Redacted Squad - offensive route names on MP

@DW - I don't think Soup Nazi needs to be redacted. Good thing too, because your screed about appropriation is incomprehensible. I may still respond to your posts that mention Soup Nazi, not to argue that it must be redacted, but because the leaps you make from that being redacted to your frenzied tirades about the people who support or perform the work are tiresome. I think the 'Zionist' and 'Hamas' route names you mentioned should be redacted. But I'm also not losing any sleep over the presence of over-redacted and under-redacted route names, as the posts I've seen have described the route name review as a work in progress. Trying to 'school' me on metaphor isn't going to go well for you, so you should quit while you're ahead. You're out of your depth and it shows.

@Guy - Bemoaning the imminent end of MP is a longstanding tradition in this forum, but it's still here and so are you.

grug g wrote:

a diverse committee was created to correct offensive route names on MP. 

how about, instead of a Star Chamber, we put it to popular vote by MP users. Post a route, run a poll, give it a week or two.

Jay Crew wrote:

how about, instead of a Star Chamber, we put it to popular vote by MP users. Post a route, run a poll, give it a week or two.

Stellar idea Jay.

@FirstLast….. yes it’s still here, but you must admit to the fact that there is much less traffic - but look at “general” - 5 years ago you had to go back a few pages to find a post that was 3 days old. Now some spend weeks on P1 ….

Jess saying 

Guy Keesee wrote:

I have a good friend, who has climbed the big stone more than 20 times, does FA’s all the time and has contributed more than 40 climbs to MP, cannot log on without purchasing a onX subscription.

Utterly not true. No 'purchasing' at all.

Jay Crew wrote:

how about, instead of a Star Chamber, we put it to popular vote by MP users. Post a route, run a poll, give it a week or two.

1. I don’t think MP forum users are representative of the climbing community.
2. Voting on censorship is oxymoronic. By definition, free speech is to protect minorities, no matter how small, even if you are a minority of 1. If the people voted on allowed speech in the early 1960’s, there would be no Civil Rights movement.

Redacted Redactberg wrote:

1. By definition, free speech is to protect minorities, no matter how small, even if you are a minority of 1. 

Huh? Civil rights are to protect minorities. Free speech has a lot of reasons, but I'd say the primary one is to protect citizens from an oppressive government (freedom of the press / first amendment).

Glowering wrote:

Huh? Civil rights are to protect minorities. Free speech has a lot of reasons, but I'd say the primary one is to protect citizens from an oppressive government (freedom of the press / first amendment).

I’m referring to minorities generally, not just demographics. Minority, as in a group that is less than 50%. Yes you are right about govt repression, but no-one is talking about gov’t here, we’re talking about culture and publishing. Like when publishers, not the gov’t, would censor abolitionist works because they were deemed offensive.

First Last wrote:I don't think Soup Nazi needs to be redacted. 

Why? What if someone is offended by it? Maybe had an authentic panic attack due to PTSD? What is your EXACT metric for determining what deserves redaction and what does not? Are you the arbitrator of morality? Or do you admit that you could be offended by a route name, only to later learn you were wrong? And if not you, then who? And if nobody, then how?

No one here disagrees that there are repulsive route names. If I made an abhorrent route name, I would hope I have good enough friends to confront me on it. The disagreement is that there is no way of reliably separating the wheat from the chaff. I want to err on the side of the innocent, since I am a rock climber and hate to step on FA’s. You want to err on the side of the guilty, because of your hatred for bigots and/or love for its victims.

But there is an even bigger truth: censorship is a runaway reaction that cannot be controlled. Once you sufficiently ignite it, everything burns down. The cure is way worse than the disease when it comes to speech.

Slippery slope fallacy. Same flawed thinking is used to argue the opposite idea, that a little permissiveness establishes a dangerous precedent. After all, with no way of reliably separating the wheat from the chaff, we would quickly find ourselves with no social and cultural taboos whatsoever and the fabric of society would unravel as pedophiles and freaks parade their perversions in front of children, warping their young and impressionable minds. Right? How interesting that both of these opposing slippery slope conceits function to disenfranchise the people whose civil rights have had to be explicitly protected. Just like Elon Musk, your backlash against political correctness/cancel culture/the woke mind virus is ultimately about freedom for me and not for thee.

