The war on Iraq & political/religious discussions

[Doom9]

Effective immediately we have a new forum rule: #15 forbids political discussion with a few exceptions. This rule has been created in reaction to recent events and a long experience by the moderation team on such issues. Basically, political issues have a very high tendency to turn nasty. The Iraqi situation has deeply divided the whole world. So deeply that the proponents of the two sides are unlikely to ever come to an agreement (demonstrations turning violent give you a very graphic image of that). Recently a thread was started in this forum that brought up the subject. Despite a few moderators and me trying to make it stop without having to actually resort to moderator power our efforts were in vain, it seems as if our efforts only stimulated the discussions. Yet, this issue has the potential to literally rip this community apart and to create a rift that will be very hard to close again. Thus we were confronted with a difficult choice: Restrict the issues that we allow to be discussed here and thus take away some of your freedom, or to let it continue and have it blow up into our faces with the chance of seriously hurting this community. It's a choice between two evils that had to be made and I believe that in the end of the day it will do more good than harm. I did not make this decision lightly as I do believe in freedom of speech very much, yet when confronted with the possibility of wrecking what has been created in the last 2.5+ years I reluctantly had to sacrifice just a bit of those beliefs.
So, if you feel the need to have a political discussion please go to another forum. I'm sure there's plenty of places where political discussion is welcome.

And on a sidenote the sanctions page has also been updated, now mentioning ways to contest a strike and situations where said rights will be forfeit.

[Doom9]

And by pretty much the same argument, religious discussion is also to be excluded from discussion.