OK, I've had some time to think things over, and went and re-read some posts. Here are my thoughts on a variety of issues that have surfaced, not necessarily in any order of importance.

1. Critiquing or personally targeting other posters with derogatory comments that add nothing to the advancement of the discussion of the thread topic. There seems to be some posters who just can't discuss anything without targeting other posters by name, rather than discussing the arguments being presented. Please stop doing that.

As a general rule, there should be very few instances where, besides quoting another posters post in your own for reference, that you should need to mention another poster or his posting style by name. Stick to addressing the topic of the thread; make your point; keep the focus of your writing on your ideas. If a post is violates a rule, report it. But stop these off topic general assessments of each others posting styles, and stop calling each other names. It's not nice.


2. racist posts; racist posters; and other bigoted statements that target a certain group with derogatory comments; (such as targeting members of the LGBTQ community) and the posters who post those thoughts:

Our policy is to separate the argument or idea from the person, in order to not make things personal. So we won't try to make a determination whether a person making racist posts is, in fact, personally a racist. It won't matter, because it is the act of posting racist remarks that will lead to someone being banned. Whether he is a racist in real life is immaterial; you post racist stuff, you face the consequences.

So if you see a poster make a statement you believe to be racist, DO NOT call the poster a racist; and do not engage with the racist poster in order to rebut his racist statements. By doing so, you one, start breaching the no personal insult rule; and two, and most importantly, if you engage him, then we are de facto allowing him to participate in our discussions with racists remarks. Our policy is to remove racist remarks and racist posters, NOT to try and engage them or prove them wrong.

If you encounter a post you believe to be racist, stop your conversation with that poster and report the post to the mods. Think of it as the way an antivirus program puts a suspected corrupt file into isolation. Don't give the racist poster 'air time' by engaging them.

So no member should assert or call another poster a racist. What we are concerned about is the posts made in the forum. We won't allow members to label other members with derogatory terms like that. Focus on the current thread. If there is a racist post report it and disengage. Or as we used to say in my old job "pop smoke and break contact".

3. Use of religious names as exclamatory remarks. While not obscenities, I believe there are enough people who feel offended when the name of their god is used in that manner. So I have decided that statements like "Christ!' or JFC! will be deleted if used, so please don't post them. The overall goal of our forum is to offer a place that is welcoming and respectful to all people of all beliefs. Plus, there is a religion forum for those who want to discuss religious things. While different from the "that's gay" slur issue, one thing in common is that some people have used those terms so often that they become generic and removed from their origins. But they remain very offensive to members of the targeted groups, so we will refrain from comments like those.

4. Trolling and trying to get another poster upset. As I mentioned, there are a lot of personal trolling posts going back and forth using members names. Those need to stop. I do specifically want to clarify the difference between an actual personal insult and a generic statement that comes up to the edge but does not cross the line. I'll use a recent example to illustrate.

After someone quoted one of the rules policies, one poster replied to another words like: "don't make garbage posts and you should have no problem". Another poster feels that statement is a personal insult, implying that he personally makes garbage posts, and so should be deleted. But that statement doesn't actually say that. Saying 'don't make garbage posts and you should have no problem' is basically a summary of what our forum guidelines say. Follow the rules, don't make lousy posts, no problems.

What would turn a generic statement like that into a personal insult is if it said "Stop making garbage posts and you should have no problems". In this case, the statement is specifically saying that the poster has made garbage posts in the past. That's not nice. It would be deleted. I hope everyone can see the difference.

The objective for all of these rules is simple: it's to create a welcoming, respectful and enjoyable place for people of all sorts of backgrounds and opinions to discuss these issues without concern for personal attacks, insults or offensive remarks. Contrary to the way many groups approach political discussions, here you will not need a thick skin to participate in our discussions. I think we have made a good deal of progress in setting the stage for this type of environment. Now we just need to get used to acting in this manner day in and day out, without the need for a bunch of post reporting and moderator intervention. If each poster does his or her part to contributing, then things will take care of themselves with little need for post reporting or mod intervention.

Let me know if you have any questions about these policies.

I appreciate the humor in that sort of wording. It's why I responded to a question about it with my own "Coked Mob of Flea Brains" as their counterparts in another comment.

But like anything, overuse can cause it to lose its humor and it becomes grating. And like a joke, timing is everything. If this phrase is inserted into a heated discussion it can come across as an insulting, condescending phrase rather than a clever play on words. So I would advise using it sparingly.

