As far as fear and such, no one has been banned unless they were obnoxious in the extreme or are trolls, and that included the massive Rudy “purge’. Proof in the putting, there are still Rudy supporters in these very forums.
So that is a weak argument against the validity of the poll last week.
That only reflects the members who participate in the poll. It is self-selecting, therefore statistically worthless. It's like the text message voting for American Idol: it doesn't reflect the viewership's choice, it reflects the choice of those motivated to vote. The wording of the questions do not motivate anyone who disagrees with the premise to vote, and the more "focused" they are, the more meaningless is the result. The "focus" merely guides the desired result.
As far as fear and such, no one has been banned unless they were obnoxious in the extreme or are trolls, and that included the massive Rudy “purge’. Proof in the putting, there are still Rudy supporters in these very forums.
The problem as I see it, is that vile, obnoxious trolls seemingly ARE tolerated, so long as they are vile, obnoxious trolls for Fred. There are lots and lots of posts here by Fredheads that would get anyone banned if the names of candidates were switched. I can think of several jerks for Mitt, Rudy or even Hunter that are gone or had long timeouts. Most for good cause. But the jerks for Fred live on, even though their rhetoric and tactics are identical: spamming cut-n-paste epics from other sites, pinging hit posses, derogatory personal attacks on other posters, attacks on candidate's families, baiting for flames, cross-thread stalking, etc.