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@ BCB: The reason I ask, is that you seem to act in a way that values a sense of predictable order. When that “order” seems incongruous to you, you seem to react as though a moral issue is at stake. I haven’t noted a tendency towards altruism, or malice, which is why I suspect a net neutrality in your approach. Often self-serving, but not malicious. A seeming need to impose order, on a disorderly universe.

To which: Dakka is much more of a neutral / slightly chaotic lean. In many ways, very North American in its walk tall and carry a big stick ways. Based on my observation of tendencies, if you would fall on the Lawful side of the spectrum, it would likely be a “poor fit” for you here. Have you considered checking out 40konline? As a forum, they are much more structured. As a chaotic by nature, I found the place absolutely stifling. I expect you experience the inverse here. You might like to try it. It may fit your nature more comfortably.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Let's say, for arguments sake, I now take the position that your comment horrifically hurt my very soul and the only way this can be rectified is for you to be banned, will you ban yourself? If not, why not?

Whilst you're being somewhat obtuse and its hard to discern which parts you're being serious and which parts you're not; I can say that often as not when two or more people do have a conflict issue, banning the other side is often the only resolution they want. Or at least its the only one that they feel is a just punishment and is often the only result of moderator action that they will see.

So when mods instead step into shut down conversations or to tell someone off verbally in private or to mediate etc... - some people get hostile against not just other users, but against the staff for "failing to act". Again I've seen many a time where users get to a point where if those they don't agree with are not being banned then they feel insulted by the very site and mod staff and thus take up a new hostility not just to another user(s) but the "site" itself and the staff. Suddenly one or two offhand comments from one user to another; one single thread - perhaps not even a page of heated argument - and suddenly you've someone fast heading down the road to becoming a heavy burden on the site and getting an increasingly jaded viewpoint.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
People here talk about "additional strife" and "escalating".

Tell me, what effect do Mean Words On The Internet have in real life? Does your monitor come to life and punch you? If you don't want to see the Mean Words On The Internet, just don't go to the latrine, go to a different one?

BCB, one of the downsides of both my IRL jobs is the internet is something I see impact the real world every day, so maybe I get more of a face full of the lie that is 'it's just the internet'.

If you don't believe that 'mean word on the internet' have real world consequences, might I just point out that thousands are now dead over 'mean words on the internet' from a group that later became known as ISIS and that we've been reeling in home grown terrorists here in the US who name themselves after an internet meme.

But this is all irrelevant to my suggestion. Since many of the mods here originally came up with moving political discussion to Wasteland, to be blunt, the seal of approval that someone mentioned earlier is already stamped on that, since, as RiTides mentioned, moving politics to Wasteland was a move the mods here on dakka proposed in the first place.

Yeah that was totally my fault, and to clarify again, it was not an official policy and only my (probably overly enthusiastic) suggestion. We actually did get critical mass over there for a little while, I think, but to be honest I was appalled at the setting whenever I checked in on it myself...

So, that takes us back to where a number of people posted on the first page here. I think it's great that many folks can see why we just didn't feel up to having politics on the site (and still don't) where every moderator action or (importantly) Inaction leads to people assigning sides and resenting the site, each other, and having all that spill out into other areas. A neutral site to direct that kind of discussion to really would be ideal.

I've asked a number of times now (not just here) for an alternative site suggestion, but is it really that much of a unicorn in the current climate? Could anyone list a concrete suggestion (with link!) to a possibility or two? Really very open to pointing folks somewhere more decent, but just don't know of any such options...!

Last time there was an OT thread where someone made suggestions, they didn’t like what was proposed. What one considers a neutral, well-reasoned site another finds to be a crew pit. A board that seems blandly moderate on one continent is a pack of fri he lunatics on another’s continent. There is no middle round any more. Even the Golden Mean is a politically-leveraged fallacy.

You might be right, Bob - it does feel a bit like a unicorn these days. Maybe a site with multiple areas ("conservative corner" and "liberal library"...?).

Could you link me to that thread, though, I must have missed it? Really open to ideas, even if it's listing multiple options for people to consider.

I’ll see if I can find it. I remember moving to PMs for some suggestions, and shortly after that thread someone new signed up to the Wasteland, came on a bit too hard, and was apparently laughed off the board.

