Welcome to the Politics Forum. Here are the rules.


1. Attack the argument, not the arguer. This includes calling a user a troll, or announcing that you have or are putting someone on ignore. Having your opinion, claim or argument challenged, doubted or dismissed is not attacking the arguer.

2. Don't be a troll.

3. Don't post conspiracy theories or other unsupported hyperbole. Any non-obvious claim about the world should be supported by empirical evidence and an appropriate, reputable citation. The less obvious and/or more radical the claim, the higher the standard will be for supporting evidence and citations. Claims of facts that are refuted by available evidence or that cannot be verified at all have no place in this forum. That includes birther stuff. Birther posts will result in a permaban.

4. No broad-brush attacks on opposing political parties or ideologies

5. No calling for a thread to be locked or for other moderation, and do not criticize moderation decisions in this forum. Use the mod notification button to get a mod's attention, PM a moderator to discuss his modding, or, only AFTER trying the above, PM an admin or go to ATF.

6. Keep posts substantive, particularly new threads. Low-content or off-topic banter belongs in the LC thread or in a designated chatter thread on the subject. Standards here are subjective. If a poor thread was closed that you would like to make a substantive contribution to, PM a moderator with your contribution, and the thread may be reopened.

7. Site-wide rules apply here, as everywhere
-- No spam
-- No begging
-- No linked NSFW* stuff without the link being tagged NSFW
-- No linked porn
-- No wishing death on other posters.
-- No Trainwrecking
-- No filesharing discussion
-- No discussion of methods to break laws, encouragement to break laws, etc.
-- No plagiarism
-- No racism/anti-semitism/etc.
-- etc.

The 2+2 terms and conditions are here.

Also, please note:

It's a new year, and it's now into my second year as one of the mods here, and I am going to try something new: a ban list and forum discussion thread a la Sporting Events. This is experimental and may be pulled at any time.

Past experience shows that there are always a couple of bad apples who like to ruin these things by trolling me or turning it into a moderation bitchfest. You know who you are. That kind of ridiculousness is not welcome in this thread. If you tard it up, you will be asked to leave. If the thread degenerates, I'll shut it down, delete the posts, and just go back to the usual sticky.

W/r/t the bans: It will be one day for a first offense. two days for a second offense, and so on. That having been said, counting begins now (i.e., past offenses don't count for this purpose). All other moderation actions, including infraction points or exile, may be imposed in addition to or instead of a tempban.

The other mods may chime in and list their bans, or they may not.

The ban list will be appended to this post (and updated) as needed.

Special Wookie Drunken Offenses
Pokerbobobobo - See what you did, Tom? Bobobo's blood is on your hands. 4/3/2010

