For specific examples, let’s first address the elephant in the room.

LABF can be pushy. He can be abrasive. He can be deeply insulting. And that’s with the people he likes. For the rest of you, he can be those things at a multiple.

I am going to ask LABF to tone things way down. Yesterday in the Bugs thread on the main board, you saw intelligent, articulate LABF. I, personally, would love to see more of that LABF. But no matter what, LABF, I’d love to put a stop to the name calling (including changing people’s monikers into a different, unflattering forms of their regular name). I’d love to avoid any post that is deliberately and solely for the purpose of offending. I’d like to avoid claims of racism or treason, since those are the two that seem to pack the most punch with many people.

Just discuss. Discuss aggressively, if you must. But discuss. And save the hyperbole for – well, I won’t mention names.
this spot.

(The part where the italics begin is sort of the tl;dr part of all of this.)

Next, let’s call this group LABF’s detractors.

This is my frustration. You can argue that I’m missing something, but I see almost all of his posts as irritating, but not quite over the line. Case in point was last week’s “prison rape” drama. A big portion of that started last week because we had “allowed” him to tell someone he hopes they get raped in prison. So I looked and looked, and couldn’t find anything like that. Finally, in Shane’s final, dramatic post, he says that it was all over a snide reference to conjugal visits. As it turned out, it was way different than “prison rape” – I had to do some mental gymnastics to even get in the vicinity. So, LABF is like the stream that cuts its way down a rock. He posts volume; but none of it is really anything I can point to and say, “Now that’s something we need to do something about!” But eventually, it starts wearing away at people. And then? BOOM! Someone responds with something we absolutely cannot let go. “Yeah, but you diddle little kids, kid diddler” – or something similar.

So, we respond, and people start talking about a double standard. But we can’t really judge LABF, as moderators, by a lot of fairly irritating, confrontational posts. We can’t, in other words, give him something of a lifetime achievement award ban (with accompanying sappy montage) because he’s irritated so many.

I’m changing about that, a little. Hence, the last post. I’m asking LABF to dial it back. The constant attacking of old won’t cut it, going forward. It will result in a subforum timeout.

But what I won’t do is turn it into a game of “Let’s see if we can get LABF to react and get him banned!” Hence, the rule about what we’ll refer to as the “Don’t cry wolf,” clause.

And we won’t turn a blind eye to egregious responses that cross the line. In a situation like the one that occurred last week, LABF would take some time off – sort of as an escalator of drama. And there were five or six of his detractors that would have taken time off with him.

Hopefully, this all makes sense. Sorry for the novel. I’ve given it quite a bit of thought, and I want something down that I can point to, if you all lose your collective minds again. If you have questions, please ask.

Thanks for giving us all another chance to redeem ourselves, Dom. 😉

As for my part, I have placed all the Trump people and all the people who were involved in the altercations which led to the temporary suspension of the sub-forum on ignore. Hope that helps!

Hey Dom, thanks for making the effort and giving it another shot. I'm still a bit confused on what the rules will be -- forum rules applied here or some looser, more vague set of rules. If someone calles me a MAGAbillie because I voted for Trump, or calls me an insurrectionist or the like, is that a violation of the rules? If someone accuses someone of having TDS, is that against the rules?

I definitely appreciate you guys not wanting to be flooded with frivolous posts, and so get the concept of banning anyone that reports a post that isn't an attack, but that's a big challenging when what is a an "allowed" personal attacks and what is a "disallowed" personal attack, or so ill defined.

I'll be very curious to see your follow up posts and hope there is some clarity.

Thanks again for giving the politics section another go.

Fell asleep before I could finish. I’ll get there later today.

There’s only 2 roads at the end of this you could take.

1. delete P & R entirely which results in less headaches less moderation more enjoyment of what you created.

2. keep it open which results in you still ending up deleting it entirely because of mass headaches mass moderation less enjoyment of what you created here. Becoming more and more jaded as time goes on. The exact road TJ took that ended with him actually hating what he created had become.

P & R are subjects that always ruin its environment. From message boards to family dinner tables. I suggest deleting it for your eventual health and well being. It’s already having an effect on your holiday week.

Only one person truly missed it while it was shut down. I'll give ya 3 guesses, but you'll only need 1.

I missed it.

I don't enjoy shouting insults at each other (being an adult and all), but I do enjoy having lively debates with people on politics who view the world, and US politics, differently than myself.

Well that blew up on me. Thanks.😂

Let's go with I didn't "truly miss it" and instead just soft of missed it...

👍👍👍

Some of these conversations have been going on a long time. It's hard to have sympathy for either side imo. It also takes 2 to tango.

But seems we're talking about the boards biggest labeler being upset he was labeled. That's a hard sell.

We really like the notion of toning down the namecalling in general. It doesn't enhance one's eloquent argument as to why their perspective is the right one --

Anyway -- just wanna say that if anyone has questions, feel free to send a PM and I'll do my best to answer it (and/or get ahold of Dom for clarifications).

Just to clarify: Am I correct in assuming this rule applies to forum members and their interactions with each other but NOT to politicians, public figures, etc?

