Discussion, not Provocation

[Tiberius]

Tiberius, I like the rule very much, but the one point I would raise about it is this:

Let's say someone posts a link to a news article about something stupid a particular political side did, with their brief opinion on how stupid this is and a generalized statement about how stupid those people are.

Whether or not it's "provocative" depends entirely on which political side this article is about. The vast majority of members here are left leaning. So a thread started with a link about something stupid a conservative did with a blanket statement by the OP about conservatives, isn't going to be provocative here. Most people are going to join in and be like "wow, yeah, that's so dumb, they're so dumb... and yadda yadda..."

But if someone posts a link to something stupid a liberal did, with their own blanket statement about liberals, that's going to raise all kinds of Hell. That will certainly be provocative.

So how will this be handled exactly Tibs?

It depends who the target of the "generalized statement" is, and how you are presenting your opinion.

Blanket statements about conservatives that are categorically untrue are provocative, whether there are conservatives on the forum or not. If a conservative says something racist, and someone posts about it with words to the effect of "see, I told you conservatives are racists", then that's a major misrepresentation of conservatives. There's nothing inherently racist about being a conservative.

If however, you post about that conservative and want to start a discussion about conservatism and racism, i.e. "Hey, this conservative is clearly a racist, how pervasive is racism within conservatism? Are there any conservatives here who want to defend / criticize this guy?" etc. then you are fine.