Administrative Recommendation To Remedy Political Discussion and Ad Hominem Attacks

[spiritofmusic]

O.k., Marc, you're not actually serious, are you? You really are in it to fan the flames, and you know it.

Al, I've been told by Steve to shelve it. Why it's controversial to state the obvious, that a thread on the potential end of the world could never not be political, I don't really know. My aside about Brexit is that any thread on this would also be 100% political. And thus wouldn't be countenanced by Steve. I just don't see the thread under fire here being any less political. What is so hard to understand about that?

 

[ALF]

Coke, chips...popcorn

 

[spiritofmusic]

Wonder Woman 1984 looks way more fun.

 

[Al M.]

Wonder Woman 1984 looks way more fun.

Aah, the state of the art in digital in the year 1984, including the marketing slogan "Perfect Sound Forever". Now that's a debate to be had...

 

[spiritofmusic]

Wasn't that 1983? Lol

 

[Al M.]

Wasn't that 1983? Lol

Hehe, but there was some carryover.

 

[Kingsrule]

Marc


To me this a typical post of yours where either on purpose or not you have a tendency to fan the flames. Knock it off

The number 1 offender....As far as I see he has 2 strikes already in this thread

I think the number of strikes a person "earns" should be posted right next to their name/ avatar so everything is totally transparent..

 

[spiritofmusic]

Kingsrule, I can guess you were a real teacher's pet.

 

[Al M.]

Kingsrule, I can guess you were a real teacher's pet.

LOL

 

[NorthStar]

Wonder Woman 1984 looks way more fun.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Al, I've told my GF that I'm #1 bad boy on WBF, she's hugely impressed.

 

[Kingsrule]

Kingsrule, I can guess you were a real teacher's pet.

Actually the very exact opposite

 

[Al M.]

Actually the very exact opposite

Hehe, I believe you.

 

[Al M.]

Al, I've told my GF that I'm #1 bad boy on WBF, she's hugely impressed.

Somehow you always manage to crack me up.

 

[es347]

Over the course of the past several weeks there seem to be more and more threads which not only contain posts of a political nature but which also contain replies from members who disagree with said posts. This all too often has resulted in some pretty severe dust-ups, in which ad hominem attacks have occurred.

There have been frequent and kind reminders from Ron that at WBF we do NOT discuss politics. In spite of Ron's admonitions the political posts continued and arguments resulted. This is not what we at WBF foster. We are a very large and daily growing community which has been brought together by a common love — the love of music. Having said that we are all different, including how we hear and how we develop our sound systems. The same analogy exists for everyone here. Simply put, we are all different. We come from every corner of the world and hang out in our little part of the internet to discuss what we love. Every so often a thread is started, which, although not overtly political at the outset, touches upon politics tangentially, and then, later on, directly.

Again members are reminded about NO POLITICS, but too often it is too late as the arguments start and the name calling follows. It is safe to say that we are a diverse community of different beliefs, different religions, different skin colors and different political beliefs. We are not here to discuss any of these topics, but it always seems to be "politics" which can “push the buttons” of many members.

Yesterday and the day before I spent hours dealing with members messaging me about the problems. Some made suggestions as to how to rectify the situation — from straight out banning a member to imposing some sort of sanction.

Our belief is that we are a close knit community the members of which for all intents and purposes get along well with one another. Ron and I have probably allowed too much leeway when it comes to sanctions when political discussions and arguments erupt. As a result, Ron and I have discussed what we feel to be a fair and just way to deal with violations of the ban on politics.

First off it is important to remind everyone who is a registered member here that he/she has agreed to our Terms of Service when he/she joins.

For those who have not read the terms if Service, or who have forgotten them, here is the link to our Terms of Service.

https://whatsbestforum.com/threads/terms-of-service.1207/#post-13195. We cannot read every post in every thread so many times we learn of issues

I draw everyone’s attention to Articles 6 and 10.

So here is what we feel to be fair and just . . .

1. Ron and I are going to be stricter when it comes to enforcing our TOS.

2. The forum is very large so it becomes impossible for Ron and I to know about every political thread or political post until after a political post is published.

3. Rather than allowing your “button” to be pushed and reacting in a less than polite fashion by posting an ad hominem attack, we ask that you “think before you post” and think twice before you push the post button. We would rather have you “report the post” that you find objectionable so that the moderators can deal with the issue. This is part of our TOS. We ask everyone not to play moderator, but, rather, to report an objectionable post. Also, we have an “ignore” button which should be considered as another option.

