Banning criteria.

[Beto]

Thought Criminal was recently banned. All I read in the Probation subforum was:

"If you can't see this, then this is your mental defect and I don't want to hear another word about it."

I'm perfectly aware of TC's general political incorrectness and bluntness, and granted, TC wasn't always very polite, but is it enough to ban a member like TC, someone who often wrote very interesting posts, and with a verbosity level well above average, while members that add zilch to debate like InTheFlesh keep on cluttering threads? Moderators may tell me "if you don't feel ITF adds to debate, than ignore him, but he's not being impolite to anyone". True, but is being "polite" (and I'd argue that about ITF) more important than anything else? Why can't people that feel offended by TC ignore him? This is ridiculous. You're all perfectly aware the level of TC's debating skills. I'm honestly very disappointed at the criteria this forum has for banning people. Daedalus was another one that was capable of very interesting posts.

I'm now deprived of their opinions while members like ITF are free to ignore rule #5 to their heart's content. I was learning a great deal from TC, and this simply isn't fair.

[Cephus]

Sorry, rule #5 doesn't mention faith, if it did, then this wouldn't be a debate forum, it would be a discussion forum.

Unsupported claims are not as severe as personal attacks, so we've put those on the back burner. Since the more serious rule offenses have diminished, I have given the moderating team the go-ahead to crack down on unsupported claims. For the general public, feel free to use the report button on violations of rule 5.

That's wonderful news, Osteng. Hopefully all goes well and the quality of debate around here improves.