Quoting Russell Coker (russell@coker.com.au):
There is no good option to be inclusive of people who want to exclude others. Here are the options for dealing with such situations:
1) Have a policy of quickly using moderation powers to stop people who attack minority groups. 2) Have a big argument with such people every time. 3) Have a de-facto policy of this list being only for straight white men because everyone who isn't will periodically face discrimination.
4. Practice civility. Which does not of course 'stop people who attack minority groups', so if you're looking for a perfect remedy that roots out Intolerable Societal Injustice[tm] wherever it's found, keep looking. But, FWIW, it's what I aim at.
The way things have worked in this list has varied between options 2 and 3.
Even when you feel (or know!) you're right about something, if you tick off everybody in the group by you blatting them over the head with it, what's the use? If you tone it down a bit, you may have more and longer opportunity to interact with the people with whom you currently disagree - and perhaps, who knows, you might convince them later with your insights and thoughtful contributions.
This has been a fashionable page to cite in recent years. The page points to a genuine logical fallacy, but then does a waffle that conflates that real policy with a weird type of special pleading suggesting that it's wrong to tell people they might make a better impression by avoiding sounding batshit crazy, as so doing ignores the speaker's substantive argument and is a form of non-sequitur reasoning (that 'distracts' from that substantive argument). The real logical fallacy is where a critic suggests the speaker's arguments lack merit because he or she wasn't being nice. Valid point, always worth bearing in mind. The waffle comes from the suggestion that _all_ 'you might come across as less crazy if you tone down the rhetoric' responses are intended, or best understood, as non-sequitur distractions from the speaker's point. Speaking dismissively to Internet loons is, actually, seldom intended to address the speaker's points. More often, it's just a reflection of the listener having limited time and patience for ill-behaved chuckleheads and little interest in debating those persons, irrespective of the separate merits of substantive points within those persons' flamemails. And, sometimes, 'you might come across as less crazy if you tone down the rhetoric' merely means 'you might come across as less crazy if you tone down the rhetoric'. The cited page's notion that raising the criticism 'shuts down' the speaker is, of course, transparently false, but is a passive-aggressive classic.