“Again, I think it comes down to moderator judgement.”
Nah, I disagree. It's easy enough to figure out when someone is calling Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, “Soylent White Wafer.”
Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that that's a personal attack on every Catholic, and that it's indecent and it doesn't belong here.
sitetest
NONSENSE.
HINT:
THIS IS *NOT* AN OFFICE OF THE VATICAN.
That is ridicule, from the Catholic perspective it's ridicule of Jesus. But not from the non-Catholic side.
A guideline against ridicule would be difficult to enforce and in some cases I can see it being abused.
I say it comes down to moderator judgement because it's more the totality of behaviour than stepping over a guideline.
As I said previously: Fanning the flames, intentional provocation, finding the most offensive ways to communicate a point.. over and over, without much attempt at discussion, is what I would flag as inflammatory. It may or may not include ridicule.
And, these are open threads, not protected for thin-skins. I think passionate belief is fine, however we can disagree without being disagreeable. But that's a difficult criteria to enforce.
If I were king (moderator), I would look at the thread as a whole and if a poster main efforts seemed to be to fan the flames and disrupt discussion, no matter how passionate, that poster would be the problem.
I remember in high school, there were usually provocateurs who would goad others into fighting someone else - "let's you and him fight" is the way we put it. They were cowards of course. But on the internet you don't have to worry about getting beat up so you can provoke without fear. But if the only intent is to provoke, fan flames, offend, ridicule, rather than discuss or debate...
That's the kind of thing I would remove from RF.