Personal attacks / Warnings

[billvon 3,131]

Recently there have been some people here who have disagreed with the policies in effect at Speaker's Corner. This is intended to clarify some of those policies.

First off, please read the rules. They are accessible from any forum page. By posting here you agree to abide by them; if you don't you may get anything from a warning to a ban.

Personal attacks

It is important to realize that a personal attack is any attack (slurs, insults, denigrations, implications about their mothers, etc) or threat against another poster. Any such attack is not permitted here. This is true even if you are absolutely, 100% sure that the poster is stupid, or ignorant, or childish, or an ass. It doesn't matter if you think it is true or not, or even if you can prove they are an ass. You can't post such messages here. If you feel it is important to post such things, unmoderated forums like rec.skydiving do not have any such restrictions.

Clever insults that attempt to get around the above (i.e. "I like rabbits" "anyone who likes rabbits and posts here is an idiot") will result in the same sort of bans/locks/thread deletions that a personal attack will.

Also note that personal attacks do NOT include attacks against political groups, prominent people who are not DZ.com posters, ideas, religions or theories. Since this board is intended for political discussions, more leeway is given to posters who (for example) attack the democratic party, or creationism. However, the prohibition against hate posts still applies (see here for a discussion of hate posts.)

Warnings

Warnings are intended to warn someone that they are getting close to being banned, getting threads locked etc. They are NOT intended to let you "get your one slam in." Therefore, any borderline posts (like constant, repetitive flaming on one topic or constant sniping at another poster) _may_ get a warning before stronger action is taken. Obvious personal attacks like "go fuck yourself" or "you are immature and ignorant" will generally get you banned immediately and/or get your threads locked. When this happens, you may or may not get a PM explaining why.

Questions

The moderators make an effort to keep track of the threads in the various forums. But with over 2000 posts a day on Dropzone.com, it's just not possible to read every post. If someone posts a personal attack and it is not deleted, there are two possibilities:

1. It wasn't really a personal attack in the view of the moderators

2. A moderator hasn't seen it yet

In such cases an email/PM to the moderators of that section can help us keep tabs on the threads that are getting rambunctious.