[Decision] Update The Debate Forum Rules

[Jom]

Proposers: Jom & Pøntifex

Supporters: Bale ii Raglan, Hesus de bodemloze, Katsumoto

As many of you who post regularly in the D&D section, particularly the Mudpit, will agree, the rules in there are a little outdated and should be updated so as to adapt to the current demands of those forums. Pontifex and I therefore present to you the updated rules:

Debate Forum Rules

Here are the rules of conduct that all users must abide by in order to participate in any discussion in the Political Mudpit. are encouraged to abide by and moderators asked to enforce. Although these provisions may not necessarily be included in the ToS, in order to create an atmosphere conducive of a polite debate in which political ideas are discussed peacefully the moderators are requested to uphold these guidelines.

This forum is only for the discussion of issues of politics, national policy, and international relations only; including those issues that may be driven by current events that are determined by the moderators to fall into primarily these areas of discussion. Religious, Moral, Ethical, Philosophical and Historical should be restricted to other forums. Moderators can move topics to more appropriate forums.

Topics that have resulted in heated discussion may be temporarily closed to provide a short cooling off or refocus period and to promote composed discussion without implying any prejudice or favoritism to any one side of the issue.

1) Debate in good faith and respect other members. Elaborate and further develop your arguments whilst trying to respond to other members' arguments. Do not continue to repeat the same arguments.

2) Address the argument, do not attack the person. Debates should be as detached and impersonal as possible. Do not post in such a manner that would elicit a strong, emotional response if possible. Your argument should be phrased in such a way that minimizes the ability to misread the post.

3) Try to back up your arguments with evidence and sources where appropriate. Any statistics used in your posts should be sourced.

4) Do not post images or videos without some clear supporting text discussion. Examples of supporting discussion include: who is the author of the video and what his/her viewpoint is and why you think it is important. Posts with image or video trolls and other spam posting will be removed at the discretion of the moderators.

5) Avoid any form of misrepresentation. Do not state that something is fact or a well known fact just because you read it in a message board, website or blog. Statements made in blogs or amateur videos are not acceptable foundations for new threads and threads such as these may be closed at a moderator's discretion.

6) Every thread must begin with some question or framework for the discussion you wish to initiate. You may not start a new discussion topic solely by posting a copy of an existing news story, image, quote from a web site, or other source information. In the instance of this occurring, a moderator may request that commentary be added within a reasonable amount of time or the thread can be closed.

7) Plagiarism is generally frowned upon. If something is not your work, please clearly state the source and include any material quoted directly from the source in quotation tags.

8) In the event that a member begins to post disruptive and inflammatory arguments against other members of any political orientation, religion, or nationality, a moderator may enforce a one day forumban on this member in order to facilitate an effective cool down period in the instance that a single member is the sole instigator of any overtly hostile action. This measure will only be taken after continued misbehaviour following a written warning in the form of a PM to the member. The moderator is required to mediate in such disputes and act in an unbiased manner to resolve the problems. Once the situation has been resolved, the member may be unforumbanned early.

In addition, the Terms of Service apply.

Have fun and enjoy your discussions with fellow members of Total War Center.

For reference, the old ones can be found here.

[Raglan]

this makes sense and helps deal with many of the issue i have with the D&D myself. I will support this.

[Hesus de bodemloze]

Cdec support.

[Katsumoto]

I don't think people even followed the old rules, but this is a good proposal if it's actually going to be enforced by moderators. Good job Moderator Jom and Moderator Pontifex.

Support.

[Jom]

I don't think people even followed the old rules, but this is a good proposal if it's actually going to be enforced by moderators.

Support.

Not many people do follow them, no, but if we make enough noise in their implementation and kindly ask our moderation team to try to enforce them then we will hopefully make some headway. I realise how difficult a task it must be to moderate the Mudpit and these rules will hopefully prevent members from doing things that would otherwise require moderators to step in and if they do have to, at least their position would be clearer now.

Good job Moderator Jom and Moderator Pontifex.

