By that measure I wonder if Frogboy is on the far right or "fairly centered".

Jon Stewart is moderate.  Glenn Beck is not.  Or he is a very good stage performer.

I dont know. I think i read somewhere that Brad Wardell one time said he didnt care for Glenn Beck or his views.  But seeing that JoeUser belongs to him and Island Dog is fairly prominent here and there, says otherwise to me.

Island Dog is free to post his own pesonal views on JU (and does), as is anyone else. They're just that--his, not Stardock's or Brad's or anyone else's. Likewise the spread of political views expressed on JU is simply the sum of its userbase. Nobody is telling anyone that they can, can't, must, or must not post from a particular end of the spectrum over there.

My name is Yuri Alexadre, and I approve this message

Locking threads hints rather strongly at "must not".

Sorry Stardock, but your behaviour and attitude (despite any claims you may make to the contrary) largely marks you as right wing minions.

No problem, your forum, your domestic authority. Just don't bullshit us by pretending to be "fair and balanced".

Stop breaking the rules and you won't get threads locked? It's like a thief complaining of being arrested by theft.

I think its more people confused about the right to free speech doesn't supercede the rights of the person's home/business you are speaking in.  It's their forum and their rules they owe you no explanations and if they give them its a courtesy, not an obligation. 

Indeed. You must not post political threads in the off topic forum. What is it about that you don't understand? Are the locked threads and warnings insufficient in some way?

So 'fair and balanced' would be allowing you to break the rules and post your political diatribe anywhere you like?

Remember, you have no rights here other than those granted to you by the site owner.

Fuzzy is spot on. You can post to your heart's content in the Politics section or other appropriate categories which appear exclusively on JU and Political Machine. As I said, nobody is limiting what you can post politics-wise over there. "Over there" on JU is not "here" in the network-wide OTF, where political flamebaiting is and has been prohibited for years.

You can take it over there and be happy, or find another site to troll. But you won't be posting on the games sites any more, as you clearly can't read the rules, warnings, and repeated explanations of both that you've been given.

What's confusing to me is that there are some political threads allowed. If all political threads were banned (no matter how civil the discussion), the ambiguity would certainly go away.

Not really. It would just focus the ambiguity on competing ideas of what it means for something to be "political." After all, subjects like DRM are very important to many gamers (and maybe even to the skinning crowd at WC), and DRM is most certainly entangled with politics. There's also a great deal of 'inherently political' subject matter relevant to discussing GalCiv and Elemental, although I admit many folks might not think that they're expressing their political values when they argue about something like gender mechanics for Elemental's dynasty system or how the Empires and Kingdoms should be different.

I still believe the policy would be stronger if it focused on behavior rather than slippery content categories. Flamebait after a warning or three, and you deserve some form of 'ban stick' spanking. It shouldn't matter whether you were flamebaiting about an election, a personal religious experience, Joss Whedon's future in television production, or how you feel about RTS and TBS games.

I agree.

There is no ambiguity. This forum is a right-wing gangbang.

Make a thread that's too liberal for the owners and they'll invent some reason to shut you up. Not that they'd really need a reason - but they want to appear foxy fair-and-balanced. After all, what decent person would want to buy software from fascists?

It's not just anti-right-wing.  A 9/11 conspiracy theory thread was locked, and that's far right-wing.  Global warming is allowed, and that's left-wing.  I mean I do agree, it's their forum, but it's our time.  We're told OT is not a political forum, but in reality it's SOME politics that are not allowed, and we don't know what those views are.  It's like once you talk politics, you cross the line into illegal, and they reserve the right to delete/lock your posts.  And they'll like do that based on whether or not they like what you have to say.  That's information control.

I miss the good old days when unmoderated boards were the norm.  Now you can't do that, because of the liability issues.   You have to moderate it, because "someone might come along who advocates terrorism", and then you're liable.  The unmoderated boards certainly had their fair share of spam and internet wackos; but to be free of the biased, overzealous moderating was worth it.   And *NO* moderated board is not biased or overzealous.   I have never, ever seen a moderated board that was not biased.   I would like to think if I moderated a board by myself I would be unbiased, but in reality what I would do is just make it unmoderated.  And I refuse to do that, because *I* don't want to deal with the liability.

The threads are only locked if those involved continue to create a non-friendly environment.  These forums are for games for the most part, not to drag the worlds crap into.  Political, religious, whatever threads are looked down upon because they almost always go badly due to people's lack of an ability to remain civil(Or willingness in most cases)  These threads do however get a chance.  I've never seen a civil thread locked because of its topic, it gets locked because the people involved refuse to play nicely.

-Twilight Storm