Personal Attack Guidelines

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[Rasta Nick]

AVOID ATTACKING OTHERS PERSONALLY
Name calling is strongly discouraged. You can disagree with another without calling them a jerk or worse. Violent outbursts will be reason enough for immediate banishment. Do not start a new thread in order to slander a poster.

THE INDIVIDUAL VS. THEIR OPINION
Anytime you attack an individual as opposed to disagreeing with their opinion, you are risking a personal attack. Some definite no-nos in this area:

Addressing an individual by a profane or rude name
Insulting a user directly

These sort of posts will be removed by the moderator and your poster's license points are likely to be lowered or worse depending on the severity of your posts.

BUT HE/SHE STARTED IT
That is an argument indicating the maturity level of a five-year-old and the response is the same as what your kindergarten teacher said to you many years ago. I don't care. "He started it" is no excuse.

BUT SOMEBODY ELSE GOT AWAY WITH WORSE
If you see something against the guidelines, call it to our attention with the Report Abuse link.

BUT THE MODERATORS PLAY FAVORITES
The moderators and I do our best to enforce the guidelines fairly and consistently. With so many posts per day, this is not an easy task. If you feel you are being treated unfairly, please bring it to my attention.

What is a Personal Attack?
Our goal is to provide a forum where a diverse group people can discuss topics in an atmosphere of mutual respect. Whilst I know that I can never be 100% successful, I am committed to doing whatever I can to make this goal a reality.

This forum has rules against posting personal attacks. I have learned that there exists a broad range of opinion about what constitutes a personal attack. It is my opinion that any negative comment about another member of this message board is a personal attack, and such comments should not be posted.

Whenever a personal attack is found on the message board, the moderators should be notified. They can discuss the situation in the private moderator forum in order to get opinions from other moderators about whether any enforcement action is warranted. Moderators only take action if they feel it is absolutely necessary. If one moderator feels strongly that enforcement action is not warranted, then we will reason over the issue and watch the stuation. This way we can minimize the chance that mistakes are made, or that enforcement is unequal, unfair, or arbitrary.

However, occasionally mistakes are made, as the moderators are only human. If a member feels that a moderator has acted inappropriately, that member should send an email to admin@rasta-man.co.uk so I can review the situation. Bear in mind I may already be aware of what has transpired through my regular look at the forum logs so don't email me with false accusations!

THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING A THICK SKIN
If you are a human being with feelings, you will likely read things that you find offensive. That is as it should be. Discussions relating to faith are by nature more passionate and contentious than most other topics. I have little interest in catering to the most oversensitive members. If you get offended by many of the things you read, you might have to learn to deal with it.

No doubt, some of you will take these guidelines as an invitation to seek out "legal" ways to be rude to other members of this message board. I would strongly advise against doing so.