PF RULES AND GUIDELINES - Comments Welcome

Heheheh, better ideas, good one. You keep believing that.

 

I don't really know what Libertarians are but I think they should be allowed, as long as they don't bite or bother people.

 

Isn't teasing beneath the regal office of advisor???

 

Oh hold on!

NOBODY TOLD ME ABOUT THIS!

I sure hope not!

How---how will I post?

 

They don't bite, but Tigers do.

Just kidding. I don't bite.

 

If an advisor is supposed to be regal, intelligent, classy, informed, or anything else positive, they chose the wrong person for the job!
/clearlyI'mreferringtoTresha!

 

Aww you poor ol' thing - now I'm feeling sorry for you. Maybe this will cheer you up

 

Hmm, I think I'll print this out and give it to my wife.

She'd say "who the heck is Southpaw and why should I care?"

Pshh, women.

 

I would like to see politicalforums' stance on hate speech be elevated from a sentance in the flamebaiting guideline into it's own guideline.

I am not in favor of prohibiting open discussion of any issue, even emotionally charged issues like race, religion, sexual orientation, etc. I think that discussion of these issues is important, and even that having a somewhat anonymous format like an online forum where people can discuss them openly and honestly is an invaluable public service.

However, as is hinted at in the flamebaiting guideline, there is a difference between posting "I think people with green eyes need a stronger work ethic" and posting "I think all people with green eyes are maggots". Either one could be considered offensive to people with green eyes of course, and either one would likely be based on mistaken assumptions about people based on their eye color, but the former at least contains an idea which can be debated and discussed, whereas the later contains only emotional content. The later is designed only to hurt people with green eyes without progressing the debate in any way.

When somebody posts the former type of comment, a person with green eyes can speak up in the thread and counter the intellectual content of the post by arguing that people with green eyes already have strong work ethics, that people with green eyes need something else more than they need a stronger work ethic, he could agree that people with green eyes need stronger work ethics, or he could post ideas on what might help green eyed people improve their work ethics. When a person with green eyes encounters the later type of post, the only response he can really make is "I think you're the maggot". At best, it makes the thread degenerate into something less than it could have been, at worst, it creates an environment that would make people with green eyes uncomfortable participating in the forum at all.

The flamebaiting guideline only deals with this issue in a circumspect way. The focus of that guideline is to prevent posts that are designed solely to stir up an emotional back and forth, then a sentance about hate speech is tacked on. I would argue that hate speech which is devoid of any intellectual content, but which is intended only to hurt or offend should be discouraged even if that post is not also intended to start a flame war.

Likewise the personal attacks guideline doesn't really tackle this type of post head on, since it only deals with attacks directed against individuals, not groups.

So, although I think actual post deletion or account banning on the basis of hate speech should be left up to the discretion of the moderators, and used only in extreme cases, I would like to see the hate speech sentance removed from the flame-baiting guideline and established as it's own guidline. I would suggest something like this:

Avoid hate speech. Posts which are intended solely as an emotional attack against members of a particular race, religion, or sexual orientation, and which contain no substantive content do nothing to progress debate. Try to stay away from slurs or insults towards broad groups of people, posts which are intended only to offend or hurt groups of people, and posts that lack specific ideas relevant to the topic of that thread.

Maybe with some description of potential consequences for repeat offenders or something added at the end?

Thoughts?

 

We've currently been in discussion over the flamebait thing, so yeah...we're working on that one.

 

That is an excellent post, tea. Well thought out, and well said.

 

The programming that creates these forums always amazes me, each one somewhat the same, but also somewhat different. For instance, I was curious about a new posting that I accomplished yesterday in the law section, which stated that it must go through a moderator before being posted. So, today, I came back, it wasn't posted yet (understandable since the fourth and all) and so I clicked on the moderator of the section and could not for the life of me figure out how to post a comment or contact the moderator. Again, I thought that if I went to the faq I could discover how to do this very basic thing, but alas, once again I could not. So, I came here, and found it easier to post to this thread in hopes that you will take to heart and make it easier for newbies to the forum to contact moderators.

Thanks,
Rick

 

MTlegaleagle,

Your first posts on the site have to be approved by the mods and advisors before they will be seen. I apologize that the process takes as long as it does sometimes. We try to make sure that these comments are quickly reviewed and approved.

Thanks!

 

I've had the same problem in the past. Someone posted how to find the mod list, but I can never remember, so in my bookmarks I have a folder for this forum, and I included the following link, which is a list of mods and advisers.

Mod/adviser list

 

It's on the front page, at the bottom of the forum list, before the stats and recent posts/etc. There are two links, reading:

Mark Forums Read View Forum Leaders


'View Forum Leaders' takes you to a mod and advisors list.