We're going to go soft and won't be ready for the real world

LOL. I'm sure there are plenty of places you can go to build up your callouses. Think of this place as a trip to the spa where people soak their heads feet and relax.

I'm sorry, but I feel like you have settled on perhaps the worst possible outcome, the one that encourages the most silencing of the debate. What is and is not a racist statement is not something we are all going to agree on. You can tell already there is wide disagreement in the community on this, and who knows where you will fall. But your proposal silences both sides! If someone makes a statement YOU as the moderator find racist, it is deleted even if perhaps many people think it shouldn't be considered racist. If someone makes a statement YOU as the moderator don't find racist, you are silencing all discussion about why people who do think it is racist think this way. That is, you have put 100% of the onus on deciding what is and is not racist on you and you alone, and anyone that disagrees on either side can not speak to it. This policy is maximally silencing.

Instead, I think societal debate about what things are considered racist or not is crucial to our democracy. In egregious cases of racism, I applaud your willingness to delete that. But there is a wide swath of comments where it isn't agreement about whether the statement is or is not racist and both sides should be able to make that case. Publicly. In a politics forum, say. A lot of the time I don't advocate that statements I consider racist are deleted, I think it is instead much better to have those tough discussions about WHY I think it is racist. If you delete it, the person saying the comment doesn't get to learn why it is considered racist and to put there own perspective to the test in adversarial debate. If you don't delete it, but insist nobody address it at such, again no possibility for learning and debate.

I disagree with a lot of the rest of your post and broadly speaking with your highly-interventionist style of moderation, but the above seems far more fundamentally wrong to me.

This guy is making a lot of work for himself. Forum might need to be re-titled from "politics and society"to "polite discourse on society and politics".

He seems determined like a substitute teacher who has been gifted a troubled class for the rest of the year after all the other teachers gave up. The fact that he is doing this all for free means he really cares about politics and society or really likes to enforce niceness.

Will be interesting to see how this develops in a few months time. One thing is certain, there are a lot of odd balls here, so baby sitting them all should be quite the chore

I agree with you completely.

I will employ the phrase sparingly (if at all).

Of couse. Part of a long list of things to be much more concerned about than personal attacks on a politics discussion forum.

What follows from that? It would be very strange to dismiss things just because there are more concerning things.

I just saw a good continuation from you in another thread which is worth reposting

I think that's a good starting point. We know that attacks (or perceived attacks) will result in defense and a cycle which can then consume everything. Many problems arise, not least your 4b where it's standard to accuse anyone who considers the attacks from some on the left as unreasonable as being right wing. I dont mind if personal attacks are allowed or not but a consequence has to be allowing defense. How it stopped from spiraling out of control remains a mystery.

I do want to know absolutely if randomly we have a right to reply to others in a discussion and accuse them of posting 'bigoted ****', as i reported here, because if that passes the smell test that will be my lead in to almost every exchange of reply to others but i will simply separate it from their posts by not quoting them.

It is fine if the ruling is that is allowed. I just want to know before i start using it.

Homophobes sure hate being called homophobes.

Buddy, why don’t we stop badgering the mod and just let him do his thing.

The goal of the new mod and his rules is to create a friendlier, more welcoming environment. For this to work, it's going to take cooperation of all (or at least most) of us. It looks to me like you're asking how to be maximally antagonistic while staying someone within the lines. This strategy seems counter to the end-goal, though. Is that really necessary?

it looks like that to you as you only see sides and only call out sides.

Right above you is Trolly retaining his right to call people he disagrees with in debates homophobes and bigots as his go to FIRST response, devoid of any context and anything the person can reply you or that shows it to be accurate or not. Just a blanket slur

And ganstaman DNGAF about that. Not one iota. Leave Trolly alone and do not call that out. It is the calling of that out by OTHERS that is the antagonistic approach.

Fact, which you do not like ganstaman, is that i am in favour of getting rid of such blanket condemnations BUT if one side (and really is only one side that i have seen on this forum) is going to continue to use that as their go to tactic, as a way to slander and smear others, then if i cannot beat them (see a rule prohibiting it), I will join them. 'Treat others as you wish to be treated' but failing that 'treat them as they treat you'.

Maybe, just maybe think about walking in to your work place and someone regularly just calling you a homophobe and bigot. No context they just say it regularly and walk on by. Would you ganstaman ignore it? Allow it?

No, of course not. But here you do. Why? 'Sides'. It really is as simple as that as you are already offended i MIGHT do it while you make zero mention of Trolly actually doing it.

