All posts on Political Bullpen are the responsibility of the individual poster and not the administration of Political Bullpen, pursuant to 47 U.S.C. § 230

Rules

Permanent Ban

  1. Promoting acts of violence.
  2. Promoting or describing how to commit any illegal act such as vandalism, fraud, illegal weapons modification, the purchase of illegal drugs, etc.
  3. Posting pornography.
  4. Calling for violent revolution against the government.
  5. A repeated pattern of disrespecting the forum culture.
  6. A repeated pattern of anti-social behavior.
  7. A repeated pattern of repeatedly insulting site, community members, or the staff.
  8. Having been suspended multiple times for any of the 7 and 3 day ban rules.
  9. Spamming for another website or trying to sell some product. You are of course allowed to post links to other sites, and you are even allowed to make threads about products you are selling, but you are not allowed to use this site as an advertising platform.

3 Day Suspension

  1. Flaming (all people involved in the flame war will get the same suspension, whether they started it or not - if someone starts flaming or insulting you, report them instead of responding).
  2. Uncivilized behavior (a pattern of rudeness or name-calling).
  3. Derailing a thread to argue about anything (the difference between “argument” and “debate” should be intuitively understood).
  4. Posting “gore” directly (this includes mutilated bodies, suicide victims, people with their heads blown off, aborted fetuses and mutilated animals, etc. “Gore” content can be used with the blur function or linked to, but with an explicit warning.
  5. Anti-social behavior.
  6. Engaging and arguing with an anti-social or uncivilized poster, instead of reporting them (if a certain number of users report an account, they will be blocked from posting - the only response you should make to an anti-social poster is to encourage others to report their account).
  7. Posting obvious bait threads.
  8. Continued poor quality posting.

7 Day Suspension

  1. Commenting on a thread without having read it. Claiming to have read the thread but not understood it will generally not be considered an acceptable excuse.
  2. Posting hardcore pornography.
  3. Attempting to cleverly avoid the no violence rule by making posts that are “technically” not illegal (“I hope x illegal act does/doesn’t happen to x person,” “x person deserves x illegal act,” etc.) This includes posting meme images of specific individuals being murdered.
  4. Linking to sites which allow for illegal downloads, including torrent sites.

NOTE: None of these suspensions or bans can be appealed.

NOTE II: Though this is intended to be a comprehensive list, it is possible to be suspended or banned for reasons which are not on this list.

Why was my post deleted?

Your post could have been deleted for multiple reasons.

The first reason is that it suggested violence, or could be construed in a court of law to have suggested violence. If this was the case, and seemed purposeful, you were presumably banned as well.

Another reason is that it is bait. Posts specifically designed to cause flame wars are banned. Flaming in itself is banned.

Along with this…

We also reserve the right to delete anything that we think is total crap.

We believe in free speech. But if we allow people to abuse the site or community members, it ends up destroying normal conversation, which effectively removes the ability of others to exercise their own free speech.

This is a Civilized Place for Public Discussion

Please treat this discussion forum with the same respect you would a public park. We, too, are a shared community resource — a place to share skills, knowledge and interests through ongoing conversation.

These are not hard and fast rules, merely guidelines to aid the human judgment of our community and keep this a clean and well-lighted place for civilized public discourse.

Improve the Discussion

Help us make this a great place for discussion by always working to improve the discussion in some way, however small. If you are not sure your post adds to the conversation, think over what you want to say and try again later.

The topics discussed here matter to us, and we want you to act as if they matter to you, too. Be respectful of the topics and the people discussing them, even if you disagree with some of what is being said.

One way to improve the discussion is by discovering ones that are already happening. Spend time browsing the topics here before replying or starting your own, and you’ll have a better chance of meeting others who share your interests.

Be Agreeable, Even When You Disagree

You may wish to respond to something by disagreeing with it. That’s fine. But remember to criticize ideas, not people. Please avoid:

  • Name-calling
  • Ad hominem attacks
  • Responding to a post’s tone instead of its actual content
  • Knee-jerk contradiction

Instead, provide reasoned counter-arguments that improve the conversation.

Your Participation Counts

The conversations we have here set the tone for every new arrival. Help us influence the future of this community by choosing to engage in discussions that make this forum an interesting place to be — and avoiding those that do not.

Discourse provides tools that enable the community to collectively identify the best (and worst) contributions: bookmarks, likes, flags, replies, edits, and so forth. Use these tools to improve your own experience, and everyone else’s, too.

Let’s leave our community better than we found it.

If You See a Problem, Flag It

Moderators have special authority; they are responsible for this forum. But so are you. With your help, moderators can be community facilitators, not just janitors or police.

When you see bad behavior, don’t reply. It encourages the bad behavior by acknowledging it, consumes your energy, and wastes everyone’s time. Just flag it. If enough flags accrue, action will be taken, either automatically or by moderator intervention.

In order to maintain our community, moderators reserve the right to remove any content and any user account for any reason at any time. Moderators do not preview new posts; the moderators and site operators take no responsibility for any content posted by the community.

Always Be Civil

Nothing sabotages a healthy conversation like rudeness:

  • Be civil. Don’t post anything that a reasonable person would consider offensive, abusive, or hate speech.
  • Keep it clean. Don’t post anything obscene or sexually explicit.
  • Respect each other. Don’t harass or grief anyone, impersonate people, or expose their private information.
  • Respect our forum. Don’t post spam or otherwise vandalize the forum.

These are not concrete terms with precise definitions — avoid even the appearance of any of these things. If you’re unsure, ask yourself how you would feel if your post was featured on the front page of the New York Times.

This is a public forum, and search engines index these discussions. Keep the language, links, and images safe for family and friends.

Keep It Tidy

Make the effort to put things in the right place, so that we can spend more time discussing and less cleaning up. So:

  • Don’t start a topic in the wrong category.
  • Don’t cross-post the same thing in multiple topics.
  • Don’t post no-content replies.
  • Don’t divert a topic by changing it midstream.
  • Don’t sign your posts — every post has your profile information attached to it.

Rather than posting “+1” or “Agreed”, use the Like button. Rather than taking an existing topic in a radically different direction, use Reply as a Linked Topic.

Post Only Your Own Stuff

You may not post anything digital that belongs to someone else without permission. You may not post descriptions of, links to, or methods for stealing someone’s intellectual property (software, video, audio, images), or for breaking any other law.

Powered by You

This site is operated by your friendly local staff and you, the community. If you have any further questions about how things should work here, open a new topic in the site feedback category and let’s discuss! If there’s a critical or urgent issue that can’t be handled by a meta topic or flag, contact us via the staff page.

Terms of Service

Yes, legalese is boring, but we must protect ourselves – and by extension, you and your data – against unfriendly folks. We have a Terms of Service describing your (and our) behavior and rights related to content, privacy, and laws. To use this service, you must agree to abide by our TOS.