Aotearoa / New Zealand

There's even a name for this - Karl Popper's Paradox of Tolerance.

At this stage in human history, a community or forum where all are welcome is impossible. If one leaves a forum open for those who are intolerant, then the forum effectively becomes closed to those that they are intolerant of. It's not a problem with forums or how communities are managed, the problem is humans being humans. Maybe in a thousand years time or so ...

At best communities get to choose what they tolerate. I've found in the past that those who demand tolerance of fairly toxic views, fail to remember that tolerance isn't, nor should it be, unlimited.

Ignore Tamaki, he was just a useful idiot for the purposes of discussion. What I am trying to get across is that a truly open and free space for the exchange of ideas can only be hindered by restricting what can and cannot be said, and will ultimately create an echo chamber. We live in an increasingly divided world; we are divided politically, religiously, ideologically and plenty of others. Restricting what ideas can and cannot be spread can only serve to widen those divisions as those who are being restricted to retreat to their own echo chambers and find more and more extreme ideas.

If we want to create a truly open place where people can come and share their experiences, their thoughts and their ideas, then we do ourselves a disservice by restricting what can and can't be said, or who can and can't say things.

Agreed. Letting everyone have an equal say just leads to shitty online forums (Facebook, Stuff comments for example) where misinformation gets spread easily, and hateful content is propagated. I don't want to see that happening here.