Self-Request

Taso - 5/30/10-6/4/10

FIRST OFFENSE

[Phil] -- personal attack (10/30/10)
Alizona -- anti-Semitic posting (03/31/10) (3 days)
AKSpartan -- trolling (06/15/10)
balla4life - trolling (04/28/10)
Bills217 -- trolling by name (03/21/10)
bobneptune - trolling (06/28/10)
Brian - trolling and staring terrible thread (11/17/10)
Brian J - trolling by name (01/17/10)
clemensol - admitted trolling (3/22/10)
clientblack - a bunch of terrible posts (04/26/10)
daaaaahawkz - trolling (2/24/11)
FallsviewPokerPro - Personal Attack (12/26/10)
FlyWf -- repeated trolling (two days, 02/17/10)
General Tsao - ridiculous hyperbole (03/22/10)
HooliganHRV - misogynistic trolling (01/27/10)
ikestoys -- making it personal (02/17/10)
istewart -- making it personal (03/21/10)
JackWhite -- making it personal (06/28/10)
JiggsCasey - namecalling (03/16/10)
Kimbo's beard - personal attacks (2/26/11)
mjkidd -- commenting on Fly 18 minutes after being told not to (16/12/10)
MrMusicRecorder - personal attacks (2 days) (04/27/10)
mosdef - trolling (02/24/10)
Neblis - trolling/making it personal (01/23/10)
nick_van_exel -- trolling (2 posts, 2 days) (09/09/10)
northeastbeast -- personal attacks (2/26/11)
Not_In_My_Name - calling Boro a moran (24 hr exile, 01/28/10)
paul rizzo - hyperbole trolling (01/14/10)
Phleggm - trolling (01/20/10)
PrimogenitoX - trolling (02/08/10)
MelchyBeau -- Dancing on Byrd's grave (06/28/10)
Montius -- namecalling (06/29/10)
owsley - trolling (02/24/10)
One big ass - trolling (06/21/10)
pvn - trolling (01/23/10)
Randomness28 - namecalling (01/04/10)
RedManPlus - namecalling (03/25/10)
Riverman - Namecalling (02/24/10)
Sackup -- trolling (08/04/10)
SandBaggn - Namecalling (02/26/10)
scandilous - Repeated terrible OP (05/26/10)
sex - evading profanity filter (02/17/10)
smittymatt - racist posting (01/17/10)
spidar - namecalling (6/4/10)
steelhouse - namecalling (03/02/10)
Stu Pidasso - trolling and then extra time for posting while banned (08/04/10)
suzzer99 - making it personal/public ignoring (01/23/10)
Thamel18 - trolling (06/28/10)
USC Cheats - see Riverman
vhawk01 - trolling/making it personal (01/23/10)
zan nen - hotlinking to racist site (10/12/10)
Zygote - circumventing profanity filter (01/27/10)

SECOND OFFENSE
[Phil] -- namecalling (12/20/10)
bobneptune -- haha Jon Stewart is JEWISH!!!! get it?!?!? yah, we get it Bob (09/17/10 - 3 days)
Brian J -- making it personal (02/17/10)
FlyWF -- trolling (02/24/10)
General Tsao -- personal attack (11/28/10)
ikestoys -- trolling (02/28/10)
istewart -- personal attack (4/23/10)
Neblis -- namecalling (02/08/11)
nick_van_exel -- trolling (01/03/10)
One Big Ass -- Dancing on Byrd's grave (06/28/10)
sex -- racist trolling (03/02/10)
USC Cheats -- name calling (5/12/10)
zan nen -- telling Wookie to **** off (11/13/10)
zzzed -- personal attacks 2/26/11

THIRD OFFENSE
[Phil] -personal attack (3/1/11)
Brian J - trolling (06/29/10)
FlyWf - trolling (9/8/10)
General Tsao -- trolling (03/16/11)
ikestoys -- trolling (03/07/11)
nick_van_exel -- namecalling (11/18/10)
sex -- trolling (03/21/10)
istewart -- personal attack (06/28/10)

FOURTH OFFENSE
sex -- trolling, personal attacks (04/26/10)
ikestoys -- trolling (03/16/11)
istewart -- name calling (08/04/10)
FlyWf - name calling (10/1/10)
nick_van_exel -- trolling (11/29/10)

FIFTH OFFENSE
nick_van_exel -- calling Sponger a "sanctimonious little vermin" (01/29/2011)


SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS
UATrewqaz -- permanent ban for repeated racist posting

First! As in banned?

Exciting implications!

Elliot, what kind of discussion IS allowed itt?

All regular forum rules apply. As for topics, anything that, in my sole subjective and possibly biased judgment, is an attempt to have a good faith discussion about the politics forum. If a topic comes up that I don't want ITT, I will say so.

So no discussion of moderator actions?

Elliot for mod imo

The King approves of the SE-styled banlist, if for nothing else because the Feltstein writeup is bound to be legendary.

I approve of all actions of Elliot, including any rule changes.

Yes, these people suck big time.

they got to him

I think that the ban list is probably a good idea, although I wonder whether the escalating bans (1st = 1 day, 2nd = 2 days, etc.) is substantially harsher than was previously the case. Was there a decision that harsher moderation was needed/is this in line with previous practice/was greater transparency deemed worth increasing the penalties or decreasing the discretion?

I'm not sure whether giving the justifications for bans will lead to more discussion of moderation in the forum (since the ban-causing posts are usually removed here), but the public shaming aspects are at least an interesting experiment.

