Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[RJG]

Please delete Steve's "off-topic" posts as well.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Technically, there are already rules against preaching, but they aren't very specific.

Namely, those rules prohibit topics that are only preaching, but do not seem as written to prohibit posts that contain some preaching and some sourced/supported content.

Perhaps, a very light addition to the Forum Rules could work. For instance, something like the following could work:

It is strongly recommended that a credible source or citation is always provided for any objective statements that are not meant as logical inferences (a.k.a. conclusions) from earlier statements. If a source is not provided, then any such objective statement generally needs to be clearly designated as a unsupported premise or assumption in some way, such as with the phrase, "For the sake of argument, let's assume X", where X is the premise or unsupported assumption. If an unsupported statement is included in a post but it is generally believed to be true by the moderation team, it will usually be allowed to remain without issue. However, insofar as a source is not included and the statement is not clearly marked as a unsupported premise, then it can be deleted at any moderator's discretion for any reason, usually in consideration of the degree the statement is considered by that moderator to be controversial, dangerous, or allegedly false (e.g. "The earth is flat." or "Drinking bleach cures chicken pox.").

If that seems to strict in itself, we could add in a sentence or two outlining a procedure in which the poster is asked to provide a source before the unsupported statement is deleted, with some timeframe (e.g. 72 hours) after which the statement will be deleted if a source is not provided.

To be clear, the above rule wouldn't apply to subjective opinions, such as the sentence, "I think ice cream tastes good", but rather only to objective statements, such as, "The population of China is 412".

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Scott, and you are okay with Steve's words to me? My words are in direct response to his personal accusations. But his words are okay whereas my are wrong?

The removed posts include a post by Steve, and the quotes I provided include quotes from Steve's post.

I did not read any posts in the topic prior to the earliest one I removed, which was itself reported by a third-party. If any earlier posts in the topic are in violation of the Forum Rules, please do report them.

In fact, if any of the posts are even merely borderline, please report them. It would be preferable to me that members err on the side of reporting borderline posts than the opposite. If a member thinks a post probably does not violate the rules but is borderline, then I would prefer the post be reported (and preferably not replied to).

Thank you,
Scott

[RJG]

The last post of Steve's is still there. Here's his wording:

"If we went round this buoy yet again, would it involve you denying a link between the density of a system of objects and distance between the objects, as it did last time? Or would there be a fun new angle with a fun new analogy?"

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

The last post of Steve's is still there. Here's his wording:

"If we went round this buoy yet again, would it involve you denying a link between the density of a system of objects and distance between the objects, as it did last time? Or would there be a fun new angle with a fun new analogy?"

That post was removed and merged into this topic as soon as I saw the report of it.

[Steve3007]

For the record, my take on this post:

If we went round this buoy yet again, would it involve you denying a link between the density of a system of objects and distance between the objects, as it did last time? Or would there be a fun new angle with a fun new analogy?

is this:

The expression "went round this buoy again" is a colloquial term meaning, in this context "had this argument again". So I wouldn't regard the first question there as off topic or otherwise rule breaking since the activity it asks about ("denying a link between the density of a system of objects and distance between the objects") is visible slightly earlier in the conversation and it's obvious from that conversation that the subject of "the density of a system of objects" is relevant to the topic and the denial of that link is relevant to the wider argument. So it's a clarifying question whose purpose is to be able to judge whether it's worth repeating the argument.

But the second question ("Or would there be a fun new angle with a fun new analogy?") is flippant in tone and, as such, could be regarded as ad hominem and therefore rule breaking. I'd suggest removing both instances of the word "fun". That would make it a simple question asking if any new analogies are going to be added to those already used (thumbtacks, mosquitos, sunburn and marbles.)

[Steve3007]

On the wider subject of how to decide whether a post is off topic:

That's a difficult one. Obviously moderators don't have time to read through pages and pages of posts to establish context so they have to judge by taking the allegedly off-topic post either in complete isolation or in narrow context. But inevitably that can lead to false positives. For example, as I said, in the particular topic being discussed here, various analogies were used (thumbtacks, mosquitos, sunburn and marbles). A moderator could conceivably read a post in isolation, see that it's talking about marbles, note that the title and original post don't mention those objects and conclude that the post is off-topic. Similarly a post which mentions "a system of objects" might appear off topic.

No easy answer to that, I think.

[RJG]

I see nothing wrong (or "off-topic") with using analogies if the intent is to help create better understanding of points being made.