Posting political / controversial topics

As you all know, there are no restrictions on what you can talk about in the Conversation forum. The only restrictions we have are about the way you have that conversation: polite / respectful.

And if I have any say in it (a lot, actually :)) this is how it will remain, because anything can be interesting to talk about.

But if you start a political or otherwise controversial thread, here is what you have to do:

1. State your purpose for opening the thread. What do you want to discuss, or which way do you want the discussion to go. You have to state your intent for creating the thread.
2. If you start a new discussion where you ask for people's opinion on a controversial topic, it is only fair that you start by giving your own.
3. If you quote other people's words (like a politician, priest, ...) put them into a quote block so that it is clear which words are yours, and which are theirs. Also if the quote is important or controversial, include a source reference.

The reason I want to do it this way is that the conversation is not just a billboard.
During the recent increase in political discussion, a couple of threads were started with only a third party manifesto as the opening post, but without any stated purpose by the poster.
Threads like that cause problems because they don't state a discussion topic. This means that everybody starts responding to what he / she thinks is the discussion topic, and pretty soon the thread ends in flames.

The items I mentioned should allow such threads to play out much smoother and on topic.

I have put this in the conversation guidelines as well.
http://straightrazorpalace.com/conve...tml#post286877
But I posted it here because
a) people not always read the stickies
b) the conversation guidelines are a closed thread, and I want you to be able to post comments so that I know if I forgot anything / should change my wording / ...

Good move Bruno. I rarely participate in those types of threads. For me SRP is an oasis where I can escape the controversy and hurly burly of the world. In reading the of origin of the first twelve step group, Alcoholics Anonymous, I found that it came out of an organization called the Oxford Group.

They were one of the earliest that tried to deal with alcoholism and had some measure of success. They ended up breaking up due to internal strife caused by their members disagreeing on the many controversial causes that they got involved with. When Bill Wilson and Doctor Bob Smith formed AA they came up with certain guidelines which came to be known as the twelve traditions. One of which states that they have "no opinion on outside issues".

The founders did not want to see their only hope fall into disarray as they had experienced with the Oxford Group so they confined their discussions to alcoholism . Makes sense to me and this is one reason I avoid even reading threads with political or religious topics.

My primary purpose in coming here is to discuss shaving, razors and especially hones and honing not to get my blood pressure spiking over other topics. I get enough of that reading the newspaper every day.

This is very well done Bruno. I know I can sometimes fall from the marks you have laid out and running a check list before I start a controversial post will likely help myself and others out.

X