4. The last thing Ron and I ever want to do is to be punitive. We have no desire to ban members. We do, however, want members to understand that we have a Terms of Service here, and discussing politics is taboo.

Further we are we loathe to delete posts. Lately there have seen several posts that were direct ad hominem attacks and should have been removed but they weren't. We don't want to treat the problem once it has happened; we want to prevent the problem from occurring in the first place. So we are soliciting every member’s help to keep WBF a fun place at which to hang out. We don't feel that is a lot to ask.

5. We do not want to censor members, but we will take action when posts violate our TOS and Code of Conduct. A gratuitously inflammatory post will be edited or deleted. Even this we find contrary to general principles. We ask you, please, to "challenge the post, not the poster.”

6. There may come a time when a member needs and deserves a “time out.” However the time out will not be our first action.

7. Ron and I have decided to use the “Three Strikes Rule”: If a moderator deems a reported post to be inflammatory, ad hominem or political, the member will be issued a private warning. This will be Strike 1. Once a member receives a third warning a time out is imposed, and that member will be banned from the forum for one week.

8. Once a member is banned for a week that member will no longer benefit from the grace of the Three Strike Rule. A subsequent violation by that member will incur immediately another one week ban.

9. If the moderators deem a post to be extremely egregious we reserve the right to impose a one week ban immediately and without the usual two prior warnings.

In summary we want WBF to be a safe and welcome refuge from anything political. Reminding people about “no politics” at our end has proved ineffective, and we hope to eradicate this problem with this Three Strikes warning system and temporary one week ban policy.

I ask of all of you to please remember these admonitions and to enjoy WBF as a”politics-free zone. I hope that with these issues in mind there will never be a need to issue any temporary bans. We ask for everyone’s help and understanding.

Thank you.

Steve and Ron

..this is the reason I stopped posting here

 

[Tango]

I do agree to Tima's idea to have a political subforum at least on trial basis. If it keeps people happy for a month or two continue with it else close it

Dude. Term Of Service #10. Stick to that. House rules. There are other forums for politico.

 

[NorthStar]

Al, I've told my GF that I'm #1 bad boy on WBF, she's hugely impressed.

Somehow you always manage to crack me up.

 

[howiebrou]

For a thread designed to remind us to be apolitical, this thread has ironically demonstrated that it is very difficult to remain apolitical unless of course discussion is restricted to techno talk. I do applaud Steve and Ron for the interjection and attempt to do so, however. Personally I don't think it is the political nature of discussions that create angst, it is the lack of courtesy afforded to those with whom you don't agree. One should be theoretically be able to discuss any topic with anyone whilst maintaining a certain degree of decorum. I'm certain that all members are able to achieve this if they want to.

 

[Al M.]

For a thread designed to remind us to be apolitical, this thread has ironically demonstrated that it is very difficult to remain apolitical unless of course discussion is restricted to techno talk. I do applaud Steve and Ron for the interjection and attempt to do so, however. Personally I don't think it is the political nature of discussions that create angst, it is the lack of courtesy afforded to those with whom you don't agree. One should be theoretically be able to discuss any topic with anyone whilst maintaining a certain degree of decorum. I'm certain that all members are able to achieve this if they want to.

Unfortunately, you overestimate human nature.

"Theoretically" as you say, yes, but human nature is sometimes like the bad implementations of early digital . It should theoretically work, until you realize that it doesn't as you thought it should. I am not excluding myself from that, being human myself (obviously).

 

[tima]

I do agree to Tima's idea to have a political subforum at least on trial basis. If it keeps people happy for a month or two continue with it else close it

That idea was conditional on the "no politics" injunction not being upheld. It remains to be seen if the new approach will be made to work. It won't surprise me if some of the wisecrackers and ideologues try to test it.

In a sense what I was suggesting is for threads (not people) to be banned or more correctly to be banished to the politics corral. My thinking here is for thread participants to react to attempted politicization by shaming those who want to corrupt a legitimate thread. If enough people get PO'd that a legitimate thread was made political and moved, maybe the collective will get serious about no politics. I have no clue if this would work, but part of the goal is to take the monitoring & enforcement burden off the moderators. Maybe a thread could be moved to the verboten zone, but none could be created there. This may be too much finesse. Ultimately I don't care as long as the political 'stuff' is not tolerated.

For overtly political threads like the recent one, those should be shut down immediately and the person who started it held responsible.