Whatever works.

I'm not sure the ban list is meant to shame, but rather to both give examples of what is out of line and to make it clear that Elliot is completely fair and balanced, thus limiting people whining that he is trying to manufacture infraction points against people.

Temp bans are a much better idea than infraction points. Infraction points are pretty much like speeding tickets without a fine. Everyone expects to get one every once in a while, even while trying to avoid it. The problem is not a few people that need to be culled (sometimes happens, but is rare), but people who post reasonably 99% of the time get into some pissing contest with another person, and needs time to cool off more than anything.

Question for Elliot:

What are your goals you intend to accomplish through moderation?

Obviously #1 is stop any kind of illegal/horsepr0n/spam posts.

After that, what are the priorities for your goals in what moderation would accomplish?

To be honest, I rarely see posts that lead to people getting banned. I mostly see the scrubbed version, and so I have only a vague idea of what gets someone banned on the margin. I'm not sure how much this helps, but I see your point.

I agree.

Produce the list so that we may chortle at the misfortune of others.

I'm not sure I understand these questions. To the extent that I do, I'll say "to improve the signal-to-noise ratio".

No one has been banned in 2010 yet.

Has Nielsio been perma'd?

To what purpose? It's not like this is an actual forum where you can't hear te other guy over the shouting of the lunatics. Outside of actual spamming that makes threads hard to read what real benefit can tere be in banning people? Is it just a way to help those with no self control or those who don't know how to use the ignore feature? I've never quite understood the rational basis for bannings of this sort. I totally understand banning porn or spamming or anything that might be embarrassing the company since this is after all a proprietary forum. Bu what's te point in banning idiots that literally take milliseconds worth of effort to just scroll past?

I think I'm mostly in your camp, but I have a personal annoyance for thread sprawl and that's actually much harder to "ignore" and can have a much more deleterious effect on the quality of the forum than someone who just sucks at posting, which I agree is easily ignorable.

I think the Low Content thread(s) are perfect in this respect. Here's what I mean: anyone that insists on creating new and stupid threads ad nauseum, making it hard to actually browse the forum, mods can dump their crap in the relevant No Content-Low Content/Conspiracy/'General Election Chatter' thread ghettos and be warned that further tarding up the forum will result in banning, since I understand and sympathetic to the fact that our volunteer mods don't want to play babysitter all day.

Anyway, that's where I'd support banning: anyone who keeps making terrible threads (not posts) and who can't learn to contain themselves to the Low Content threads.

If everyone ignored them, they wouldn't be such a problem. However, even decent posters may not be able to resist replying to their posts. That's when the threads can really get clogged up.

vhawk1, imo you are vastly underestimating how crappy a forum gets when unmoderated

It's just one question. What are your goals for the results you want to see in a forum. Obviously you want to make sure there is no illegal crap going on, or spam, etc... beyond anything else (the entire reason we got moderators). Your second goal might be to improve signal to noise ratio. You can still have other goals, such as reduce amount of animousity/personal attacks as another goal. Your style of moderation would clearly have the intent of trying to go towards those goals. I'm just curious what your priorities are.

Obviously noise is perfectly fine when contained, as we have the Life thread, the Drunk thread, and the Low Content thread. I can't imagine you have a problem with any of those threads, even though they are very high noise.

This. The forums on another website I post on are virtually unmoderated. The only actions the mods take are to delete porn or obscenities, posters almost never get banned for flaming or frequent low or no content posts. It's crap. It encourages ******s to go and post crappy one liners with absolutely no thought or effort, and often just devolves into insults. There are some really good posters there, but you have to wade through a tonne of crap to read their posts. Even when good people do post more often, they just get derailed by ******s picking up on trivial crap. The level of moderation in this forum at the moment is pretty good imo.

An example from the other forum I post on is the Israel/Palestine threads. There is absolutely no chance of getting good conversation going in them because they instantly get infested by "JEWZ ARE TERRORISTS" and "ALL MUSLIMZ HATE JEWZ" type posts. The intelligence and effort put into posting in this forum is much higher, and at least some of that is due to the more stringent modding.