Generally speaking, I've found even the best run political forums atm are having problems,since being fair and balanced makes them prime targets for people who aren't.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
People here talk about "additional strife" and "escalating".

Tell me, what effect do Mean Words On The Internet have in real life? Does your monitor come to life and punch you? If you don't want to see the Mean Words On The Internet, just don't go to the latrine, go to a different one?

BCB, one of the downsides of both my IRL jobs is the internet is something I see impact the real world every day, so maybe I get more of a face full of the lie that is 'it's just the internet'.

If you don't believe that 'mean word on the internet' have real world consequences, might I just point out that thousands are now dead over 'mean words on the internet' from a group that later became known as ISIS and that we've been reeling in home grown terrorists here in the US who name themselves after an internet meme.

But this is all irrelevant to my suggestion. Since many of the mods here originally came up with moving political discussion to Wasteland, to be blunt, the seal of approval that someone mentioned earlier is already stamped on that, since, as RiTides mentioned, moving politics to Wasteland was a move the mods here on dakka proposed in the first place.

No, people are dead because they killed people. The Mean Words didn't kill anyone. By your logic, having children created the people who created ISIS, who caused people to die, therefore those terrorists parents are just as responsible for the people they killed as the people who said Mean Words On The Internet.

Example in point, the Anti-First-Amendment mob in the US. Do I think they are morons? Yes. Do I think they should have their speech curtailed in any way? No. Do I think they should be mocked? Yes. Do I think they should get away with actual violence? No.

BCB, I wanna preface this by saying that I really like having you around. I really respect the amount of effort you put into holding GW to account for their frankly toilet-water quality rules, despite charging people a premium for them. We've found ourselves on the same side in a couple of discussions, and you seem like an alright dude.

But what are you advocating here? As far as I know, even /b/ had moderators?
You want MORE bad words on Dakka? Let's be real for a sec, if the ad hominen rule got lifted, things would get fething WILD around here, esp. in News & Rumors, the Rules section and Off-Topic. I could name a BUNCH of posters who already regularly skirt around them. Likewise with politics. If nothing else, it would make reading a whole bunch of threads hellish, as people just bickered, and obscured what the content of the thread actually was.
It's hardly as if the Mods prohibiting a certain topic, and a few ways of talking to other people is draconian, when it's on a forum for little plastic space men.

Yeah, working around the politics rule can be a little tricky when it comes to some of the content in 40k, and its real-world inspirations, but beyond like a bit of historical/sociological contextualization, do we REALLY need to discuss it? I think I speak for quite a few people when I say that sometimes it's a pain in the ass to have to consider when posting, but I'd rather have mods who can do their jobs, and keep things civil, than let several corners of this site, which are enjoyed by a pretty large number of users, just turn into fetid little cesspools.
I for one really love Dakka, and how it's moderated. And that's not to say that I haven't had a spanking once in a while from the mods for being too cheeky. For the most part, the community here is very welcoming and helpful. I rarely feel as if grudges held between more than a handful of posters (you know who you are and also we all do, too) spill into too many threads. ATM, I think Dakka has a bit of a problem with posters trying really hard to be right all the damn time, and it's lead to this really infantile way of debating where a lot of people will just target one part of a post, and misconstrue it a bit, in order to have something to argue against, and keep the salt flowing. But, TBH, this is only an issue in the usual places people like to have spats, and even then, I think it gets reigned in pretty quickly. If we allowed ad hominem, and politics in those areas, I think it'd just open up more of a screeching match, and it'd make it even harder for the more creative parts of this site to flourish, as people already seem to have more time for mustache-twirling "well, actually"s, than, say painting and modelling. Something I really admire about a lot of the fightier posters is that they tend to put it to one side when it comes to participating in the more hobby-y side of the hobby, rather than the silly internet angry side of the hobby, and can not only be civil, be friendly towards one another.

