Primary Forum Rules: No Personal Attacks

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This forum exists to facilitate civil discussions and debates. Condescending, rude, and annoying remarks and insults are awarded with temporary and permanent bans. People who seek actual discussion and debate about the issues will find the forum rules intuitive and common sense. Those who seek to bully, insult, annoy or spam will not last long on the forum.

The basic rule here is to discuss the issue and not your opponent. Discuss what your opponent says, not the character or background of the opponent him or herself. You can tell when you are probably violating this rule when you start to use the phrase "You are ________." Once you start to say "you are", you have generally begun to start talking about your opponent and not your opponent's STATEMENT or OPINION. Criticize and thwart the opposing STATEMENT or OPINION, if you wish, not the individual him or herself.

The following are the rules all members agreed to in the registration agreement:


Rules on civility, posting quality and moderation (1-4)

Insults are not allowed and posters who react to disagreement with condescension or rudeness generally are awarded with a speedy ban.

The following are prohibited:

Rule 1: No direct personal attacks (i.e. Person X is an idiot). That means no insults in posts or in private messages.

Rule 2: No indirect personal attacks (i.e. I dislike Person X's idiocy).

Rule 3: Discuss the issue and not your opponent. Discuss what your opponent has said, not the opponent him or herself. You may discuss and criticize a posters opinions, preferred policies or the actions that the poster has said they have taken. No speculation about the personal lives of other posters.

Rule 4: No trolling. Trolling is defined as baiting or provoking another poster with rude, disrespectful, or condescending remarks. Trolling also includes posting up comments that de-rail thread topics with nonsense.

Rule 5: No commenting on moderation in public, or mouthing off to moderators upon receiving a warning or penalty from them in private. Moderation may only be discussed or disputed via the report post method illustrated here: http://www.politicsforumpoliticalwor...-comments.html

Quick Guide on what is considered an insult here

Rules on civility, posting quality and moderation 5-9

Rule 6: Moderators keep discussions civil, enforce forum rules and are also bound by forum rules. They give their own political opinions, and their opinions are not the opinions of the forum. Moderators maintain the quality of political discussion and therefore moderators are empowered to edit and delete posts as well as to ban posters who they deem as degrading the civil atmosphere of the forum. The final interpretation of the forum rules rests with the moderators.

Rule 7: Personal aggression, condescension, rudeness, racism, bigotry, are banable offenses. The forum does not tolerate personal drama pushed into political discussions and forum business. Posters who make their own membership an issue for discussion open themselves up to the possibility of a moderator closing their account for them.

Rule 8: Low quality posting including but not limited to the following, are bannable offenses: misrepresenting or distorting another poster's comments or actions, nonsensical and illogical remarks, or general stupidity. Moderators can issue bans for insults, trolling, low quality posting, spam and remarks or actions which moderators feel are beneath the standards of the forum. Low quality posters may be banned at the moderators discretion depending on the severity of the individual comment, post, or thread.

Rule 9: Do not create more than one account.

Private Messages

Rule 10: Insults conveyed over private messages are treated the same as insults on the forum. When infractions are awarded, a private message is automatically sent to the offender. Mouthing off to the moderators will result in additional penalties.

The private message system is intended for the benefit of the members of this forum to share personal things with each other which they are not comfortable sharing with the forum at large or to develop bonds. It is a privilege provided by the moderators of the forum for the enjoyment of the members. In the past, small numbers of posters who were unable to follow forum rules nor capable of succeeding in creating fruitful discussions, formed anti-moderator factions. Those posters relied upon half-truths and common political agendas as a basis to bash moderators and encourage the spread of moderator bashing over the private message system. The result of this was a movement away from civil discussion on the issues towards unnecessary personal conflict and drama. The end result has always been the same for anti-moderator factions: permanent ban for all members of the faction.

Rule 11: Using the private message system to bash moderators or the forum is an offense subject to a permanent ban for ALL participants involved.

Enforcement of Rules

Item 1: Moderators do not personally look at each post. If you see a post that breaks forum rules, REPORT the POST in order for a moderator to become aware of that post. The following links shows where the report post button is on each post that is made: How to REPORT personal insults and attacks

Rule 12: The forum takes no responsibility for any of the views expressed or the information released by people who join this forum and express opinions or post information.

Spam

If your only reason for being on this forum is to promote your own website, then don't bother posting. Your posts will be deleted and you will be banned. This is a political discussion forum, not spam town. Asking political questions to mask advertising will not work.

Rule 13: Do not create threads or posts designed to advertise for your site or webpage. If you want to display a link or image of your webpage, add it to your signature in the User CP options. It will show up every time you make a post.

Signatures

Rule 14: Do not link to other political forums or consumer goods or services in your signature. You may link to political blogs and non-political forums in your signature.

Rule 15: You may display one image that refers to your site in your signature. The maximum size of a text link image in your signature is restricted to 250 Width pixels x 50 Height pixels, for example that is the size of this image:

You may have one link only back to your site, and you may only add comments about your site into the text of the link to your site. This is also called "text linking." The maximum font for you link is 2.

Rule 16: All signatures (which do not link to a site that you own) are allowed to have images that have a 200 pixel height, which is as large as the picture below:



It is not acceptable to stack images on top of each other if their combined height is greater than 200 pixels.

Rules on creating threads and posts

Rule 17: All threads and posts that copy and paste an article as a new thread MUST be accompanied by an ORIGINAL COMMENT by the thread starter that poses a question or says why the article is important or makes a commentary on the article he/she is presenting. Threads that copy and paste an article must be accompanied by a link to that article where possible.

Rule 18: Do not post the same thread in multiple forums

Rule 19: "Goodbye threads" are only allowed if they state a personal reason for leaving the forum and they are not used to violate other forum rules, like making accusations against the forum staff.

Chatroom

All forum rules apply in the chatroom.

Who runs this joint? How are forum policy decisions made?

This forum is managed and owned cooperatively by the forum moderators. The forum expenses are funded by advertisements and contributions from its members. Broadly speaking, the forum moderators have three goals: to keep the average quality of posts at a reasonably respectable level, to promote an atmosphere and environment that maximizes the growth of the forum, and to keep the forum ideologically balanced. This last part means that the moderators do not wish to see any one political ideology become over-represented. Sometimes these three goals come into conflict with one another and in situations like those moderators rely upon their judgment to strike the appropriate balance.

These rules are created to maintain an atmosphere of political discussion, as opposed to an atmosphere of distracting and annoying personal attacks. Happy posting.

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1st thread in forum.