Terms of Conduct: Political forum

This forum is a place for discussing current events, political situations and other issues that are not car related. It is your soap box for discussing these events and debating your position.

1) This forum is not for car questions, car pictures or other matters that are properly presented in the other NICO forums.

2) Debate your position. If you are incapable of debating or someone has proven you wrong, do not resort to name calling nor other childish behavior

3) Realize others will have different stances and priorities than you do. It is the way of the world and should simply be accepted that something important to you may not be important to others.

4) Personal attacks means you lose.....and may result in a ban

5) General discussions on religion will not be tolerated. There are numerous religious aspects within politics and these are open for debate. Attacking a member for having a religious affiliation will not be tolerated.

6) Posting something inappropriate. In the interests of professionalism, we ask that anything posted on NICO be "PG-13" in nature. There are other sites where "anything goes" and, while we try to avoid censoring content, NICO is not one of them.

7) Flaming, bashing or trolling. A good rule of thumb here is, "if you don't have anything nice / constructive to say, don't say anything." NICO prides itself on being a safe place for all people (newbies and veterans) to learn and share a common interest.

8) Commercial posting. We all hate spam, and spamming our members is a good way to be removed from NICO. Further, if you are a business and you have a product that might be of interest to our members, feel free to contact us. We can't allow commercial posting for non-paying advertisers, but we're very flexible and can design a package that accommodates most business budgets.

9) Starting a new topic in place of one that you *think* might have been removed by a Moderator for one of the aforementioned reasons is simply bad "netiquette" and will be dealt with appropriately.

10) Grammar is important. Use appropriate English so you may be understood.

11) NO POSTING PASTED ARTICLES AS THEIR OWN THREADS. Feel free to link to an article in your post to make a point, but posting up an article as a "wall of text" contains zero original thought or opinion and is thus not justification for making a new thread. This is a discussion thread, not a news site, we can all go read the articles in the news.

Additionally:

Argumentum ad hominemThese are arguments directed against a person instead of that persons position/opinion. Name calling, such as referring to them as drunk or a retarded are but a few examples of prohibited ad hominem responses. Ad hominem arguments are never proper.

Using a Strawman to avoid the ad hominem rule is equally invalid. For instance, making a caricature and attacking it with an ad hominem argument is no more than sidestepping the ad hominem attack.

Ad hominem responses typically, but not always, have the word "you" in them. If you have used that word, perhaps you should reread what you are posting and see if it might be misconstrued. How would the average person interpret your comment?

Meaningless questionAsking questions that can not reasonably be answered. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Flights of the imagination go in General Chat.

Respect the opinion of others. Respecting doesn't mean you have to agree, it means you allow others to toe option to disagree. Even if you are opposed on one issue, such as pro-life, you may be together on another, such as gun control. Respect breeds respect.

Take a walk. It is often better to take a 15 minute break and walk around the block before responding to an argument in an emotional fashion. You are your own keeper.

Here are some tips that you may find helpful in polishing your debate technique. These are not forum rules, instead they are presented to assist you in your debate. By applying these principles you will learn to avoid fallacies of logic that often lead to unwanted results.

Appeal to ignorance. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence You can not prove a negative fact no matter how hard you try. For instance, stating Big foot doesn't exist because one has never been captured is a false statement. You can prove Big foot exists by capturing one, however you can't prove it does not exist because one has never been captured. Lack of evidence supporting a fact is not evidence against that fact.

Begging the Question. (petitio principii) Asking the question in such a way that the answer can be assumed. When one begs the question, the initial assumption of a statement is treated as already proven without any logic to show why the statement is true in the first place.

Mary is sexy because she is cute. The adjective "cute" does not explain the adjective "sexy." Which begs the question "What is sexy?"

Post hoc, (ergo propter hoc). It happened after, so it was caused by…When Mary's car stalls she sings a certain song, thereafter the car starts. The song has nothing to do with clearing the vapor lock, time did.

Misunderstanding the nature of statistics. Be careful of statistics. When President Eisenhower was informed that fully half the American population had IQs under 100, he was shocked. In fact, 100 is the average IQ. There must be as many below 100 as there is above 100.

Slippery slope. A fallacy in which a person asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another. These are improper because the argument assumes that the result of the initial ascertain will be followed by a specific action. "If you don't get As in school, you will never be successful." "If you give them an inch, they will take a mile."

Observational selection.Counting those facts which supports your position while ignoring those facts that do not. "Everyone agrees with my position." (Except him, and him, and her, and him….)

Counting supporting items, while ignoring contrary items.

Finally consider; Literacy works. Break posts into sentences and paragraphs. Use proper, not necessarily perfect, grammar. Write so your post can be read without difficulty.

Read the post you are responding to and the posts that preceded it.

Remain open to learning and rethinking your position.

I have read and understand the terms of Conduct.

Its cool we finally have a political forum, NICO =

All I can say is WOW! This totally goes against the Nico policy. When I saw someone with the custom title that said "Political forum Moderator" I thought they were just being a smart ^ss...

So far so good!

Guys, I got a GREAT compliment about this forum tonight from one of my Webmaster buddies who runs another huge forum...

He said we were NUTS to do this on a car forum. I told him our members are generally mature, respectful and can disagree without letting things get too personal... A couple months later, here we are, and he said he's AMAZED at the amount of information being passed on in here.

So, WELL DONE. All of you.

I'm brand new to the forum and am glad to see there is a politics forum.

In this day and age, in the current economy, it is difficult to discuss automobiles without thinking about politics. The two seem to go hand in hand lately. I love the suggestions in the first post. If those were applied to every debate forum they would attract far fewer posters who are just looking for a flame war or fight.

I also think it's wise to leave religion out of it. I have been in many debates on the subject and I can tell you there is no winning on either side.

RiceRocketGal wrote:I also think it's wise to leave religion out of it. I have been in many debates on the subject and I can tell you there is no winning on either side.

Indeed, yes!

Thanks for understanding.

Z

Well its nice that some section is there especially for politics. I think we all should seriously think about this. This would help to improve it and may ba the style of working of people involved.