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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mistwell" data-source="post: 8026262" data-attributes="member: 2525">I think you're using "politics" in a different way than the poster you're responding to.If there were a thread about Thomas Hobbes' book Leviathan, it would be a political thread. The thread wouldn't be about choosing sides between two competing political parties, it would probably not resemble traditional American politics, but it would 100% be a political discussion. It's a foundational book in political science.And it might also be discussed by way of comparison with modern politics, because that's the easiest comparison basis people have to draw from in their experience. I mean, it might also be compared to people's experience with watching Gilligan's Island or something like that, but in all likelihood you'd get people drawing comparisons to modern political topics.Discussions about how a society should treat different groups of people and individuals, about what natural rights should and do look like and the social contract regarding natural rights of groups and individuals (which you termed "human decency") which exists on this board and in the gaming hobby, those are all political discussions. They're core political science topics. You will find those topics in every philosophy of political science course in any country where that degree is taught in universities.And because they're core political science topics, people will frequently turn to comparisons with current more trending political topics and even the political parties which disagree about those topics. Because it's the closest basis for comparison, and a shared experience which relates to those conversations and serves as a common language to talk about them.If you don't want people to be drawing on those modern political discourse topics to relate to a news item that's posted which is about social contracts in our community or natural rights of groups and individuals, then you probably should express that in a different way than its been expressed so far. Tell people they can relate to the topic with something fairly benign, like a comparison to Gilligan's Island would be for a discussion of Leviathan. Tell people they cannot refer to the more modern and more controversial and competitive comparisons to modern politics and political parties.  And give examples of how someone can approach the topic which would be OK, and ways which would not be OK.That, or like ccs said, just don't allow comments on topics which you know are likely to result in people reacting in a controversial and competitive way with each other where they use modern politics as a shared language to talk about that topic.Or keep going like we're going, which sounds like it's a source of wretched daily grind for the moderation staff which will eat away at the morale of the people who run this place, and hopefully all of this will just burn itself out over time.Or maybe there is a different way I have not considered.</blockquote>

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