Reflect on that, if you are capable of that.

There's a difference between calling out posts as bigoted and planning ahead to just blanketly call posts bigoted with the intention of being antagonistic. The former can coexist with and be a part of a civil enough discussion, all the latter can not.

Good feedback. Let me clarify some things. To start with, here is the language from our current forum guidelines that existed well before I became a mod here:

Extremist views well outside of the mainstream will not be allowed: offensive conspiracy theories, racist views, etc.

First, the policy on not allowing racist views to be posted has not changed. It is the same as before I became a mod.

Second, of course it is my job as a moderator to make the decision whether a statement is racist or bigoted enough to violate our site rules and be deleted. That's a key function of a moderator in a moderated forum. To simply sit back and allow the users to determine the standard is the model used by some websites. They tend to be filled with vile, hateful speech and essentially become cesspools. That is not the type of forum we have here, or will allow to exist here. So I'm a little surprised that some seemed shocked that it's up to the mod to decide what meets the posting standards for racist comments. It has always been that way across the site. Having posting standards is meaningless if there is no one to enforce those standards.

You can't have a political argument unless both sides are free to present whatever arguments they chose. But we are not going to allow a poster to fill our threads with all of the hateful rhetoric used by racists to justify their beliefs. To do so would be to a defacto unmoderated forum. So while users may wish to debate to counter racists views, that won't happen because we are not going to yield the floor to a racist to spew their hate here.

An example:

Poster A: all members of group X are subhuman and should never be considered equal to us, group Y.

Poster B: that's some racist BS there. Everybody is equal

Poster A now posts excerpts from various racist websites saying all sorts of vile things about group X

Poster B: posts opinions or studies showing why poster A is wrong

Poster A counters with more hateful, racists ideas and posts links to "studies" that purport to show that group X is genetically inferior or genetically unable to be equal to group

And so it goes, back and forth. But what you end up with are multiple posts on our website espousing absolutely hateful things, and providing links to even worse material. And that is completely unacceptable. That is why we have to nip racist posts in the bud rather than have our users engage them trying to rebut their arguments. Because you can't have a back and forth about racist views unless you give the racist "equal time" and our forum becomes a platform for disseminating hate speech. This is why when someone starts off with "group X is subhuman..." you need to report it to a mod and not engage in a debate with them.

So of course this forum is not a total "free speech zone" where anyone can say anything they want. We have forum guidelines and mods to ensure those guidelines are followed. I frankly believe that some are seeing monsters under the bed in regards to my modding. I have yet to delete any posts as racist or any other type of hate speech or CT. All I have really done so far is to delete some off topic or no content posts, and posts with some childish name calling and trolling. That's it. I haven't been swooping in and deleting posts because they don't match my personal political beliefs or because I have some exceedingly broad view of what racism is. But since the modding is different than before it upsets some people. I get it.

The fact is that this forum has been fading away. The number of regular posters is tiny, and a good deal of the total word count posted is just a few people mostly sniping and trolling at each other rather than actual discussions of political topics. This gives the forum a negative feel, and makes it difficult for people to follow the topic of the thread. So they leave rather than fight through it. If we want to change that and grow the forum, then in fact we have to make changes. And the changes needed aren't necessarily major changes to the political content we allow. Our guidelines haven't changed in that regard. What keeps people away is often the atmospherics I mentioned above. The name calling. The posts bloated with three paragraphs of personal bickering and off topic subjects for every one paragraph of on topic thoughts.

It should be easy to clean that up. And when we do, the actual political discussion will come to the fore, which is what people come here looking for.

I think the issue Bowser when it comes to racism is that you're operating in the old world where people knew what racism was when they saw it, in the new world racism is lurking everywhere. So when you say racism won't be tolerated that's great, but people are upset that you're appointing yourself the racism detector when they consider it their own mission to find it and root it out.

You will never get as one of the most 'partisan' posters here, because, again you see Trolly above actually DOING the blanket calling out posts as bigoted in real time and would never raise a cry and yet based on me saying 'if that is the rule and that is ok, i will adopt it' you decry it as wrong.

I am not saying i will do anything in the future that Trolly does not do now, IF THAT IS THE RULE. And you say, 'to ask for a rule clarification and say you will live by and adopt the rule and do what Trolly is doing is wrong', while NEVER commenting on Trolly doing it.


The 'difference' is a fiction you create in your head to justify always being on one 'side'.

You are literally saying me asking to get the rule clarified while saying 'if that is the rule I will do as Trolly does' is wrong and you have created some 'difference' to maintain Trolly is right because what i am doing is different.

