AAC has a rule prohibiting political threads. I agree with it completely.

However, awhile back some threads that were political were allowed on the basis that personal philosophies were OK, so long as political parties were not mentioned. At least, that is how I interpreted the rational given at the time.

We now have a thread that has been locked that did not mention political parties: https://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/...the-world-gone-mad.159599/page-3#post-1390769

Not only do I agree it should be locked, but it should have been locked a lot earlier. What I hope our moderators will do is craft a definition that is unambiguous and fair regardless of the parties involved in the "political" discussion.

 

Not only do I agree it should be locked...

I disagree.

 

It ran its course quickly. I don't see a problem either way.

 

No one is forced to be a member here. If membership is such a hardship to you, just don't post.

 

No one is forced to be a member here. If membership is such a hardship to you, just don't post.

Wow, get over yourself. Just by the fact that this thread already existed my wanting to understand the policy obviously isn't limited to me. How did that escape you the day before yesterday?

Back To School, to which thread are you reffering?

"And now for something weird." Apparently what was political was a Memorial Day acknowledgement of immigrants who with a promise of applying for naturalization if they honorably served are now being deported at discharge. Posthumously they get their naturalization. A policy from someone who the doctor has acknowledged bought his deferment. I never mentioned politics.

 

Wow, apparently my question here has now been deleted.

Welcome to the Forum, we all have had posts deleted, everyone person here in this "Thread" as well as other individuals in other "Threads". Get use to it, keep pushing things and you'll be banned, trust me I've seen it happen many times. There are plenty of forums out there, but not many that contain the information available to you for learning electronics, it's well structure and protected by the Mods following TS. Members are here only by their own volition, without Members you have no forum.

kv

 

keep pushing things and you'll be banned

Nah ... it's not that bad ... only times I've seen people banned is when they start insulting others and throw sh** everywhere. And that's not only understandable, but I completely agree with it.

As for the prohibition of political threads, all I can say is rules are rules. This place is privately owned and it's not a democracy. But I also happen to agree with that policy. Bickering about politics is not what this website is about, but rather about learning electronics. Politics is a bottomless pit that would only distract from its real purpose, and it's a subject that almost always ends up in a train wreck anyway.

 

Killivolt beat me to it.

A deleted post means that it violated the Terms of Service, the rules to which you agreed when you signed up. In case you missed them, there is a link at the very bottom of every page which you can follow and brush up on the TOS. It’s inexplicably labeled “Terms and Rules”.

Sometimes you didn’t intend to commit a violation, but you did. No big deal. If you want to be proactive, review the TOS and figure out the reason for the violation. Or you can contact a moderator and see if they can explain the issue.

Or you can shrug your shoulders, promise yourself to be more careful and continue contributing to AAC.

 

AAC has a rule prohibiting political threads. I agree with it completely.

However, awhile back some threads that were political were allowed on the basis that personal philosophies were OK, so long as political parties were not mentioned. At least, that is how I interpreted the rational given at the time.

We now have a thread that has been locked that did not mention political parties: https://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/...the-world-gone-mad.159599/page-3#post-1390769

Not only do I agree it should be locked, but it should have been locked a lot earlier. What I hope our moderators will do is craft a definition that is unambiguous and fair regardless of the parties involved in the "political" discussion.

jpanhalt, I'm leaning toward when people begin the process of personal opinion attacks it begins to get out of hand, @ronv who I respect lost our relationship over the last go political round that was allowed as an experiment by the Mods.

Even @spinnaker and I didn't even get off on the same page in the beginning because of my character or lack of character on ETO. It followed me here, and I'm sure he didn't as well as others want me to be here. But, here I am defending the TS, I do not agree to disagree. I'm in full agreement with the mods when they make corrective actions.

Sometimes they don't catch the ball but most of the time they do.

IMHO, (In my humble opinion)

kv

 

Thank you everyone. I really did not mean for any of this to go this far. It was never my intention. I just asked a question to understand the rules better. The deletion never was the issue. In the scheme of things, differing opinions is low in importance.

