Guidelines on Tibet/China

leninbenjamin

so wait... why are specific guidelines needed if it's already covered by the rules of the forum? once again you have me conflustricated PSI...

GuanYin

leninbenjamin wrote: »

so wait... why are specific guidelines needed if it's already covered by the rules of the forum? once again you have me conflustricated PSI...

Because the current charter rules don't cover tens of accounts set up by an influx of chinese posters starting 25 different threads on the same topic in outrage because alot of Irish people, who probably couldn't pick out Tibet on a map (and in some cases China), nevermind name the leader of the PRC or give any knowledge of how it works, have started soapboxing about stuff they don't know in a manner more suited to AH.

Actually that is the crux of it, the last time we had this issue Politics looked like AH. As much fun as it is infracting a few hundred posts a day, I do like to do other things on boards

So to summarize, I'm opressing our Chinese posters. Yes I'm on the PRC payroll.

The Sweeper

GuanYin wrote: »

Because the current charter rules don't cover tens of accounts set up by an influx of [posters of various nationalies] starting 25 different threads on the same topic in outrage because a lot of Irish people, who probably couldn't pick out [anything] on a map (and in some cases [anything at all]), nevermind name the leader of [any political party in any given country], or give any knowledge of how it works, have started soapboxing about stuff they don't know in a manner more suited to AH.

Actually that is the crux of it.

I just wanted to misquote you, because to me you've just summed up almost every single political argument I've ever listened to, had to listen to, been involved in, had to be involved in, heard of, heard alluded to, seen, read, absorbed or watched.

GuanYin

Minesajackdaniels wrote: »

I just wanted to misquote you, because to me you've just summed up almost every single political argument I've ever listened to, had to listen to, been involved in, had to be involved in, heard of, heard alluded to, seen, read, absorbed or watched.

Welcome to my world

Hobbes

What gets me on the subject is the whole one sided part of the argument. For example you point out that the Dali Lama was paid by the CIA to help fund what we would call "terrorists" and people go into denial.

Asiaprod

For the record,had a couple of anti Dali Lama/China posts in Buddhism. I just canned them all. Out of curiosity, can one expect more of this type of post in the athletic-oriented forums with the upcoming Olympics?

bonkey

leninbenjamin wrote: »

I said banning, verb. not banned past tense. and i wasn't necessarily referring to you individually either, i meant you and you're moderating brethren.

With respect, your full statement was : "PSI, I see you are banning once again for the anti-China propaganda.". (emphasis mine)

The use of a moniker and the word "you" suggests that the word you is directed personally and not to the moderators as a group.

The use of the term "once again" requires that a previous event of this nature took place.

The specification of "anti-China propaganda" makes it clear what specific events the previous alleged bannings were for.

You may well have meant something different, but between GuanYin's interpretation of what you said, and your "clarification" above, his is far more accurate to what was written.

You suggested that he banned someone for posting anti-China propaganda and is at it again.

To anyone who thinks this pedantry on my part, I would point out that I wasn't the one to introduce grammatical analysis of the post in question. I'm merely pointing out that if we go down that road, we'll see that leninbenjamin's grammatical analysis would appear to be as factually flawed as the original claim itself.

SkepticOne

Glad all that's sorted. Obviously given the nature of the subject there's going to be heated discussions. While I would question the need for additional rules for a particular topic I think the important thing is that arbitrary judgements should be avoided simply because an issue is sensitive or causes reactions from other countries. Either a) have discussions on the China/Tibet question under the same basis as other topics (this would be my preference) or b) draw up clear rules governing the discussions.

leninbenjamin

bonkey wrote: »

With respect, your full statement was : "PSI, I see you are banning once again for the anti-China propaganda.". (emphasis mine)

The use of a moniker and the word "you" suggests that the word you is directed personally and not to the moderators as a group.

The use of the term "once again" requires that a previous event of this nature took place.

The specification of "anti-China propaganda" makes it clear what specific events the previous alleged bannings were for.

You may well have meant something different, but between GuanYin's interpretation of what you said, and your "clarification" above, his is far more accurate to what was written.

You suggested that he banned someone for posting anti-China propaganda and is at it again.

To anyone who thinks this pedantry on my part, I would point out that I wasn't the one to introduce grammatical analysis of the post in question. I'm merely pointing out that if we go down that road, we'll see that leninbenjamin's grammatical analysis would appear to be as factually flawed as the original claim itself.

i expressed my self poorly last night. bog whoop. happens all the time. we were able to continue the conversation yet you felt the need to bring it back and point how much i fail at the English language?

faceman

I was never fond of Tibet. But T'Pau, she was hot! I think. All Girl Bands are great though.

DeVore

Well, you were the one who got all hyper-grammatical in the first place.


As for China, its a sensitive issue with the olympics coming up. I'm not concerned about China being criticised, we don't live in China after all as pointed out above. However I do think we should be careful about generalising about one sixth of the earths population.

We'll need guidelines (probably more like re-iterations of the rules with specific emphasis) before the Olympics but apparently the Pol Mods are working on them so everthing should be hunky dory shortly.


DeV.

pickarooney

bonkey wrote: »

You may well have meant something different, but between GuanYin's interpretation of what you said, and your "clarification" above, his is far more accurate to what was written.

Ah, you didn't...

oscarBravo

We've had a wee chat about this. It's probably fair to say that (insofar as practicable) there shouldn't be a specific set of rules for a specific issue, not least because tough cases make bad laws.

The background to this is that a while ago there was a lot of press coverage about the whole Tibet/China issue. It's a topic that, for various reasons, people get emotive about and express strongly-held (and not always strongly-informed) opinions. So far, so usual day at the office for Politics.

What's different is that some of the opinions expressed were (intentionally or otherwise) downright insulting, offensive and patronising to not merely China as a country, but all Chinese people. Unsurprisingly, several Chinese members took umbrage at this, and vented their spleen on the forum. They also seem to have spread the word and encouraged others to join them in doing so. The result was a mess of repetitive threads with lots of new members posting in anger without bothering to understand the rules. Throw in something of a language barrier, and some unwillingness on both sides to accept the other's viewpoint as having any validity, and the result is a forum that's swamped with pointless arguments.

This drags me ever closer to the central point: we, the Politics moderators, see our role as being facilitators of rational, intelligent, informative and interesting discussion of political topics. We take a fair bit of flak for being stricter than most other forums in our application of the rules, but I think most regulars would agree that, by and large, the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty good as a result. Others seem to feel that the forum would be better off unmoderated, but we'll have to agree to disagree on that.

Long story short: we feel that the existing rules give us quite a bit of latitude in keeping discussions on the rails, through selective application of firmness. We have a rule on expressing opinion as if it were fact - this is one that can be used to crack down on uninformed ranting, if such ranting is likely to raise the noise level as it did in the past.

Short story even shorter: discussion of China and Tibet is allowed in Politics, subject to firm moderation. Duplicate threads on similar topics will be closed. Ill-informed generalisations will be challenged, and if necessary clamped down upon.

GuanYin and the others may have something to add to this, and I'll clarify if necessary, but if someone's going to ask me precisely where the line is drawn so that they can spend all their time carefully staying just inside it, I'm sorry to have to disappoint.