Thread: Site Rules - Refresher

paralreg, The Electoral Commission has registered some 1500 parties (probably more, I've not looked recently). Most parties have their own web presence, but relatively few have proper chat rooms. The BNP is denied access to many of these websites and discussion groups. Privately owned sites have no requirement for fairness or to care whether they infringe 'democratic rights' or not. Human rights legislation only applies to public bodies and even then there are get outs.

Anthony allows the BNP and other minor parties a presence here. Because the BNP are denied a presence elsewhere, the sub-forum they are allowed here has become a 'meeting' place. Anthony has laid down a number of rules that have stopped the BDF becoming a free for all. Some of the BNP members are, frankly, abusing their welcome and breaking rules almost from the day they join. I've caught people blatantly breaking rules with their first post. They log in, don't read the Ts and Cs and launch straight into personal attacks, racist abuse or political diatribes inappropriate to the thread they are in. Some come to the BDF only to get people to look at their extremist websites and care nothing for the rest of the posters. Others are only here to attack named individuals (I banned one the other day who launched personal attacks in almost every post and then started sending abusive PMs). There is no right at common law, under the ECHR or any document to launch abusive and libellous attacks on people you disagree with.

The forum has, in my view, become worse for tolerating as much as we have done from BNP members. None of us has the time to deal with 100+ posters who seem to spend 24 hours a day at their keyboards abusing each other (put some of their names into Google and you will see them posting the same garbage across the Internet). Richard Allen has spent a lot of time trying to moderate the BNP and other small parties, but he, like Anthony, is fighting an election campaign at present. I've tried to get a grip, but I don't have time either. We're all unpaid volunteers who have other aspects to our lives, whereas some of the BNP types don't appear to have a social life of any sort.

Banning links to other far-right sites is important. The forum is attacked by the far-left as 'loonies letterbox' as it is. If we are just seen as the place to go to link to the KKK or some crypto-Nazi sites then we will lose our other posters and ultimately disappear.

I thank you both for your comments and now understand a little better.