Hi everyone I'm new to posting on this forum and to be honest I'm a little dismayed at how leftists treat each other on this forum. While it may be common practice to be an arse hole to each other on the internet I do not see why this should extend to leftists who all have a common enemy. Through my experience on another forum where I'm an admin for people with socialist ideologies I have found this not to be the case. In fact we have had very little to moderate in the year I have been on that forum this is probably partly to do with the difference in size. I've joined this group as I hoped this may be some kind of oasis in the constant warring of Revleft. It seems this group is fairly quiet at the moment with the last post 2 months ago so if anyone is here please respond .

I think this group should be actively trying to change the culture of Revleft by condemning such posts as "**** is a waste of space" "**** should not exist" "**** should fuck off and die" I've seen variations of this in the learning section. I can only conclude that this is down to slack moderating and if this kind of behaviour was stamped out we would have a more productive debates and a more welcoming place to learn. So any thoughts on how we can make things better?

Hello Manic, thanks for joining the group and posting.

In regards to your point, yes the general size of this forum poses a great obstacle to respectful debate. It is quite difficult to maintain a productive dialogue when any of the 20-150 members who are online at a time can jump in a derail a thread fairly easily.

I recommend the following tactics:
- Use quote/response as much as possible. This keeps the discussion centered and lineal. It also allows you to respond to multiple people in one post keeping the thread clean.
- Re-read your posts. I can't emphasize this enough. I re-read once when I'm done, and once again when it's posted. It's easy, takes 10 seconds, and helps catch spelling errors, grammar, and most importantly, keeps posts coherent.
- Don't insult people. It's hard sometimes - really hard. But it's an internet forum and you can step away.
- Ask people politely to stop and fairly often they do.
- Use the 'report' button to report unacceptable posts (it's on the top right side of each post you see, near rep). Let us mods/admins know and we can handle the site better as a whole.

And thanks for reviving this group - it's a great one and serves a very important purpose. Good to have you here.

- August

I agree with both of you. I only call people ''stupid'' or ''idiot'' if they have been doing the same to me in a debate for some time, ideally I think politeness is better in all conversations and debates. I have seen too many mods and members just enter the thread with ''Fuck you...'', and that is not a good thing.

In a way, I think the rules should be sharpened a bit because I hate to see members being verbally abused on forums. Still, there is a fine line between ''sharpening'' the rules and making them totalitarian to an extreme.

Really there's no "rules" that will solve the issues on a message board (and take my word for it, I've been an admin, global, local, CC member, etc... on this board).

What is needed is mods/admins who have the right attitude towards enforcement of the 'no trolling/flaming' rules. It's all about how people interpret the rules and enact them. We all know not to troll, but we all (to some degree) do it anyway. The point is that all mods/admins have different ideas of when posts are troll posts and when they aren't.