It’s understandable that both you and Meagan don’t have the time for moderation of this forum, but have you thought about the solution to this issue?
Chie has been frequenting this forum for a long time, being active, spending lots of time reading and writing in here. The time he could offload from both of you if given an ability to moderate things on this forum, assuming he would agree to such a proposition.
He displayed enormous maturity when responding to others, clarity of judgment, analytical thinking, caring about values of freedom of speech, high level of intelligence allowing him to read between the lines with accuracy. And I think he already has proven himself as a person who can be trusted with such responsibility, a person that does deeply cares about this organization.
I know that a lot of people here care about allowing people to express their opinions, I agree too, I think that everyone should be given a chance to express their opinion, regardless of how disturbing it might be because there is more benefit to having such opinions discussed than to pretend they don’t exist.
But the fact remains that such principles are being exploited by all kinds of trolls to fabricate accounts of individuals claiming support of Prostasia while acting in deceptive ways to reinforce the paranoid suspicions many people in society have about this organization. On top of genuinely pro-contact individuals who seek to find others like them, or to convince others to be like them. Because even if it fools errand in the case of this forum, it’s still worrying to anyone seeing such effort allowed to happen.
I think most of us saw this article in which Michael45 posts and the fact that in his profile there is information that he was invited by terminus has been used to craft the narration that Prostasia supports individuals like him by being inviting and complicit in allowing his activity. Sure, some people are already aware of how manipulations like these work, we had a couple of people came in here saying that they weren’t tricked by the screenshots of his posts posted on one Discord server, most likely by Micheal himself.
But the majority of people are not going to spend their time reading the week’s worth of textual conversations I had with him exposing the double speak he has been using. Even now people researching this organization can look up his profile, seeing, that he is invited by terminus and that he is still allowed to post. Many of them will assume that this is the confirmation of the accusations because most people are simply too lazy to dig deeper. And they can’t be blamed for that being the case.
I don’t think that having a strict rule that results in an instant permaban of anyone even closely alluding to pro-contact rhetoric would be beneficial. When I met various individuals skeptical about this organization, I usually link them a thread in which they can see people like Chie, and many others, actively debunking statements of individuals that advocate for relationships between adults and children. Or where they give legitimately good advice to someone struggling with problems. Or explaining in logical, rational, and supported with external sources manners how the propositions Prostasia is giving away translate to the improvement of protection of minors.
Having the ability to see the community this organization gathered in action clears any of the misconceptions such people are having. Because to every claim like “Prostasia is a secret child sex trafficking hub akin to NAMBLA that tries to normalize pedophilia”, they see what you see:
But the problem is, they associate that stance with the community, and not with the organization itself. Anyone can have an account on this forum, but the accounts that matter the most are of the individuals being a part of the organization. There has to be some feedback within such discussions that come from people that represent Prostasia, in order for them to link that stance, with Prostasia as well.
What I’m proposing is not a ban of “pro-contact opinions”, there would be difficulty in determining what constitutes as such. Such opinions should be expressed and discussed because there is a benefit to them. But there should be a system of warnings, against deceptive behavior, and there needs to be a conclusion to individuals who behaved in such ways in spite of the warnings, that essentially summarizes what they did and why they got a ban. So people researching claims against Prostasia can easily see, that for instance, on Michaels’s profile there is information that he was banned for disingenuous and manipulative behavior that was aimed at mischaracterization of the organization’s mission as being supportive of child sexual abuse.
There could also be use in issuing warnings and eventually banning individuals who don’t use the search function of the forum and repeat the same threads over and over again. Like all the insecure individuals who talk using “we” instead of “I”, demand proofs of claims without giving any themselves, try to intimidate others and dominate them into submission, and clearly have no idea what the majority of society finds disturbing in regards to the topic of pedophilia.
This is the only compromise between freedom of speech and the protection of this organization’s reputation that I sadly have. One thing that has to be paid in mind is that because of the constant insistence of social media drama queens that Prostasia is “a front for pedophiles”, lot’s of disgruntled, resentful and antisocial individuals might believe it, hoping to find likeminded people or to simply troll the larger public for their own fun. And when such people come in here, there isn’t really much that would challenge what they believe Prostasia is. Daniel Rumanos himself thought that when Prostasia talks about “child protection”, they meant prepubescent children alone and that this organization was in support of hebephilic and ephebophilic relationships. And having such a system of warnings against deceptive behavior, or against red flags, could clear such people’s misconceptions.
As for Mark Miner, I think he should have a chance to stop talking in riddles, rather than to be instantly banned. I still find it hard to believe that someone who presents himself as a linguist, professional writer, and poesy enthusiast, with his insistence on communicating with others through the analogy of his favorite medium, which he should be an expert of, somehow manages to make multiple people conclude the opposite of what he alleges to try to communicate. He either is a deceptive pro-contact advocate, or simply a poor writer. One option needs to be eliminated before the second can be asserted, so the chance to do so would clear that misconception.