Like, none of us are hanging out here because we're Johnny football heroes, and we need a quick breather from hanging out with all the cheerleaders.
We're a bunch of nerds. And like, pretty hardcore nerds at that. Not trendy nerds who like blockbuster movies, and have high-end games consoles. We're nerds who like poring over old-ass, dusty books, doing mathhammer, talking about decades worth of lore about goblins and space elves and gak.
I know, because I've been one of them, but some posters come here as a respite from the seemingly-endless kicking the outside world gives them. Some posters here could very well - as I'm sure we're all aware - be on the Autism spectrum, or likewise be in some way neuro-atypical, and find socializing very difficult, or even impossible in a face-to-face environment, for a whole host of reasons. I think that we can all be proud that, largely, for them, and for ourselves, Dakkadakka is a welcoming forum, where you can discuss a ton of stuff relating to the hobby, get tips, advice, and generally have a laugh with members of the community from all over the world.

It's also kind of bonkers that you're trying to claim that "bad words on the internet can't hurt anyone". We've seen tons of insane gak online, and crawl out of the shittier corners of the web in the last 5-10 years.
The internet is, certainly, on one level, just a communication tool, but it's still a vector for information, misinformation, instruction, propaganda and grooming. Sure, me typing "feth you" isn't gonna like, come at one of the mods with a switchblade and take their wallet, but a wall of "feth you"s, from a bloc of well-respected posters, all directed at a single person isn't great. When maybe that person is vulnerable, or lives in a difficult home situation, where this site is a refuge, that kind of feedback could quite easily be harmful. At the very least, it breeds an acceptance of toxic attitudes that that same person could easily carry into their IRL life. Sure, this is an extreme example, but as someone who has worked/works with vulnerable kids, you'd be shocked how common this kind of stuff actually is. Saying "just close the laptop lmao cyberbullying isn't real hahaha it's just the internet just turn off the router XD" is more or less proven to just not be the take here. You can cry "muh free speech" all day, but like, we're talking about skaven dude. It isn't that profound.

I think saying we need containment, or a "toilet" is mental, too, as if we're expected once in a while to just treat each other like fething garbage as a natural process. If there was a "toilet", it'd be like going in there to touch the poo. I just wouldn't want to touch poo, and tbh, I think it's kinda goofy to act like this is a normal thing to do. This isn't a peace summit in the West Bank, this is a forum for talking about space marines. If you really feel like you need to go postal on a message board once in a while... like maybe try to get off the internet and look at why you want to do that? Don't get me wrong, I dip in to stir pots here and there, but I feel like I'm pretty self-aware that I'm being a wiener about it. There's nothing fun about actually being mad at the internet, and I don't think it should be normalized as an acceptable behavior.

I'd like to share the sentiment other posters have brought up, that one day, when things in the US, and the UK chill out some more, maybe, just maybe, it'd be fun to have the politics ban lifted, but at the same time, I don't think it's something we need. Until then, like, this site? It's alright, man.

 posermcbogus wrote:
But what are you advocating here? As far as I know, even /b/ had moderators?

Not in the days before Moot sold out and decided to sanitise everything because the normies complained.

 posermcbogus wrote:
You want MORE bad words on Dakka? Let's be real for a sec, if the ad hominen rule got lifted, things would get fething WILD around here, esp. in News & Rumors, the Rules section and Off-Topic. I could name a BUNCH of posters who already regularly skirt around them. Likewise with politics. If nothing else, it would make reading a whole bunch of threads hellish, as people just bickered, and obscured what the content of the thread actually was.

Well done, you've proven you didn't bother reading my posts. Read them again, more carefully, and then realise I did not say "Remove all rules from the forum in its entirety".

As you have shown you didn't even read my posts, I shall not waste time responding to your further points.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 posermcbogus wrote:
But what are you advocating here? As far as I know, even /b/ had moderators?

Not in the days before Moot sold out and decided to sanitise everything because the normies complained.

That point was really more about how I can't understand what you're advocating, because your arguments are a mess and you're getting snappy with people, rather than the virtues of moderating on the literal worst board on 4chan, but go off I guess dude. If it gives you an excuse to twiddle that mustache and be patronizing and Technically right - the most satisfying kind of right then enjoy my guy. My post was really only half-replying to you, so piss into the wind about not reading it all you want.

Ultimately the mods/owners goal is to create a discussion forum that allows people to talk about toy soldiers. I'm not sure why that requires even an off-topic politics forum. I'd argue the ban on political discussion on Dakka isn't a complete ban in practice anyway. Political discussions do happen, provided they're in the context of the game and don't stray into the real world. But what advantage would be gained for the forum as a whole if there was a part of it that allowed discussion of real-world politics? There are plenty of other places on the internet where you can have those discussions.

