One point of order is that Joe User is certainly more tolerant of foul language than Stardock's game related sites.

Joe User is also more tolerant of personal abuse, however wingnut (i.e. Right Wing) abuse of moonbat (i.e. Liberal) is far more prevelant than the converse. This is due to the fact that most people with anything approaching a Liberal view of the world don't bother hanging around very long because you may as well be speaking to a stone wall. This may be a selling point for those whose views are naturally right wing, just make sure that you're right wing *enough* or you may actually be considered Liberal.

The final thing to note is that although foul language and personal abuse are less likely to get you banned over at Joe User, I have seen multiple summary bannings occur because someone said the wrong thing to the wrong person (to be honest I've only seen two within the span of 2 years so it's not like a daily occurance, but then I hardly pay attention to the site so there certainly could have been many more). Just be aware that any banning that occurs on one of Stardock site applies to *all* Stardock sites. Forewarned is forearmed.

And to be forearmed is to be forskinned.

Awesome, thankyou, I didn't want to google it at work to check the spelling.  Glad you cleared that up.

Got to get the "report post" button fixed then all will be well in SD land.

While not wanting to behoove anyone's foreskin, I agree with the post as a whole. Those threads are quite rare in the GalCiv forums and I'm glad if that. I've also noticed that the regular GalCiv crowd tends to stay clear of them for the most part when they do pop up. Kryo is absoluetly right in that they invariably cause problems. I believe they get started just for that purpose.

And sry about the childish pun of my own. I told myself not to type it, but it wound up on my screen somehow anyway.

I still think the 'forum interstate system' installed in the last big round of upgrades is another example of technology getting way ahead of policy (this thread pre-dates that change, as the wording clearly indicates). Off-Topic is the same for every Stardock forum site now, so the intent of the OP here is pretty much foiled from the git-go by the fact that Joe User has much broader standards than, say, the game sites that have regular participation by minors.

If this were just GalCiv2's OT or Elemental's OT, then trying to avoid 'inflammatory' threads would make a bit of sense to me. Although I also think that, even when it made more technical sense, the policy was a heavy-handed global response to a problem that is better handled on a case-by-case basis. Banning subject matter just sticks in my craw, but swearing off swearing makes sense because you can say anything you need to without foul language, with the possible exception of deeply nuanced expressions of anger or disgust.

I don't currently have access to my map of Stardock's close to 350 unique forums that due to duplication are accessible as over 750 forums spread over Stardock's 12 seperate forum sites. Actually I'm sure these numbers have increased since at the time I made my map the Elemental site (the 12th) did not yet exist. The reason I have never published this data is that it's enough data to choke a horse and there's no clean way to make logical sense of it all.

Off the top of my head the forum that is accessible from the most sites (other than the Impulse forum that seems to draw a disproportionate share of moderation) is the Personal Computing forum, but even that isn't universal. In all reality it's very difficult to know how the source of your audience varies from one forum to the next.

I know you've been a proponent of OFT for sometime now and to be honest I have relaxed my previous stance and have even come to appreciate it somewhat, it's just that I have difficulty understanding why some folks feel that anyone that holds a contrary opinion is an idiot and therefore a legitimate target of abuse. Although I do think that some beliefs are so heinous (a la Nazi apologists) that they indeed *are* legitimate targets of abuse.

Ah ... double post due to page boundry crossing.

Thanks for the correction, Mumble. I only root around GC2 and Elemental and was mis-remembering from your earlier sprawl analysis.

Joe User pretty much scared me away the few times I've scanned it--I like amiable disagreements, not ferocious ones. Guess that might make my "Free the OT" position just some unconscious form of cowardice or something.

On the other hand if your opinions are generally to the right of Ann Coulter and you enjoy swearing at and otherwise abusing the occasional liberal that’s stupid enough to wander in and stay for any noticeable period of time then this is the place for you. You certainly have no need to be concerned about your language or trollish behavior, heck those things will just make you fit in better. However you still must be concerned that you not say the wrong thing to the wrong person or as my God-Mother used to tell me your ass will be out of there “so fast your head will spin” (not quite sure what this means, I never was brave enough to press the issue and find out).

So the point of a forum is to always be friendly? How boring.While I usually consider rudenes to be when attacking the arguer instead of staying with the argument.It is not a good tactic anyways.