Regarding the new forum that I proposed recently...

[Prairie Gates]

41. This is a good idea on balance, and certainly needed

My reservations are few. There is a rather sizable cadre of posters who have skirted the existing rule quite skillfully - some have never posted a positive thread about a Democrat ever, but will absolutely dominate threads - often in groups - with negative posts. Those posters will have a field day in the new forum. That's fine. It would be nice if they could migrate to it en masse, and the "Don't Bash" rule be more enforced (even heightened) in the other forums. That would be keeping in the spirit of separating the forum to let those who want to go all bare-knuckled do so in that space, a la GD: Politics. Unfortunately, I think once the dam breaks on criticism of Democrats and Democratic party policy, it's going to flood the site as a whole, making it essentially useless to its original purpose. There's already the sense in your description that juries will be urged to err on the side of license, which will then apply to the site as a whole.

I think if the "Don't Bash" rule goes in that forum, then there should also be a loosening of some of the other rules. It feels like unilateral disarmament otherwise. I think we need to dispense with any illusions that a forum of the kind you're describing will be anything other than a streetfight. So, yes, by all means. Let those of us who are up for it actually fight.