Before I get into this, I want to point out, that while I may not agree with some of your political views, I repect them. I think that some of your views are nuts, quite fankly, but I will never let our differences affect how I treat you as people. I expect (and demand) that same respect in return. I encourage good political debate on this site, and do not want any of you to feel that you have to censor your beliefs.
That said...
I am on a mailing list of Dolphins webmasters that keep in touch to discuss promotions, linking, site issues, etc. and I was warned a month or so back about a member named "runtheball". I was told that he had signed up to another website's forum, where he primarily argued politics. When asked to cool it, he got very nasty, including calling one of the webmasters a "cunt". I was warned to ban his IP before he got a change to post.
...but I didn't.
I do not want to censor people, and I think that I've done a pretty good job at welcoming those who don't share my viewpoints, be them sports-wise or political. We'd had a few other "loose cannons" come on here and become contributors, and I didn't want to cut people off before they had a chance.
So, true to form, runtheball jumped right into the political forum, and to his credit, he never crossed the line.
However, last night he reported this thread to the moderators:
http://www.thedolphinsmakemecry.com/forums/index.php?topic=8294.msg83191#msg with this message to me:
"Not sure why my innocuous statement needed a reply full of personal attacks. Do you ?"
In it, bsmooth calls him a puppet....but I thought it was fairly mild. This thread was reviewed by both me and UK_Dolfan and neither of us found anything that was against forum policy or even remotely offensive. We took no action, but I saw that, having been warned, this could become a problem. I returned this reply:
"Dude, chill out.
He called you a puppet. Maybe you should avoid political threads.
I've heard that they've gotten you in trouble before.
--Dave
TDMMC"
Here is runtheball's reponse:
"Dude,
Learn to read. It was more than that.
I've read some of your replies. You obviously have an agenda, so suck my dick Dave."
I work too hard on this site in my personal time to have personal attacks sent to me.
So, there you have it. I hope that nobody feels disenfranchised about their political views, as I assure you it had nothing to do with the decision. Keep it civil, guys.
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