This is a message to all religious forum users.
Since the beginning of the new year, the overwhelming majority of forum post reports has involved users and posts in this forum. Over two dozen of such reports with only 2 or 3 not being from this forum.
Many of these are not strict violations, but come close to toeing this line. Some users have had to be warned and some posts deleted.
Despite these actions, user interactions has grown increasingly vitriolic and more and more posts are coming close to and crossing that line. Rather than continue to issue individual warnings and habding out temporary bans, I am sending out a blanket warning to all religious forum users:
Reign in the insults and personal attacks. There is a negative feedback loop that is making each conversation consistently worse and worse.
The Moderation team is going to establish the following course of action:
1. Mark all current reports as handled; the above warning serves as a warning for all users regarding all reported posts.
2. Continue to monitor the situation.
3. If individual threads receive a high number of reports, and those reports involve posts that cross the line, or are coming close to crossing the line, the moderators will post a warning in that thread and lock it for 24 hours.
4. If the behavior repeats after the thread is reopened, the thread will be locked permanently.
5. If a thread is locked permanently as a result of the above, any users with any post that violates the CoC will be temporarily banned.
6. Continued violations after a temporary ban will result in further bans of increasing duration until the ban is indefinite
The moderation team knows that any discussion about religion will inevitably get heated, but please make sure you are following the CoC.
Thanks,
Virtuoso
-Chief Moderator