[Religion Moderator]

The objective, on the Religion Forum, of not bringing forward disputes from prior threads is to discourage flame wars spreading, in particular the needling or badgering of other posters by bringing up their past remarks, again and again.

However, if you were to say “I recall your saying something else on an earlier thread” and the poster challenged you “Oh yeah, where?” then you would be obligated to link to the previous thread and I would not pull it.

If you want to argue the previous claim, then go back to the earlier thread, ping all the interested parties and say something like “Here you say the sky is green. Why?” The respondent will be obligated then to explain the green comment in context with that particular thread and parties involved in it.

If however you are seeking to “impeach the witness” by showing he waffles back and forth THAT is “making it personal” and I will pull it to avoid a flame war.

And if you are trying to embarass another Freeper by recalling his inconvenient comments from prior threads, THAT is also "making it personal" and I will pull it to avoid a flame war.

A poster may quote himself from a prior thread. And he may link to articles he has previously posted. That is not "making it personal" - he is merely reasserting his own views. He may link to articles posted by others or other posters' remarks which are not part of any dispute, e.g. "You hit the nail on the head when you said..."

If however he is linking to an article posted by someone else - and that article was a "caucus" of which he was not a member - then I might pull the post anyway if I think it would have the affect of defeating the caucus label. Besides, he can always quote the source article directly without seemingly trying to work around the caucus protection.

[Religion Moderator]

Ping to the above post 80

[Rashputin]

So if someone says an opinion some other poster expresses is all wrong because, for example, "no one on FR has ever said to kill all chickens that lay brown eggs". Later that same person says, "You can't find a single example of anyone who ever said to kill all chickens that lay brown eggs, can you?", (which is pretty much "impeaching the witness" by implication), the proper way to deal with that is to by first going to the thread where such a comment was in fact made.

From that thread, respond to the comment containing "Kill all chickens that . . . " in the original thread, including in the list of recipients the person who denies any such comment exists, as well as others actively involved in the thread and series of comments wherein it was said on such statement exists. Right?

[Biggirl]

Thank-you.

[metmom]

Ping to post 80 for more on herding cats.