❌ Friendly reminder: Politics, bigotry, & SAS

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Hello SAS–

As you might have noticed, we have recently experienced a significant increase in a small number of members violating SAS’s Community Expectations regarding political commentary, politicized comments, political dog whistles, bigotry and prejudice around groups of people, and claiming that a topic is inherently “political” when that is not true.

Unfortunately, we (volunteer) staff have had to step up our responses in these situations, including privately PMing members, removing content from posts, deleting posts and topics, applying “time out” consequences, and posting public reminders.

A few reminders…

  1. Members can (and most do!) express an opinion politely and professionally–including about laws, the government, state and federal agencies, etc–without getting political.
  2. Members may not personally attack SAS staff or other members, in posts or in PMs, at all, ever. Full stop.
  3. Flagging a post, topic, reply, or PM for a possible issue is not considered “attacking,” unless flagging is being abused in cases where the flagger simply disagrees. We saw enough of that on the OSFE; we’re not doing it here.
  4. Bigotry will not be tolerated, in any form.
  5. And we hate to mention, but…just because your opinion is that an SAS staff action is unfair, does not make it objectively so.
  6. We are never going to “both sides” bigotry on SAS or make space for users who want to hijack this e-commerce forum.
  7. Please, friends, be mindful of your words and tone when posting. We recognize that we are living in an excessively divided time and space, where loaded rhetoric has become a habit for many, which is why we offer many many warnings and chances before taking drastic actions.
  8. Focus on e-commerce issues and what we have in common as online retailers and businesses.

Thankfully, most issues have been minor, unintentional, and non-malicious, and most members have been understanding. We greatly appreciate everyone’s graciousness and cooperation. :pray::hugs:

If you decide that you are not able to follow our SAS Community Expectations, you can send a PM to staff or an email to [email protected], to request that your account be deleted, as one (former) user did today as they were unfortunately facing consequences for posting prohibited content via PM.

Thank you all for making SAS a respectful, professional space for e-commerce businesses.

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JUNE 2023

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Please help me understand. Are these examples of posts you are prohibiting?
I think they are all worthy of discussion here.
Can we pretend to be adults and express our opinions in decent terms?

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No, they are publicly-posted reminders to stick to the SAS Community Expectations, consolidated into one post–just in case any members had not already seen them.

Not sure what “they” you mean? Many things are certainly worthy of professional, permitted discussion here.

As noted above:

We ARE all adults, but unfortunately some topics seem to bring out fast-and-loose definitions of “decent terms”. Those topics are prohibited for discussion on SAS: politics and religion.

Because we non-paid volunteer SAS staff don’t have the time to babysit every post or interest in policing rhetoric and discussion on these hot-button, non-e-commerce issues, SAS members are asked to ACT LIKE the adults they are and simply avoid them.

That doesn’t mean you can complain or express opinions about laws, the government, government agencies, cults, religious restrictions, etc, on SAS.

It does mean that you can’t bring politicized rhetoric, political dog whistles, party-bashing, party-worship, religion-bashing, religion-worship, etc, into e-commerce/business discussions in ways that violate the Expectations.

98% of our SAS members have managed all of this very capably, with professional behavior and a focus on the things that we HAVE IN COMMON here on SAS.

And 90% of those who crossed a line have responded professionally and respectfully, too.

SAS IS A MODERATED E-COMMERCE FORUM.

  • It is not and never will be a free-for-all.
  • Attacking, harassing, and targeting SAS staff for mod actions or any SAS members for any reason will not be tolerated.

A few people won’t like this and will make bad choices, but we will not let those folks hijack and disrupt SAS.

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Well said and clear. Thanks

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Man…I missed all of that :frowning:
My 5 cents don’t matter…but you gotta leave a little bit something exciting around here. Otherwise it turns into a library and we are not all book sellers…seems more censored then Amazon. We are also all adult and should be able to have an exchange of stuff that is not 100% about selling and pink unicorns

This was suppose to be a BETTER place…a community. In communities, people argue.

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We can. And do!

Just not about politics or religion or anything racist or sexist or bigoted.

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religion and politics should be able to be discussed between adults who respect each other and have a respectful exchange. Should not go in the same box with racism…honestly…I’m a bit shocked about all that “removed and edited” stuff. But who am i…guess It just isn’t what I though It was gonna be…

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How is it ok that prayer has been mentioned, all the time, but if someone would say “There is no God” it gets deleted?

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I noticed your edit-to-add after I replied above.

On SAS, we can argue about policies, procedures, business practices, best label printers, whether FBA is good or evil, if Amazon Handmade should include mass-produced machine made Croc jewels, etc.

SAS is NOT the place to argue about politics or religion.

And SAS will not tolerate, make space for, or “both sides” bigotry in any form.

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got it

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Do you really not understand the difference between “I’m praying for your tough situation” and “There is no god”?

I’m skeptical.

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Nobody’s saying that you can’t discuss religion and politics online.

We’re just saying you can’t do it here on SAS.

Yes, it should: the box of things not allowed on SAS.

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I’ve been watching a moderated livestream that runs 24/7 for several years now. The moderators are all volunteers and someone is always on duty. Here are their posting guidelines. Discussions about politics and religion are discouraged, although they are not mentioned in the text below. Not much different from SAS.

"GUIDE FOR PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE: Please be polite, chat with compassion, and give each other the benefit of the doubt. Please don’t swear, don’t ask for subscriptions, don’t ask personal questions, don’t spam (including roll call requests & spamming emojis) and keep your chatting family friendly, inclusive and peaceful. No block caps. Thanks!

OUR MODS ARE VOLUNTEERS AND THEY ARE TRYING TO HELP, PLEASE TREAT THEM ACCORDINGLY! Bothering a moderator inside or outside of chat is grounds for banning and the sharing of your info to other cams for them to ban you as well."

Thank you, @papy and the other mods for keeping things civil.

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@Racing_Stripes and @wadeorcas thank you both for your kind words and understanding of our situation.

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I know you didn’t ask for opinions, but I’m grateful for the guidelines. The internet is full of those topics, it’s nice to escape it here and focus on business (and some fun, of course). Moderating isn’t a small job, thank you for taking the time.

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Completely agree, thank you!

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I think its quite simple to limit discussions about policy without discussing political leanings and inferring political intent - same for religion.

A prayer = best wishes and is areligious as Santa and the winter solstice celebrations

And one can say a policy sucks without including terms like “liberal adjective” or “conservative adjective” (which does occur here on occasion).

It’s literally that simple - everything else is game.

And I think the posts about Ed were deservedly critical and harsh but that did not veery into religion or politics.

There’s no need to be burning Scripture, figuratively speaking, and claiming first amendment (although no one has done something like this iirc)

@papy thank you for the reminder.

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:star_struck: Dern, @Tried_Tested, well said! Thank you!

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One of the reasons I didn’t comment much on The OSFE is because of all the discord present that I didn’t want anything to do with. Life is too short for all the bickering.

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