gatsby wrote:It "veered off into religion" only because one person said they were offended by it. Under that kind of policy, you can kill any discussion about sovcit use of religion by one person saying they are offended by the placement of a smiley -- which is what happened here -- or even how a sovcit's remarks are quoted in a post. The same is true for posts that refer to someone else's political remarks.
Therefore it appears you understand the rules then. If the conversation ends up becoming about politics and religion, it is not going to survive. It does not matter how one intends their comments to be taken, if the thread devolves into a discussion about politics and religions instead of scams and scammers, then the admins/moderators are going to step in.
I suspect you know what I was saying here re my "motivation.'
I don't know what you suspect. All I am going by is your statement is that you engage and post here primarily for your entertainment value. That is not a reason to allow a thread to result in a controversial political or religious discussion.
I already spend time since the first deletion in pondering the "phrasing of" my posts to consider whether this board's mutaween will take it down because one person found it offensive.
We don't have mutaweens here. But again, this is the type of statement that starts creating dissension and controversy and can lead a thread downhill. Should a devout Muslim read your post, they are going to immediately see your comparison as being offensive and will want to respond to debate your comparison. This is exactly the controversy that we wish to avoid.
If you disagree, then perhaps this is not a site at which you should participate.
What's political and what's not? If I had compared Pratt's gun group to RuSA or the Michigan Militia instead of the NRA, would it have been deleted?
It might have, it might have not. Depends on the sort of reaction we start seeing, especially from our regular posters. Depends on how you phrased your comparison. In fact, it depends on a lot of things. So many things that I actually take it on a case by case basis. And if I am not sure, I get the admins involved.
Similar comparisons between different degrees of radicalism are regularly made in the Tim Turner and RuSA threads. Is this political: "Tim Turner makes Timothy McVeigh look sane"? What if a militia member registers here and then argues that "McVeigh was a true American patriot" and professes offense?
If a militia member logs in here and wants to argue about the patriotism of McVeigh, then their posts are going to get hammered. The purpose of Quatloos is to talk about scammers, not the patriotism of a militia member. If the original post is judged to have generated the controversy then it will get hammered as well. On the other hand, if the original post had said nothing about McVeigh and the succeeding posts tried to inject McVeigh into the thread, then the original post is not going to get deleted. So in my sincere opinion, posters should choose how to express themselves thoughtfully, and not just throw out responses that are going to generate controversy.
At a minimum, moderators should delete the offending content, but keep the comment "shell" in place with a specific comment on why the content was deleted. For instance: "Comment included political remark comparing one gun group to another.
And as I pointed out above, that is my intent when I have to intervene. But if the original post is tending to be sticking a thumb in people' eyes, I will be deleting it.
