I’m amending my discussion policy. I have added a sentence to Item 2 so that it now reads,
2. Comments must be civil and clean, “family friendly,” as they say. Your opinion is welcome, whether you agree or disagree, under what I call the “Starbucks Standard,” practicing the kind of courtesy you would give another person while sitting over coffee together. That means no personal insults or gratuitous character attacks on other persons. Any first-time commenter here who introduces himself or herself to me, or to other commenters, with character attacks (for example, the accusation that we are liars) will find his or her comment summarily deleted, and future comments banned.
I also added the words, “whether you agree or disagree.” I have always practiced that; I have always welcomed civil disagreement; I just wanted to make it more explicit in the policy. Disagreements are fine. Being a disagreeable person is not.
I’m not sure the “Starbucks Standard” is the best choice of words since they are strong supporters of same-sex marriage. Maybe another more “family-friendly” group?
Oh, maybe. I’ve been using that title for it for a very long time. I’ll think about it. What’s another coffee shop I could name it after?
I think “Starbucks Standard” sounds just fine.
so pointing out that someone is a dishonest person or a fraud by providing evidence for that merits deletion?
or is it the usage of words like “liar”, “hack”, etc. itself that’s the problem, even if it’s been convincingly demonstrated that a particular person is one?
I mean, when one calls out a person on his/her lies and uses the proper label (“liar”), that’s just telling the truth, isn’t it? I don’t see how it counts as an insult, or why we should be concerned even if it does.
Of course, in case a person hasn’t said or done anything to deserve such labels (or it hasn’t been shown s/he has), that’s different story
AOR21, I made that rule specifically for first-time commenters. Here’s why.
It takes some interaction with a person to distinguish between various forms of errors, to determine whether it’s a lie or some version of an honest mistake; and it takes even more to determine whether the person is generally a liar.
Although I can imagine extraordinary circumstances where this would not be the case, generally speaking, anyone who comes in here with rhetorical guns blazing, calling anyone a liar, is not going to be the kind of person who will be careful with the facts or with treating people as people.
I’m not sure why anyone would give Tom a hard time about this. On this blog, I have seen many atheists comment with varying degrees of substance. Clearly, Tom shows a commitment to dialog and free speech. Compare this to a Gnu blog (like Coyne) where its just an echo chamber of all Gnus maintained through heavy-handed moderation and banning.
I like your rules