> That guideline is based on the evidence of what happens when people don't follow it. That's the opposite of arbitrary. I didn’t mean to imply that the rule w

> That guideline is based on the evidence of what happens when people don't follow it. That's the opposite of arbitrary. I didn’t mean to imply that the rule was arbitrarily selected, merely that your application of it was arbitrary — that it, at the sole discretion of a small group of people, without guiding rules, and without systematic review for p, eg, bias. Force, such as bans, applied in an arbitrary manner is inherently tyrannical — and your appeals to civility a rote recitation of a millennia old justification for tyranny. Tyrants are never merely enforcing their biases on others — it’s always for the greater purpose! Having been a member of this community for a while, my reply would be that flame war groupthink is better than this groupthink: flame wars can occasionally change minds and show the diversity of extant opinions — while your groupthink preserving censorship distorts people’s view of the diversity of opinions while leading to no more changed minds, and is therefore strictly worse.