You're also ignoring the many ways that society has actually loosened constraints on free expression over time. Even within the incredibly specific context of MP and route name redaction, the current program of route name reviews is reversing many of the redactions that were done quickly based on the presence of a given keyword - because in real life, the adults in the room can handle the nuanced decision making that you find impossible. If we ground this in data rather than fear mongering hypotheticals, we see that you're clutching pearls over 0.25% of the routes on MP being redacted. The slippery slope argument isn't the path of reasoning that led to your conclusion, it's what you turned to as a convenience to justify the outcome that is most comfortable for you. Where's your 'runaway reaction' from the censorship of hate speech, or workplace protections from hostile environments? Fortunately, we have already decided as a society to codify limits on free speech, often as an extension of civil rights, and remarkably, it hasn't snowballed into fascism.

Why? What if someone is offended by it? Maybe had an authentic panic attack due to PTSD? What is your EXACT metric for determining what deserves redaction and what does not? Are you the arbitrator of morality? Or do you admit that you could be offended by a route name, only to later learn you were wrong? And if not you, then who? And if nobody, then how?

On MP it's not up to us. It's up to whoever runs the site or whoever they put in charge to make those decisions. The supreme court has ruled things are obscene if it's patently offensive and goes beyond contemporary community standards. And a similar approach would apply here IMO. Both "patently offensive" and "contemporary community standards" are subjective, but if you have a panel (as I think was the idea on MP it just hasn't happened, hence this thread) you can discuss and come to a conclusion on most items. "Contemporary" is a big factor. Like in my Squaw example earlier 20 years ago the community (general population of the US) didn't consider it offensive, but years of people who are offended by it speaking out and people looking into the origin and context of how it's been used changed the opinion of enough people that it's considered offensive now. 

But there is an even bigger truth: censorship is a runaway reaction that cannot be controlled. Once you sufficiently ignite it, everything burns down. The cure is way worse than the disease when it comes to speech. 

No it's not. Example MP. Did all route names get redacted? No. Were a small percentage of route names caught up in a purge that aren't offensive? Yes. Is it worth it that for those names you have to click on the i to see them in order to prevent really disparaging names from insulting a targeted group of people. Again that's up to MP not us, but IMO it's still worth it. That' what this is about not some slippery slope argument. For MP we can see exactly what the consequences are. 

Coincidentally, just came across this:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/05/us/video/bird-name-racism-christian-cooper-intv-foa-digvid

This is a funny thread and perfect bathroom reading.

Redacted Redactberg wrote:

1. I don’t think MP forum users are representative of the climbing community.
2. Voting on censorship is oxymoronic. By definition, free speech is to protect minorities, no matter how small, even if you are a minority of 1. 

.1 We're only talking about MP, correct? It's not like MP can command a guidebook author, or anybody else beyond the website.

.2. True... but better than a committee

IMO MP should only decide one thing... redact or not redact. In no way should Onyx try to go into the re-naming business

Redacted Redactberg wrote:

But there is an even bigger truth: censorship is a runaway reaction that cannot be controlled. Once you sufficiently ignite it, everything burns down. The cure is way worse than the disease when it comes to speech.

I'm amazed that so many people don't understand true freedom. Personally I'm done adding any routes to a website that doesn't get it (I  know that they didn't start the censorship of route names). 

Being offended is part of freedom.

Doesn't OnX cater to motor heads and hunters? I wonder how that customer base feels.

Glowering wrote:

On MP it's not up to us. It's up to whoever runs the site or whoever they put in charge to make those decisions.  

I’ve asked this before, and I’ll ask it again: what’s the point of this platitude? It feels like a diversion to deflect important questions. We’re discussing if it’s moral to censor route names. Even if you aren’t pulling the levers, that doesn’t mean you can’t criticise and ridicule those who do.

No it's not. Example MP. Did all route names get redacted? No. Were a small percentage of route names caught up in a purge that aren't offensive? Yes. 

I’d say between 1 in 5 to 1 in 10 redacted names I have clicked on I have found to be innocent in my opinion. That between 10 and 20 percent. You think that’s negligible?

And isn’t it notable, how even in this toy example that is MP route names, they absolutely failed? Doesn’t that tell you something about the nature of censorship? And can you point to a single time in history where the dudes who were censoring were the good guys? Do you think after thousands of years of humans censoring each other, and watching every instance where it slowly but surely degenerated into tyranny, that suddenly you or someone else is the moralistic Messiah that’s going to do it right? And if you think 4 years is the timeline to consider, your education has failed you.