My take on this is -- anyone who goes into politics or becomes a public figure will experience criticism; it "comes with the territory". And it's unlikely that any given politician or public figure would be lurking on this subforum to become offended. There still is a decency line though and I'd recommend not making unfounded allegations of criminal activity regarding them.

Examples would be -- it's a proven fact that Trump University defrauded students. But while it's alleged that Matt Gaetz trafficked underage girls -- well, that hasn't gone to trial yet. It's ok to reference that Gaetz is under investigation, but needs to be noted that he has not been convicted. I don't think the plan is to worry about references to "Obummer" or something like "Mango Mussolini" -- although again, my personal opinion is that type of namecalling doesn't add quality to one's post. I'd discourage "F Joe Biden" or "Joe and the Ho Gotta Go"... because of the vulgar offensive terminology... if that makes sense.

I'm reminded of the old days on the Mane with Mock (may he RIP). He was very much into namecalling and some of those names were -- unflattering to say the least. We (the moderator team) had many an interaction with him until he settled on "dimwit" -- a personal insult but mild enough that it wasn't gonna get him in trouble. Ah, the memories -- LOL

Loved when Mock deferred to Beezer.

I remember those days. I remember being on the receiving end of said name-calling not infrequently as Mock wasn't very fond of liberals (to put it mildly.) The people who posted on the Mane also had much thicker skins back in those days, I recall.

Do you really need to restrain people at all for calling non-forum members name. Don't get me wrong, I was never a fan of calling Obama the Messiah or other derogatory terms, because I thought we should show respect to the office, even if we didn't like the office holder, but it seems like you are going to have enough to handle keeping us from calling each other names. Does it really matter if someone calls Trump, Dump or something far more unflattering?

Taking it outside the political forum, do you guys prevent people from saying McDipshit (McDaniels) or calling other football players/staff names? While I'm unlikely to take part in name calling of public people, as you say, it comes with the territory. As to wanting to police the claims of criminal activity, where do you draw the line? If the DOJ considers white supremacists/nationalists to be terror groups, and you (general you, not "you") call Trump a White Nationalist, then by extension you are calling him a domestic terrorist. Do you want to be in the game of policing that?

By the same extension, until there are charges brought, using your example, you (you now, and the general you, but not General Hue), would need to stop calling Trump an insurrectionist, and would need to start saying, that some allege that Trump is guilty of insurrection. Right?

tl;dr

I think you and Dom are going to have your hands full keeping forum members from launching personal attacks on each other, and I think it's a bridge too far to police personal attacks on public figures, and unfortunately, your own political biases (we all have them, even if in moderation roles we try and suppress them) will come into play, such as with my Trump/insurrectionist example above, which is then going to lead to criticism leveled at you guys, fair or not.

On this, I think we sort of go back to how we’ve done things all along. Anything with a racist undertone doesn’t work (obviously). I don’t like misogynistic stuff. Or homophobic stuff. Or any kind of criticism of Mitt Romney.

But I don’t think anyone is suggesting that we’re going to police nicknames. That said, if something comes up that is so out of line it causes us to say something, once we’ve said it, it would need to be considered a moderator directive. Then, it would need to stop. But that would have to be a really unique situation (like basically any attack on Mitt).

I think we’ve shown that we’re not interested in being ban-happy. We’ve done two bans in five months - one for a week, and one forever. They were of the same person. Just be civil to each other, and we’ll be good.

Is the Romney attack/criticism comment a joke, or real. If real, can you explain that?

Also, can you draw a clear distinction on what you are referring to with public officials vs. forum members.

For instance, where are you going to come down if someone calls me a white nationalist, traitor, treasonous or insurrectionist, simply because I said I voted for Trump. Arguably, those are at the same level as cracks about Thailand, as white nationalists are considered domestic terrorists, and treason/traitor/insurrectionist, speak for themselves, and carry long prison terms, or in Arkansas, treason is 30 years or the death penalty.

I'm only being pedantic in this regard, based on what I've seen to date, and one forum member stating that he believes calling people the above names if they voted for Trump (or said something to that effect) would be allowed, and only things cracks about Thailand are out of bounds.

Seems better to get this stuff out of the way now, since reporting something as a personal attack, that isn't, can result in the reporter being banned. So, if you are called a traitor to the United States, and insurrectionist or a White Nationalist/Supremacist, and report it, who's getting banned?

It's a real joke.😁

I may regret saying it, but I think you are over-thinking this. And what I DO NOT want to do is start defining what is problematic, other than to say that I don't want anything said that is a direct attack on a poster.

I would suggest everyone simply keep an open mind. If you get feedback from a moderator (for now, that is Blue and me - Old Dude and JCMElway have all the tools, and have been invited to moderate as their time and desire allows) about a specific post, listen to the feedback. I worry that if we start jumping in and defining the letter of the law, we're going to end up frustrated. The spirit of the law is basically, "Don't be uncivil, and don't be sensitive to the point where you are constantly looking for situations where someone is being uncivil."

No one is going to get in trouble for going after Mitt. But I am an unapologetic Mitt fan.