A couple of points
(1) It is good to see at least some people voicing their opinion on the subject. I am willing to bet there are others out there who have chosen not to speak up for whatever reason but who think there should not be such hate driven threads on Sajha.
(2) I think this was a very mild disciplinary measure by San dai. He did not delete the thread or lock out the users. He merely moved it to the "Our Difference section". This is his site and it is his prerogative to do what he pleases, but I thought he was being very lenient there. Most major sites like the groups in Yahoo, Google, MySpace would not put up with hate threads either and they might actually take more stern action like deleting the thread/group and disabling the account of repeat offenders. Each site has different thresholds for tolerating such stuff - you can get away with it for longer on some sites than others - but it is no unknown for site admins to take this kind of action when the forum gets taken over by such posts.
(3) Knight Crawler said "Until and unless we cleanse our thinking, simply removing a thread from one site, even though a good start, ain't going to help....it may disappear from Sajha,but it will pop up in million other sites, be it from same person under different identity....or from a different person with various other aliases."
Agree about the need to cleanse our thinking as you so aptly put it. That's gotta be the long term solution. But in the interim, actions like what San dai did are baby steps that might contribute to how people can go about changing their thinking. When you know you cannot get away with hurling such egregious racist charges,and you are held accountable even in a small way for it, there in can begin the process of self examination. As for such stuff popping up in other sites, unless such people go about hosting their own sites, they are bound to run against the tolerance threshold of most community oriented sites like the ones mentioned above
Sajha can and perhaps should be a forum for discussing differences in a healthy and civil way in my opinion. There is plenty that can be discussed in an informed and civil way. However it should not provide a platform for people who are bent of spewing out hate and maliciously putting others down - that to me is a clear abuse of the privileges given to them.
(4) I don't for a second buy the notion that all San dai cares about is money and he is so driven by it that he does not have any responsibilities. The very fact that he has intervened, taken charge of the situation and removed threads and disallowed users on numerous occasions is proof enough that he has acted responsibly- sometimes perhaps even jeopardizing his financial interests by being tough on users some of whom might have been able to bring about financial benefits in the long rung (like banner ads, word of mouth references etc)
But if money is a motivator - then so be it - this is not a charity site - and it's a good thing IMHO. The admin is ultimately responsible to ensure there is good content on this site and whatever he deems necessary to do so - including rewarding and punishing users - is entirely up to him regardless of what his business model is.
(5) I have been part of several groups and community oriented sites out there and one of the most elemental things that everyone understands is if you deliberately and repeatedly do something on such a site that you could not do in the open community, you will be held accountable for it in some form or the other at some time or the other.
Sajha should be no different on that account.
Just my thoughts.
