I agree with you little Acorn, it is very hard to decipher through the continual childish insults in threads to find the real debating issues....but what I try to do, is ignore the insults when being thrown at me, and respond back to the poster on the part of their post that I feel is worth debating. And if it continues in to the next post with the name calling, I continue to debate, without insulting the other person in retribution....
by the third go around, without me responding to them in like kind, the person I am arguing the argument with, has usually stopped the insults....I think they really want to debate the issues as well, but they get caught up in the hyperness of this board and insult throwing.
of course we all fall short of the glory of God, and I have not always been able to follow my own advice.....but I try, and it honestly does help in curbing insulting responses, eventually.
As far as the typical general insults thrown out by those on the right about Liberals, which essentially is an insult or generalization about me...I again try to ignore them and debate the issues worth arguing in the thread.
Maybe you should ignore the insults and generalizations the left has to say, like I do with the right wingers and see if you could get them involved in an actual debate on the thread topic.....it's worth a try...
This phenomenon of name calling and insults and generalizations is the bad side of free speech, but free speech none the less....I don't think the board moderators can really do anything about it...I personally, feel that I am seeing way too many members of this board in pink already, and when there are people in pink, it also means that there are already too many rules and restrictions imho. for a board that used to take pride in allowing posters to just be themselves, or "internet selves".
I am not certain if this is what you are calling for...but if it is...I sort of disagree...
I think we, as the members of this board, can try to change the ways of the board, without the gvt,
, without the moderators having to be more en-forceful than they have become...try something different when someone throws a bunch of insults and ignore them as I have suggested.
The moderators can pull out of threads, derailings of posters arguing by cleaning them up and moving those posts to what once was the Rubber room, and Romper room or the Flame zone....that way they are not censoring what posters are saying, just moving them out of a decent thread to keep the argument going without the side bar action of the children throwing insults....
