Forum Rules
What this forum is for:
- Offering opinions on politics, economics, society and militaries
- Criticism of those opinions without talking in any way about the forum member who wrote them
Do NOT join this forum if you are any of the following
- A person who will not read and follow the forum rules
- An internet tough guys or trash talker
- Someone who use sarcasm, make smart arse remarks towards other members, rudeness, smugness, or a condescending tone
- Someone who cannot tolerate having their opinions criticized in a normal way (i.e. your opinion is not based on facts)
- Someone who cannot tolerate having their opinions criticized in an ABRASIVE way (abrasive being defined as what you wrote is lies, dishonest, disingenuous, misrepresenting, false, nonsense, worthless, absurd, baseless, silly)
Retaliation for Breaking Forum Rules
* Admin and mods will NEVER initiate talking about another member
* Admin and mods reserve the right to retaliate against forum rules violation with insults. This applies as well to insulting the forum itself. The admin/mods are the only people with this privilege and it is forbidden to all other members.
* As it is your obligation to know the forum rules, the admin/mods need not give you any indication that you have broken the forum rules in order to retaliate against you. It is a waste of our time explaining things that all members have ample opportunity to educate themselves on.
* Anyone who joins this forum should expect to see people who break the rules get insulted by the admin/mods and those rule breakers shall either take such disparagement or be banned.
All members are responsible for knowing all of the forum rules. The forum rules are a bit detailed, but here's a very simple way to abide by them: target what the forum member says, not the forum member him or herself.
1 During political debate, do not talk about another member in any way, shape or form. Only criticism of other members' statements and beliefs are allowed. These criticisms include but are not limited to: your belief that the members statements are wrong, inconsistent, irrational, partisan, unfair, factually incorrect, lies, dishonest, nonsense, worthless, absurd, silly, nonsense, baseless, false.
It is not acceptable to describe someone's comments as crazy, garbage, crap, a joke, laughable, BS, bitching or any other profane act.
In the following examples, green is OK and red is bad:
OK: That is unreasonable. Bad: You are unreasonable.
OK: This is class warfare. Bad: You engage in class warfare.
OK: This is just more tax cuts for the rich. Bad: You are a pawn for the rich.
OK: This is conservative. Bad: You are conservative.
OK: This is liberal. Bad: You are liberal.
2 No indirect insults (i.e. Your comment is idiotic).
3 Acceptable phrasing
You:
You misrepresented/distorted/twisted the Senator's remarks.
You omitted the facts.
Your comment is a lie/dishonest/worthless/absurd/nonsense/silly.
* The burden of proof is on you
* Would you provide proof for x, y, z?)
* You didn't answer the question/address the point.
* You left out x, y, z
* According to your standard/method...
* Ask a person what country they're from, if their command of the English language seems foreign
4 Banned Phrases
No "you are", "you're" and no "he/she is being" (i.e. you are being partisan, you are being unwise, etc)
No personally descriptive your phrases: (i.e. your partisanship, your bias, your hate, your lack of knowledge)
No converting a member's statements into emotions. (i.e. I see you support capital punishment. Why do you feel so angry towards criminals?)
No psycho-analyzing (i.e. your innocence is admirable, but it is disgusting when it turns to denial.)
No use of the word bias when referring to another member nor their comments The way to talk about bias is to criticize specific comments by the member as partisan, nationalist, discriminatory, racist, bigoted, etc.
No talking about a member's attitude
No talking about another member's motivations, sincerity, nor what they care for unless you are quoting the member. No: You don't believe your belief.
No talking about another person's tendencies (i.e. Do you always say that?)
No lol'ing at another member's comments, unless you want to be insulted. This is baiting and if you lol, LMAO or smiley face laugh at any member's comment outside of The Pub, that member shall be allowed to eat the bait and disparage your intelligence or maturity. If you reciprocate, that will be considered a violation of forum rules.
No speculating how another member will reply (i.e. I bet you won't answer.)
No talking about another member's credibility. You may talk about the credibility of their comments though.
No you do not understand, comprehend, grasp, not aware of
No talking about, nor asking if another member has done research, read, watched, nor informed him or herself in any way about any political subject as a means to discredit that member's beliefs.
No speculating on another member's capabilities, what they can and cannot do, nor whether they have useful things to add to the discussion.