The thing with "mean words hurt nobody" is that it's demonstrably false. We know people get worked up over insults and "mean words". Sure, you might not, and I might not, but some people will. So the owners of the board need to decide whether that's something that is conducive to the board's main goal. Does creating more of a free-for-all as far as freedom of expression make the board better for discussing toy soldiers? There isn't a definite, 100% correct answer to that and a lot does depend on how it's moderated, the consistency of the moderation and how much leeway is allowed. But taking a stance of "don't insult other people" is not wrong. It's not necessarily right either because it's a judgement call about what sort of board you want Dakka to be.

Slipspace wrote:
The thing with "mean words hurt nobody" is that it's demonstrably false. We know people get worked up over insults and "mean words". Sure, you might not, and I might not, but some people will.

Do I need to point out the flaw with this line of reasoning or can you work it out without me needing to spell it out?

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
The thing with "mean words hurt nobody" is that it's demonstrably false. We know people get worked up over insults and "mean words". Sure, you might not, and I might not, but some people will.

Do I need to point out the flaw with this line of reasoning or can you work it out without me needing to spell it out?

I find people understand me better when I say what I think rather making them guess at what I might be thinking of.





I also find a certain level of irony in that politics is essentially all words with great meaning (be they written and/or spoken) and yet you're here arguing that words online don't mean anything. Or at least that insult and snide remarks and all the rest are not a problem or that the problem is only with a subset of the community who should get thicker skin, or whatever.

BCB - We did, of course, have a lively politics discussion here once upon a time, but times have changed and it's not just Dakka - it can be difficult to have political discussions many places on the internet, as evidenced by the complete lack of alternatives to link to that have been suggested

And as insaniak said, in-context discussion relating to miniatures is generally just fine, anyway. It's a fine line, but we really do try to be light handed. Even your complaints about heavy handed moderation earlier in this thread - you were not warned, punished or suspended in any way. And to be honest, if the "normal" opinion (which pretty much everyone in this thread has agreed with) is that political discussion is just too toxic atm, that's what we're going to go with.

And to the amount this thread has devolved into a bit of mud-slinging, only reinforces the idea we just don't want that here. Maybe in the DCM forum if people really wanted it, where the paywall would keep out troll accounts? Again, this isn't a Dakka-specific problem, it's an issue everywhere. Bad actors have realized that sowing online discord reaps huge dividends for very little cost, and we're all dealing with the fallout of how to return to civil discussion in those arenas and separate genuine people from those trying to rile everyone up. This also means when someone has a genuine minority opinion they can get lumped in with those bad actors, and if they're Not moderated then the site can be. It's a no-win situation for Dakka. As the super computer in War Games said: the only winning move is not to play.

I really wish we could've solved these issues on Dakka. But since a solution is so hard to achieve everywhere on this, not participating and letting people enjoy the miniatures part of the site (which was always its purpose) just make sense. Again, I'd love to link people to a more actively moderated and SFW option for discussing politics if anyone has a suggestion? Even if you're not sure if it would work, please share!!

 BaconCatBug wrote:
No, people are dead because they killed people. The Mean Words didn't kill anyone.

That's divorcing the cause from the effect. It's like saying that the person didn't kill their spouse, the bullets did.

Words are potent. You'd be surprised the number of authors who've been murdered for their books over the years. And that's ignoring books like the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf, who've led millions into madness and death.

Did the internet suddenly, magically, lose that power somewhere along the line?

Anyway, this digression is OT, and it's been fun dancing around your efforts to drag this discussion down, or mire the mods with, what is essentially, a political view, but it just underlines my point.


@Ritides: Hmm.... the DCM forum idea might not be a bad one. At least the site would get paid for the trouble.

Another idea that literally just occurred to me as I was writing the above post this morning: I could start an unofficial politics board, and message folks here to see if they're interested in migrating that discussion (and only that discussion) over?

We'd probably only need like 10 people to do so to get it going. If there really isn't a good place to have a bit of what we had here before, we can make it.

