Racial/ethnic/extreme threads

[Anonymous]

There have been a lot of racially, ethnically charged threads lately. I understand your stance about not deleting them and I think it's reasonable and fair. But I'm concerned that Off-Topic is giving outsiders the impression that DCUM is populated by a bunch of David Duke types.

What about either having a separate forum for Hot Topics threads, with a requirement that the person have at least 10 posts on DCUM to post there, or just a requirement of 10 DCUM posts to participate.

[jsteele]

Well, I'm not sure that there is an increase in racial threads. I think we have always had such threads and some of the most memorable fights here have involved those topics. Maybe you are just noticing them more now?

I think counting the number of posts by individual anonymous posters will be impossible.

One thing that I have noticed that does seem to be different recently is that readers seem to be quick to attack a poster for being racist or whatever rather than giving them the benefit of the doubt that the question might be well-meant. The Hasidic Jews thread is a good example. Regardless of your feelings about the original question, and despite some attacks on the OP, the resulting discussion has been fairly reasonable. Maybe we should all learn to take a couple of deep breaths before we decide to take offense about something?