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Welcome to The Debate Unlimited Forum
All discussion is in English, all times are GMT, unless you change your settings, the whole world is welcome here.
Debate Unlimited is a title, not a claim about a product. Of course there are limits, you can discuss many things that you would not be welcome to discuss elsewhere but we do need some rules and codes of behaviour. The more extreme and controversial the views the more important it is to avoid gratuitously annoying people.
Choose The Right Forum
The Atheism Forum
is for all discussions of interest to atheists and all theological discussions. This forum attracts a mainly atheist audience but theists are more than welcome to join in or start debates. I reserve the right to remove anything which I consider to be simply a statement of dogma.
The Politics Forum
is for political issues. Please note that this is an international forum. Phrases such as “our nation” and the like are not appropriate. There is no national majority on this forum, the largest minorities are British, American, Canadian and Australian, but with many more countries represented as well.
The Quiz and Puzzle Forum
is for quizzes, puzzles and games.
Links
is for links, plugs and adverts. It's a FREE FOR ALL board, with no strings. Please post all such posts here, they do get noticed, I promise. If you post them elsewhere they may get moved or they may just get deleted, it depends whether or not I had a bad day. Get it right.
I don't mind people putting adverts to websites or other bulletin boards on here but please observe these guidelines:-
No flash, no animated GIFs and preferably no graphical links of any kind. Keep links to text only please. You must have noticed that this place is very light on graphics. That is not an accident. I want the board to fly onto the screen, graphics slow things down.
No commercial advertising, it will be removed.
Spam is usually removed in less than a quarter of an hour, don't waste your time.
The Mind and Matters Forum
is for everything else. It is difficult to imagine anything being considered off topic here. If you have got a weird theory that you need some feedback on this is the place to air it. Language, memetics, evolutionary theory, psychology and geeky humour seem to be fairly constant themes but almost anything goes here, unless it fits another of the forums better.
Links
If you are linking to a very bandwidth intensive site or one with material that some people may find tasteless or offensive in some way please indicate this, links that do not give appropriate cautions will be deleted.
The abbreviation NSFW (not safe for work) should be considered as a flag when posting a link to anything which might cause offense to the petty-minded.
Hit and Run posting
I reserve the right to delete hit and run posting without needing to justify the action. Posts which are obviously intended simply to drop links onto the board rather than to engage in debate will be removed. As will unanswered first posts of all kinds. If a virgin post doesn't get a reply within five days the chances are it never will.
Lurking
People are free to lurk, to be a member but not post, however lurkers cannot put links in their profiles. Several inactive members have been deleted if I suspect their motives were simply to post spam links when I am not looking. Don't waste your time or mine. If you intend to just lurk please state lurking as one of your interests in your profile.
Censorship
You are free to develop any argument and put any case, including those that many liberals would not tolerate. However all types of incitement to violence, glorification of violence and violent language is unwelcome and may be removed.
Junk Posts
I may decide to delete what I consider are junk posts, that is posts that have so little content that they are just clogging up the system without having any merit. Exchanges of catch-phrases and smileys and virtually anything in all capital letters could be deleted under this clause.
Language
Please use English. Please try to spell correctly and be aware that this site attracts people from all over the world who may not share your dialect, that is not meant to discourage you from using good dialect phrases only to be careful that your meaning can still be drawn out by intelligent people who are not totally familiar with your dialect.
There is no “profanity filter” operating on this forum. You can use any word that is suitable and aids your meaning but please be aware that the impact of such words is best maintained by using them sparingly. People who use offensive language gratuitously may be banned. And the same goes for exclamation marks. People who put three exclamation marks after everything are annoying and deserve to be banned.
If you don't want to use obscenities please don't imply them, use a more inventive expression instead. Do not self-censor any words: it looks like you are scared of your own thoughts, if you are scared of your own thoughts you have come to the wrong place. Moderators are under instruction to change bowdlerized words to either the full intended word or a pseudo-random nonsense word. e.g. if you put motherf*#*ers it will be changed into either the plain motherfuckers it is obviously meant to be or something silly like munchkins or metaphysicians.
Spell Check your posts!
Get yourself a browser that does spell checking in place in all text entry boxes:
Avatars
If you have your own webspace you can link to a photo and use that as your avatar. This can be set in your Profile when you set your options and create a personal profile, which you are strongly encouraged to do.
If you want me to host an image for you just ask. I can host a photograph, an avatar of your choice or even perhaps make an avatar for you.
