Perhaps the most important thing to remember when posting here is that it is the nature of the beast on a politics forum for debate to become heated, please try and refrain from ad hominem attacks (attacking the person and not their views), always debate the point and refrain from making it personal. Likewise, should a cause or issue be of personal importance please do not take it personally should another member disagree with your point of view.

Please try to use good English and punctuation in your posts, we are not the spelling police and typos etc. are to be expected from time to time (titles may be edited to aid with the search function). However, a well written post is far more likely to illicit a response and further debate. Posting in ‘txt spk’, or using bad grammar, undermines your credibility, shld u constantly typ sentnces lyk ths thn don’t expct ne1 to care abt wht ur saying lol.

Other things to try and avoid include:

Straw Man: Attributing a point of view to someone which they do not hold, and then arguing against it. Do not imply or state that anyone holds an opinion that they have not specifically voiced.

Appeal to Emotion: This is the act of describing something in a particularly emotive way to back up your argument, which may or may not be correct. Also included in this are personal references. With the utmost respect to our members, no one cares about your life story. It is not evidence of anything.

Appeal to Tradition: Commonly used by conservatives (with a small ‘c’). This implies that simply because something has always been one way, it should stay the same forever. Remember that tradition is not self-evidently a reason to keep anything – for example slavery used to be a tradition.

Inductive argument:
I am a woman
I like to eat fish.
Therefore, all women like fish. This is evidently stupid reasoning!

Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc (After this, therefore because of this) or false cause: This argument mistakes correlation for causation. Causation is very difficult to prove, and correlation is very, very easy to notice, so this comes up a lot, expressed as follows:
• A occurred, then B occurred.
• Therefore, A caused B.
• When B is undesirable, this pattern is often extended in reverse: Avoiding A will prevent B.

Godwin’s Law
This states that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." The argument follows that by invoking the Nazis one automatically loses the debate. Obviously, as a politics site, discussions on topics such as 1930s Germany, genocide, propaganda or eugenics etc. are immune from this particular fallacy. There is also the argument to be made that “Godwin’s Law” is used by actual Nazis to silence criticism against them, but you can expect to see this smiley http://i899.photobucket.com/albums/a...974/godwin.gif should you invoke it!

For a decently comprehensive list of most basic fallacies, try this website: Fallacies

Forum features to further debate.
Thanks/rep.
The thanks button is widely used on this forum and has largely removed the plethora of “I agree” posts. Use it to this effect or if you find a post particularly amusing etc. If you consider a post particularly well written and informed then please add to the user’s rep. Likewise should the opposite be the case then “award” negative rep.

Special thanks to DougieG for original idea.