[rebeccaskinner]

> Its easy to think you're right when you assume the other side is racist.

The crux of my experience is that when the thing people disagree with you on _isn’t_ racist/homophobic/misogynistic/etc. then they tend to directly name and openly discuss the subject of their disagreement. The general and innocuous sounding term “diversity of thought” tends to get brought out when the opinions themselves are one of those opinions that people don’t want to admit to so openly.

If people are going to disagree about a choice of software license, or technical architecture, or copyright assignment, or even about moderation standards and free speech, they tend to just directly name the thing they are disagreeing about (as we are now).

I’ll give some ground here and say that in some cases “diversity of thought” isn’t raised because the particular person raising the thought wants to say bigoted things, but at the very least it tends to get trotted out to defend speech that ends up driving people away because of either direct overt bigotry or, more often, a pervasive use of dog whistles.

[logifail]

> to defend speech that ends up driving people away because of either direct overt bigotry or, more often, a pervasive use of dog whistles

Q: Who gets to determine if something counts as a "dog whistle" or a "trope"?

I don't find the typical usage of either of those terms ever contributes much to honest debate.

[rebeccaskinner]

You know it when you see it, and ultimately it’s going to be a call left up to whoever is moderating the community. Any attempt at a narrow or precise definition leads to disingenuous people exhausting the moderators with endless rules lawyering.