New Rules 2020: Discussion Thread

[Dropo]

Don’t you think the description of “Politics and Elections” on the MB home page should be coherent?

“Politics & Elections
The forum for discussion about the horse race For discussion of elections and electoral politics, including strategy and tactics, political parties, individual races, political news, and politicians and public figures.”

Underlining added

[Helena330]

I don’t even lurk on those forums, mainly because of the reasons these rules were necessary. Maybe they’re not perfect, nothing will be, but I appreciate the attempt to introduce more civility anywhere on this board. Thank you to all involved! I’ll definitely at least do some lurking.

[Northern_Piper]

I really don’t know how you can enforce the “no threats of harm that might include a poster” rule, without just saying “dont’t threaten harm”.

Sure, no threats to Dems or Repubs; easy to see how that can be modded, but in practice it means “no threats of harm to Dems or Repubs”, period.

What if the US is in a heated exchange with Elbonia and poster A says “All Elbonians should be rounded up “. And then poster Elb, long-time member of the board, says “I’m an Elbinonian ! Breach of the rules!” And poster A says “I had no idea we had Elbonians posting here?!?”

Given this Board’s wide membership, crossing political, gender, racial, ethnic and international boundaries, what group is there that a poster could threaten harm to, comfortable that they’re not attacking a group that at least one Doper belongs to?

[Roderick_Femm]

@Jonathan_Chance

I am defining ‘Omnibus’ threads as ones with very wide topics.

An example of one would be the overarching 2020 Democratic Primary thread in Politics and Elections. Threads should, going forward, be specific in their topics.

OK, I’m sorry and I don’t want to beat this to death, but this example seems a bit problematic to me. Does this mean that a thread could only be about one candidate, or one primary, and not a whole primary campaign? How many different threads do you think that one thread should have been divided into? There’s an arch to the story of a primary campaign, and discussions of one candidate without discussing other candidates in the same thread seem likely to be rather sterile.

Your example is one that I was afraid you would select, and I would like to say that I think this specific area is one that ought to be allowed (in future) as an exception to that omnibus rule. As it happens I don’t post in that thread, but I do read it from time to time, and it still seems like a useful discussion.

[Dinsdale]

Found it amusing that the discussion of exhausted topics is closely followed by the statement that religious witnessing is A-OK!

[Max_S]

@Northern_Piper

I really don’t know how you can enforce the “no threats of harm that might include a poster” rule, without just saying “dont’t threaten harm”.

That’s how I’m reading it, “don’t threaten harm at all in GD/P&E”.

I am concerned as to whether advocating for policies such as war counts as threatening harm.

In a thread about the threat of an Iranian first strike on Israel:
“We should go to war with Iran, and start by bombing Bushehr”.
“I live in Bushehr! Are you threatening me? Mods!”

~Max

[Little_Nemo]

@Jonathan_Chance

Hijacks will now be more broadly defined. We want to see more and more specific threads. That means attempts to redirect them or to derail them are now potentially sanctionable.

I’m taking a wait and see stance on this one. There were some recent moderator decisions in this area which I disagreed with. It seemed like the moderator just didn’t like the topic that was being discussed and declared that it was not the topic of the thread and we should all stop discussing it.

On the other hand, we’ve had posters who regularly derailed threads and I have no problem with a policy of telling them to knock it off.

[AK84]

@Colibri

I can’t recall seeing a lot of contentious threads about the politics of Renaissance Italy in Great Debates.:dubious:

These rules apply to Great Debates and Elections. Free ranging discussions are still permissible in other forums like Cafe Society, The Game Room, IMHO, and MPSIMS.

Gotcha!

[Max_S]

@Ludovic

In general, pretty good, and most of the verboten topics are pretty good, I see a couple odd things about the forbidding of things that “encourage discrimination against any minority group”:

– It isn’t in the form of “threads about…” like the others but seems to be a blanket topic ban. Which isn’t to say this makes it wrong, I’m just wondering what the intent was.
– “Minority group” is not well-defined. Is this like the second amendment, in that the beginning is merely explication for the rest, and the ban should be understood to include any “race, gender, sexual orientation or any other group into which a person might belong”? If so, I am fine with it. Otherwise, it would seem to allow the advocacy for some discrimination as long as the target is not in whatever is a “minority group”.

I’m also not sure what would count as discrimination against a minority group. I discriminate against minority groups all the time - it’s part of life. Women are traditionally considered a “minority” group although I think the majority of the population in my country are women. And segregation is discrimination, but we segregate women and men routinely. In restrooms, in (some) schools, in sports, in medicine, in choral music, in religion, etc.

And then, of course, whatever should happen if some official government policy actually discriminates against a minority group? God forbid the President of the United States wants to discriminate against Muslims, it would become literally impossible to voice support for the President without breaking the rules.

And then is there a distinction made between discrimination for some ostensible purpose versus discrimination for the sake of discrimination? Is a post against the rules because it advocates for something that has the effect of discriminating against a minority? Does it matter at all how the poster might try and justify their opinion?

~Max

[Max_S]

I was thinking about starting a thread about the morality of rejecting male nurse job applicants on the basis of sex. Because I have hired nurses of both genders and have what may be legitimate reasons to do so. If I acted on those reasons - circumstances have luckily prevented me from making a hiring decision based on sex - I could myself be the one putting men at a disadvantage. If men’s rights advocacy is verboten I don’t think I can have that debate; a one-sided debate is no debate at all.

