When Social Groups become Hate Groups

[CoS Forums Staff]

When Social Groups become Hate Groups

From our original social groups policy:

By Hate Groups, we mean groups that are set up purposely to discuss personal hatred of someone or a body of people. Such groups cannot work on CoS. For example if someone were to start a group called 'Haters of Harry Potter', it would be removed. Likewise a group started such as 'People Who Like Harry Potter Are Idiots' would be removed.

It would appear that with a lot of private, invite-only social groups the staff have noticed an increase in personal and vindictive comments said about other members and themselves. This type of behaviour has found its way onto the forums where individuals and groups of people gather to simply outdo one another, regardless of the consequences and regardless of the dynamics of a thread.

These private-only groups were meant originally to allow you to discuss the books and other topics off the main forums without the issue of the debate environment, like-minded people having a genuinely fun time with people more akin to their line of thinking. Up to that point, it sounds reasonable. But these days it’s become a place where the atmosphere is heated with individual’s intent on simply bashing or cursing the other member out, without fear of reprisals from staff.

No more.

Groups like these are going to be defined as Hate Groups and the Admins will make the decision to close them and delete the accounts of those members found to be taking things just too far. We don’t expect perfect behaviour from members, but we do expect people, some of whom with more years than ourselves to act maturely. If the effect of debating a scene, a character or a current affair is causing such venomous behaviour in ordinarily very reasonable people then we fail to see why either the member or the debate should be allowed to continue on CoS Forums.

We expect to see an improvement in conduct in these groups over the coming days and for it to remain that way. If you won't do that, you won't be here anymore.