The site has established debate principles to help achieve productive discourse, the usage of these principles is always encouraged and required for dissent to site established efforts that are working towards the advancement of our Mission Statement. The principles are:
• Follow the site's Usage Guidelines, taking particular care not to use ad hominem attacks and insults against others. This means don't say "You're [some derogatory term]"
• Debate only in proper context; start a new thread if necessary.
• Present your position in an intellectual manner, provide reasoned supporting details.
• Maintain a respectful disposition.
• Do not claim something to be true/false without presenting proof.
• Work to get along with other participants, ask clarifying questions before casting negative assumptions.
• Use extreme care to not misrepresent what you are arguing against. Ask clarifying questions before casting potentially inflammatory misrepresentation.
• Remember to be respectful and work to achieve the purpose of advancing the site's Mission Statement.
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Being respectful
Maintaining a proper decorum is essential for any group, and is critically important for online political forums, being respectful of others is an important part of that and required by the Site Usage Guidelines. Here are some examples of being respectful vs. not:
• "You're an idiot for thinking that." -- not respectful since you statement is based on an insult.
• "Here are the problems with your line of thinking..." -- respectful, you don't have to agree and can present logical counter-arguments.
• "Troll" -- calling other members a troll is not respectful and implies you know the intent of the member.
Religious context:
• "God does not exist" -- not respectful since you are declaring others' religious doctrine wrong without a proof.
• "I disagree with your beliefs" -- respectful, you don't have to agree, but you can still be amicable about it.
• "Your church services are stupid" -- not respectful, you can certainly think they don't have value, or think they are not at all of interest to you, but they may be important to others and there's no point in demonizing them - no public policy will change.
• For complete deals see this special instructional thread.
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