You voted to continue the forum, allowing personal attacks.

I've changed my mind. Shut it down.

Personal responsibility and self control would work too.

Yeah it would, if I had any.

Self ban?

Or if you want to retain access to the rest of the forum, post something so awful it should warrant a perma here, like, oh I don't know, maybe threatening people with physical violence?

+1

Can't handle defending trump any more?

its hard to argue with delusion

trump is winning so much and you guys just keep listening to cnn

What has he won?

A post-rap world is unimpressed by fronting , especially when that's all you got. Now it's collecting how many of you are using words like 'delusion' as meaningless accusations while pointing out you are unqualified.

**nt Of The Year award

despite the anti trump hysteria and his lack of political experience trump has had one of the best presidencies so far

thats winning

So no.

The battle against fake news.

And the hearts and minds of the real people.

Nah, that's easy.

Lots more winning to come yet. Mark my words.

If he won that means there is no more fake news!! Thank God thats over.
The dehumanizing that they are not even real people is one of the steps to genocide. He does look to be making gains there.

Mark their trumpish words, they seize reality!

Just to let you know where we are. There has been much discussion on how to mod the forum and it's become clear to me that Well Named, Whosnext and I are not far apart in practice even though we frustratingly cannot quite formalise it yet (coming soon hopefully).

Given the fact I see us heading towards a common approach, and the results of the 'pole', I'm not at all inclined to mod in a way that greatly conflicts with how Well Named has been the past week while we try to dot all the i's and cross all the t's. So I too will be modding on the basis that on topic personal attacks are allowed and with a lighter touch towards LC posts.

We will work out any fine tuning as we go. You can expect to hear from whosnext on this shortly. Please keep your views coming - both what you like and what you don't like. Anything remotely constructive is very helpful to us.

If you're going to delete posts that aren't egregiously awful but infringe whatever rules you come up with, for god's sake put them into a silo where we can see what the infringement was.

Or just don't delete stuff like that

Here is a PM I sent Chezlaw and Well Named during our discussions. It crystallizes my own view and will reflect forum moderation going forward. (Of course, no two mods will always make the exact same judgment on each and every post in this or any forum. But the three mods of Pv7.0 have reached general agreement on this topic.)

As many posters have pointed out, political views are deeply personal. So there is a fine line between a political attack and a personal attack. So ruling out personal attacks is problematic at best. (I apologize if I wasn't clear on that point earlier.)

This is where the moderation judgment comes in. I don't know if this will help, but this is where I would draw the line. When I talk about prohibiting posts that are exclusively "personal attacks", I am talking about the following posts:
- you are a moron and I wish you were dead
- you are the stupidest person on the face of the earth
- etc.

The following posts would be acceptable (if they are "on topic" in the thread):
- all liberals are stupid
- all Trump supporters are racists
- the country would be much better off if people like you didn't exist
- only a racist believes that
- the leftists in this forum are a joke
- the conservatives in this forum are the stupidest people in the world
- etc.

I am not sure I would stand behind each and every item in those respective lists, but I am attempting to demonstrate that I have a pretty high threshold for classifying a post as a "personal attack".

The prototypical post that I would sanction: (i) contains no substantive elements; (ii) uses tone or words that rise to an "attack"; (iii) attacks the person as a human being, not the political views that that person may hold.

If a questionable post does not "qualify" on all three of those elements, judgment would be needed to deem whether or not the post is acceptable. As a general framework, I would typically allow (in rare cases with a warning) a post that does not check all three boxes.

I fully realize that trying to define what we mean by a "personal attack" may be a rabbit hole that we don't necessarily want to go down. But I wanted to give you guys some idea how I interpret that phrase in our forum's context.

Relatedly, you guys know the type of thing that drives (drove) many regulars crazy. Person X posts some extreme/offensive political viewpoint. Person Y calls Person X an idiot. Mods delete Person Y's post and gives Person Y an infraction for violating the "personal attack" rule. Person Y and many forum regulars are now pissed at the moderation and the moderators.

In that scenario I think it is best to not delete Person Y's post. Or sanction Person Y in any way. Maybe I would green ink a warning that posts should contain more than personal insults -- in the future please add why you think the person in question is a moron. (If Person Y persists in this type of posting, subsequent deletions or sanctions may be warranted.)

To summarize, my view is that as long as the discussion in the thread is not derailed, and as long as the "personal attack" is not "too personal", then I think we should allow it (with green ink warnings possible in extreme cases).

Time to buy shares in green ink.