 

Thank you everyone. I really did not mean for any of this to go this far. It was never my intention. I just asked a question to understand the rules better. The deletion never was the issue. In the scheme of things, differing opinions is low in importance.

Have you actually read the rules?

 

AAC has a rule prohibiting political threads. I agree with it completely.

However, awhile back some threads that were political were allowed on the basis that personal philosophies were OK, so long as political parties were not mentioned. At least, that is how I interpreted the rational given at the time.

We now have a thread that has been locked that did not mention political parties: https://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/...the-world-gone-mad.159599/page-3#post-1390769

Not only do I agree it should be locked, but it should have been locked a lot earlier. What I hope our moderators will do is craft a definition that is unambiguous and fair regardless of the parties involved in the "political" discussion.

Such a policy simply isn't possible. As we have seen repeatedly, content that one member considers blatantly political others contend is completely apolitical. It will always be subject to personal opinion. Sometimes that's because of the bias of the member and sometimes it's just a reflection of the fact that the same post can often be interpreted from different perspectives and different motives assumed for why it was posted.

Also, there will always be threads and posts that contain violating content that goes uncaught since we do not moderate each and every post (many forums do -- and if you want a several hour or several day delay from the time you post something until it shows up, then that is the price for having all content scrubbed against the ToS/UA). We rely heavily, almost exclusively, on members reporting potentially offending content. Even then, the mod staff has to deal with those same issues of trying to figure out if it is too political and, no, we don't always agree. So we discuss it behind the scenes and the resulting decision is all-but-guaranteed to be seen as wrong by at least some portion of the membership, regardless of what that decision turns out to be. In general, we try to take as light a hand as we can and sometimes that turns out to be too light (and sometimes it still turns out to be too heavy).

What can I say? We are human, we are volunteers, we have limited time to devote to mod duties, and other tasks (such as spam clean up) have higher priority.

 

Welcome to the Forum, we all have had posts deleted, everyone person here in this "Thread" as well as other individuals in other "Threads". Get use to it, keep pushing things and you'll be banned, trust me I've seen it happen many times. There are plenty of forums out there, but not many that contain the information available to you for learning electronics, it's well structure and protected by the Mods following TS. Members are here only by their own volition, without Members you have no forum.

kv

I've had posts deleted, even a few since becoming a mod. I've also deleted roughly as many posts for being political that I agreed with as that I haven't. Including some that I ardently agreed with and thought made important points -- but this is simply NOT the place to post them. I know several of the other mods have similarly deleted content with which they agreed for the same reason. We try very hard to be even handed; it helps that the mod team is a cross-section of the political spectrum and so, when necessary, we can chime in on why something is or isn't acceptable. The general guideline that has developed in those situations is that unless everyone agrees that it is acceptable, it probably isn't.

 

@WBahn

Of course, you have the bully pulpit, and I won't disagree.

By way of further explanation, my reference was two recently closed threads. This thread tried to avoid partisan mention, but seemingly went off the rails and became partisan in the opinion of others:
https://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/threads/has-theban-been-lifted.153804/
That set a criterion for "political" that I referenced in my original post:

For the record:
No, I do not see a generic discussion of whether being one vote out of tens of millions of votes means your vote does or does not matter as being political.
Yes, I do see trying to inject claims of partisan voter suppression as being political.

It has nothing to do with accepting or not accepting "the facts" or pretending something is or is not happening. Maybe I agree with you and maybe I don't. It doesn't matter, because partisan political discussions are not allowed on this forum -- take those discussions to another forum where they ARE allowed. I would be more than happy to discuss them in such a forum.

Then there was this thread about climate change: https://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/...the-world-gone-mad.159599/page-3#post-1390769
Things were going along fine until a member interjected,

The real problem is this thing we created called money.
We bust our asses off to acquire and accumulate it. Then when we have more than what we need, we want more, driven by greed.
Then we exalt it to be the most important thing in our lives, more than our neighbor and the land that we need to survive.
Go figure.

Never were politics or parties mentioned in that thread, but several members disagreed with the concept that being a beggar was preferable to contributing to society. That's when the thread was closed for "being political." Less drastic measures are often used when one member derails a discussion, namely deleting the OT posts. In that instance, however, the lesser action was rejected and the thread was closed. Is the science of climate change now considered political?

