W_Tracy_Parnell said:
As I mentioned, I am working on a (political) website and am thinking of adding a forum too. I would be interested in knowing how much you feel a moderator should allow? Anything within reason or no personal attacks of any kind? And how do you define an "attack"?
I might need my head examined for considering this at all!
If you do go forward with the forums, I will jump aboard! I feel that political debating is a good thing. It does not matter what side of the isle you are on, or what stand on the issue you take. It is healthy for all American's to debate anything especially politics. The leaders in our federal, state, and local government's play the most important role in our earthly lives, so we should never feel like debating issues, or politics is out of place anywhere, (even the Chit-Chat club of Satellite guys)!
If I was a moderator on a site like that, I would definitely expect to stay busy with monitoring people making it "personal". When it comes to debating politics, the lines are a little different with personal attacks. An example of an attack that I think is allowed would be: "You and your liberal party are unintelligent and need to pull together a sense of understanding of the Majority in this country if you plan to not look any more like a fool"!. That is making a solid point of why they are unintelligent, and a fool. Don't call them unintelligent and a fool with out a sound reason. This would be the same point with unacceptable attacking. "You and your Liberal A#$ Ho&# friends can plan on eating Sh!%, until you come to grasp with what the majority in this country want". First of all Eating feces has nothing to do with unintelligent, and no one person is made of nothing but an A^# Ho*&. (Only people who park crooked at grocery stores are)!
Deliberately calling someone a name such as Idiot, Dumb, Stupid, Ass, or more severe cuss words should always be out of line. Attacking their Idea as stupid, should not be. You also can always tell when the the thread gets heated up. You can just sense the timidness of about 4-6 posts, and they will always end with nothing but an insult to individuals who are debating. And at that point the thread is dead. That can happen quickly or it can take a while, but threads do have a "life" to how long they last. You can always tell when its going to run out when people are just insulting each other, or saying the same thing in a different way, or things are getting blatantly repeated. A good moderator should be "wise" to recognize these things.