Full disclosure: the goal would be to have lively discussion from both sides, but remain SFW. You would need to make arguments based on merits, not expecting the other person to be banned. We'd be trying to get folks of all political stripes to engage and participate, so if any more moderators were needed I'd be looking for neutral folks. Finally, I voted for Jo Jorgensen, so you'd only be able to participate there knowing that and being okay with the knowledge that's who was running the place

Seriously though, let me know if you guys would be interested in this as a very much Unofficial solution. Cheers

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
The thing with "mean words hurt nobody" is that it's demonstrably false. We know people get worked up over insults and "mean words". Sure, you might not, and I might not, but some people will.

Do I need to point out the flaw with this line of reasoning or can you work it out without me needing to spell it out?

You're going to need to point it out. Discussion generally works better that way. Also, you may want to read my quote in the full context of the rest of the post it appeared in.

@RiTides, one of the problems with discussing politics anywhere today is the difficulty in finding somewhere that doesn't just devolve into entrenched partisan opinions. I think it's probably just a problem with the anonymous, no-consequence nature of debate on the internet in general. IME, politics seems to be something that's much more effectively discussed and debated in person because you tend not to get quite so polarised opinions when debating with your average person rather than someone who already has a strongly partisan stance. It's why I think banning political discussion on a forum like this is the best approach. Those who want to discuss politics are usually the ones who really just want to espouse the superiority of whatever position it is they hold. Again, this is just my experience and not an absolute certainty but it's probably a likely enough scenario it's worth imposing a blanket rule to prevent it.

Neutral sites are unicorns because people gravitate towards safe spaces. A left-leaning poster is not going to visit a conservative site unless it is for trolling, and the vice-versa is also true. And the 2016 election pretty much forced previously neutral sites to choose a side.

Edit: And if Dakkadakka had a political sub-forum or RiTide's idea of unofficial board, the same would eventually happen. Unless both sides are evenly matched in numbers, one will dog-pile the other and pretty much will eventually force the "loser" out of the discussion. The "losing" side is going to have a negative view of the events that will spoil their opinion of Dakkadakka and likely will lead to them abandoning the site.

And both sides being evenly matched is unlikely considering the demographic nature of politics.

What we continuously saw was the opposite of that Tyran. We saw one side poisoning the well of discussion, constantly, and nothing be done publicly about it. And that's where the big issue was...that those individuals would do this and then be back within a few weeks/months doing the same thing.


The 'ban on politics' here was the only option because nothing seemingly ever got done about the bad faith posters and it contributed to an incredibly ramped up atmosphere. The only dogpiling done was people falling for the bait of those bad faith posters--and I should know, I fell for it a few times. But that's all those posters would 'contribute' to the thread. Their super edgelord takes intended to drive the thread into oblivion.

I'm trying to give an unbiased recounting of what I have seen on other boards. Current American politics are pretty much bad faith debating, with both sides viewing the other as an evil to be defeated. I'm personally not free of that blatantly entrenched partisanship, to me bipartisanship is dead and I fully blame the other side. But to honor the no politics rule, I'm not stating which side is that.

For a long time, it was one poster who singlehandedly sabotaged political discussion here. Just like it was one bad faith poster who got the coronavirus thread here locked and the topic banned.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
anyone have a viable reason why the dakka mods should not forward posters to the Wasteland when deleting/locking Political posts/threads as a way to remind dakka posters that there are appropriate forums to discuss this

Sure. The same cancer that killed politics in the OT metastasized to the wasteland. It would also do so to any new forum that was advertised here for that purpose.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
For a long time, it was one poster who singlehandedly sabotaged political discussion here. Just like it was one bad faith poster who got the coronavirus thread here locked and the topic banned.

But what if we did the same thing at a different URL, tho

Slipspace wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
The thing with "mean words hurt nobody" is that it's demonstrably false. We know people get worked up over insults and "mean words". Sure, you might not, and I might not, but some people will.

Do I need to point out the flaw with this line of reasoning or can you work it out without me needing to spell it out?

You're going to need to point it out. Discussion generally works better that way. Also, you may want to read my quote in the full context of the rest of the post it appeared in.

You can use that argument to justify anything. I could claim that "Not being able to discuss politics on Dakka hurts nobody" is "demonstrably false", therefore if you're going to forbid Mean Words On Internet, I can just as validly argue that you can't forbid Political Discussion on Dakka. You can't have it both ways, so which one is it?

