Political content doesn't mean political discussion

[kadioguy]

Hello.

Today one of my thread was deleted by a moderator for the reason "Political content". However, I didn't mean to have a political discussion. What I focused on was its language use. That was still an English learning thread. Please see:

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General Rules

[...]

3. Religion and Politics

This is a forum with members from all over the world, and therefore political discussion is banned due to its potential to offend.

Discussions about religion and politics often become arguments very quickly. Our general policy is not to have such discussions. We are a language forum and, as far as possible, discussions should stick to language issues. There are political aspects to language learning and teaching, but any discussion that starts to get heated will be closed or deleted.

https://www.usingenglish.com/forum/misc.php?do=vsarules
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As you can see, the rule doesn't say that a thread should be deleted just because it contains "political content". Political content doesn't necessarily mean political discussion. I was asking about the use of "the People" in a twitter in that thread. In addition, there wasn't anything offensive in it. Therefore, please restore the thread. Thank you.

 

[GoesStation]

From what I remember of that thread, it seemed to be about a question of language, not politics.

I agree.

 

[PeterCW]

From what I remember of that thread, it seemed to be about a question of language, not politics.

I agree as well.

 

[Tdol]

What's the link?

 

[kadioguy]

What's the link?

I am not able to give the link, because it has been deleted. It was in the "Ask a teacher" forum. Its title was "[Grammar]Your President will continue to put the People first!"

 

[probus]

Kadioguy

I was not the moderator who deleted your thread, but as a mod I am able to see the deleted thread. Had I been the first to see it, I too would have deleted it. There was no need to include the entire quote from Ms McEnerny, who to be frank is a professional
political operative in a highly polarized America. Every single thing she says is blatantly political. If you simply want to know about her English usage, maybe try a shorter quotation from her, rather than an entire posting.

 

[emsr2d2]

I have just looked at the deleted thread and feel the same as probus (I wasn't the mod who deleted it either; I hadn't even seen it). It would have sufficed to omit the screenshot of the tweet and simply quote the sentence "The President will continue to put the People first" (simply giving "A tweet by [name]" as the source), along with the simple question "Why is "People" capitalised?"

The more of the original post/tweet you include, the more it will look like political content and the more likely it will be to be deleted. You will wish to bear this in mind for future posts.

 

[GoesStation]

This is as good a place as any to answer the question. The author of the tweet doesn't know the rules of capitalization. He uses it to emphasize a word.

 

[Tarheel]

I am not on Twitter, and I am reminded every little bit why that is a good thing.

 

[kadioguy]

Kadioguy
[...] If you simply want to know about her English usage, maybe try a shorter quotation from her, rather than an entire posting.

[...] It would have sufficed to omit the screenshot of the tweet and simply quote the sentence "The President will continue to put the People first" (simply giving "A tweet by [name]" as the source), along with the simple question "Why is "People" capitalised?"

The more of the original post/tweet you include, the more it will look like political content and the more likely it will be to be deleted. You will wish to bear this in mind for future posts.

Thank you for the advice. I'll do so next time. However, if the moderator could send me a message to ask me to do this, rather than delete it directly, the whole thing would be simpler - I could simply obey the advice and edit my post to meet the need. To some extent, that would save our time, for this thread would not exist.

 

[probus]

No Kadioguy. The correct solution to the problem was for the moderator to delete the thread. Otherwise the political content would still be there for people to read .

 

[kadioguy]

No Kadioguy. The correct solution to the problem was for the moderator to delete the thread. Otherwise the political content would still be there for people to read .

OK, at least I would hope in this case that I could get a copy of my post in my mail box after it had been deleted, so that it would be easier for me to modify and post it again.

 

[tzfujimino]

Why don't you use this and ask her/them(?) about it:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/get-involved/write-or-call/

(I don't know if you will get a reply.)


(Edit)To probus
Her name is Kayleigh McEnany.

 

[kadioguy]

Why don't you use this and ask her/them(?) about it:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/get-involved/write-or-call/

(I don't know if you will get a reply.)

I think that l would like to get a quick (and still professional) reply - the forum could be a better choice. ;-)

 

[emsr2d2]

OK, at least I would hope in this case that I could get a copy of my post in my mail box after it had been deleted, so that it would be easier for me to modify and post it again.

I take your point but the fastest way for us to get rid of potentially inflammatory content is simply to delete it. Yes, the mod could have taken the time to copy the contents of the post, save it, paste it into a PM and send it to you with an explanation, but we shouldn't really have to do that. If users simply avoided posting such content in the first place, we wouldn't need to do anything similar, nor would we need to be having this conversation!

 

[emsr2d2]

This article might be of interest. Perhaps supporters of Trump are simply trying to emulate his (incorrect) capitalisation of certain words.

 

[tzfujimino]

Here's one opinion on the matter:
https://medium.com/@ericmarsch/why-we-should-capitalize-the-people-c12d95628f4

I think I'll stop here - this is User Support Area.

 

[emsr2d2]

I'm going to move it to General Language Discussions for now (it might end up being moved again in future but we are now discussing language at least).

 

[Rover_KE]

What's the link?

Here's the link.

kadioguy had already seen teechar's reply on the language content before I deleted the thread, and can PM him to repeat it if necessary.

We recently asked GoodTaste to refrain from posting threads with political content. If this had been allowed to stand, GoodTaste for one would have wanted to know why.

 

[jutfrank]

Nobody's asked for my opinion but I'll give it anyway.

I strongly dislike the forum rule that users may not post language with political content. The point of posting is to ask about use of language, not to make a political statement. I find it rather sad that any grown-up members of the forum would consider enquiries about use of language 'inflammatory'.

Having said that, I very much appreciate the rule that political discussion be avoided on the forum. This certainly is no place for it.