 

Hi static_engineer,
And thanks for the mod list link. You'd think the people who ran this forum would consider that newbies would have no idea how to contact the mods and they would actually try to make it easier/plainer/right-up-front-in-yo-face. i find it interesting when those with a vested interest (ownership) in what they are doing, really don't want to facilitate making it any easier on the rest of us. For instance, I posted my first article
in the law section, and was suprised to see that it would have to await moderator approval (get this - in an supposedly wide open political forum)! Then, I couldn't find the moderator list/contact to ask about it. And to top it all off, the moderator rejected my article because get this - I first wrote it for my own BLOG! Isn't America great! Open Political Forums and all!

 

As for having your posts reviewed by a mod, that's standard protocol here. It serves to keep out the spammers for the most part. I think my first 10 were reviewed.

 

Hey MTLE,

Sorry about any confusion you may have had. I'll try to answer your points and if I don't clear it up for you, just ask.

First, everyone's first 10 posts must be approved by the mods/advisors. The reason behind this is that there are HUGE amounts of spam posts thrown at this site every single day. If we allowed all users to see everyone's first message, the spam would make this site unbearably cluttered and annoying. I know that waiting for approval can be frustrating and we do apologize when it takes a while. However, I think you would agree that 10 posts not showing up immediately is well worth having a site without hundreds of 'Viagra Now!' or 'Find hot dates here!' posts every day.

As for the blog thing, I completely understand your frustration. However, there are a couple of factors to consider. First, if I remember correctly, it was not readily apparent that it was your own blog. Therefore, it looked like a long copy/paste with no actual comments from the poster. We don't allow those here because we've found that it leads to spamming by some and just doesn't encourage healthy discussion. We don't want this to be a news agency or source - we want this to be a place of discussion. That's why we require the original posters (OP) who start a thread to input substantive comments on how they see an article or story.

I do believe that the requirements for OPs are more lenient in the political blogs section.

Does that address your concerns?

Again, apologies for any frustration - that certainly isn't our aim.

 

Just a follow up, when we 'approve' a newbie's posts, we aren't making judgement calls on what types of political views we will allow. Most anything is acceptable, as long as it stays in line with the Guidelines.

We are filtering out porn, graphic images, spam, etc.

 

MTLE, I apologize for any frustration this process caused. However, I would like to point out that we have over 2200 posts per day with an average of 2-4 mods on at any one point. That does demand quick decisions and actions in order to process so much activity - from the standpoints of addressing insults, reported posts, spam, and posts from new users. That makes addressing each post with the user absolutely impossible - unless you want to make a very large donation to the site to hire full time mods....

I skimmed your post and remember it vaguely. I don't recall anything to make it clear that it was your own work.

Furthermore, you must understand that we have rules on this site. Other than the Political Blogs section, we don't allow huge copy pastes of blogs - even your own. This is a discussion site - not a news agency. If you want to discuss your article, link to it, quote a few pertinent sections (less is more) and then type out what you think. Copy paste jobs of anyone's work, including your own, without discussion in the OP is prohibited.

I've visited your blog. You need to keep in mind that this 'open political forum' does have rules. For example, no flamebaiting, no personal insults, and no copy pasta jobs without discussion and analysis.

Wait a minute. Your article could have been absolutely fantastic and your site could have been the most informative thing since John Marshall sat on the bench. That's not the point. The point is that what was done unintentionally was still a strict violation of our rules on this forum.

Did you put in it the Blogs section or not? No, you didn't so comments like that won't help you at all.

Rick, it's not hard to understand. This is a very large site which gets tons of traffic. That puts us in the bulls eye for spammers of all sorts. We only have a few mods/advisors to approve and deal with many posts per day.

I know it was inadvertant but your post broke the rules. We welcome your input and hope this frustration doesn't turn you off from this site. However, if you want to copy and paste from your own site, please do so in the blogs section.

If people wanted to read blogs, they will go to a blog or go to the blog section here. This site isn't about that - it's about discussion and analysis.

 

..................

 

Deliberate of course!

 

We are certainly not going to ask every single newbie if what they are posting is their own words. That would take us a month of Sunday's.
What you can do is state in your post that it is all your own words, instead of expecting us to assume.

I believe I may have been the one who canned your first post. Your name rings a bell. I am not going to look at anyone's blog to check it against their post. That takes far too much time, and I am a busy woman.

Nope. It was boring. No offence but I don't read boring stuff. Someone else may have, though.

Nope. As I said, we are not going to check everyone's blogs to ensure they haven't just copied and pasted. It is up to you to state that in your post, instead of making us assume.

I skimmed over it. You gave no links, no indication that the work was yours, and I wasn't going to read the entire thing to find out. You need to state that first thing, before you write the post.