Go ahead and create 3 threads with no purpose back to back and see if you get a warning DO, cause you'd deserve one. It's the generosity of the community that it tries to make these useful, not some ingenious planning by bb. If you want discussion or content make threads with those don't spam and hope it happens.

People will +1 whatever the mods say. I'm not exactly convinced, sorry. I bet a lot of the people +1ing you are the same ones who participate in these threads.

But how is it spam if people are talking on it Valis? If there's a limit to how many threads you're allowed to post a day maybe have that stated.

People talk on the passport selling threads that the entirely spam accounts create. It doesn't make them any less spam. Flooding the forums will result in a warning; this is not a new rule.

No cause other than enforcing law or rebellion against truly tyrannical oppression can justify violence in a society, especially a democratic one, that values law and order. Sure, slavery is evil in the eyes of contemporaries, including myself, but it was regarded by most as acceptable for much of the early 19th century, and retrospect taints our perspective. In another few centuries, perhaps animal consumption and experimentation will be regarded as murder and torture respectively. Would that justify a mass murdering vegetarian today? No. If one wants social change in America, one ought to go through the democratic process rather than turning to terrorist tactics. I think the proverb that one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist applies very well to Brown. Violence is never the solution. Why is there so much outrage over violence at Trump rallies? If you rationalize what Brown did, then you can only be angry at Trump's supporters because you disagree with the social change they want.

I think it's spam at the point where no one replies to your threads and you keep posting more. People were actually engaging with this discussion, and would have probably continued to do so when the mod team decided to call it spam. But hey, maybe all of us on webdip would rather talk about Windows 10 upgrades instead.

Slavery to the eyes of John Brown and every slave he wanted freed was a tyrannical oppression. John Brown's religion was opposed to violence. He turned down military service citing his religious opposition to it. Him choosing to violently oppose slavery isn't nothing.

"If one wants social change in America, one ought to go through the democratic process rather than turning to terrorist tactics."
He wanted to tear down slavery, not even the abolitionists wanted that. There was no way in hell it could be achieved through democracy, and he became fully aware that only a full scale war was the only way the institution of slavery by the time he was executed.

wanted to tear down racism**

As I said, people may see animal consumption and experimentation as tyrannical oppression. The tyrannical oppression must exist as a consensus. Otherwise, slavery probably wouldn't have remained for more than a few more decades even without the Civil War.

Google defines abolitionists as "a person who favors the abolition of a practice or institution, especially capital punishment or (formerly) slavery.".

It defines abolition as "the action or an act of abolishing a system, practice, or institution."

It defines abolishing as "formally put an end to (a system, practice, or institution)."

How is formally putting an end to slavery not tearing it down?

Quite false. There weren't nearly as many slaveholders as you think, but the slaveholders were powerful enough to be ingrained in American politics and economy and keep the institution alive. The only reason the institution ended was because abolishing slavery was the only way to keep the Union together in the end so that we wouldn't fight over it again.

If support for abolition were great enough, it would eventually have been abolished by a constitutional amendment akin to the Thirteenth Amendment eventually. In 1860, the support for it wasn't large enough. True, poor southerners didn't own slaves, but they still saw it as a way of life. In the end, society would have progressed beyond it just like the Civil Rights Movement didn't require another civil war.

Right, that only required race riots.

Reactionary forces fighting progress will always happen, and the progressives will end up responding with violence. It's an endless cycle.

The difference being that there isn't a significant portion of our society that regards the rioters as heroes today.

Reactionary forces fighting conservatism will always happen, and the conservatives will end up responding with violence. It's an endless cycle.

You don't understand what reactionary means in terms of politics. That's fun.

You're looking for the term revolutionary.

There is a growing force of extreme conservatives in reaction the fast-paced social change in the past half century.

Oh, and this this the definition of reactionary: (of a person or a set of views) opposing political or social liberalization or reform.
synonyms: right-wing, conservative, rightist, ultraconservative; More

Also, they don't regard them as heroes because of active villainization by the reactionaries. We hold MLK, a peaceful criminal, on a pedestal for being more important to the Civil Rights movement than he really was. Women's suffrage also had to use violence. These sorts of progress things are why there were as many violent revolutions as there were in Europe in the 19th century as well.

https://www.google.com/search?q=reactionary

Exactly, so how can "reactionary" forces fight conservatism?

