A few weeks OK, in Britain, a court ruled that a woman, who’s job it was to carry out marriages at a registry office, was entitled to opt out of performing doing her job if the ceremony was a civil partnership (gay marriage) as a result of her religious views. I am not intending to debate the rights or wrongs of that decision, but it did get me to thinking about support requests relating to websites where you disgree with the message.
Image you write an ass-kicker of a theme or plugin and there is a fair amount of take up. Someone contacts you and politely asks for you help because they are having problems with your plugin on their site. When you visit the site you find out that the point of the site is the promotion of a religious or anti-religious agenda that you find distateful, perhaps even offensive, although the person is not enciting violence or anything illegal.
I choose religion purely because it seems to stir up the most passion in both sides.
The question is: do you help him or her to fix their site or do you decline, ignore them, or any other variation thereof?
I have provided help to people even though I didn’t like the message or the point of their site, and to date I haven’t found one that has promted me to consider doing anything else. Perhaps I am just too nice a guy. But I can understand why someone would not want to put their spare time to helping further an agenda that was not their own. How about you?
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How Much Do You Give Away? | The Reader Appreciation Project
[...] Rickmann also raised a thought-provoking issue. If someone had a site you didn’t particularly agree with, would you still help? So not only are our time being competed for, our ideals are as [...]
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Kristin K. Wangen
Andrew; not helping people for one view or another is some kind of discrimation. But it’s the “you don’t share my view so your worth nothing and that’s give me the right to treat you like dirt”-kind of discrimination I’m talking about.
Just as an example: I’ve met Muslim men that honestly believe they can’t talk to me without my husband’s permission; in my western point of view is a kind of discrimination, but none of them have done this in a way that have made me feel less.
If people understand.
Well; I do not mean to take things beside the point.
But on a general matter; yes, I would help, and most people is never ever near my lines. At least in my part of the world you have to be really extreme before I say no.
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Thaya Kareeson
I would not hesitate to help unless the site promotes something that can harm somebody else (i.e. if they have a spammer site, they promote hate). Usually when somebody contacts me for help, they are always regular nice people though.
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Andrew Rickmann
Andrea, that is pretty much my take on it. I think if a group was quite active in the media then helping them or not may be making a statement about allegance. I am also really talking about helping for free which I wouldn’t do for a group that had the funds to gain a ‘media presence’.
Louis, thank you. On the whole I agree with that.
Kristin, I don’t want to take the conversation too far away from the point but there are cases where I think a little discrimination would be a good thing. Of course it does depend on how you define discrimination. Encouraging violence is right out for sure though.
I haven’t found my line yet and I think I am lucky for that.
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Kristin K. Wangen
My carved in stone line is discrimination and encourage of violent acts against other being. (And usually the two goes hand in hand). This doesn’t include a random rant of someone they hate or something like that, but if the entire site all about this, I just turn it down.
And as Andrea says, it depends how things are said as well. When living a country of free speech and religious freedom, you just can’t put away every site or person which/who have an opinion you dislike and disagree with.
So it really boils down to (at least for me): do they write their opinion etc. in a way that you are left with the agree to disagree, or does everything they write just make you angry.
This is an interesting question, and first time I read you post, I wanted to say ‘no, I don’t care what people think, believe etc.’, but that would not be the truth. We all have a line drawn somewhere.
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Louis Liem
You are a nice guy! You helped me numerous times and I think you should keep helping people even if you don’t agree with their opinions. As long as they dont do criminal acts or stealing people’s rights, it’s just a difference of a way of thinking.
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Andrea
I think it depends. I mean, I’m kind of in the same place you are – maybe I’m too nice. I have helped out a bit on political sites and personal sites with content I disagree with. I guess it depends on how much I disagree with the content and if the person behind it is offensive.
I also try to be as helpful as possible, so overall I’d have to say yes, unless they give me a strong and compelling reason to feel otherwise.
I would, and have, help out others who are a differing religion or sexual orientation.
Now that I think of it, I did turn down an offer to work to work on an anti-abortion site, mostly because I really disagreed with the focus that the campaign was taking on the website & in the media.