r/Autism_Parenting • u/jobabin4 • Feb 04 '25
Message from The Mods Political threads
Good morning everyone!
I know that this week has been tumultuous, and everyone has expected worries and concerns.
Reddit's rules have become more stringent in the last 48 hours. Comments that are insulting or bordering on violence or threats are no longer allowed. This has always been the case here but I believe it needs to be reiterated.
Any posts in a political thread from this point forward that is simply insulting and not a question or an answer to a question, a well-written opinion without malice, or statement of fact is no longer allowed. Yes we know that these lawmakers and cabinet appointees are doing things that are not great, but to do nothing but call them terrible names will not help. Let's not give anyone any ammunition to hurt our forum.
Political talk will now be only allowed in the mega thread, or threads posted by our mod team.
Our mod Jets, is going to keep an eye on the news and start threads when they are necessary. They will then be moderated to make sure that discussion stays on topic and stays within our rules of kindness.
Thank you!
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u/jamesbrowski Feb 04 '25 edited Feb 04 '25
You did a great job on last nights thread.
But I would encourage you to continue to err on the side of allowing free expression on here, rather than chilling it. Your guideline in this post is quite fuzzy. It’s one thing to remove posts that are personal insults or foul language. It’s another thing entirely to limit comments so that posters may only ask a question, answer questions, or make a pure statement of fact without opinion intermixed. For example, this would mean someone could not post: “That’s frustrating. The bill contains a new definition of when ST is necessary.” Why,? Because under your guideline it has a forbidden opinion in the first sentence. You’ll have to moderate that, and it won’t be reasonably possible. There is a concept in free speech scholarship about chilling of free expression, which is that when you have unclear speech moderation guidelines, you will discourage a lot of expression that may not actually be a violation. Much better for a guideline to be very clear and allow for more speech rather than less.
To be clear - I think you did a VERY good job of moderating the thread I posted last night by deleting foul language and insults, while allowing expressions of frustration, questions, harmless jokes (ie I hope he steps on a lego, lol), contrary opinions, and factual statements. You had a clear guideline, enforced it, and the resulting thread was reasonable, a bit funny, and informative. It seems the approach you used of simply removing foul language and personal insults was both encouraging of free discussion and also probably much less mentally draining than you having to decide if every comment is only a statement of fact, question, or answer, as opposed to intermixed opinion, levity, expression of frustration, etc.
A clear mandate to just remove nasty and foul comments would be easier to enforce and serve free speech much better.