DO: We've experimented with more explicit rules in the past. What happened was that members started seeing the forum as a game, trying to skirt as close to the edge of the rules - posting against the spirit of the forum rules, but not the letter. This results in a more unpleasant forum environment, and a higher load on the moderators. That's not an improved situation in either direction.

The point of this forum is to support a community around Diplomacy. This includes many common off-topic interests (eg games with deception/limited information, politics, etc), and discussion of Diplomacy the game.

We've been very clear that we want to keep the forum welcoming, because it's on the front page of the site, and we have nearly 3,000 active users every month. For this reason, we have rules about being civil to each other, and work to reduce straight up trolling/abuse.

Removing the forum from the front page has been discussed in the past (which would neatly sidestep the "the forum represents the site" argument), but this idea has always been unpopular; many forum regulars say that having the forum on the front page is what drew them in in the first place. I think that's a fair argument.

I have some draft code for integrating a more featured forum (including Diplomacy, Forum Games and an Off-Topic board), which would reduce the impact of spam threads- and it would be possible for members to configure which boards appear on their home page. However, while we have the single threaded forum that we currently have, it's necessary to curb the number of spam threads.

I'm sorry that you feel that the forum is low key and dead- but this view isn't shared by everyone. Those who enjoy the forum do regularly complain about spam - often we don't do anything about it when it's just an extra thread, or when only one user has complained. However, when several users complain, and when the site rules are clearly being broken, we step in.

I'd like to note that BB apologised privately - which wasn't necessary, but was (and is always) appreciated.

A large part of Zultar's focus as site co-owner has been to reduce toxic forum behaviour - we don't want to end up like the community on (for example) EpicMafia - that's not what we want for the future of this site. I think that his effort has been very successful - people are generally more civil to each other, and yet discussion continues.

Now, sure, forum spam isn't the same as trolling/abuse - but it does contribute to making the forum harder to use. Consequently, no one was silenced or banned, and I don't expect that to happen here. And, as Riot has pointed out - flooding the forums has been against our site rules for a very long time.

This is open and shut - BB said he didn't think it was against the site rules, and when we pointed out that it was, he apologised. It's really very simple.

"People will +1 whatever the mods say."

This has ....not been my experience :)

I don't believe MLK was a shining beacon, but his actions did catalyze the civil rights movement, and they were better than violence. I do endorse civil disobedience in reasonable situations. Also, when did suffragists employ violence? The bloody French Revolution doesn't exactly aid your argument. Irrational and bloodthirsty revolutionaries overthrew one of the mildest French monarchs of the time.

Oh, yes. I believe you're right about reactionaries. My bad.

In the states it was mostly male on female violence, but in the UK suffragettes were definitely violent without question. Also, there were a lot more revolutions in Europe than that, and that one wasn't even the 19th century. Revolutions of 1820, 1830, 1848, Paris Commune, etc.

You're also definitely knocking out all the French Revolution really accomplished, and Napoleon's civil codes show that social progress can come without democracy.

There are many who say that the violent extremist wing of British suffragists actually turned the public off and delayed women's suffrage in England. The Revolutions of 1820, 1830, and 1848 were largely failures. I am unfamiliar with the Paris Commune, but from preliminary searches, it seems to be one more radical and bloody mini-revolution. I do agree that progress can come without democracy. There were quite a few progressive European monarchies. That has nothing to do with violence though.

Without the violent suffragettes, many would have ignored the movement, and the government treatment of peaceful suffragettes wouldn't have garnered the same sympathies. And the revolutions cited did push for progress, especially in France. The French Revolution of 1830 ousted an ultra-conservative, and the French Revolution of 1848 put Napoleon III in a position to take power, and his empire was more progressive than the regime that preceded the Revolution. And the Commune helped establish a government that wasn't merely a reaction to the progress Napoleon III pushed. Every revolution has an impact in the direction of progress, and a number of those are touchy enough that society will demand they stay even if the revolution failed. You underestimate the role of violence in the crafting of the world where you live.