valid so as a rule of thumb: you stop when asked to stop. Just like any decent person would do when someone in the room tells them they are uncomfortable.

To quote @forest, "The very definition of contextomy."

@terdon Well, I think @MichaelHomer was being irrational. But clearly you would disagree.

@FaheemMitha That is not for either of us to judge on a subject as sensitive as this one.

But I don't think there is much point continuing this further. If I had the energy, I might bring this up in Meta, but I doubt I have the energy.

Please do.

@terdon Sigh.

@FaheemMitha Sigh or not, that's the point: I don't get to tell you that you're being irrational because I don't have the same experiences you have so subjectX does not affect me in the way it affects you. If you feel so strongly about continuing a discussion that makes someone else uncomfortable, just take it to a different room. Again, just like any half way decent human being would do in real life.

@terdon I don't feel "so strongly" about this discussion, which in any case was over when you appeared and decided to start pontificating about your ideas of courtesy. I just object to the idea what anybody could choose to derail a discussion about any topic because it make them uncomfortable. You designate "child sexual abuse", which we were clearly not talking about, as a sensitive subject.

Tell me, do you have a list of "sensitive subjects" which you should share with me and/or the room, or even the site? That way we would have some notice whether we could expect such a discussion to be abruptly shut down for no reason.

Ignoring your tone, I will just repeat that the rule is quite simple: if you are asked to stop, stop.

If you feel the request is out of line, flag.

But really, all I am saying is "don't be a jerk", don't ignore people if they tell you something makes them uncomfortable. I am surprised I need to explain this to you, this is not something that should be hard. You have always been kind and polite to others.

@FaheemMitha @FaheemMitha Oh (darn again, why did I not use the reply_arrow), that was just a reply to chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/60857306#60857306 ...that's why in my writing for that part, I changed to parenthesis, as you said parenthetically too, in said chat entry. I mean, you were talking about missing the duplicate entry, correct, when you wrote "(Sorry,"? I think you were apologizing for your grammar in a sense, missing the repeat links/repeat words in first proof.

@terdon I don't think either I or @forest was being a jerk. And I think you're missing the point of the whole discussion. AFAIK, the role of a mod is to "keep the peace". That doesn't include (as far as I know) randomly and arbitrarily setting policy "on the fly". It does include, for example, people randomly spamming the room with rubbish, being abusive towards other members, and perhaps being aggressively off-topic for extensive periods of time.

I don't think the brief conversation between myself and @forest belongs to any of these categories.

In my experience, when actual abuse happens, mods (and everyone else) are quite likely to do absolutely nothing.

@FaheemMitha I was pointing out that you are not someone who goes around being a jerk. As for the role of mods, that most certainly involves making sure people are civil to each other which includes stopping conversations when they make others in the room uncomfortable.

I remember some years ago, one of the members in the Cooking Chatroom, where I had been for a while, decided to start verbally harassing me. She was a high rep member I think. Nobody did anything. This went on for a while. I tried to ignore her for a while, but eventually I left. I actually think I complained to you about it as well at the time, as I recall.

Being aggressively off topic is a new one to me. This room is regularly used to discuss subjects ranging from the Indian stock market to the best lawn mowers. We've never been about a specific topic.

@FaheemMitha That's what flags are for. Also, the rules around chat are very different today than some years ago and far less permissive.

@terdon I suppose we differ in thinking that @forest and I were being uncivil to anyone. We were having a conversation between us. Not including anyone else.

But I think we've covered this ground already.

@prosody-GabeVereableContext Ah, I see. You were referencing my comment "(Sorry, I see I linked to Adam's review twice.)"

Yes, longer edit times would give one a change to go back and fix typos and repetitions and stuff like that.

2 minutes is definitely on the short side. But I imagine this has been bought up by people already, though I've not checked.

@FaheemMitha That's not how it works. If you're having the conversation here, you are having it with everyone. If you want to have a conversation only between the two of you, then take it to a new room.

@prosody-GabeVereableContext There are tons of items in the SE wishlist which mostly get ignored, I think.

I'm made a couple of suggestions myself.

@FaheemMitha That's all I'd ask for. Not to digress, but I wonder ("theoretically") if longer talk times (I mean, like, Reddit has only 6 month thread time limit, how is that enough time for world peace?) would help some topics of conversation.

@prosody-GabeVereableContext And yes, using the reply thingy is usually a good idea, for context. Though it does have the drawback of potentially disturbing the person who make the comment that is being linked to. One suggestion I earlier made was to allow the linking without the notification.

@prosody-GabeVereableContext 6 months seems a bit excessive, but longer than 2 minutes might be reasonable. But I'm not aware of any discussion about this. But I don't really follow SE stuff.

