Hello EMC, I had a small idea while reading the forums recently. It is currently against the rules to purposely lead threads off topic or to use immature or rude language towards other members, but I feel that a more specific rule would be beneficial to the forums community: A ban on politics, strictly unless said otherwise by the person who posted the thread. I have seen a good number of threads here during my time on EMC where politics were not relevant to the conversation. Politics, unless everyone can be mature and knowledgeable about it, often leave all involved with a bad taste in their mouth. If this is a specific rule, this section of the 'off topic' rule will likely be taken much more seriously and we won't have to see so many good threads closed due to heated, off-topic debates arising. I appreciate your constructive criticism. Thoughts?
This is already covered under the public drama rule. Anything malicious/out-of-line is not allowed. Anything civil (even when opinions can flare) is allowed, so long as it stays appropriate. Banning one subject does not take away the issue of problem posts.
Who would be the person to deem a topic political or not? One can assume most things that happen in the world are political to some degree. Would you restrict all threads to only talk about things to do with Minceraft and EMC? Trying to restrict threads that talk about politics is, ironically, political in nature.
I don't agree necessarily. The premise is a good one, but I don't think it will end up being effective at all. People are going to say what they feel is relevant, so maybe if a third party looking at a given thread thinks that politics has nothing to do with it, a group of people could very much think that politics has everything to do with the thread topic. For example, if the thread is about burritos and a comment brings up the topic of burritos containing a lot of artificial preservatives, a valid response could understandably contain political discussion due to the fact that a lot of countries have loose restrictions on what can go into commercial food. In turn, this could either spark a positive debate where a few people could address some points and interact with others about the topic. It could also turn heated where disagreeing members aggravate each other and begin to harass one another for their thoughts on said topic. If there were to be a rule on a strict ban of politics, I don't know how effective it will be. Here are the main issues that I see arising should this be a rule, in no particular order. - If it's loosely moderated, then it would be fairly natural for members to still go into politics regardless of the rule if it fits the topic nicely as I described earlier. - If it's strictly moderated, then it could be seen as censorship, which is never a particularly good thing. An implementation that I could see fit would be to allow politics if it fits into the topic of the thread, but warning members that get out of hand with their beliefs an modifying any offending posts to take out any insults or negativity towards another member. This way, people can still have debates as long as they are relevant to the topic at hand and they won't feel censored. However, out of hand and heated arguments can be censored (and validly so). EDIT - As Jkjkjk said, it also doesn't help anything in general to banish one form of discussion alone. Politics in and of itself is not inherently negative or a touchy topic, but it can be if people take it out of proportion but that would no longer be considered plain politics.
There are 2 things that should never be discussed public forums. Politics and religion. These 2 topics are guaranteed to end in hurt feelings. I've been on several forums that banned discussion of both topics. Personally, I don't see why either topic has any place here on a minecraft forum. If you want to talk politics or religion, go to a forum that welcomes these topics. I don't know about the rest of you but I come here to forget about the real world. I come here to play Minecraft and have fun. I for one, would hope that these 2 subjects would be banned. If you want to discuss these topics, there are plenty of places other than here, to do it. Leave these forums to those of us who want to talk about EMC and the game of Minecraft!
If we apply the logic that a Minecraft server shouldn't discuss non-Minecraft things, then many discussions would be banned here and this would be a barren forum. Anything can cause people to get upset, picking the two most well known topics to ban won't solve that problem.
The thing is, the EMC community is much different than any other. There is no political, religious, general, gaming, or any other community that is the same as the EMC community. Some people would rather talk to people in the EMC community and they'd prefer doing so because the type of person that you're likely to bump into on EMC is much different than the type of person you're likely to bump into anywhere else on the internet. People around EMC tend to be more understand and willing to engage in intelligent conversation. And let's just say intelligent conversation isn't something very common among the internet
There is a reason that certain topics are not subject for conversation on our forums or in-game. The main ones have to do with Politics and Religion. Most threads that include any of these discussions result in some form of insults, either directly or indirectly. The reason? Beliefs such as religion are based on strong opinions that go head to head against one another and are often linked to our personal foundation as a human being, however we believe that is. If someone is christian and someone is atheist and they get into a 'discussion' over the existence of a God, neither one of them is just going to accept the other's point of view. It's not an argument that either side can win because you cannot shake fundamental beliefs with simple words. What usually happens instead is that one person steps out of line and insults the other's religion, that other player fights back defensively and is rude in return, and it all snowballs from there. Just look at some of the threads that I've had to close in the last 48 hours. Players cannot have calm and rational discussions regarding the Orlando tragedy. The immediate response has been 'It's group X's fault','If we had more regulations on X, this wouldn't have happened.'. This isn't what we want in a gaming community. This discourse is toxic and when you have something where people hold very different beliefs and you hold a discussion, people don't discuss. They point the finger and try to prove everyone else wrong, often dragging them through the mud in the process. We have a policy regarding these and other similar subjects. Threads created are allowed and heavily monitored if we feel they are aimed at discussion rather than arguments and when it gets out of line, the thread is closed. We will not be changing the policy at this time.
Today I saw someone take a national tragedy and use it to push a leftist agenda. It's like they say, the proof is in the pudding.
