@destraht @gaylubeoil @itiswr1tten One of the reasons I introduced Tribes is because I don't think all men naturally do get along together. In fact, I think it's quite natural for men to band together intro small groups and generally dislike outsiders. History is a giant lesson in this very fact.

But I think it's naive for me to assume I know the best group, that my group is the best, or that a best group actually exists. I know that the competition of ideas is important to avoid echo chambers.

I saw the writing on the wall on other platforms. I knew that my tribe was in danger. And I recognized that other tribes were to suffer the same fate. Enter: TRP.RED and TRIBES.

I am not banning content, nor am I going to disallow for the rigorous debate of ideas. I am, however, interested in making sure one particular tribe doesn't troll the front page where I spend a lot of time and effort getting new users to land. If I spend effort acquring new eye balls, and a small group of 3 or 4 people are doing their very best to make sure they leave, then they are working against my purposes.

Other tribes will not get a foothold if one is busy trying to make everybody else miserable in highly targeted and visible ways.

While I don't agree with how Reddit handles things, there was benefit in how they developed subreddits. The fact that our mods were able to ban the TWOX trolls from /r/theredpill, and they did the same to us, worked well to keep our community strong.

Likewise, the trolling I see on here has no place on /feed/theredpill because I keep a higher standard of discourse. But that doesn't mean I have any desire to silence you.

It does mean a home-page feed change needs to take place. I don't buy any crocodile tears from any of you if you threaten violence, post personal pictures and mock people for coming here, and then get upset when only the same few users stay active for longer than a day. And before you say it- yes, I keep having to remove death threats, threats of violence, and other wishes of personal harm from our home page, despite it being expressly against our content policy.

I hear the complaints that you don't want an echo chamber. But many here are working overtime to keep anybody with competing ideas entirely off the platform with personal mockery and insults instead of better arguments. Perhaps I was gifted the skill of foresight, but getting rid of absolutely everybody instead of embracing at least the tiniest form of decorum is not the way to avoid an echo chamber.

Essentially, where a common decorum or baseline decency is not recognized, only those with the worst behaviors will survive. Is that code for "the best ideas rise to the top?" No, it means that only those who can shock the most are left after everybody else gives up on due to the flood-style of debate that is devoid of ideas and resorts to ad hominem as the first line of defense.

Even now, with what I've just said, I have no intention of censorship. But I think anybody who wants to see TRP.RED succeed will agree with me that scaring off every new user is just plain bad marketing, and that there needs to be a way for new users to gradually uncover the deeper elements of the community without being slapped in the face with it before having a chance to upload their avatar. I think that's reasonable.

Also, as an aside, I feel that a lot of the ongoing debates will have far better structure with the advent of tribe forums on forums.red.