You might want to stop calling me that before someone gets offended.

[Katsumoto]

Very well, as you wish.

[Nole4694]

Sure, everything seems fine to me. Support

[Viking Prince]

I like the proposal in theory ([ABANDONED] [decision] Tightening up the rules for posting in The Mudpit and the Political Academy), but I will need to read a bit first. One concern off the top is the use of the word 'trolling' which is not defined and vague on the margins.

[Jom]

How about this definition of trolling? I just threw it together and it's rather late over here so I'm afraid it's a little vague. Clearly moderator discretion plays a rather large role in this whole thing.

"Deliberately using inflammatory arguments not to further the debate but which are designed to solely and deliberately elicit an aggravated response from other posters."

[Viking Prince]

What I would suggest is to replace the word trolling with whatever short definition of trolling seems to fit. The problem with trolling is the reason, in part, why the off topic rule was created.

[Squid]

"Deliberately using inflammatory arguments not to further the debate but which are designed to solely and deliberately elicit an aggravated response from other posters."

How does any member know what another member "designed" their post to do.

[Nole4694]

How about replace

"has started trolling other members"

with

"begins to post disruptive and inflammatory arguments against other members"

[Jom]

How does any member know what another member "designed" their post to do.

The same way moderators judge disruptive posting as defined by the ToS:

Any series of posts whose nature is designed to disrupt the flow of conversation [...] or elicit a response that violates these Terms of Service. Single posts of this nature may fall under the Off-Topic violation.

How do you, Squid, judge when a post is designed to elicit a response that violates the ToS?

[Pontifex Maximus]

How about replace

"has started trolling other members"

with

"begins to post disruptive and inflammatory arguments against other members"

I like this change.

[Jom]

Well I shall agree with my co-proposer here and make the necessary changes.

[Squid]

The same way moderators judge disruptive posting as defined by the ToS:



How do you, Squid, judge when a post is designed to elicit a response that violates the ToS?

Simple, I've only issued maybe a handfull of disruptive posting infractions, and all them were for when there were a number of posts that were all ToS infractions (usually off-topic and/or insults) and rather than hit someone for a bunch of posts I accumulated it into one. I can't think of any instance that was disruptive without violating something else which made it easy to quantify.

As for the inflammatory bit I'm against that, as some arguments are by their very nature inflammatory and should not be excluded for being such. I also have a bit of a problem with policing member A so member B doesn't need to watch they post.

[Jom]

How about just "disruptive" arguments then? I can see your problem with inflammatory. Accusing Catholic priests of paedophilia could be considered incredibly inflammatory to a devout Catholic, even if it's true.

[magickyleo101]

Support, Support, Support, Support, Support! Especially (8)!

[Jom]

Support, Support, Support, Support, Support! Especially (8)!

I'm actually not terribly happy with the inclusion of "inflammatory" now in #8. I think it would be best just to remove it but I need to wait for my fellow proposer's opinion and a few others, too, but I'm glad that you're so enthusiastic.

[magickyleo101]

I'm actually not terribly happy with the inclusion of "inflammatory" now in #8. I think it would be best just to remove it but I need to wait for my fellow proposer's opinion and a few others, too, but I'm glad that you're so enthusiastic.

Are you saying that you plan to take (8) out entirely, or just the word inflammatory in "disruptive and inflammatory arguments"?

I agree that the word "inflammatory" is less than ideal, given that whether something is "inflammatory" is a product of its tendency to "inflame" and thus how other people see it. There might be some posts that are inflamatory because of their controversial topic and which shouldn't be censored or discouraged merely because of that.

But it's also true that the word "inflammatory" is doing important work in the current drafting of the rule. A lot of times threads get out of control because both sides in an argument begin drafting their posts to get a rise out of the other side, and not because the "core" content of the post is by necessity inflammatory.

So maybe you can redraft to pick out "intentionally and needlessly inflammatory" posts.

Just a suggestion. I support with or without the "inflammatory" language.