Welcome to the Politics forum. We welcome all who wish to discuss political and current events in a fair and friendly manner. Vulturesrow and I have agreed on these rules to help foster civil debate. Thanks for stopping by.

1. No personal attacks. You can attack positions, but not posters.

2. No asking for bans, locks, etc. in the forum. Use the notify moderator button or PM the mods instead. You don't hijack the thread this way and its more effective anyway. You can appeal mod decisions to ATF or in a PM to Ryan Beal. (section 2 repealed by Amendment II)

3. Keep one line posts to a minimum, especially OP's. You have to provide content once in a while. OPs with only a link and minimal description are not allowed.

4. No images or posts designed to inspire hatred. This goes for all ethnic and racial groups. We will use subjective judgment to determine what constitutes "inspiring hatred".

5. We reserve the right to go beyond these rules to protect the forum and 2+2.

6. The Personal Attack rule will be expanded to include calling other users trolls and generic complaints about the worth of another poster's contributions.

7. Persistent and extreme hyperbole will not be tolerated.

8. New threads must have some relevance to larger society. Threads consisting of smears on a public figure that do not have bearing on their ability to lead or perform their job function will not be permitted.

9. Do not copy/paste more than a paragraph or two of articles in violation of the author's copyright.

10. If you encounter a poster who seems hostile to the normal functions of government that poster is likely an Anarcho-Capitalist. Please read the AC FAQ before arguing with this person.

11. Section 2 of the Constitution is repealed. I wasn't enforcing it anyway.

12. Instead, If you wish to complain about a moderating decision, please PM one of us. Do not hijack threads with a moderation debate.

13. If you would like to post about politics without starting a new thread or discuss off-topic matters, you may use the Monthly Low Content Thread.

I'm going to make my first amendment to the forum constitution.

Amendment III:

14. Do not announce to other posters (and to the rest of the forum) that you are putting that person on your ignore list. This has not been enforced as such in the past, but in my opinion, it resembles calling someone a troll in a thread. Instead, if you want to ignore a poster, add them to your list and enjoy the forum without reading or responding to their posts without any fanfare.

15. Do not publicize the contents of your ignore list to the forum.

16. If you think that the forum in general should ignore a poster, do not call for this in threads. Instead, just hit the notify mod button for any posts you think are in violation of the forum constitution, and let the moderator(s) handle it.

Interpretive guide to the Forum Constitution:

i) It's not in the constitution because it should go without saying, but we are going to say it anyway: Don't violate the twoplustwo T&C.

ii) "Personal attack" means not only namecalling, but also posts that do little more than criticize a poster qua poster or a poster's body of work. It seems that people have not understood this until now, but now everyone is on notice so please post accordingly.

iii) Being abusive toward a new poster that asks something that has been talked about before (or for any other reason) falls under the personal attack/trolling tule. There is a nice way to point someone towards prior discussions. If you can't be nice about it, please don't make the post.

iv) Calling for a thread to be locked or for other moderation to be taken on it, esp. when that thread does not violate articles of the forum constitution or various executive orders (e.g., creating an election chatter thread to confine LC posts about that election), is considered trolling. If a thread is in specific violation of forum rules, then more leeway will be given w/r/t calling for it to be locked etc., but this is at the moderator's discretion. Importantly, since calling for a thread to be locked without actually notifying the moderator to lock it is completely counterproductive, posts calling for moderation that are unaccompanied by a mod notification of the offending post will be strongly looked down upon.

v) Most things done in the name of moderation can be reversed. If you have a big problem with a mod's decision in this forum, you're free to take it up with us by PM, in ATF,* or with one of the reds.


* Posting about the Politics Forum in ATF is not permitted until February 2009.