I agree that a mathematically rigorous definition of a political thread is not possible, but I do believe that something less arbitrary can be developed. We seem to be getting to the point where disagreement on science leads to labeling something political.

 

Never were politics or parties mentioned in that thread, but several members disagreed with the concept that being a beggar was preferable to contributing to society.

Hey! That was my comment.

Sorry...I couldn't leave such misapprehensions unchallenged...

 

@WBahn

Of course, you have the bully pulpit, and I won't disagree.

By way of further explanation, my reference was two recently closed threads. This thread tried to avoid partisan mention, but seemingly went off the rails and became partisan in the opinion of others:
https://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/threads/has-theban-been-lifted.153804/
That set a criterion for "political" that I referenced in my original post:



Then there was this thread about climate change: https://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/...the-world-gone-mad.159599/page-3#post-1390769
Things were going along fine until a member interjected,


Never were politics or parties mentioned in that thread, but several members disagreed with the concept that being a beggar was preferable to contributing to society. That's when the thread was closed for "being political." Less drastic measures are often used when one member derails a discussion, namely deleting the OT posts. In that instance, however, the lesser action was rejected and the thread was closed. Is the science of climate change now considered political?

I agree that a mathematically rigorous definition of a political thread is not possible, but I do believe that something less arbitrary can be developed. We seem to be getting to the point where disagreement on science leads to labeling something political.

The sad reality is that some topics are magnets for political injection; those threads are kept on very short leashes. Climate change is one of them, along with abortion, gun control, religion, and several others. We try to let the non-contentious, non-political discussions of most such topics continue as long as we can, but we do not have the time to monitor such threads and constantly be cleaning them up. We tried to operate that way on a couple of threads and it was a nightmare and a huge time sink for us. Even when we specifically said to keep the politics out otherwise the thread would be closed, several members just had to chime in immediately with politicized views. So as soon as a hot-button topic starts going south, very little effort is going to be put into keeping it on the rails, it will simply be closed.

 

Wow, get over yourself. Just by the fact that this thread already existed my wanting to understand the policy obviously isn't limited to me. How did that escape you the day before yesterday?

I have never been "over myself". The reason I didn't say something the day before yesterday is two fold, 1. I wasn't here and 2. you didn't say anything till today. Why didn't you call out the others saying, the same basic thing to you, that I did?

 

Such a policy simply isn't possible./--/.

You are completely wrong. Yes, it is difficult. Yes, it is a chore. No, it is not impossible.

I am not "calling you out" out on this and I, in fact, agree with much of what your post (the one that I am quoting that one sentence from). I think you are completely wrong because adherence to your statement (again, the quoted one) is tantamount to saying that it is what it is and will not and can not get any better....that is why I believe that you are completely wrong.

Here, as far as I can tell, is the current guidance/policy/rule concerning political threads. It consists of this statement only, "- No Politics". Now, to be sure, there is much in the User Agreement that can be applied to many threads in general, but clearly including "political" threads. To tell me, "member to member" when it is indistinguishable from "moderator to member", that it is impossible, I say baloney, show me what you tried.

I know a great deal about regulations and policies, not everything but some things,...more than many, I think, through working for decades for the USDoD. I have heard, more than a couple of times, "Well Dr., since you have such a problem with that policy, draft a new one for me...by COB blah blah blah". I would do that, and it would take a long time and I would be put on a committee (or worse, chair) and we would meet over a period of months, to work up four freaking paragraphs that would be presented to the Commander for signature consideration. I would know going in that there was little chance of my drafts being accepted as is, but if I could improve one line, sometimes one single word, of an outdated and poorly described policy, I considered a big win. Also, it counted against my unwritten required non-science hours and I would always choose something where I felt I could have an impact.

In the case of the much stronger and higher regulations, if I had any chance to provide feedback, I would do so, seriously and in a thoughtful manner. Here too, knowing that it was not my jurisdiction and it could just as easily be summarily dismissed. At least, I thought, they could see what we are up against in day-to-day practice and it could possibly have an impact on the discretion that was inevitably so often the determinant of what was done or not done.

