Over the past couple of years, a number of users here have expressed to me, both publicly and privately, that they feel that banhammer recently falls far too readily upon expressions of political opinion, namely anything that is not strictly politically correct.

While expressions of actual racism, sexism, and the like are clearly against the forum rules and should indeed face moderation, creating an environment where only one side of the political aisle is allowed to speak and exist is not conducive to a sustainable forum environment, especially when activity is already low; more than one long term user has called it quits in recent months because of this.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it should be open season, the existing rules against hateful conduct that have stood for decades should still be adhered to, I am simply passing on a concern here that quite a few members have relayed to me.

I believe that as far as politics on this site is concerned: Keep it to the “Politics Discussion” threads. That way if you do choose share something problematic, the ban can stay confined to Political forums and not become a site-wide ban. However you choose to take it outside of the political forums, then I believe the rules as they stand are fair enough. Can’t think of many instances where a ban wasn’t warranted due to sharing some genuinely problematic political points.

I haven't been following political discussions very closely, but I think every single time I've seen bans in political contexts here, they've been deserved. Sometimes the bans have come a bit easily, but even then they've definitely been deserved. Obviously I must have missed a ton of bans, so it's possible there's some undeserved bans there too, but based on what I've seen, I have little reason to suspect that to be the case.

I reckon the issue is that people don't want to be entirely civil about their opinions, because people tend to not be entirely civil when discussing politics. If that's the case, the real question would be whether some leeway should be allowed even if in practice it means racism, sexism etc. My moral stance is absolutely not and people should learn to be civil even in disagreement, but my pragmatic side isn't so sure - people are what they are, and trying to fight it too hard also has a cost.

This can be moved to the politics section if appropriate, wasn't sure which section it would be best suited to.