RiTides wrote:Another idea that literally just occurred to me as I was writing the above post this morning: I could start an unofficial politics board, and message folks here to see if they're interested in migrating that discussion (and only that discussion) over?

We'd probably only need like 10 people to do so to get it going. If there really isn't a good place to have a bit of what we had here before, we can make it.

Full disclosure: the goal would be to have lively discussion from both sides, but remain SFW. You would need to make arguments based on merits, not expecting the other person to be banned. We'd be trying to get folks of all political stripes to engage and participate, so if any more moderators were needed I'd be looking for neutral folks. Finally, I voted for Jo Jorgensen, so you'd only be able to participate there knowing that and being okay with the knowledge that's who was running the place

Seriously though, let me know if you guys would be interested in this as a very much Unofficial solution. Cheers

I'm in.

Ouze wrote:
Sure. The same cancer that killed politics in the OT metastasized to the wasteland. It would also do so to any new forum that was advertised here for that purpose.

I don't think it's fair to compare Whembly to cancer, but beyond him, I can't say I've noticed that on Wasteland. NSFW threads, sure. but generally the Vietnamese casino bots have been a bigger problem.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
You can use that argument to justify anything. I could claim that "Not being able to discuss politics on Dakka hurts nobody" is "demonstrably false", therefore if you're going to forbid Mean Words On Internet, I can just as validly argue that you can't forbid Political Discussion on Dakka. You can't have it both ways, so which one is it?

Anyone been killed over not being able to post politics on Dakka? No? Ok, then consider it disproven.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
The thing with "mean words hurt nobody" is that it's demonstrably false. We know people get worked up over insults and "mean words". Sure, you might not, and I might not, but some people will.

Do I need to point out the flaw with this line of reasoning or can you work it out without me needing to spell it out?

You're going to need to point it out. Discussion generally works better that way. Also, you may want to read my quote in the full context of the rest of the post it appeared in.

You can use that argument to justify anything. I could claim that "Not being able to discuss politics on Dakka hurts nobody" is "demonstrably false", therefore if you're going to forbid Mean Words On Internet, I can just as validly argue that you can't forbid Political Discussion on Dakka. You can't have it both ways, so which one is it?

Except we saw that when politics was being spoken about users were getting insulted; users were getting suspended/banned/talked to by mods; threads were being locked and there were fights. There was ample proof and reason that political discussion was resulting in problems.

Similarly since the ban on political discussion we've not seen a resurgence of that same behaviour. It didn't just transfer to a new topic focus. So thus far I'd argue that we can prove that not allowing political discussion did result in a reduction in negative social behaviour and associated disciplinary actions being taken.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
For a long time, it was one poster who singlehandedly sabotaged political discussion here. Just like it was one bad faith poster who got the coronavirus thread here locked and the topic banned.

It's almost never one poster who gets threads locked.

 Overread wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
The thing with "mean words hurt nobody" is that it's demonstrably false. We know people get worked up over insults and "mean words". Sure, you might not, and I might not, but some people will.

Do I need to point out the flaw with this line of reasoning or can you work it out without me needing to spell it out?

You're going to need to point it out. Discussion generally works better that way. Also, you may want to read my quote in the full context of the rest of the post it appeared in.

You can use that argument to justify anything. I could claim that "Not being able to discuss politics on Dakka hurts nobody" is "demonstrably false", therefore if you're going to forbid Mean Words On Internet, I can just as validly argue that you can't forbid Political Discussion on Dakka. You can't have it both ways, so which one is it?

Except we saw that when politics was being spoken about users were getting insulted; users were getting suspended/banned/talked to by mods; threads were being locked and there were fights. There was ample proof and reason that political discussion was resulting in problems.

Similarly since the ban on political discussion we've not seen a resurgence of that same behaviour. It didn't just transfer to a new topic focus. So thus far I'd argue that we can prove that not allowing political discussion did result in a reduction in negative social behaviour and associated disciplinary actions being taken.

Yeah when you ban any dissent it becomes hard to argue against it.

 insaniak wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
For a long time, it was one poster who singlehandedly sabotaged political discussion here. Just like it was one bad faith poster who got the coronavirus thread here locked and the topic banned.

It's almost never one poster who gets threads locked.

If people believe that only one bad faith poster did things.. Well I can say they ignored a fair few things.