Well, I know that it sounds bad to put it like that,

But... in reality this is your forum, Jeremy, and while I appreciate your concern for free speech, I think that rules are essential to keeping the community together in the long run. Sometimes, censorship may have to be used, however objectionable, to keep a forum healthy. But you'll always have people complaining of double standards if you choose the "half-open but subject to our discretion rule." A blanket ban on certain topics seem to be a much better way since it would be in the official policy to do that. Nobody can complain that they are being singled out.

In any case, I do feel that there is a degree of moderation in this forum which justifies making some policies official. I think it has been going around for some time (unofficially) that politics are taboo here. The problem here is that since there is no official stance on that, sometimes moderators interpret it in one way and close politically inclined threads and in other situations, allow it. This leads to a degree of confusion.

I agree that when you look at my post, it appears to be an unreasonable level of restrictions, but in reality many online forums continue to thrive very well indeed and sometimes even benefit by a few restrictions. I also think it will only "officialize" some existing moderating practices on this forum.

As you said, LQ being so large, you have a reasonable justification for clamping down on things that go too far from the purpose of the community, which is to give and receive knowledge related to Linux. But whether you choose to take that step needed or not depends entirely on you. Personally, having seen this forum for a period of more than 2 years now, I think it's a necessity.

All I can say is that for a guy who doesn't care what anyone thinks, and pisses all over the Christians on the second most holy day of their year.....
....he sure bleeds easy.

WRT the politics and religion threads. As many of you will know, some moderation policies tend to be on a case by case basis - especially in the General forum.

For example, you may remember the recent, long, religion thread. In that case the first post was well thought out and balanced and so were the responses. Where someone tried to leap in and derail or "damamge" the thread, I or another mod leapt in to stop it. Had the thread been along the more usual lines "hurrrr, X religion sucks" or tried to cheerlead for a religion (propoganda), the thread is closed. The same goes for a politics thread - although, they are more likely to be closed as they tend to polarise people and descend into a "hurrrrr, the US sucks" type of thing.

General (or /dev/null on some forums) is, by it's very nature, more lax than other forums. At the same time, anyone who wants to post here has a responsibility to engender rational discussion or not to be offensive. With great freedom comes great responsibility ..... to paraphrase Uncle Ben

Reread the first post. It starts off talking about AT&T, then says that there will be only one ISP and then says that Linux will suffer. It jumps around. Had sources been offered for these quotes(?) then we could have read the fuller story and had an informed discussion.

Providing sources to support a written statement is just good arguementative style.

Censoring "freespeech" is a bad policy because censorship tends to become more work then it is worth. And the topics discussed in a censored ("politically correct") forum tend to become tedious and oftentimes abstract.

The book 1984 gives us an excellent example of how censorship can degrade the human condition. INMO freespeech is worth listening/reading things which I may or maynot agree with. Keep in mind that communication is a participatory process. If someone says something that you disagree with; you have the choice to ignore the offending persons statements or to respond to them as you see fit.

It wasn't a political thread and I can be sure that the whole community is not "disturbed" when some touchy subjects are discussed. Only as individuals we feel something, and we may choose how to react. An in any way, no matter the level of sensitivities, I think we always learn some more. The only issue is that the mods will have some more work, and I'm sure they learn how to deal with situations such as this one.

Excellent thread!!
Don't even think of any form of censoring.

...It is a too flaming discussion...

Why do you think it is the best linux forum??

Because people (right or wrong) takes a compromise.

I really enjoyed it.

Alejandro.

While that may be the case you've made three post since you last logged in in 2012 and all three are posts tacked on to old threads and posts that don't really add much of value to those threads. Please refrain from doing that.