While the subject matter of this thread seems like it belongs in ATF, I am starting it here after discussing it in PMs with jjshabado to take advantage of the PU "mod your own thread" rule.

In this thread, we discuss the definition of "personal attack" for the purposes of the Politics and Politics Unchained forums without using examples that deal with race, racism, etc. You should strive to work towards a general definition of "personal attack" without mentioning race that can then be applied to matters involving race. If you must use an example, use something else, such as homosexuality instead of race or sexism instead of racism.

Mentioning race/racism will be punished appropriately, probably through a request that mods delete the post. Responding to a comment mentioning race/racism (other than to flag it as something that violates the rule against mentioning race/racism) will be treated the same as being the one who injected race into the debate. As a corollary, since the BruceZ debate is heavily tied into how people define racism, referring to that is also verboten.

To start very simply, I ask people to post a definition of "personal attack" that they would use if writing instructions for how to mod P/PU.

I also ask the following questions:
-Should the working definition of "personal attack" be different for P/PU than for other forums, such as NVG, Sports, and OOT? Is there language that is acceptable in one place but not another?
-Should mods distinguish between personal attacks that are true and personal attacks that are false?
-Should mods distinguish between personal attacks that are fair and personal attacks that are unfair? Does your definition of a "personal attack" include unfairness as an attribute? Can a personal attack be true yet unfair?

attacking the traits of an opponent as a means to invalidate their argument

I don't like it how you lump Politards and Unchained together, because each have different standards, for obvious reasons. I think the enforcement should be tailored to the respective culture of each forum, in the case of PU it should be a much higher threshold than in other forums, cos chains brah

Mods are subjective, so if you are going to take this line, you should set a criteria that has to be met before something can be identified as "true"

For example, someone calls ikes a douche, its easy to be "LOLZ YAHRR" but when exercising authority, you should show restraint and give ikes reasonable doubt, with cross-mod analysis of his posting up to x post (you could have a clean slate provision where posts before x date aren't counted against your character) to determine how fair or unfair the comment was. Mods who have a conflict of interest should recuse themselves. You could have a system where you have a set of mods with no power to enforce the rules doing the analysis, and submitting their findings to a committee of an uneven number mods that do have power, who will vote on the outcome.

How should enforcement be tailored to the different cultures of P vs PU?

What criteria would you set for mods identifying something as "true"? Would you ask for proof beyond a reasonable doubt? Clear and convincing evidence? A preponderance of the evidence? Probable cause? Reasonable suspicion?

Should the process allow mods to act quickly enough that an offensive post can be deleted and a poster temp-banned, if necessary, before a thread devolves into an undesirable back-and-forth? Wouldn't the system you propose make more sense as a way to appeal a mod's action rather than a barrier to mod action in the first place?

Sadly that is like 90% of all arguing in here but its all part of the game. As long as you arent saying stuff that is deemed illegal i see no point trying to play mod. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the unchained kitchen imo.

I know it when I see it.

This isn't hard:

"You are a sexist" is a personal attack.
"Your argument is sexist" is not a personal attack.

If you can validate someone is a sexist than "You are a sexist" needn't be a personal attack and can be an observation.

It's hard when you're one of the numerous village idiots in this forum who think that it's a personal attack when someone calls them out on the sexist or [REDACTED]ist bull**** they post.

Idiot: "[sexist garbage]"

Normal person: "Hey, that's sexist garbage."

Idiot: "OMG personal attack!"

Pretty much this. The thin distinction between "You're a sexist" and "You type sexist things into the internet" is not worth investigating.

Without the ability to call names, this forum may as well not exist. If the mods don't like it - like i said for the millionth time - delete this forum and keep the bad posters thread, mod that differently than the rest of politics main.

I think eventually everyone will come to the same conclusion.

LOL (for obvious reasons) @ anyone suggesting personal attacks should be discouraged in PUC.

The differences between, "You are sexist!" and "That thing you said seems sexist to me because X." are subtle but important. One is a personal attack/label and one is a suggestion that the way one articulated a thought comes across as being sexist in nature. This should be recognized and dealt with accordingly in Chained.

Conversations in Chained would be far more cordial and constructive if the latter were substituted for the former.

What is not a personal attack? is another approach to qualifying behavior.

What attacks are indefensible? Is it fair to make an attack a person cannot defend against? Such as an attack on an condition or attribute outside of their conscious control.

I don't consider namecalling a personal attack. An attack is meant to damage someone well beyond "stfu idiot."

"You're an idiot and your parents never loved you, also you're ugly as dog's balls and dress stupid" is an attack.

This distinction has always seemed silly to me on an Internet forum. Who's honestly taking posts seriously enough that this distinction matters?

To go back to the basic sources... there isn't an explicit restriction against 'personal attacks' in these site-wide rules (link www.twoplustwo.com/terms.php). The relevant passage is this...

However, while Alta Politardia does not use the phrase 'personal attacks', rule #1 (link http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/41...rules-1055823/) could easily be construed as a rule against 'personal attacks'. The relevant passage is...

It also seems to me that there is an informal but effective 'common law' situation regarding the de-facto forum rules. For example, the Alta Politards rule #7 reiterates that site-wide policies apply, and lists "No wishing death on other posters." as an example. There is no such explicit site-wide rule. I can only assume that at some point a critical mass of mods/admins decided that wishing death was an example of violating Site-wide rule 7.1 quoted above... and that ruling has been passed on as policy to new mods/admins.

