Since it seems that Political Discussions board is here to stay, allow me to give a few suggestions regarding enforcement of forum guidelines in the new board. More than any other, this board will be prone to generating heated discussion and may contain opinions which are not necessarily palatable to everyone. It will also produce a lot of emotional content and, undoubtedly, some ad hominem attacks. Nonetheless, it is vital, (again, more than on any other board) that freedom of opinion is not infringed in the course of maintaining order. There is a lot of ways this can happen, from simple mistakes, clouded judgement right up to deliberate abuses of power by a member of the moderation team. Thus I wanted to suggest a way that would help alleviate this issue.
1. The guidelines thread should be pinned in the Political Discussions board. The guidelines should be formulated very clearly, with no room for varying interpretation. This would not only help non-native speakers be on the same page as the moderators, but prevent personal opinions and biases from interfering with actual moderation. The focus of the rules should be based on ensuring civilized and logical discussion, enforcing mutual respect and preserving one's right to express and defend one's opinion.
2. Enforcement rules and punishments should be based on a clear algorithm and posted in a thread for all to see. Wiggle room should be very limited in order to prevent anyone from feeling unjustly persecuted. This would serve to ensure there is no favorism (perceived or actual) on the part of moderators. The enforcement rules should also be formulated in a way that is clear, unambiguous and understandable to anyone with a decent grasp of English.
3. Anyone offended by someone else's opinion should have the option of not participating in discussion and not seeing the offending posts. However, as long as this person does not infringe on other rules, he or she should be entitled to defend this opinion. Enforcing political correctness is not something that is conductive to constructive discussion of controversial issues, quite the contrary.
I hope that those ideas will at least be considered. I have seen cases of injustice, personal attacks, abusive language and outright censorship in GD, on both moderators and regular users' part. I hope that with the creation of a new board, new guidelines could be devised to ensure fair enforcement and productive discussion. The general guidelines for the whole forum have not been sufficient, as everyone has seen, for neither ensuring civil discussion nor preventing abuse.