However, I'd like to elaborate on a few points and add a couple more that I feel are necessary to follow in the "Current Affairs and Serious Stuff" forum.
Here are some of my (personal) criteria for locking a topic or warning a user:
Opinion vs. Perspective
I'd consider a lock or a warning when a topic eventually is whittled down to exploring a specific person's opinions as opposed to questioning and debating their perspective. This really becomes an issue of "X camp vs Z camp" which, frankly, is terribly boring to witness and be a part of. Feel free to question conditioning, feel free to question our social construct, feel free to dig deeper into why we form the opinions we do, but once the debate is about "This is my opinion about X topic, I challenge you to change my mind", it's already beyond discussion. There is no room for the discussion to grow.
That's my problem with posting extremely loaded topics, if the answer to what you personally seek is painfully evident to you, then what's the point of the discussion? Remember, no one "wins" a discussion, you don't go home and tell your mother you won a discussion on the internet. It never is about sneaking the right point in for internet glory. For me, a discussion is about questioning my own motives, where I come from and get a better understanding of myself. It pushes me to dig deep and critically analyze my own perspective. Call me selfish or cynical, but at the end of the day the only thing I can take away from any discussion is the way I reacted to it. That's the only reason debate on any topic still goes on. Special brownie points if you manage to slip in a dick joke or two.
Stay on Topic
This one is especially important when it comes to dealing with volatile issues. I'd rather Godwin be delayed or denied rather than welcomed. And I would warn against shoehorning your own agenda into a seemingly unrelated topic.
Repeating Yourself
aviel wrote:Okay, those are some nice criteria, though I'd like to specify that I only repeat myself if I've been ignored, not if somebody disagrees with me. For all I know, I made a convincing point and the other person didn't even hear it. I think that's reasonable: we aren't obligated to never say something ever again if a person misses it, right?
I request you to not to repeat yourself over and over again, regardless of whether the other person chose to willfully ignore it. That's why we have moderators, we'll jump in and guide the discussion. If we feel a particular point was missed, we'll bring it up. Please don't take it upon yourself to keep hammering in the same point.
Those are some of the issues I could think of now, if there are some more, I'll make sure to add it.
I'd like to stress on the fact that these points are more or less exclusive to the "Current Affairs and Serious Stuff" board. Simply because we are talking about a lot of sensitive issues there and a lot of what is said is taken seriously. The same criteria does not apply to other boards.
Apologies for not being clear on that thread, I was going to address it sooner rather than later, I just have a lot on my plate currently.