Likewise, here in Baja Politardia, spanktehbadwookie decided that calling someone 'Aspy' was an example of violating 7.1, and may (or may not, I'm not really sure) created such a 'common law' rule for Baja.

To answer the OP:

There should be different standards for Alta & Baja, as well as for other forums. Calling someone a sexist or <redacted> shouldn't be ruled out in either Alta or Baja.

Calling someone sexist is not a 'personal attack' nor 'name calling'... it's just a simple observation. An observation that in Alta can be refuted by simply asking the person making the observation to 'show their work'.

It is silly. In fact any distinction between all three candidate formulations ("You're sexist", "Your argument is sexist", and "Have you considered that your argument has an anti-woman component") is silly.

And as I have mentioned before ITF... as a practical matter, it doesn't matter.

A poster spewing sexist bile is going to try to shut down the conversation no matter how they are called on it. If you call them a sexist, they'll derail the conversation by complaining about 'name calling'. If you say their argument is sexist, they'll say that's the same as calling them a sexist, and proceed as above. If you go into the long-winded "anti-woman" spiel, they'll complain about sexism being 'brought into everything', about the PC-police, and about sand in uncomfortable locations.

We've never seen it turn out any other way... otherwise these mythical and magical 'serious conversations' we hear so much pining for... they would actually have to happen every now and then.

Sometimes I don't want to suggest, I want to make it clear that I interpret a statement in a certain way with no doubt in my mind. Do you see a difference between "That thing you said seems sexist" and "That thing you said is sexist"?

It seems like you're saying that no one who should apologize for something should ever have to say "I'm sorry that I hurt you" but should only need to say "I'm sorry if anyone was hurt".

Is it fair game to attack a person based on attitudes that are consciously chosen?

In honesty i don't know why people are so thin skinned. Some random person on the internet calling you something shouldn't offend you to an extent where your feelings are hurt. The only reason to have a rule against it is to preserve the prestige of the forum. Given that keeping the rule is in the interest of the forum, it should be relaxed and only enforced when a debate has descended into a trading of insults (so for example if someone drops in a personal attack while passionately writing an otherwise fine rebuttal, that should be okay). If the rule was in the interest of preserving the emotional stability of the posters, then it should obviously be more strict, but i think we are all grown ups here, so it shouldn't be an issue.

This. If you create rules that are very stringent on what is and isnt a personal attack you actually undemocritize discussions.Im serious

This is because "You're sexist"
and "Youre post is sexist" doesnt even come close to conveying the possible range of personal attack posts. There are a wide variety of methods of personal attacks in discussions. For example someone could post a picture of themselves and you could in the next post say "hey has anyone seen this movie" and it be a poster of some hideous monster from a sci fi movie that kind of looks like them and in a similair pose as the picture they just posted. " Everyone when they read that post knows poster number 2 is trolling poster number 1 and they make the connection between the two posts but there isnt any actual connection between the two posts no rules have been violated by poster 2.
Or you could subtly suggest that you know a therapist who is quite helpful or imply that so and so has a problem they dont actually have.

The more strigent the rules are the more subtle posters and people who are good manipulators benefit the most because they will always find a way to hate on people.
If you had just a flat ruling with no room for interpretation and flexibility
the conversation could go:

"Person 1: here is a picture of me"
"person 2: Hey has anyone see this movie of a horrible monster"
"person 1: thats mean"

and then person 1 could get banned. Someone could call a sexist jerk a jerk and get banned. So there has to be a level of human interpretation and flexibility in any system that will succeed. people are not hard rules and numbers. people are people.

Also I have been trolled way way worse than anything you would consider trolling spanktehbad wookie which is youre biggest problem- youve never had real trolling.
if you think gizmo and low key are trolling you so much you should look around the internet and see people who are really trolled you think you have but you havent. Ive received death threats from people, stalkers , letters that imply suicide is a good option for me. And in some cases I have received those messages in ways that are subtle enough so I could not prove any of that was the case.

Could you provide an example of a consciously chosen attitude? Just to see if we are on the same page.

I consider opinions and political positions as expressions that come from a person's consciously chosen attitude. Attacking a person for their opinions is fair in an argument or discussion in a politics forum that allows personal attacks.

Are you aware that people have different levels of emotional intelligence and awareness as a result of being individuals?

You imply that as adults we should not mind seeing people treated poorly, but as an adult I find this view rather immature.

Similar to JJ's view that this is just the internet, yeah so?

This forum is still on the planet earth and populated by human beings. "It is an Internet forum!" is no where near a strong rationalization to justify targeting people for conditions beyond their control such as age, gender, or health condition; to name a few.

No, it's still a personal attack.

personal attack(Noun)
Making of an abusive remark instead of providing evidence when examining another person's claims or comments.

http://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/personal_attack

This is a pretty terrible definition, imo. Most personal attacks that are and should be moderated are made strictly to insult and not to invalidate any argument. The kinds of personal attacks that do invalidate arguments are the "You are sexist" variety, which are the gray area that some would like banned.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, imo, and personal attacks made in the course of an otherwise substantive post are always moderated more leniently than posts that are nothing but an attack. The rule is not about feelings, but about forum readability. I have no moral qualms about calling neg3sd a barely-functioning idiot in here or in SE because I don't really care about his feelings, but I don't do it in Alta.