Providing some quick context: earlier today another RGM poster linked me to some comments on the Current Affairs board that I'm not sure I had ever read before - I think I did years ago, but not sure - the issue at hand being related to my field of work, namely taxation policy. I proceeded to make a few comments, I believe this being the first : viewtopic.php?f=69&t=1697409&start=860#p65847309 . Most of them are on the technical point on the mechanism through which lower tax expenditures by firms lead to wage growth on the models that include them (which are pretty much all, the contentious issue how large/small is that effect). As I was on that thread, I casually replied to a comment someone had posted in the meantime. Let me get the url:
viewtopic.php?f=69&p=65852653#p65852653
For this, I was issued a warning by "fleet" with the motive being "derailment". I was quite perplexed and asked what exactly could constitute derailment; he clarified that it was derailment because, and I quote ipsis verbis, "talking Obama and his economy are not the subject of thread".
I found this beyond absurd: not only I didn't bring up "Obama and his economy", rather was merely replying to a comment about them; there's an abundance of mentions to Obama and his administration policies, consequences, etc, in that particular thread and every single the "Trump Thread xyz" I checked. I would think that is to be expected - how on earth can one even discuss the public policy of one president while not mentioning the others? This wasn't a decontextualized mention to a past administration; rather an argument on how to assign responsibility for the current economic climate to the current and past administrations.
In the same PM, "fleet" claimed that, and I quote again, moderators are "hardcore on [mentions to Obama". He then claimed that everyone gets warnings for that reason and moderators are very "strict about it". I quickly read the thread a few pages back and found that implausible. FWIW, two posters I asked about this issue claimed they have never got a warning for talking about Obama and other extraneous issues.
He then made the following comment on the thread:
"General reminder/warning. Obama, Fox, and Democrats are not subject of thread. Go to appropriate thread. Say no to derailing."
viewtopic.php?f=69&t=1697409&start=880#p65853015
I suspect the reason he had to write that comment is that he was being less than truthful when he claimed that "everybody gets a warning" for those things. In the meantime, and already after this stuff, there have been a bunch of comments about Obama, Fox, etc, that someone (I assume "fleet") has diligently moved to another thread - I find pretty bizarre people are getting warnings about the issue and still writing those posts one after the other?
Anyway, the trouble is that "mentions of Obama, Fox, Democrats, etc" seems like an absurd standard for derailment. And leave a huge amount of discretion for the moderators to issue wanrings and bans for the most trivial measures. That prompted me to ask for further clarification in the thread; "fleet" replied with this comment: viewtopic.php?f=69&t=1697409&start=900#p65856537
Make of that what you will, to me it just seems weird.
So, what I'd ask the moderation team to clarify:
- what exactly is the standard to derailment? Or forget about the exactly, just an approximation. If such a trivial topic like "what amount of credit does the Trump Administration deserve for the current economy and what should be assignedto past Administration, Congress, etc?" constitutes derailment of a generic "Trump Thread", as "fleet" claims, what on earth doesn't? Surely I can't be the only person thinking this is nuts?
- is it accurate that posters are issued board warnings over such trivial things?
I fully understand hard and fast rules are impossible, that Justice Potter Stewart's "I know it when I see it" is the only operative threshold, and that it isn't easy for moderators to adjudicate what is or isn't derailment - also that inevitably mistakes will be made. However, I'd rather not be banned because of some innocuous allusions to another politicians, or news orgs, or political parties in a thread literally named after the POTUS and ostensibly created to discuss politics and policy. I mean, the simple fact that posts keep being moved from that thread to another suggests not even the regulars on that board are au fait with the rules? How about the other threads?
I know politics is a very charged issue, people get emotional over it, mods will occasionally not be immune to such things. I suspect that's what happened with this moderator - which would be of no importance if it wasn't for all the weirdness that followed. I apologize in advance if I'm wrong, but it seems "fleet" made a little faux pas by issuing a warning for an utter banality, but then got trapped on and is now way too emotional to find his way out of it - his replies are increasingly erratic and esoteric, he sent me a link to some thread over PM and said "go complain there", then wrote in the thread that I should contact him via PM if I want to know if a certain comment is permissible (I think that post was deleted), but on most of his PMs he just make the same vague, snark-heavy, comments and doesn't really reply to my question.
To wrap this up, I genuinely just want to know if, e.g. writing something like "Trump isn't even the first POTUS using that expression, here's an example of the former POTUS using the exact same wording" on the "Trump Thread" will get me issued another board warning or not. This should be an easy yes or no question - although it'd be frankly bizarre if the answer was a yes- and probably more work for the moderators that they'd like to deal with!
Thanks in advance for addressing this issue.
That is not acceptable on this website according to your #1 rule. Attack the post, not the poster. Such hypocrites. You guys can't help yourselves with the personal attacks. Online it is personal attacks while in the real world libs get violent towards Conservatives. 
May peace be with you~
