Discussion: Improving your SciTech Forum, Pt. 2

I've been moderating this forum for quite a while now and while it's usually fascinating and engaging, I think we are all aware of some shortcomings. In the spirit of the stickied "Improving your SciTech Forum" post I am going to make some suggestions for the future of this forum.
I'm putting this out there for discussion and you are welcome to add your own comments and suggestions.

1. What we want: an educated and fun discussion about scientific topics. That includes all kinds of academic fields. You want to make a thread about a sociology question? Go for it. You want to make one about archeology? Go for it. Physics? Sure. Quantum Mechanics? Absolutely! Just ask a technology question or talk about new gadgets and devices? Yes!
Speculation is fine, too. I don't mind if we're using existing science to speculate about future applications and developments. This is all part of a good scientific discourse.

2. What we don't want: You want to make a thread about Alchemy and intelligent design? No. You want to post your crazy tinfoil hat ideas without providing any reasonable evidence or sources? No. You want to slam "mainstream scientists" to present your beautiful and edgy alternative ideas to the world? You better have some evidence.
What we do not want is unscientific, crazy nonsense spamming good discussions. Incoherent posts that don't provide any comprehensible reasoning, evidence or sources can harm discussions if there are too many of them. They tend to derail the conversation by turning it into some random unscientific argument that's only vaguely related to the original topic.

3. How to post: All of this does not mean that you have to absolutely provide scientific links for every single claim you make. We are not at university here.
But am I alone in thinking that we don't want to have constructive discussions ruined by stuff that is blatantly wrong, unscientific and completely ignorant of the topic at hand?
You can have fun in this forum, you can make funny posts, you don't need to be an expert in everything.
But...

4. How not to post: Do not derail threads or spam threads with bizarre, faulty and unscientific reasoning to a degree that makes it impossible for everybody else to have a constructive discussion because they're too busy dealing with your ramblings. If you're being that guy... you're ruining it for everybody else. Don't be that guy.

5. Mod tools: If you are that guy... the new forum software gives me the option to temporarily or permanently ban you from replying to specific threads. I plan to use this tool... as rarely as possible. My goal is to not exclude anybody. Nobody will get a forced break from a thread for making a joke or posting something that turns out to be wrong. But if you're constantly spamming threads with nonsense, derailing them, I may have to step in to protect the others.

Now go ahead and spam me with comments on this. This is about making the forum a better place for a fun discussion. But in order for it to work there need to be some rules and expectations.
Am I just talking out my cute ass? What do you think about this, ladies?

Shoot!

*ducks*

 

Absolutely. I addressed that in my first point when I talked about "tech questions". The forum is called Science and Technology so you can talk about that all you want.
If you want to talk about the latest Samsung Xperia iPhone X you can do that here, too.

 

I love your idea, @teacake, but I also think it would open a can of worms. I obviously have to be careful about not restricting people too much. And of course people would complain about evil "mainstream science" when I move their crazy pseudo-scientific ideas into a designated tinfoil hat thread.

On the other hand... should we really be concerned there? We can't really let constructive scientific discussions be derailed by nonsense all the time. The problem is that once the nonsense is brought into the topic the whole thread tends to revolve around that nonsense. Especially if the nonsense is repeated regardless of people's rebukes.

So at some point I'll just have to decide: "You're obviously misunderstanding a lot of stuff, have crazy ideas and you can't back those ideas up with any evidence or sources. And since you're not stopping, you're monopolizing the discussion, ruining it for everybody else.
Take a break."

 

Make a thread.