~Max

[AK84]

Women are a minority?
Seriously?

[Max_S]

@AK84

Women are a minority?
Seriously?

If you’re asking me, the answer is that women are not a minority, but women are a minority group.

That’s because, as I understand it, “minority group” does not literally mean a group of people that is less than half of the population. I think “minority group” means something more like, a group that is historically disadvantaged.

~Max

[don_t_ask]

@BobLibDem

The rules are pretty common sense. I have a slight issue with following upthread instructions. Say you participate in several of the first 10 pages of a thread. You step back from it for a week or so. Meantime, it is now a 25 page thread with a mod note on the 11th page warning people not to accuse others of smelling of elderberries. You come back on the 25th page and accuse someone of smelling of elderberries. Is it really reasonable to expect everyone to pore over every page of a very long thread before posting?

Suggestion (not sure it’s feasible)- could there be an icon for each thread containing mod notes and/or warnings? Say it’s a exclamation point. So you come to this 25th page and see the exclamation point and say “Golly neds, there are instructions or notes or warnings here”. You click on the exclamation point and all of the mod notes and warnings in that thread are displayed automatically. Again, I don’t know about the software’s capabilities but if it can be done I think it should be.

A simple workaround for this, assuming that you can recognise the user names of the mods, is to click on the number of replies at the forum search and then on the number next to the mod’s user name in the search result. You will be provided, in reverse order, with a link to each post and the first line of text.

[Ruken]

The in-thread rule-making is and always has been a disaster that mods on other boards manage to avoid, but we’ve been over it before and the ones hear have been clear that they’re not interested in making that minimal effort.

[AK84]

@Max_S

If you’re asking me, the answer is that women are not a minority, but women are a minority group.

That’s because, as I understand it, “minority group” does not literally mean a group of people that is less than half of the population. I think “minority group” means something more like, a group that is historically disadvantaged.

~Max

So White South Africans, British Colonists and Israeli settlers are also minorities and thus disadvantaged.
:rolleyes:

[filmore]

@don_t_ask

A simple workaround for this, assuming that you can recognise the user names of the mods, is to click on the number of replies at the forum search and then on the number next to the mod’s user name in the search result. You will be provided, in reverse order, with a link to each post and the first line of text.

In all these years, I never knew about that trick. Can the mod names be visibly unique in some way? The board admins may be able to manually change the user name of the mods and insert a character which would normally be prohibited for user names. Perhaps they could have a character at the end that normal members wouldn’t be able to specify (*, $, or whatever).

[Shodan]

@Max_S

I was thinking about starting a thread about the morality of rejecting male nurse job applicants on the basis of sex. Because I have hired nurses of both genders and have what may be legitimate reasons to do so. If I acted on those reasons - circumstances have luckily prevented me from making a hiring decision based on sex - I could myself be the one putting men at a disadvantage. If men’s rights advocacy is verboten I don’t think I can have that debate; a one-sided debate is no debate at all.

~Max

Here is what I think is the relevant part of the new rules sticky -

Posters may start threads on these subjects only with prior approval of a Great Debates or Politics and Elections moderator. If you think you’ve got a new angle on something we’ve discussed a million times and found unpleasant, please feel free to make your case. Getting one approved is a very heavy lift, however.
…
Men’s Rights Advocacy. This can include threads about how men are somehow disadvantaged in society, women are somehow genetically inferior or have a predisposition toward specific gender roles and other threads about the ways in which men are somehow naturally entitled to be in charge

AFAICT you would need to get prior approval from a mod to start such a thread, and they are not inclined to grant such approval. Perhaps I am wrong about this, and IANAM in any case.

Regards,
Shodan

[Skywatcher]

@Max_S

If you’re asking me, the answer is that women are not a minority, but women are a minority group.

That’s because, as I understand it, “minority group” does not literally mean a group of people that is less than half of the population. I think “minority group” means something more like, a group that is historically disadvantaged.

~Max

FWIW, Wikipedia agrees with this.

[Max_S]

@AK84

So White South Africans, British Colonists and Israeli settlers are also minorities and thus disadvantaged.
:rolleyes:

I think you are equivocating on the word “minority”. In the context of discrimination against minorities, “minority” does not mean the smaller of two or more groups. Instead minority means a group that is (historically) subordinate to a dominant group.

You have listed three traditionally dominant groups. None of them are minorities for the purposes of a rule that prohibits discrimination against minorities.

~Max

[UltraVires]

@Max_S

And then, of course, whatever should happen if some official government policy actually discriminates against a minority group? God forbid the President of the United States wants to discriminate against Muslims, it would become literally impossible to voice support for the President without breaking the rules.

And then is there a distinction made between discrimination for some ostensible purpose versus discrimination for the sake of discrimination? Is a post against the rules because it advocates for something that has the effect of discriminating against a minority? Does it matter at all how the poster might try and justify their opinion?

~Max

I hope the mods use a scalpel with this instead of an axe. Is saying that Obergefell was wrongly decided advocating discrimination against gays? I notice that transgender status is not mentioned, but is that subsumed under “minority”? If I support a “bathroom bill” is that a no-no? If a person believes in single sex higher education, will that be modded?

If it is taken at face value and only applied to clear and obvious discrimination, then I don’t have a problem, but we’ve already seen the arguments that many posters put forward to censor viewpoints under the idea of the “don’t be a jerk” rule.