The ONLY difference is I won't do what Trolly is doing until the rule is clear. If the rule says I can, then I will TOO.

GASP!!!

With all due respect this is the type of post used by both extremes of left and right to say 'no one can judge our comments so let them all be'. It is what the right trolls on Twitter argued before Elon, when they got banned, and now the more left trolls will argue post Elon as they get banned. And the far left agreed with the right trolls being banned and vice versa.

Sure moderation will NEVER be perfect but that does not mean pulling to the centre generally cannot work.

For instance, Trolly's blanket assertions calling certain people bigots and homophobes or racists and transphobes will always garner far more replies that descend into trolling and polarization than the actual topic. It is doing so here now with ganstaman quick to take up the mantle defending Trolly's right to do it as it is 'different' while decrying me saying, if that is the rule i will do same.


Such comments by Trolly are INTENDED to polarize and force people to take sides as ganstaman demonstrates unwittingly, how easily it works.

the far right throws out blanket assertions of 'groomer' or 'pedophile' while the far left uses 'homophobe', 'transphobe', 'nazi' and a list of '...ist' but it is the same tactic. To 'otherize' debate opponents as bad people while ignoring content, because they do not have a valid answer to discussions of content. It is a tactic to derail debate not encourage it.

browser2920 solicited input from us, buddy.

Please try to pay attention.

Thanks in advance.

Trolls sure hate being called trolls.

I heartily endorse your approach, and will endeavor to do my part to make it work.

The difference is here, in bold, where you state you will start doing this all over the place just because you can:

This is my last reply in this exchange unless something new is said. Otherwise, as you've done before, you are openly announcing your plan to troll in the name of fairness.

That's an interesting point. But I would say that in fact every user still plays a role in identifying the racist remarks posted here. In fact we rely on them to do so, as a mod can't keep up in real time on all the threads. So I would suggest that I am not the appointed racism detector, but rather the designated racism remover. I'd also suggest that having lived through a period of open racism, with a clear view of what it is, it is actually easier to see it lurking in the shadows. Someone who has never seen racism clearly may be more easily fooled by its disguises.

I have always sought out and valued the input of others in a group setting. This forum is no different. I will be considering everyones thoughts on what is and isn't racist. This is a difficult and at times ambiguous area with plenty of gray area. We will have to work through this together as situations arise.

Well, he certainly gets an A+ for consistency!

As Trolly CURRENTLY does.

Trolly continuously, 'all over the place' drops his 'drive by' slandering of people as homophobes, bigots, etc with ZERO citation or even relevance to the discussion at hand.

ganstaman : oh that is ok and fine because he is not saying 'he will do it in the future', he is 'just doing it now in the present'. That is the 'difference' QP that makes him ok and someone i will NEVER complain about, while you doing saying 'if the rules say it is ok to do it, you will adopt it too', well that is a 'difference' I have to point out as wrong.


Again, i use the analogy of sports fanatics who will NEVER see any blame or reason to criticize anyone on their perceived side, while splitting hairs to see blame or wrong on the other. In your world view I am wrong if i ask for a rule clarification and say I i will adapt whatever the rule is, and do only what Trolly is doing currently and has always done, while he is fine because he does not ask and simply does not say he will continue doing it, as he just does it.


You have to be able to accept a crazy level of cognitive dissonance to think you have fond some meaningful 'difference' that justifies Trolly and condemns me.


QP : hey mod i see that guy swearing in each post and i thought the use of profanity was prohibited can you clarify because if it is within the rules to swear I will start doing so

ganstaman : you are seeking to make this a less friendly environment by clarifying that rule and saying you adopt it and use profanity and do what is allowed, , and as other posters do. That is wrong.

QP : wait... what? What about the guy then using all the profanity. I am sticking to whatever the rule is and use it as others do, while advocating for a rule that limits such.

ganstaman : well what 'side' is he on? (whistles while walking away with never a comment) but says 'QP you are the only one wrong because of 'differences'. "Differences' being defined as 'saying you will do in the future what someone is actually doing now, if the mod says it is within the rules'.


That 'difference' is the sole thing ganstaman says makes me wrong. Just do like Trolly and it is ok. Asking for clarification first and saying you will only do it ('difference') if within the rules, is what makes it wrong.

but we all know if i did not have that 'difference' and just 'did like Trolly now before any rules clarification' ganstaman would find another reason to call me out and not him. NEVER him.