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Politics Moderating Policy

Politics Moderating Policy

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General Politics Guidelines

Politics is a difficult subject to discuss on an online message board. People who post political threads here have a variety of opinions and beliefs that span the political spectrum and keeping the discussion civil can be tricky.

Generally, you won't have any troubles if you:
  • Be respectful toward other people.
  • Avoid insults, mocking, attacking the character of other people or other groups of people, or dehumanizing people.
  • Avoid mocking or ridiculing other peoples' posts on the forums.
  • Avoid name calling directed at other people.
In some situations the guidelines above can be vague, and there are exceptions, so the next pages will go through more of the specifics of how political moderating guidelines are enforced, with examples to help clarify.

When you create a new political discussion, be sure to mark it with the "Political" tag. Please do not post about politics in discussions not marked political. Next »

No Name Calling

This rule has been in place since the very early days of the website. Avoid name calling directed at other members or all people in other political groups, even if you really think it's true/accurate.

Avoid Name Calling Directed At Other Members:
  • "You're a moron!"
  • "You're such a liar."
  • "You're a troll."

Avoid Name Calling Directed At People In Political Groups:
  • "They're such libtards."
  • "Stupid Rethuglicans."
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Be Respectful. No Character Attacks

Be respectful toward other people. Don't throw severe insults or mock the character of other people or all people who are in a different political party than your own (even if you believe these things to be true). Character attacks tend to kill productive political discussion. Avoid ad hominem attacks. Accusing someone of "hatred" for their political opinions is specifically considered a character attack. Instead, stick to the facts and argue the issues. Don't make things personal. Important: If you're going to post something that seems like a character attack, it must be worded in a way that it's clear you're not referring to or alluding to another person, or it will be removed by default.

Avoid Character Attacks On Other People:
  • "You're a hypocrite!"
  • "You're hopelessly biased."
  • "I don't trust a word you say."
  • "Your hatred and bias is blinding you."
  • "Why are you so full of hate toward that person?"
  • "The left can't help themselves from lying."
  • "Conservatives are hypocrites to the extreme."

Avoid Character Attacks On Groups With Different Political Beliefs:
  • "Republicans are terrible human beings."
  • "Democrats can't think straight."
  • "Conservatives are pathetic."
  • "Look how idiotic liberals are."
  • We are a mixed group, with a mix of political beliefs. Statements like the ones above make it impossible to have civil political arguments.

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No Demeaning, Mocking, Ridiculing, Condescending, Sarcastic Comments

To keep conversation civil, avoid comments directed at other people or their posts with differing political views that are demeaning, ridiculing, condescending, dehumanizing, or sarcastic in a negative way toward that person.

Avoid:
  • "Grow up, kid"
  • "You're so naive"
  • "Only people who live in fantasy worlds believe that"
  • "Oh genius, enlighten me!"
  • "You sound drunk!"
  • "LMAO, you don't know what you're talking about."
  • "Are you off your meds??"
  • "I didn't even understand what you're trying to say it's so dumb"

Avoid Sarcastic / Insulting Compliments:
  • "You're cute/adorable"
  • "Nice spin!"
  • "That's priceless coming from you!"

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Rejecting Opinions Outright

Avoid claiming another person's opinions are illegitimate, fake, or not genuine. You should assume the information and opinions posted by other members on the forums are ones they genuinely hold and are posted in good faith.

Avoid:
  • "You're doing nothing but spin!"
  • "Wow, you're just regurgitating XYZ News' talking points!"
  • "You don't even know why you think that!"
  • "You're just repeating talking points."

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Sensationalism

No inflammatory, sensational, fear mongering, doom-and-gloom, or “outrage” posts.

Avoid:
  • "Obama is going to completely destroy our country!!"
  • "Can you believe what this SOB did!!!"
  • "As long as they're blaming Trump, Democrat will probably be just fine with that. "

Allowed:
  • It is OK (not considered a personal attack) to point out when you think someone is violating the Inflammatory/Sensational/Fear-Mongering/Doom-and-Gloome/Outrage rules, assuming you do it in a civil way.

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Politicians & Public Figures

You should also avoid insults, mocking or attacking political figures and members of the media, even if you *really* dislike a political figure. Instead, argue the issues and avoid personal attacks.

Not Prohibited:
  • "Trump is not being truthful."
  • "Obama's new policy will damage the job market."
  • "I don't trust Hillary with implementing this new law."

Avoid:
Especially avoid generalizing the statements to include more than just the political figure:
  • "Trump is a scumbag, just like every other Republican."
  • "Obama and his followers are psychopaths!"
  • "Hillary is a typical liberal who lies and can't be trusted."

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Sources & Labels

If you are posting a headline, text or screenshot of a study or news article, please provide a link to the article in your message.

If you're citing numbers or studies, please provide your sources for your information.

If you're posting an Opinion or Blog article from an outside source, please label it as such in your post title. A moderator may do this for you otherwise.
Ex: OPINION: Inflation is going up very soon!

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Clearly False Information & Conspiracy Theories

In the interest of not helping to spread bad information on the web, certain types of content that are portrayed as fact, that can be easily and conclusively disproven, will be removed.

The most common reason for this type of removal is:
  • Posting quotes that a person never said, or were attributed to the wrong person.
  • Posting a graph with clearly incorrect information, or contains dubious information when graph's data is not sourced.
  • Posting a satire post or article as being true.
  • Posting videos or articles from Facebook or Twitter or Youtube that were subsequently removed by those services.

In addition, certain extreme and/or objectionable conspiracy minded posts will be removed, at the discretion of the moderators. Those posts may be better posted on Facebook or Twitter instead.

Repeatedly having the above content posted from your account may result in your access to Politics posts being revoked.
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Vague Interpretation

Sometimes something written on the forums can be interpreted by reasonable people in two or more different ways. Text communication is notorious for being difficult to interpret.

Generally, if a post can reasonably be interpreted as breaking these rules, your posts will be subject to a moderator's judgment call.

Moderators will often use past behavior, posting history, conversation context, and past moderator actions to inform these decisions.

If you want to make sure that your messages aren't subject to a moderator's judgment call, then take care to be clear with your wording, and avoid comments that could possibly be interpreted as breaking guidelines.

If you are routinely posting near the "gray line" between what is and is not against the rules, you should expect your posts to be moderated occasionally.

Unfortunately, we often get people who are intentionally vague in order to attempt to skirt the rules. If a moderator suspects this might be the case, your post will be removed automatically.

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Only Human

Moderators are only human. We try to be fair and unbiased, but sometimes we fail. There is no computer algorithm to perfectly moderate the forums at all times, and our moderating is imperfect.

We also have to make, sometimes, hundreds of small moderator judgement calls on the forums on a daily basis. Each judgment call needs to be done quickly to keep up with the volume. Sometimes we'll get it wrong.

BUT, our promise to you is that we take the job very seriously and strive to be fair at all times.

If you need any clarifications, don't hesitate to send your moderators a Private Message using the link below:

Send TomballDotCom a PM »
Send TownHubAdmin a PM »
Send Joe a PM »



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