Redacted Redactberg wrote:

 And can you point to a single time in history where he dudes who were censoring were the good guys? Do you think after thousands of years of humans censoring each other, and watching every instance where it slowly but surely degenerated into tyranny, that suddenly you or someone else is the moralistic Messiah that’s going to do it right? And if you think 4 years is the timeline to consider, your education has failed you.

You poor boy, you deserve better than to spend your one human life brainwashed by Jordan Peterson. History is littered with evidence disproving this claim, and overwhelming evidence if we accept your expansion of scope into non-governmental spheres. Despite our restrictions on hate speech and social censure of harmful rhetoric, people in the States are freer than ever before to say and write what they want without being excluded from insular and/or parochial societies. It's just that when your cult leaders chart the trajectory of free speech in this country, they don't count the hardwon freedoms of women, people of color, and lgtbq+ people to be themselves without losing their livelihood, friends, and safety. It's the emerging consequences for chauvinist members of the people in power that so offends you. Look to Germany, where they have embraced restrictions on free speech with the express purpose of preventing the reemergence of fascism.

First Last wrote:

Look to Germany, where they have embraced restrictions on free speech with the express purpose of preventing the reemergence of fascism.

Which I, as a Jew, abhor and consider a betrayal. If you think the lesson of germany is to censor, you are historically illiterate. Literally the first thing after the reichstag burned down, in 1933, as an excuse, the national socialists suspended civil liberties, including free speech. From then on, it was always intense censorship that disallowed clear reporting on what was going on in germany. And since that suspension of civil liberties, for the next decade began that slow descent into hell. Germany used censorship to cause fascism. Modern Germany is now arresting people for memes. If you don’t think that’s tyranny remerging, you are lost. 

Redacted Redactberg wrote:

I’ve asked this before, and I’ll ask it again: what’s the point of this platitude? It feels like a diversion to deflect important questions. We’re discussing if it’s moral to censor route names. Even if you aren’t pulling the levers, that doesn’t mean you can’t criticise and ridicule those who do.

The devil's in the details and if you don't spell out what you're talking about it doesn't mean anything. It is moral for MP to censor route names on their website IMO (a business making decisions what's in their best interest). It's not moral for the government to censor or limit what you can name route names on public land IMO (suppressing first amendment rights). If you aren't specific about the situation it means nothing.

I’d say between 1 in 5 to 1 in 10 redacted names I have clicked on I have found to be innocent in my opinion. That between 10 and 20 percent. You think that’s negligible?

And isn’t it notable, how even in this toy example that is MP route names, they absolutely failed? Doesn’t that tell you something about the nature of censorship? And can you point to a single time in history where the dudes who were censoring were the good guys? Do you think after thousands of years of humans censoring each other, and watching every instance where it slowly but surely degenerated into tyranny, that suddenly you or someone else is the moralistic Messiah that’s going to do it right? And if you think 4 years is the timeline to consider, your education has failed you.

10-20% of innocent names isn't bad IMO for a blanket decisions of pulling names that may be offensive. But what I was talking about was being negligible in regards to the full database of routes on MP. I don't know how many names are redacted in relation to the total number of climbs, but I imagine less than 2% of all routes are redacted. And 20% of those is 0.4% of non offensive names may be hidden out of all names. Not really a big deal for me to click on the i one out of 250 times when I look at a route. 

There's many examples for censuring that didn't slowly degrade intro tyranny. For decades you can't swear on TV/Radio. Has the degenerated? Have they continued to add words you can't say? No. You seem to be conflating governments suppressing free speech (especially to speak out against the government, like you see in left wing / right wing autocracies like China, Russia, and Iran) that IS a big issue and is tyranny, with private businesses censoring what's on THEIR platform, or people being held accountable for degrading speech. Hugely different sitauations. So you can't just say "censorship bad" and have it mean anything.

Glowering wrote:

There's many examples for censuring that didn't slowly degrade intro tyranny. For decades you can't swear on TV/Radio. Has the degenerated? 

Yes. Lenny Bruce (jewish btw), one of the founders of modern standup comedy was repeatedly arrested in the 60’s for using obscene words like “cocksucker” and “schmuck” in his routine. He was harrassed by law enforcement repeatedly, and they were monitoring his activities covertly with undercover police detectives. He was ultimately convicted and sentenced to penal labor. He died before the sentence could be caried out, likely due to the stress. Without him, modern stand up comedy would not exist.

Censorship in germany.

Censorship on tv and radio.

Next.