A reminder to folks that my role is "Forum Manager," not editor or censor. I
work hard to be fair and treat everyone the same, regardless of who they are,
or whether their political opinion is politically popular and whether or not I
agree with it.
I am not going to make up new rules in order to suppress a politically
unpopular point of view. There are no rules against repetition. There are no
rules about posting length. There are no rules about how many posts one can
respond to in a single post. I agree that these things are annoying for the
average reader, especially when multiple subjects are jammed into a single
post. It is okay to note that in your posts. I do it all the time in my role as
individual contributor.
I do not plan on changing my style of moderation. To be transparent, I rarely
give official warnings. If I did give them for every offense from across the
political spectrum, there would be many frequent contributors that would be
suspended.
These are the circumstances that are likely to result in an official warning:
1) egregious personal insults or privacy violations, 2) egregious insults about
groups of people based on demographic characteristics (race, ethnicity etc.),
3) disregarding a reminder to the list about the rules in short proximity to
the reminder, and 4) 2nd offense for a less egregious violation related to
civility/privacy/being off-topic after being given a previous informal warning
or reminder about the same violation.
In Framingham, Republicans (9%) are a distinct minority when compared to
Democrats (37%) and unenrolled voters (54%). I understand that Ms Ahlstrom's
views on immigration are not politically popular, but they are pretty
mainstream within the Republican Party. I understand that there are some within
our community that feels that any discussion about the impact of immigration on
our community is racist, a perspective that is pretty mainstream within the
Democratic party.
I am not going to ban the discussion of immigration and its impacts on our
community on the list. It is a political issue. Posters may not make insulting
characterizations about people or their motivations based on their immigration
status. Posters are required to link their posts to local government, but they
are allowed to use supporting data that may not be locally linked. I allow it
on other issues, and people do it all the time. Those are the rules that
pertain to racism and similar isms that will be enforced. People can say other
things that are offensive to some and not break list rules.
Have a problem with what is being said by a subscriber? Exercise your posting
rights as a subscriber. You have the right to: 1) criticize political positions
expressed by other posters on this list and the content of their posts, 2)
challenge the supporting evidence used to support positions that they disagree
with, and 3) encourage other posters to contact public officials, go to public
meetings, or take other positive steps to become involved in town government.
Instead of simply complaining to me, exercise your right to participate in
political debate. That is the purpose of the list.
Perhaps you are one of the people that feels that responding to that with which
you disagree only provides credibility to that perspective, or you don't have
the time or inclination to post. In that case, I encourage you to exercise your
right as a subscriber not to read that which offends you. I have included many
suggestions about how to manage your own inbox in this post:
http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/framgov/messages/topic/3IVMcitGVOxJ6l4eLiK262/
Political debate is often not very nice when people disagree on an issue and
their core values are in opposition to one another. It is the nature of the
beast. Every time something feels racially insensitive, "not nice" or "not
civil" it doesn't mean that a list rule has been broken.