No cloudy personal attacks (i.e. the fact that you believe that is very telling)
No talking about a member indirectly with any combination of words or phrases including "some people", "those", "Democrats", "Republicans", "liberals", "conservatives", etc. It is acceptable to say that Democrats are stupid and Republicans are stupid, but if you are using those phrases as a clever way to insult the person you are disagreeing with, you run the risk of the mod team finding out and if we do you are liable for breaking the rule. The moderators have the last word on interpreting if this tactic is being used or not. Disagreement and criticism should be DIRECT, i.e. "your support for a flax tax/progressive tax would slow economic growth", "Obama/Romney would be an awful choice for President."
No telling other members what to do nor what they should do. If you would like to offer some advice to someone you must ask them first if you can offer the advice and receive that permission before offering it. This does not apply to forum staff telling members to comply with the rules, nor to people telling someone to stop telling them what to do.
No talking about another person because they started talking about him or herself in passing. For example, if a person says I consider myself a fair person. a good reply to this would be: well it's not fair how you support X, Y, Z a bad reply would be: apparently you're not very fair since you support X, Y, Z. If you talk about yourself to remark on another member's comments, they may comment on what you've said about yourself (i.e. reading your comments offends my sensibilities as a fair person = people get to say you're not a fair person).
No giving advice unless that advice has been asked for. No telling people what to read or do. The best way to offer advice is to talk up whatever it is you think people should read. (i.e. Thomas Paine's Common Sense is a great book on this topic. It's eloquent and makes points that are timeless.)
No "care to" questions (i.e. Care to address what I wrote?)
No saying that someone is a bad Christian/Muslim/atheist/Democrat/Republican/liberal/conservative/American/European, etc.
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Enforcement of the Rules & Complaints
5 Forum Rules Violations will generally be handled in public. Handling forum rules violations in private means no witnesses, and hence people will break the rules in private messages when talking to moderators. Any response to a moderator's public comment on a rule violation MUST be made on a separate thread on the Complaints Forum. If a person replies with both political comments AND claims of how their comment is not a rules violation, the comment will be copied, then deleted and the copy placed on a special thread in the Dump Forum. The member will have the privilege of going back and making those comments the right way.
6 ALL complaints about the forum must be done on the Complaints forum here (click). List what comments and policies you believe are unfair. A complaint like this: Moderator X bullied me because I disagreed with him and he couldn't come up with any arguments is nothing but a personal attack and will result in a ban (and my own snappy comebacks). A valid complaint says how a comment violated the rules, or how the rules are bad, how rules are not enforced right, etc. Complaints made within these guidelines guarantee that the member making the complaint is not talked about, but their comments are.
Any verbal trashing of the forum or the forum staff is a banable offense. Trashing usually has several distinguishing factors: it talks about the character of the staff, it's not in the complaints section and it's rude.
7 Any goodbye thread/post, any ultimatum to moderators, and any instance of a person saying they will leave the forum is a breach of the forum rules and will result in that person being banned immediately. In addition, any complaints made about the forum made on a good bye thread will incur the forum staff talking about the behavior, beliefs and character of the person making them, the thread being locked and transferred to the dump.
8 If you believe that a member has violated the forum rules, report their post by clicking on the exclamation point icon in the lower left-hand corner which appears on every post. Fill out the form and a moderator will take action if it is warranted. A graphic of this icon can be found on this link. Forum staff handle forum rules violations at our pace and discretion.
9 Moderators and admin have the final say on the interpretation of the rules.
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Typical Common Sense Forum Rules
10 Stay on topic.
11 People who engage in low quality discussion can be banned at any time.
Low quality posting includes:
* Rudeness
* Extreme dishonesty and or telling deliberate lies
* Claiming something to be a fact and then failing to provide proof that it is a fact
* Making comments that can objectively be called stupid (i.e. Holocaust denial)
* Hate Speech
12 No racist, sexist, religious or gay slurs. They may be quoted and discussed. Threatening to injure any democratically elected politician is not allowed, nor is wishing for their injury or demise.
13 No insulting or harassing people via private messages or postings on their personal pages. No private information about forum members may be shared without that members permission.
14 Only one account is allowed. A banned member can plead his case at the e-mail address listed. Do not open a new account.
15 No Spam. No creating threads or posts to advertise for other websites unless approved by the forum staff.
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Not required to know this stuff below
Notes:
* Changes in the wording of the forum rules may be made from time to time to either make them easier to understand or to incorporate improvements. Major changes will generally be accompanied by a forum-wide announcement, minor changes will not. A log of changes to forum rules are also publicly maintained.
* This forum is privately-held property by myself (WEB) under a privately-held domain name, privately-owned forum license, and privately-held hosting of the data. This forum has no affiliation with any political, government, religious organizations, individuals, nor ideology. Moderators who are conservative, independent, liberal, libertarian and non-American shall be selected as the forum membership grows.