~~:60858398~~ (Me strikethroughing the reply function string, in your honor :) Yet SE is lightyears ahead of the chat specifications of FB. Web feature/regulation discussion is in its infancy so far, we don't even agree on basic terminology yet, literacy to even know what's an Edit Time. (If only SE was as open source as RMS tho, hmm... I wish SE had more representation, seriously, more editors, more coders, an open source community to help grow SE leadership as a non-profit... Sorry, dreaming.)

@prosody-GabeVereableContext "strikethroughing the reply function string, in your honor"?

You realise SE is a corporation, right? And not a particularly nice one, by all accounts. Though are corporations ever nice? But I don't pay much attention to the goings-on here. I just ask questions on SE, sometimes. And sometimes I post answers. Though not much of the latter in recent years.

@FaheemMitha Strikethrough syntax to symbolically not show the sound effect for the reply notification?

@prosody-GabeVereableContext FB is best avoided, I think. They're Bad News.

@prosody-GabeVereableContext Ah. I don't object to the sound effect. I was just saying it's not ideal. But you do want to link your replies if possible. For context, as already mentioned.

Apparently it's harder on a phone. But I don't use a phone for such things, so I wouldn't know.

Funny maybe but as an aside, I almost never say the word in my name "c__text" it's just in my name... <3

I read you (among others) in the English room (the most active room on SE) we're around the same hours sometimes, I just can't go fast enough for the English room, Mitch types so well I can not compete. :)

@prosody-GabeVereableContext Presumably you are aware that there a couple of small alternatives to SE around, who were directly inspired by SE. But I don't know how they are doing. One of them is topanswers, the other is codidact.

@prosody-GabeVereableContext I'm rarely in the English room. I assume you mean the ELU room.

I have been there in the past, but I've never really been active there, at least not for long periods.

Sometimes I ask questions about English usage.

Oh my, I am confusing you with Vikas and I am only reading your names and typing text. Lord, forgive me. Your text does not sound or look the same, so something psychological for me maybe, eek.

@FaheemMitha I want to use Ubuntu and Red Hat or SUSE, not Gentoo and Slackware for my questions and answers ...or I mean, SE/Quora are the FB of Q&A, nothing can compete (well, maybe regulation can compete, in 100 years...).

@prosody-GabeVereableContext I don't know who Vikas is, but OK.

@prosody-GabeVereableContext I didn't quite follow that sentence. But SE and Quora are hardly comparable, they're very different sites.

And Quora is full of advertising and misinformation. Not a very useful site, unless you really have no alternative. Sometimes they are useful, since nothing is off-topic, and you can pick up scraps of possibly useful information there, which is better than nothing.

SE doesn't cover a lot of things, and in a lot of cases it's not clear where else to ask.

@FaheemMitha Stupid me, reading names for identity markers, stupidly thinking your names sounded the same, my slip only, not related to you. >:(

@FaheemMitha Oh, I agree, SE and Quora are their own countries. SE is a democrac.... well almost... Quora is Russia maybe, but I'm biased...

@prosody-GabeVereableContext Poor Russa. The latest Western punching bag.

Before it was Iraq. Or Libya. Or just Muslims. It changes.

@FaheemMitha Sorry, I was biased there. I actually agree, the hegemonic polarization is inculcating into (un)just pejorativization. I'm giving away I'm an American citizen, and I'm not even trying. I meant to stay neutral with the Ubuntu vs. Slackware continuum, again, sorry, that variable was too political.

@prosody-GabeVereableContext Oh dear. I'm afraid I'm not following again. I do seem to say that a lot.

I currently have a Finnish guest who doesn't really speak English. So I get to say that to him too, unfortunately.

@prosody-GabeVereableContext Do you live in the United States?

@FaheemMitha Born in US, American schools, raised by text chatting.

@FaheemMitha Ubuntu vs Slackware, is StackExchange versus Quora, in my reference point. But that's not the best analogy, I wanted to just express the paradigm.

@prosody-GabeVereableContext I don't think there's really a vs here. Linux distributions don't have an adversarial relationship. And SE and Quora kind of feel like they belong to different universes. But that's just my opinion.

@prosody-GabeVereableContext There do seem to be a lot of Americans here. But I suppose that's not surprising.

I was just thinking how Eurocentric the world is. As a mental exercise, I tried to come the names of living African citizens. And I couldn't come up with any. Which I found a bit shocking. Other than my recent guest from Namibia, Graham. I've had other guests from Africa, but I can't remember their names. All the others were from South Africa, for some reason.

@FaheemMitha Informal analogy, please forgive the stretch of logic, just trying to place markers on the idea. They're really their own "universes", I agree, if only there were Q&A spec templates from W3.org... sorry, dreaming again.

One of the math faculty at UNC, Math Dept is/was also African. From Benin, I think. I can't remember his name either.

I only remember names when they're screen names, so I have another problem...

Perhaps most people could think of some African athletes or sportsmen, but I can't think of any. But I think of literally hundreds of people in North America without trying.