I speak to influence, I speak to illustrate, I speak to communicate ideas. That's what speaking is about. Communicating what I am thinking to others. I was not made aware of any social contract by which I am only permitted to speak when spoken to, similarly I am unaware of any obligation to speak on command. I think this is the only true independence of thought and deed, to be the master of my own self and to control the words I write and the things I say and do, from within my own self.

While I appreciate being badgered with lots of leading questions and mocked and derided by snide little remarks issued in poor taste, I don't know that there is any way that I can be forced to reply to them... in fact, I'm certain there's not.

I do look forward always to intelligent contributions to the topic, even if that means I often find myself waiting in vain. I appreciate your correspondence and commitment to whatever it is you've committed yourself to, here.

31 minutes ago, Unknown33 said:

I think what's interesting is when a Trump bashing thread lasts for several pages but a similar question about the future of liberalism is closed immediately, followed by serious discussion about only allowing certain people to participate in political discussion.

To me and the many people reading this post, that is very interesting.

Edit: This is how you destroy a forum, by the way. Nobody asked the question, but this is the answer. Maybe this will be the first community to survive becoming a contentious, politically biased platform for ideologues but it probably will not.

You alienate the original core userbase and then get a lot of trolls, then you seem to attract new users in droves, but after the trainwreck of the controversy wears off you just have a dead forum.

I think this illustrates why just not discussing politics here may be the option to go with unfortunatley.  I doubt anyone with anything meaningful to say put the site in their browser with the intent of discussing politics.  I was a fool to respond to the topic and can go literally anywhere else on the internet to discuss it.

I also feel like I have to come clean, I down vote most of your posts in these 2 threads, it's me.  At first it was because the content was barely coherent delusions of grandeur mixed with poorly parroted talking points but I continued to do it because it visibly upset you and because I'm petty and a child at heart who isn't above that kind of thing.

Also, you made a duplicate thread referencing a thread that had been locked hours prior on a relatively slow forum not centered around the topic or agenda you attempted to discuss.  What part of any of your common sense tells you that is okay and that they are in the wrong?  If you're such a coding stud that is better than anyone who went to the wrong college or attended a degree program you don't like as well as claiming to have the same views as the entire world aside from whoever disagrees with you at that particular moment why don't you just make your own site where you can enforce your own rules instead?  Call it devgame.ru

I'm of two minds on this.  On the one hand, politics is a legitimately interesting and timely topic for discussion, and a lot of good insight into many aspects of life can come from it.  Understanding politics in general is a vital life skill, and discussing current world events, historical politics, or politics as it applies to many other areas (whether it's relationships, science, career advancement, etc) can lead to insights and understanding that people can apply to their lives.  For many people it's also just fun to discuss and argue current events.

On the other hand, many political discussions inevitably become flame wars.  This typically happens when certain people come in and start to spew falsehoods and attacks with the pretense that they're the reasonable ones, they're the ones being fair and everyone else is just biased and pushing some kind of agenda.   This is basically what Unknown33 does here, and why he's getting so much push-back including a mod explicitly proposing rules to keep people like him out.   

Whether politics threads should be allowed to me just depends on how much and how strict the mods want to be with them.  Without any moderator supervision those threads can become very toxic.  With too much moderation they will be stiffed.  I dont know how much time the mods have to devote to just moderating these types of thread or how much stomach they have for it.  It's up to them.  I do like some of the proposals for allowing only people with certain levels of reputation or those who have been on the site and active for a certain period of time.  This makes sense.  Often you get people who only make accounts just to push their agenda or troll the forum.  And I probably dont have to mention all the "other" influence from certain nations who want to support a certain political party.

1 hour ago, Unknown33 said:

 

 Edit: This is how you destroy a forum, by the way. Nobody asked the question, but this is the answer. Maybe this will be the first community to survive becoming a contentious, politically biased platform for ideologues but it probably will not.

There have been plenty of politics threads on GDNet before. It didn't destroy the site then, it won't destroy the site this time.

And yeah, you were downvoted because you refused to answer direct questions and pretty much admitted that you were only here to taunt liberals by not answering direct questions. That's not engaging in good faith. If you don't want to reply to questions, why post in the first place, other than maybe to manipulate the site into making you look like a victim by closing your threads? Or perhaps some kind of power trip? Either way, I'd call it trolling.

My opinion is that this thread is a very good example of why intellectually dishonest, bad-faith arguing and trolling should be moderated much more heavily and with less leniency. I personally don't see the point in not acting more swiftly in these circumstances.

Pointless/inflammatory/off-topic response removed. -jbadams.

Argumentative response removed. -jbadams.

@Unknown33: Beyond perhaps your first post in this topic, you are not engaging in good faith, and are baiting argument with other members.

You are not to reply to this thread further unless you are explicitly responding to an on-topic point.

I will remind everyone that the topic is a meta discussion of discussing politics on GameDev.net, and not "liberalism", "trumpism", or any specific example of a political topic.

@Everyone else: you are not to engage with Unknown33 unless explicitly engaging with an on topic point.

Inflammatory/off-topic response removed. -jbadams

@Unknown33: take a 24 hour break from the site for ignoring explicit moderation instruction. Continued bad behaviour upon return may result in longer suspensions or permanent ban.