What I never did, was say "It is impossible".

Take a look at this thread https://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/threads/capacitive-transformerless-ac-dc-power-supplies.139120/ and in particular, the first few lines of this post https://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/...ess-ac-dc-power-supplies.139120/#post-1170499 from a principal at AAC. Now, look at how the thread ended (by being locked) and, if you can see, the deleted content. What was the final verdict - issue resolved internally by the VIPs and no change in UA. That was years ago and the issue (transformless supplies) has come up for years before that thread.

As I recently posted, I took a stab at how the UA could be modified to accommodate some instances of transformerless supplies. A first pass a simple draft...something to start the process...and clearly understanding that it was not my decision. As I was posting the draft, the thread was locked and when I tried to post it in the suggestions sub-forum, it was promptly deleted and I was told to send any suggestions I had to a moderator (and BTW, I do not recall if you had any involvement at all in any of it).

The OP, in his first post stated:

What I hope our moderators will do is craft a definition that is unambiguous and fair regardless of the parties involved in the "political" discussion.

If I had read that before my previous experiences, I would have said, "No, this is something that the community members can start, knowing that the decision is not theirs but will be heard". That is the idea of a community standard. Now, I would not only agree with that part of the OP's post, I would extend it to administrators as well.

Every time you delete one of these "political" threads, a couple of things happen.

First, although the content is almost immediately unavailable when you log on, it remains available on the "outside" for a good week - and that means available to all manner of indexing, search engines and whackos.

Second, people get angry. The members who are angry that the posts were deleted, the members who are angry that it took so long to be deleted after it was reported, the members who are sick and tired of the same groups of people making the same kinds of posts over and over again, the moderators tired of hearing that they waited to deleted the post or, worse, let their own views stand before locking the thread or who were otherwise unfair.

What is the long-term effects - I don't know. I had almost no Forum experience before AAC and I was surprised to see so many here also on other sites. I was surprised to hear about the history of AAC (and other sites) and people who were here and left or were banned and so on and so forth. I don't have those answers or data to base a position on. Personally, if AAC became some kind of a Political site, I would not participate because there are many other place I could go if I wanted to participate and I can select such sites where the politics are more to my liking. One member makes little difference, but is not meaningless.

So, why not try your hand at crafting guidance text on the No Politics policy? Not up to it? OK, I understand, no problem......BUT, it is NOT impossible.

 

The sad reality is that some topics are magnets for political injection; those threads are kept on a very short leashes. Climate change is one of them, along with abortion, gun control, religion, and several others. We try to let the non-contentious, non-political discussions of most such topics continue as long as we can, but we do not have the time to monitor such threads and constantly be cleaning them up. We tried to operate that way on a couple of threads and it was a nightmare and a huge time sink for us. Even when we specifically said to keep the politics out otherwise the thread would be closed, several members just had to chime in immediately with politicized views. So as soon as a hot-button topic starts going south, very little effort is going to be put into keeping it on the rails, it will simply be closed.

Actually, some may interpret my comments as favoring quasi-political discussions. In reality, I am against them for two reasons;
1) AAC is a business. What legitimate purpose is served by allowing such contentious discussions here? At best, you get a few extra clicks. In sum, you probably loose more than you gain.

2) The World is full of politics. There are two surviving brothers in my family, we each have four children. And ironically, each family is made up of 2 conservatives and 2 liberals. We get along. We have family gatherings. We stay away from political/contentious issues. Trivial Pursuit with teams -- often pairing conservatives with liberals -- passes the night and everyone is happy.

My solution to the Off Topic/Political Issue is simple. Off topic threads remain open until they become contentious. Then they close. Politics are not the only reason. OT should be fun. It is a break from electrons, LED's, and arduino. But the potential for alienating "friends" always exists. I value friends and family more than arguing unsolvable differences, just like in my family. Recent threads by @OBW0549 and @MrAl typify what I would want to see more of in that section.

 

Didn’t this whole thing play out several years ago?

I don’t look forward to another bloodbath...

Play on.