Malekithe recently edited a post in a totally unacceptable way, which is a pity because it could have turned into a nice debate. How many times must it be posted that this is a board about Wheel of Time and nothing else? It is not about your personal vendetta against posters who were rude to you, or about American politics, or about how bad your day was... that's what the CMB is for.

Now, rude posters are coming into the limelight again. As you know from the original rules for the board, we encourage civil conversation and discourage insults, rudeness and bigotry.

However, people will always get heated when pressing a point, and vociferous debates often degenerate into slinging matches. That is the reality of life, not just on our board. If you cannot handle being called 'mentally retarded' for your opinions on Egwene, you probably need to toughen up. If a poster is openly rude to you, you have several options : reply in kind, reply civilly, ignore them, send them an NB or send me or Rugbyplayingashaman an NB.

There are several rude posters on this board, many of whom resemble Aginor and are generally unsavoury and loathesome. However, like Aginor they are sometimes clever and know things, and as long as they want to discuss WoT in a meaningful way, there's really no reason to kick up a fuss. Aginor could make Trollocs and Demandred just had to put up with him - and this is the moral of the story.

That said, not everything goes. If you feel that you've been outrageously assailed, then speak to me about it, and I'll see if it can be resolved. Ben is not against banning frequently abhorrent posters, but I am against weakening the board to protect people who protest if someone just looks at them funny.