I would merely ask that these discussions stay inside dedicated threads... When someone with an agenda tries to import it to each and every other thread it gets annoying.
I have stated before thyat I was a Mod on a very active Website and it was 90% a job requiring the moderation of nasty and coordinated attacks developing out of just about anything and quickly turning to politics and religion. Music was more fun, but never got so bad.
We even had assassinations! People were outed to their employers for using the Forums during working hours. Some were severely reprimanded and one definitely lost his job (hatchet job done by an Oxford tutor who found out that the lawyer he was arguing against worked for some of his old classmates)...
Whilst I would not expect things to get that bad, the point is that there are places where you can go and debate, defame, destroy others, or play that so-clever game of pretending to be someone else and supporting your own arguments with multiple accounts (the other reason for never allowing multis in here)...
I believe we come here to play Dip and enjoy the interaction bewteen people who share a passion yet represent a myriad of lifestyles, culture, mindsets etc...
It would be very sad to see a need for Moderation of the Forum itself and not just the games.
If say, A and B want to slog it out over US Foreign policy (for example), I would ask that they find a site dedicated to such things and go there to continue.
That is not to say we should have no discussion at all, and politics ought to be a matter of interest to Dip players. Asking people what their politics are or how they would solve the Iraq problem is very different from a thread that mixes in combinations of the words Holocaust, Fascism, USA, Iraq etc...
a) "What are your politics?"
b) "What do you think we should do about the Fascist dictator in the US who has started a Holocaust in XYZ?"
a) tends to get interesting responses and a degree of politeness;
b) attracts variants on the F-word rather early on and some pretty angry reactions...
Maybe we should have a moritorium on politics post WWII?
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An apology to Xyanth
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