Moderation of Political threads
But some things are stark, crazy obvious, staring us in the face.
Perhaps we've become immune.
Increasingly hostile and personal insults would not be acceptable in a real-life meetup.
What makes people think they can get away with it on internet forums?
Disrupting and distracting from a serious subject.
The analogy isn’t strong, here. This isn’t a meetup. There is no social setting. We’re just reading and writing in largely solitary situations, where no harm, distraction, or disruption from other members can really befall us.
This explains why people think they can “get away with it” on Internet forums. There are no social repercussions for being hostile to other members. No threat of violence, ostracism, or shame. But we’re also largely anonymous, so much so that any insulting and hostile poster is really swinging at a caricature in his own head. Thus, each insult or hypocrisy reveals much more about the offender than his intended victim. He’s fighting something of his own creation. That’s the irony of the whole thing.
More importantly, insult, satire, diatribe, are all important facets of democracy in particular, politics in general, and I agree with the mods that some leeway should be given in such discussions. To maintain a modicum of decorum without eliminating these important facets is no easy task, but to make it easier on all involved, maybe we ought to grow thicker skins.