Comments that are on topic and not ad-hominem are welcome – ad hominem insults are not : it’s not rocket science.
Thoughts on ANM’s Comments Policy
by our founder Angel Garden @angelgarden
Everyone who knows me knows I really love a good discussion. I’m well known for it and for changing my mind when new facts and ways of looking at things are presented to me.
However, we are heavily cyber-stalked and harassed by networked and coordinated gangs of “humanists” and “skeptics” deviously trying to shut down free speech while superficially appearing democratic, so while it is my dearest wish to have open comments and fierce discussion of important issues with no moderation, gang stalking makes that impossible.
Gang Stalking
As just one example there is a certain proxy cyber-stalker attached to the British Humanist Association who constantly monitors and spies on us for Melanie Byng, Andy Lewis, and their gang:
It’s exactly the sort of thing that shuts down comments, from 30.12.13 (yes it has been going on for years):
@sjparis to a third party tweeter: “Just out of curiosity, did a person called Skepticat UK contact you via DM or otherwise about me?”
Tweeter: “Within minutes! DM’d me. I did not care to respond. Seemed creepy”.
That is stalking. This stalker is also unable to make any distinction between fact and vitriolic opinion and is compelled to insult and jibe, even where she could attempt to make a reasonable argument. A troll in other words.
So this blocked stalking troll, then resorts to anonymous personas to try and further circumvent democratic standards and continue her proxy harassment.
“Abi”
One of her sock puppets is “Abi” from 2013.
The only interesting thing about “Abi”, who I strongly suspected was this supposed “humanist”, is that through being literally forced by spectacular malice to take legal action to uncover the appallingly damaging wide use of Professor Richard Byng’s credentials to smear me, I got to see the proof of her proxy harassment and the falsity of her absurd claims to humanism.
It goes like this: I write a blog post to expose, and defend myself from, Richard Byng’s proven and now admitted covert mental health smearing, with regard to his professional role in mental health.
Melanie Byng emails the British Humanist Association Celebrant troll:
“btw Maria – you may be interested to know that Richard is a Professor of Primary Care Research, not mental health.”
“Abi” comments on my blog.
“I just googled the bloke and he’s not Prof of Mental Health but Prof of Primary Care Research.”
I stand corrected and reassert his claims to mental health authority. Following further nuanced defence against “Abi’s” own aggressive mental health smearing, her promotion of Richard Byng’s smears, and her refusal to adjust any of it in conversation, the exchange ends.
Melanie writes to her again :
“Thank you Maria. I can’t add anything.”
it was proxy-harasser “Abi’s” refusal to cut the mental health smears from her comment that outed her as a troll. She wasn’t interested in anything but attacking and to be fair, if she had edited out the smearing there wouldn’t have been anything left.
Here’s “Abi” telling me that I had to publish ad hominem comments about myself to prove they were ad hominem:
“you need to cite the sentence that you see as an attack on your character“
I’m sure you get the picture…
Sieving Trolls
Inviting someone to rephrase without ad hom isn’t censorship – for a start a private site isn’t the market square, and there is no absolute right to speech in any case.
Inviting someone to rephrase without ad hom is just expressing a willingness to continue dialogue whilst also having a boundary, one that effectively sieves out trolls. Because it’s a total farce to say you can’t be practising free speech unless you just hand over your own site to a slathering “potty-mouth” (the troll’s own description of herself).
A similar thing occurred again recently, regarding Freedom Of Information [FOI], with a different person and a different type of aggression.
When an Information Commissioner’s Office [ICO] apologist started laying in, both on Twitter and on the site – I gave him the same site boundary and he too refused to stop carping.
So then the “Abi” stalking troll immediately approached him – still hard at it three years on!
Cue ranting about “hypocrisy” on potty-mouth central. But no, hypocrisy is when you say one thing and do something else, like if I said I allowed all comments without moderation but then didn’t: that would obviously make me a liar.
Whether here or on any other site this has always been our policy and we see no reason to change it now.
Further thoughts of Troll Sieve – 23/2/17
Just so you can see what goes on.
The other day I was impressed with this article worth a look about how gaming free speech can backfire and is a bad idea. That’s all your fake news etc., designed not to inform but to create effects you can leverage to serve your agenda.
Here’s my tweet – 
Before long (stalking is pretty much a full-time pursuit for some humanists) the same proxy troll featured above in a couple of her “personas” , and who blocks and is blocked by me, tweeted this @ me against Twitter’s terms of service. (I’ve modified her handle and the link details because she’s a troll.)
She must be getting desperate because that was self-evidently our case.
An absolute lack of free-speech combined with mental health smearing was the only reason we had to challenge in court. We are otherwise more than capable of robust publication in the “free market of ideas”.
Her proxy trolling only exists at all because the cowards she’s doing it for adopt a deliberate policy of no right of reply to create effects they can leverage to serve their covert criminal agenda.
They have to because if they took up the right of reply we’ve offered them to everything we’ve ever published about their lies, they would be instantly exposed, and they don’t offer a right of reply for the same reason. Framing that as being “necessary” due to ‘danger’ serves their disgusting mental health smearing agenda even more – gaming free speech par excellence.
They and their ridiculous troll’s innumerable sock-puppets really aren’t getting the point of free speech at all are they!
Me: Have a right of reply, what do you think?
Them privately: let’s never answer her and tell everyone that Professor Byng diagnosed her after he met her for an hour when we heavily ‘befriended’ her when her mum was about to die of cancer
Them publicly: She denies us free-speech!
That’s fake-news for you, courtesy of ‘humanists” and “skeptics” (who could grow up somewhat imo).
CORRECTION : obvious mistake, they could grow up A LOT.