Suggest to ban moral debate in the LHP Black Magick sub forum

[Mannimarco]

If people want to debate morality, promote their pacifistic worldview, sanctimoniously lecture people who are doing baneful magick, etc, at least let the Black Magick sub forum be off limits. It's inherently off topic, contributes nothing, and derails threads pretty easily. It's about as valuable to the discussion as born again christians leaving "turn to jesus" comments on satanist social media.

 

[whimsicalwarlock]

If people want to debate morality, promote their pacifistic worldview, sanctimoniously lecture people who are doing baneful magick, etc, at least let the Black Magick sub forum be off limits. It's inherently off topic, contributes nothing, and derails threads pretty easily. It's about as valuable to the discussion as born again christians leaving "turn to jesus" comments on satanist social media.

I don't necessarily think its off-topic to discuss it objectively but if people end up just lecturing others on the morality of it from a preachy "save their souls from eternal hell, wiccan rede, shame on you" kind of way then i think there should be some pushback on it, because if we allow judgement, personal bias and moral lecturing of ANY sort to be allowed then to me, that sets up the entire site to be riddled with it and I think ultimately this entire site should be a safe space for anyone practicing/exploring alternative practices. If we allow virtue signaling or moral lecturing then that sets a dangerous precedent.
I am not too keen on someone just going around wagging the finger at people because we all pull our own weight on our own path in one way or another and the idea of seeing false morality parading itself around the site and looking down on its nose at people leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I don't take moral lecturing well. I've got too much of the beast' spirit in me to take being told what to do UNLESS i ask for it and I doubt I'm alone in that.
People should be allowed to discuss things without taking things objectively without getting their ego's involved, no topic should be off limits and we should all be free from judgement and shaming from within this site because to me that is the inherent purpose of this site.

Sidenote
If anyone here is using Jesus' name as a way to cast shame onto people as a way to "be a good christian" then I've got news for you, You aren't being a good christian. If this describes you then I give you this verse from the book of matthew,
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?"

 

[Digiquo]

I think at bare minimum, unless the OP's thread topic is about morality, it should be considered derailing on any subforum. Anytime I've seen anything about curses or "dark/harmful magic" on this site there's always at least one guy going off about how people shouldn't use magic like that. Only exception I could see is if there are truly karmic consequences for using such magic and the OP is simply being made aware of them, which I think is different from actual moral grandstanding. Especially if whatever it is can go awry if the caster fucks it up.

 

[Yazata]

It's inherently off topic, contributes nothing, and derails threads pretty easily

Somethings can slip by because we don't have time to read everything (straight away) but if you report anything that is off topic we can take a look.

 

[SkullTraill]

If it’s inherently off topic then it’s already banned because there is already a rule against being off topic. If someone starts a thread to debate the morality of LHP in that section, I think it’s fine. But if someone is coming into a LHP thread discussing anything other than morality and injects a moral opinion then it’s already off topic. Simply use the report function.

 

[HoldAll]

Not easy to implement, though in principle I agree. It's just that even now we have to make judgement calls all the time as to whether a post is off-topic or in the wrong subforum, and such a rule would be difficult to enforce, e.g. in the case of veiled disapproval or when the OP is unsure himself or herself whether a curse is warranted in a given situation. Besides, I think that members who are using baneful magic should have a sufficiently thick skin to withstand moralistic criticism and can be trusted to fight back against any jesus-or-whatever freaks. Although you're right, it's annoying when somebody starts a thread with a case-specific question like "How would you go about…", only to be answered "Don't do it!"

In case of a baneful tutorial, it's clearcut: commenters wringing their hands in horror are out of line. However, if you open a discussion thread in any subforum, you're bound to get some naysayers and pushback, so you could argue that nobody deserves special protection or privileges here. You can always report a comment if you think it's off-topic or derailing a thread, and then it'll be time for another judgement call, same as if a new rule concerning moralistic replies would be in place.

 

[SkullTraill]

Exactly as @HoldAll and @Yazata said, there is no need for special subforum specific protections here. There is already a rule that covers this. OF COURSE, things will be missed and that's why the report function exists. If anything breaks an already existing rule on WF, simply report it guys.

I don't necessarily think its off-topic to discuss it objectively

If the thread wasn't started for that purpose, it IS (off topic).

I might genuinely need to start giving incentives for people to report stuff. 1 McChicken voucher per report.

Obviously, only report stuff that actually breaks a rule (I'm not strict about this, I won't penalize people for loose interpretations or misinterpretations of the rules), but so much drama on WF and so many different suggestions and complaints can simply be addressed by more reporting!