Rules for avatars
1 ] Avatars must be either of your face or something that is clearly not your face. You cannot use another person's face as your avatar. (Obviously this relies on honesty)
2 ] Avatars must not be animated
3 ] Avatars may be in GIF JPG/JPEG or PNG format
4 ] Avatars must not be more than 80 pixels wide or high. If you don't want a square image you don't have to have one, but you can't trade height against width, both are maximums which will be enforced.
5 ] Violent images are not allowed. Violent images may include (but this rule is not limited to) images of weapons, destruction, death, blood or means of torture. (Yes, that does mean crucifixes are not allowed.)
6 ] Avatars may not be hotlinked from other websites without permission
7 ] Avatars must not be excessively gaudy
8 ] Avatars may not be ugly The cosmetically challenged can't get away with looking as moody as the beautiful people. Life's like that.
9 ] Avatars should not be more than 5 KB (aim for less than 3 KB, it is not difficult)
10 ] Avatars should not contain long messages in words
I will gladly house avatars for anybody and I will make sure the image is compliant and is optimized. Simply reducing the size of an image almost never works well, turning a large image into an avatar just by resampling it leads to a small soft-focus fuzzy image that is bigger in file size and much less clear than it should be. Most avatars I come across are, to use a technical phrase, a bit shite. If you don't know how to optimize such an image let me do it for you, send me the image at at least twice the size you want it displayed and not heavily cropped and I will email it back or I'll house it on my site and send you the link for it.
Signatures
Signatures have been disabled. Far too many people write a signature and then slap it down every time they post something and simply cause constipation on the forum. If you really need to sign off with a witticism you won't mind doing it manually, will you? If you do object to repeating yourself just think how we feel about having to go to all the trouble of loading and ignoring the bloody thing.
Images
Hotlinked images are not allowed. By this I mean images that belong on other websites that have not been released into the public domain specifically for such use. If you control the webspace the image is hosted on then that is fair enough but putting in a link to a photograph that is not yours housed on a website that is not yours which will in all likelihood generate a cost to an account that is not yours is theft. I spend several hours each month trying to track down people who steal images from mwillett.org, having a stolen image on a forum generates a lot of traffic, often long after the users of the forum have stopped visiting that page and moved on because search engine spiders sniff them out and search engines continue to send visitors to those pages in dribs and drabs in perpetuity.
When I find out who has been stealing which image I usually substitute one of my own devising, needless to say such an image is designed to cause the maximum possible embarrassment to the thief. I do not want anything similar to happen on my forum!
Some websites set aside funny images complete with very conspicuous URLs in the image, it is a reasonable assumption that the people hosting that image want you to use it to advertise their website. Using such images is allowed. Otherwise you should host images on webspace you control. Technically this could still be considered as a copyright infringement in many cases but I think it is reasonable to assume that about half the images on the internet fall into this category. If anybody complains that an image on mwillett.org is an infringement of their copyright and can show some evidence to back up that claim then the image will be withdrawn.
The Score
Debate is not a zero sum game. Do not try to win, just develop a good debate, admit when you are wrong, don't back down just because you are in a minority, have fun and don't take it all too personally. There are no prizes, no votes, no scores, no winners. Enjoy the experience.
Deletion and Banning
Several people have managed to get themselves banned by being consistently annoying and deliberately provocative. You won't be the first so there's no glory in trying. People are never banned for what they are arguing, or who they are arguing with, only for how they are arguing.
It is only fair to point out that people expressing extreme views have to meet a higher standard of debate etiquette, the more you disagree with the consensus the more polite you have to be. Is that fair? Maybe not, but it's the rules.
Individual posts will be deleted if they are hot-headed and excessively insulting to other members of the board.
People who cannot cope with any hint of an insult or bad language are welcome to fuck off.
No words are banned, if used in an appropriate context.
People deliberately misspelling words may have their posts deleted. Changing Cs in the names of people into Ks (or triple Ks) does not make any valid political point, it's bloody annoying and will not be tolerated: posts will be edited or deleted without warning.
Any post with more than three smileys in it may have me reaching for the delete option.
NO POETRY. It's not big and it's not clever. Whole threads, maybe even a whole forum, may be lost in collateral damage when I delete the stuff. Don't do it.
Anybody who is consistently aggressive to a particular member will be banned.
Anybody who is consistently aggressive or obnoxious to a particular group of members (women, Americans, Christians etc.) will be banned.
Anybody who boasts about sabotaging online collaborative projects such as Wikipedia will be banned permanently. The same goes for people who gloat about burning libraries for exactly the same reason.
Bullying will not be tolerated.
The Rules
Rule One
This is my website and my forum, it exists for my benefit not for anybody else's.
The forum cannot and will not be allowed to become a vehicle for attacking me (as opposed to the ideas I express) in any way.
