The forum moderators are trying to make a concerted effort to improve the overall quality of the forum's discourse while encouraging a free, open, and vigorous discussion of the issues of the day.

In Content threads, personal attacks, name-calling, making an issue out of the person posting rather than the content of the argument, are not allowed.

If somebody posts something you think is wrong, ridiculous, narrow-minded, nutty, etc., etc., you are doing yourself a disservice by attacking the poster rather than the content.

For when a mod removes your post for violating the 'no personal attacks' rule, it might appear that the original post (and poster) is being "protected" when the mods had no such intent for their action.

If an expressed viewpoint is wrong, ridiculous, narrow-minded, nutty, etc., etc., it should be confronted and challenged vigorously on its claims, not on the identity of the poster.

Related to this is that we are stepping up the removal of particularly vile posts (in any thread) especially as they pertain to attacking vulnerable groups.

Finally, a semi-formal sanctioning process is in the works which will sanction bad posters for their bad posting (personal attacky posts, posts meriting warnings or deletions, etc.).

What are sanctions, and how do they work?

More information will be forthcoming, of course. The possible sanctions are the same as possible now. Warnings, timeouts (from a specific thread or from the forum), temp-bans (from 2+2), and perma-bans (from 2+2).

We hope and expect that any of these will only be meted out in rare and extreme cases. The 2+2 site-wide temp-bans and perma-bans would hopefully be given out only very very rarely as they are contrary to the spirit of this forum.

Although the forum has only a few simple rules, one of the reasons for semi-formalizing a sanctioning process is to let everyone know that there are potential consequences for violating these rules.

I'm alright doing myself a disservice.

If a poster has a history of posting awful arguments it's relevant to current / future discussions. I get that the mods have a vision for what they want the forum to be but what evidence have you that that's what the posters want?

Dereds. We could all have a very long discussion about what works but in the end the proof is in the pudding.

Also P exists for those who prefer political content threads that become about the posters. Pv7.0 is providing an alternative to that approach. The choice is a good thing.

We have a new rule on citations

That's not what P exists for. P also exists to discuss political topics, are you providing an alternative to that approach as well?

My question stands, what feedback have you that the posters in this forum want your changes?

Lets say I argue in a thread that Breitbart has said X (where X is a claim about some vulnerable group) am I allowed to post the link that proves Breitbart said it?

Yes of course Pv7.0 exists to discuss political topics. That's what the content threads are for. P does it differently. Unchained died. This is a new forum in the making. There's been feedback in public and private but this isn't based on a market survey and I'm not attempting to justify it that way.

It's still far too early for many to have any idea whether they will like what it becomes - I hope many will decide they do like it and that 2+2ers who have avoided the politics forums will give it a try.

P does it with well informed posters having numerous conversations and some calling out of posters is permitted in line with the forum rules.

I'm not arguing for a returned of unchained but I think that mods should take their lead from the users of a forum rather than impose their vision of it. You have introduced a number of changes and it seems that you have managed to introduce enough that there is enough for everyone to disagree with.

I don't think that's how forums should be moderated.

It may not be allowed at all. Depends what the claim is.

Links aren't allowed but quotes are. If it somehow become a serious dispute about the quote being accurate then mods would have to resolve it.

The point I was making is that we can't ever substantiate a claim about what Breitbart is saying with primary sources because you've banned links to it.

Please cite a credible source that Pinochez's rule is a good thing or never repeat that claim.

I appreciate you see it that way but I see it as a new forum that will take time to get going.

The balance of the rules almost guarantees that everyone from a 'fighting' forum like PU disgrees with some of it. Maybe that'a good thing.

References and quotes can be substantiated if necessary. It's it isn't PC then it will have to be a quote from a significant political figure.

Sure banning links to breibart or any other site isn't perfect, we believe it's the correct thing to do for some sites anyway. If an untenable situation arises then we will have to find a solution

I would suggest that rather than deleting posts you compile them in a stickied thread. This would serve to show what is unacceptable as well as protecting the mods from charges of gas lighting in service of bigots

^ I've suggested this too. Call it a Bin thread and allow only mods to have write access.

It's absolutely wrong to delete posts that break the rules and carry on with your fingers in your ears as if nothing happened. All this does is allow the most vile posters here to continue to troll, and deny that they ever posted things that the whole forum read. We saw exactly this scenario play out yesterday.

I know there's a set of sanctions on the way, but the audit trail provided by a Bin thread would give transparency to the whole moderation process that even P lacks.

I doubt chez will go for it as he seems to have a, uh, different idea of what this forum is for.

I'm a big fan of transparency. We will be maintaining a viewable list of timeouts/etc that have been given - it will be appearing in the rules sticky shortly

Before we can begin to consider the bin thread idea we need to address the issue of offensive posts remaining visible. Objections to not deleting them were very convincing. Would replacing the contents of nonPC posts with "nonPC" suffice?

I motion that we begin the process to put semi-formal sanctions on apartheid South Africa.

Reasons for keeping objectional posts quarantined in their own locked thread but visible include

1) holding posters accountable for their ****ty views and keeping them from lying about ever holding these positions
2) showing other posters examples of unacceptable posts
3) holding mods accountable for not banning horrible bigots

These seem like good reasons for someone who claims to like transparency. What are your objections to doing this?

And of course deleting the post and replacing it with NON PC is laughable

No it wouldn't, it would simply encourage the vile trolls to increase their trolling.

I don't understand your reluctance to dump all the rule-breaking carp into one silage as is (with the original perhaps edited to read "Moved to Non-PC Bin" so that people can see exactly what is unacceptable). Obviously I'm not talking about sick stuff that breaks actual real life laws here (eg physical threats or Holocaust praise), which should be deleted (to protect the site legally) and the poster perma-banned immediately.

Unless you mean deleting the post and replacing it with non pc AND moving it into the bin thread. That would be perfect

Kerowo and others objected to offensive posts not being deleted because they could still be seen.

There was a discussion about my initial policy of leaving them in situ so that people could see what it was that was no longer allowed. I'm going to wait to see what more people say before considering reversing it again.

Yeah, exactly. If it's bad enough to insta perma ban, like Wil's horrendous gay posting, by all means delete it and perma ban the user. But if you're just giving him a 24 hour time out then how in the world could it be bad enough to not remain visible elsewhere?