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.

The Rules

Rule One

This is my website and my forum, it exists for my benefit not for anybody else's. Read the URL.

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. The forum has never pretended to be a democratic organization, it is a benign dictatorship.

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 the job of forum administrators or moderators to anticipate your hurt feelings.

5.1] 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 judgment 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. See Rule 16.4

8.1] 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. 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. 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 will never be used as a permanent gag on debate on any subject.

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 whinging. 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.

Posting graphical images of violence is insulting our intelligence.

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.

Rule Fifteen: 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 make an avatar for you.

15.1 ] 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.

15.2 ] Avatars must not be animated.

15.3 ] Avatars must not be more than 120 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.

15.4 ] 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.)

15.5 ] Avatars may not be hotlinked from other websites without permission

15.6 ] Avatars must not be excessively gaudy

15.7 ] Avatars may not be ugly. The cosmetically challenged can't get away with looking as moody as the beautiful people. Life's like that.

15.8 ] Avatars should not be more than 15 KB and should be clear and crisp

15.9 ] Avatars should not contain long messages in words

Rule Sixteen: language

16.1] People who cannot cope with any hint of an insult or bad language are welcome to fuck off.

16.2] If you mean it write it. If you don't want to use obscenities 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.

16.3] 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.

16.4] Everybody is free to use words such as nigger, spic, coon, paki, Yid, faggot, slut and so on as long as they are not aimed at specific people. Just as guns don't shoot people people do so words are not offensive or insulting until they are aimed at people. You may use such words when talking about the use of such words. Referring to words by code letters is self-censorship which further fetishizes and adds to the shock value of the words as weapons. You may not use racial slurs or insulting terms for people based upon their sexual tastes or practices (majority as well as minority tastes) in a way which is clearly aimed at offending people directly or being generally offensive about particular kinds of people. If you can't understand this see Rule Thirteen.

16.5] You can use any word that is suitable and aids your meaning, but in moderation. People who use offensive language gratuitously may be banned.

16.6] People who put three exclamation marks after everything are annoying and deserve to be banned. Or flayed.

16.7] It is not acceptable to change the spelling of words or names to make puerile and infantile points. You may not maliciously change people's usernames when you quote them or deliberately spell names or other words incorrectly. e.g. If a user was called Billy Farquharson you could legitimately abbreviate his name to Billy, or Billy F, but calling him Billy Fartpants would not be acceptable.

Rule Seventeen: New Topics

Anybody may start a new topic. However...

17.1] You may post the same question in DU as you are asking elsewhere on the internet but only occasionally. People who regularly start new topics which are clearly written for a different audience will be banned.

17.2] If we are not interested we are not interested. Repeatedly posting new topics which are all about your favourite subject that nobody else is interested in will be a reason for banning.

17.3] 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.

Rule Eighteen: Lurking

You don't need to post to be a member but people who do not post cannot have a link in their profile. Please state lurking as one of your interests to avoid your membership being removed in periodic culls of inactive accounts.

Rule Nineteen: Sexual content

19.1] You may not directly post graphical images of sexual activity or nudity on the forum except in a topic which is marked as NOT SAFE FOR WORK in the topic title.

19.2] Links to material on other sites which might cause embarrassment because of their sexual content should be clearly marked as NOT SAFE FOR WORK.

Rule Twenty

No poetry. It's not big and it's not clever.

Rule Twenty One: Age Restriction

There is no formal age restriction on the site. Nothing on the site or the forum should be seen as trying to entice children to participate or to prevent them from taking part if they have the intellectual capacity to do so.

Rule Twenty Two: Play Nice

22.1] The more extreme the position you hold the more important it is that you debate politely and show respect to other members.

22.2] The less you agree with me the more important it is that you debate politely. see Rule One

Rule Twenty Three

All debates must be done in hot blood. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Anybody who argues for the sake of arguing or to hone rhetorical skill by knowingly arguing the opposite of what they actually believe may have their posts and possibly also their membership deleted.

This rule should not be seen as a way to prevent people flying a kite or having a whimsical discussion but rather a way to allow us to remove people (or lawyers) who merely wish to hone their rhetoric as a tool for personal or professional advancement.

Rule Twenty Four

Do not hotlink images without permission. Do not embed images in the forum unless you have permission from the owner of the site which hosts the image.

Rule Twenty Five

All forms of generalization and vagueness are allowed, even by other people.

25.1] Weasel words are allowed. Lack of citations is allowed. Non-specific if-the-caps-fits-wear-it accusations are allowed. This is Debate Unlimited, not Wikipedia. Nobody needs to provide proof for opinions.

25.2] Pointing out people making generalizations of the type in Rule 25.1 is allowed, however it cannot be implied that this form of critisism makes the original post illegitimate in any way.

Rule Twenty Six: user confidentiality

26.1] Anybody who maliciously reveals personal information about a user on the forum which may lead to them being identified will be permanently banned.

26.2] User names can be changed, to protect your confidentiality, on request.

Rule Twenty Seven: suspensions, deletions and bans

27.1] Members may have their accounts permanently deleted for serious breaches of the rules. A deleted account cannot be found in a search. Deletion cannot be undone.

27.2] A ban is a reversible process which causes you to see a message saying you have been banned. A ban may be reversed after a specific time without the user having to do anything.

27.3] A suspension is caused by changing your password, your account still exists and your posts are available to be viewed and searched. You cannot log into your account until you get the new password which you have to ask for or I send to you by email. This process ensures that you do not return until I have decided that the time is right. It also gives you the opportunity to return quickly if you apologize for breaking the rules. Apology messages full of justifications are almost always a waste of time.

Martin Willett

5 August 2011

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