I don't have to defend my decisions about what I do to defend my forum.
Rule Two
Never forget Rule One.
Rule Three
Except when this rule clashes with Rule One there is no limit on what issues can be debated and what opinions can be expressed. No opinions are protected from scrutiny or immune from criticism except one: nobody calls me a liar. Ever.
Rule Four
You are free to express your agreement with Rule Two and Rule Three. Rule One is not debatable.
Rule Five
Personal attacks on any participant in DU are not tolerated however people making personal attacks will not be automatically censured (except when this clashes with Rule One) unless a formal complaint is made by private message. It is not my job to anticipate your hurt feelings.
Anybody who has joined DU just to stalk another member will be banned.
Rule Six
In the event of a personal attack being made the culprit must on demand remove the offending remarks (unless they have already been removed by a moderator or by me) and refrain from repeating the attack. There is no requirement to make an insincere apology. Petulance and the holding of grievances by either offender or offendee may fall foul of Rule One.
Rule Seven
Moderators and myself may edit posts to correct spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. It is not permissible to complain about this or to make out that making errors is part of your freedom of expression. See Rule One.
Correctly formed sentences in American English will not be "corrected" into British English, or vice versa. See Rules Eight and One.
Rule Eight
One of the most important parts of the DU experience is the wide range of people who are attracted to post. Any malicious attacks on groups of people based upon ethnicity, language, race, sexuality, sex, sexual orientation, class, age or nationality will be regarded as a serious matter. If you have been offended by any remarks of this nature make your complaint to a moderator by private message. Moderators will only act upon their own judgement when such comments are grossly offensive and clearly malicious. It is not up to moderators or myself to anticipate your hurt feelings. On the other hand just because offence was felt it does not follow that action will be taken, the overly-sensitive will not be protected by preventing free expression, e.g. words such as nigger, queer, spic, abo, paki and cunt are potentially hurtful words but they will not be censored simply because somebody objects to their appearance in any post regardless of context.
Note that religion, creed and ignorance do not count as categories granted protection: you don't have a choice to be Belgian, a lesbian or ginger-haired but being scientifically ignorant, Muslim or Catholic is a matter of choice. If you don't like the heat get out of the kitchen. You don't get to choose to be born to a family of rednecks, Jews or Mormons but you do get to choose whether or not that is something you identify yourself with, take responsibility for that choice even if you didn't notice yourself making it.
Rule Nine: The enough already rule
People may be suspended, asked to stop debating a certain point or excluded from a particular forum if their posting activity is seriously affecting the balance of debate on a particular forum. Whilst people are free to debate any issue and from any point of view this does not extend to inundating a particular thread or forum with excessive numbers of posts pushing the same line especially if in a loud and obnoxious manner. If a casual observer can mistake a minority for an overwhelming majority this is a matter of concern. New posters can be particularly susceptible to action being taken under this rule as can anybody who has a lot of time on their hands. Please note that action taken under Rule Nine is not censorship or gagging it is designed to maintain the character and appeal of Debate Unlimited. Rule Nine cannot be used as a permanent gag on debate, even the tiredest argument may be resurrected after several months.
Rule Ten
People may be permanently excluded from Debate Unlimited if they seem to take a pleasure in being negative and complaining about the way the forum is run. This is the way the forum is run, it is not open to debate or susceptible to the pressure of whingeing. If you don't like the way I run the forum you should either keep it to yourself or leave. See Rule One.
Rule Eleven
You may not promote inter-personal violence on the forum in any form including glorying in self defence and “anti-crime” precautions. If somebody asks you if you own a gun you may answer but boasting about your skills in karate or how many rounds of ammunition you keep under your pillow will be regarded as obnoxious macho willy-waving and suitable reason for suspension (for a first offence) or banning.
Rule Twelve
Posting images, videos and even excessively graphic verbal accounts of violence and the effects of violence is not permitted. The forum does not attract people who are too stupid to understand verbal descriptions of atrocities or who need detailed descriptions of violence to understand that war, torture, murder, rape, rioting, riot suppression and 'ethnic cleansing' are bad things.
Rule Thirteen: Quality Threshold
The management reserves the right to remove posts and/or ban people who are too stupid, crazy, illiterate or unimaginative to contribute to the debate.
Such deleted posts will be marked as Deleted Under Rule 13.
Rule Fourteen
It's not about you. Seriously. People are free to debate various subjects but there is no room or appetite for people who wish to spend all their time talking about themselves and making every statement a reflection on them. If you want to pontificate about yourself all day long get a psychiatrist, or a blog.
Play Nice!
