I see the deletion as an infringement of our freedom of speech. As of the time I left my polls thread, the discussion was rational and I see no reason to terminate it. If people are reluctant to accept the unpopularity of the US government, they could just choose not to open the thread.
Kestas, if you want to keep politics out of pHpDiplomacy, that's fine, but please be consistent in your actions and do the same to threads like " Vote for McCain or we're all doomed." Otherwise, you are in effect discriminating against those who are politically incorrect, i.e., the vast majority of us who dislike America for a reason.
I suggest that all responses containing abusive language be deleted, while the rest of the thread be restored. Or course, Kestas, you have the convenient option of deleting my account and continue with your political persecution, though by doing so you are murdering the voice of conscience on pHpDiplomacy.
"Vote for McCain, or we are all doomed" is quite clearly of humorous intent. Or are you telling us that you take the argument presented in that topic's first post seriously?
kestas has a consistent rule - a topic which becomes uncivil will be deleted. If he is inconsistent in its application, that is simply due to the fact that it is not his highest priority - and, indeed, there is a solution (the introduction of dedicated moderators) on the to-do list.
As a final word, the idea of freedom of speech is a far less persuasive one on a particular site on the Internet than it is in real life, as on the Internet there is always the option to discuss the subject on one of the many dedicated forums for it.
frushai I deleted the threads because there were at least 3 threads on the subject of the US, and overnight another 3 were added. This forum is getting swamped with anti-US posts and nothing else, and everyone except a couple of people would rather drop the subject.
Remember this forum is about Diplomacy the board game, if there are a couple of off-topic threads then that's fine, but if there are 4-5 threads all on a non-Diplomacy related topic that most users would rather not discuss then obviously I need to clear the forum out.
People here are suggesting closing down the board to try and stop all these anti-US threads, and I have 2 mid-semester tests this week but have to spend my time keeping this Diplomacy forum from becoming an anti-US socialist propaganda forum! Can't you just accept what the visitors and creator of this forum want, and move on?
If you familiarise yourself with the appeal to belief you will see that that thread had no good purpose. Further, we had far, far to many anti-US threads, which were simply getting out of hand. We don't have a php forum, so we need to keep this one as neat as possible. I consider these topics to be a problem until we can have subforums for them, so I support Kestas in his decision, and remember to be aware of how vocal Diplomacy players are by their nature.
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An apology to Xyanth
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