Reply #58: not crazy about it

[GreenArrow]

a few random thoughts...

#4 in the "general Discussion" guidelines seems to put the nix on the popular "rant" posts that a lot of people use to blow off steam. I guess these will carry over to other forums.

The "Democratic candidates and party guidelines" seem overly restrictive to me. It's easy to imagine all sorts of potential posts with legitimate questions that would run afoul of the proposed guidelines. DevilsAdvocate mentioned one in his post above. I assume this sort of post will migrate to other forums. Possibly, if there is enough migration of that type of post, there will be complaints and suggestions of applying the new rules in those forums.

Part of the perceived problem is that there is no universally accepted defintion of bashing. I've seen plenty of posts with links/documentation that called into question this aspect or that of a given candidate, posts that seemed reasonable to me, (especially given that this is primary season) that are imediately branded as bashes, flames, disruptions, etc. by partisans of that candidate.

I think it's kind of disengenous for people to complain about bashing posts when some of these same people are gulity of name calling, put downs, sarcasm and so on. Changing the rules about how posts are made isn't going to make much difference if people can be rude, disrespectful, and loutish within the body of the post itself. It always amazes me how people can say things on the anonymity of a message board that they would likely never say to people in real life.

And there is always the risk of promoting a uniformity of accepted opinion.

must be the zeitgeist...