As long as we don't have overzealous moderation, things will be fine. And if we do, and the free-wheeling quality of TPM EC is lost? Well, that would suck. But C'est la vie!

Artapp, thanks very much for the tip re: Comment Policy! Definitely much more user friendly than Terms of Use.

Thanks AA.

I think the largest issue that people are having is the definition of acceptable and non-acceptable. So far we are living with the Potter Stewart's definition (with respect to obscenity): we'll know it when we see it.

The problem is we all see it differently. ;-)

Thanks, AA. I had allowed myself to get a little overly paranoid about posting here for a few days.

I always make fun of people doing the goodbye cruel world posts but I guess I'm ready to do one now. All of a sudden they're enforcing rules that haven't been enforced during the 2-3 months I've been posting here. And the only way I learn about it is from people complaining.

Not only do people get censored, they get called out and made an example of by Josh and others. They get scolded within the threads and then their names get brought up in a negative light in other discussions. Censoring's not enough - people have to be publicly humiliated too?

Wouldn't it have been nice if the admins had put up a notice someplace where we all could see it? Most people are willing to play by the rules - if we know what the rules are. I read the terms of service when I first signed up, but since they weren't being enforced, I forgot them.

I keep seeing references to a post Josh did in April. I wasn't even here in April, and if I had been, I wouldn't remember what he wrote then.

I was already unhappy because of all the Clinton bashing posts - but I don't want them censored. All the positive feelings I had right after the election are gone. I'm back to hating Obama and his supporters again. (Why the hell is he dragging this thing out for Hillary? It shows a total lack of respect for her.)

I'm also unhappy because my dashboard has been wiped clean. Gee, thanks for the site improvements. Not.

Anyway, it just hasn't been much fun here lately. I might be back after all this crap gets sorted out, but for now, I've got better things to do.

Sounds like I missed some fireworks. Oh, well. I not very good at process stuff anyway. Too ADD.:)

This is a website's posting policy we are talking about, right?

Yeah, that's what I thought.

The politics of this are so fierce precisely because the stakes are so small.

Josh Marshall elaborates in more detail on forthcoming community rules and his vision for acceptable behavior in more detail in this April post I just ran across:

TPMCafe Site News

By Josh Marshall - April 12, 2008, 6:14PM

I wanted to bring everyone up to date on some upgrades we're making to the site and also discuss community rules for posting and commenting. As you've probably been able to see over the last few days, comments and reader blog posts are now appearing on the site much more rapidly than they were before. We're also planning on pushing through another upgrade to the publishing software that runs TPMCafe early this next week and that should resolve some remaining glitches that have afflicted the site since the relaunch in early February.

It's been almost three years that TPMCafe has been online. It's gone through several designs and iterations. And it hasn't been since early on that we've had a community wide discussion of acceptable behavior at the site -- something that's become even more important since we've now integrated TPMCafe more deeply into the rest of our network of sites.

We're going to be posting acceptable behavior guidelines shortly. But I wanted to start off by setting out some key elements of the community discussion area we're trying to create what guidelines are necessary to help foster and preserve it. I'd also like feedback from readers on what they agree with, don't agree with and what they'd suggest changing.

A good baseline for behavior is that no one should talk to anyone else or at anyone else in a way they wouldn't in an actual, real-world cafe. That dictum is obviously open to a great deal of interpretation. But if we all ask ourselves this question candidly, I think it actually clarifies the great majority of questions about what's okay and what's not. The simple fact is that lots of people who are perfectly well socialized in real world behavior check all that at the door when they discuss things online. And our basic message is, don't.

This doesn't mean everything that we want flood of elaborate pleasantries in every discussion or that we don't want passionate debates. But in a real coffee house the most probable outcome of kicking off a conversation by calling someone a moron or a jerk is a physical confrontation or just getting kicked out of the establishment. We don't want it to be uptight like some Victorian-era gentlemen's club. But we'd like to build in some of that sense of restraint to stop things from escalating and preserve a place for vigorous and passionate but respectful discussion of important issues and ideas.

One other point I'd like to discuss. A lot of you have argued that the tone of the conversations at TPMCafe and in the discussion areas of the other TPM sites has gone downhill in the last couple months. I think there's a lot of truth in that. And I think that's for two basic reasons. First, the redesign that went online in early February opened TPMCafe up to the other TPM sites, thus bringing in a lot of new people, and also lacked some of the discussion moderation functions of the other publishing platform. That meant a lot of new people who weren't familiar with the norms that had built up at the site over time while also removing some of the tools that helped keep things in line. Second, and I think even more important, is the simple fact that the bitterly contested primary race has created what is in the history of the site simply an unprecedented level of intra-community acrimony. Those two factors together have taken a toll.

So we're going to begin an effort to raise the level of the conservation, along these lines.

So, a few other bullet points.

Profanity. We don't want to and probably couldn't ban four-letter word type profanity. But it should be avoided. Sometimes it's appropriate and even necessary. But allowing it to become commonplace degrades the conversation.

Four-letter words or denigrating language directed toward other Cafe denizens is grounds for having a comment removing, commenting privileges suspended or revoked.

Hate speech and expressions of prejudice of any sort, exhortations to violence or statements that may be deemed libelous are prohibited.

Political disagreement in itself is never a grounds for banning or exclusion from the site. The great majority of Cafe denizens may be progressives and liberals. But conservatives and people of all political persuasions are welcome here and should be made to feel welcome.