Everyone please read!
As you all know, I have always put freedom of speech above all else on my boards. I believe all viewpoints should be heard and everyone should be free to speak like the adults we are. But as in "real life", this freedom comes with responsibility. Allowing everyone carte blanche to speak their minds shouldn't lead to a board full of hate, vulgarity and overall degradation of the atmosphere.
The point of this board is to allow people from all over the world to come here and discuss political events and topics that effect all of us. We're lucky enough to have a lot of people that have gotten to know one another, and therefore put good use to our regular discussion forums as well to allow everyone a chance to break away from the heated politics and just chat with one another.
We've always had our share of "in-fighting" and feuds, and of course the outburst from time to time. But the last few months have taken a turn for the worse. The feuding has escalated and it seemed as if the central theme of the board was to fight, and not debate. And yes, there is in fact a clear difference between the two.
I took a back seat and tried to allow freedom of speech to prevail. I tried to treat everyone like adults and let things take their course in the hopes of resolving itself. I also tried appealing to everyone to take the higher ground, to ignore the person that had them posting in an inappropriate manner. I made several announcements to the board stating the fighting, vulgarity and threats needed to stop, or action would be taken. My hope was that the threat alone would slow down the issue - but it didn't. I made a final attempt with my last announcement by stating "it stops today" and made it very clear that there would be consequences to the individuals who continued. Unfortunately, a few thus far have not heeded my advice, received said consequences, and have turned back to me and cried foul. I am being blamed for bias, poor moderation and unfairness. I guess these individuals have forgotten how much I looked beyond in the past, and how many times I politely asked to cool things off a bit.
I have no intention of changing the "freedom of speech" for the long term of the board. What I am doing now is putting a choke hold on certain activities until we can get back to normal. Once there, staff will once again play a more hands off role and allow everyone to participate on the forums like adults.
As for "long term", I have updated the rules going forward. This is mainly a change involving the "steel cage" that will allow regular threads to remain free of being hijacked and ruined. There are also a few slight changes overall, so please re-read the board rules and familiarize yourselves with them.
If you have any questions, please shoot me a PM.
http://www.debatepolicy.com/showthread.php?t=3487
Originally Posted by Gaffer
