Announcement
Due to the inability and or unwillingness of people to communicate with each other in a decent and respectful manner - mainly in the politics threads - we have decided that it is time to introduce some changes to our moderation policy.
Before we get to that we just want to say that the vast majority of people who visit and use here and indeed the vast majority of people who have ever visited or used here, are people who do or did abide without any trouble by our community guidelines/rules - they made our community better for all by doing so and we thank them for that.
Sadly, the same can't be said for a small but vocal and incredibly persistent group of posters - a group of posters who have been engaged in personal battles for years, not just here but on other forums too.
Their disrespectful, disruptive and frankly unpleasant behaviour was often ultimately not tolerated or welcomed on those other forums and it is not welcome here - we offered everyone a clean slate here with no baggage affecting anyone, we offered you more freedom than you were afforded anywhere else, we have been incredibly patient with you (quite probably to the detriment of the wider community here), we have tried and tried and tried to encourage you to engage with respect and decency and been more than fair in not being heavy handed and treating you with respect.
Sadly, you have been unable or unwilling to show the same respect to each other, to the forum as a whole and for the rules.
A poster made a post recently which we think summed up the problem quite nicely:
The sad fact is that some people are simply unable or unwilling to accept that others have divergent social, political and economic viewpoints to themselves. They take that personally and so then personally attack the people whose views they disagree with or call them a troll.
We couldn't agree more.
What also exacerbates the problem is that posts are also often made to deliberately illicit a certain reaction - a reaction that fuels the ongoing battles.
The problem we see all too often with the political talk is too many people on both sides get into this echo chamber where they can't or won't compromise with the other side or even try to see the other side's point of view. Yes, obviously, stuff like racism and homophobia should be condemned, and is and we will always act on stuff like that but I'm talking about understanding why someone may vote Democrat or Republican, why they may believe a certain way and trying to peacefully disagree. People here seemingly can't or won't do that, so we have these personal attacks of people and all this fighting and nasty back and forth.
It has been going on for 5 years nearly and despite all our efforts to broker a peaceful and respectful discourse on it goes.
We offered people here a really light touch moderated forum where free speech is encouraged and where people are treated like intelligent, responsible adults - all we ask is that people engage in that freedom with decency and respect - it really is very simple.....Most people have been able and importantly willing to do the very easy thing and help make it work - sadly some just can't or won't.
We came very close to simply putting a blanket ban on political threads, we are frankly sick of the bickering in them, we are sick of how the behaviour of people in them sours the atmosphere on the forum, how it has led people to feel they don't want to engage here anymore (and it is sadly quite a lot of people, we know this because they have told us it is case)
We are sick of the fact that regardless how hard we try and reason and encourage people to see reason and regardless of how we say to people "Feel free to disagree as much as you like, discuss (within reason) whatever you want, but just do so with respect for and show decency to each other", people just continue with the ugly, unwelcome and at times downright disgusting behaviour.
In the end we decided to continue to allow the political discussion - but we are putting in place a new policy:
1. We are putting in place a Warning System - this system will operate on a "Three Strikes System" - Simply put a user who gets three warnings will be banned upon receipt of warning number three.
The decisions on the issuing of warnings will be made by the admin and mod team and those decisions will be final.
2. Admin and Mods can't be here 24 hours a day - we are all volunteers here, and we all have things like jobs, families, hobbies etc....So to help us identify and deal with poor behaviour we would like to remind people that the best way to make us aware of problems is to use the "Report Post" function - doing so generates an email that goes to each of us...from there we can log in to the forum when free to do so and take a look at things.
We are all saddened we feel we must go down this route - but enough is enough.
The new policy will be applied across the whole forum and takes effect immediately.
Being absolutely frank, the people who exhibit the worst of the behaviour we now feel we have to deal with like this are barely welcome here whilst they continue to behave as they do - those people cause nothing but damage to our community as things stand - the only reason they are still here is because we remain committed to trying to foster a community where people engage with decency and respect and are allowed the freedom to discuss (within the boundaries of common decency) whatever they like.
We hope we never have to hand out warnings, we hope we never have to ban anyone - but in all honesty we'll do so happily if we have to, simply because it will be very clear to us all that if we have to that the people who have soured here and other forums for so long simply can't or won't buy in to the very simple rules and community guidelines we have here, designed to make here a welcoming place where people can enjoy free discourse without personal attacks and unpleasant behaviour.
Ultimately it is down to you - change or we'll ultimately wave you goodbye - and whilst we will be sad to do so, we'll do so safe in the knowledge that we will be making the forum a better place.
Regards
The Talku2 Administration and Moderation Team.