In the forum, on cake and the Hospitality list

I often heard the complaint that the ML is a terrible place, some find it intimidating, there are reports of citizens and prospective citizens throwing in the towel after one heated debate or the other.

Various attempts have been made to rectify this, from overbearing moderation masquerading as a public order technique, but to some having more to do with the suppression of free speech and silencing opponents, to periods when the more frequent posters from all "sides" swore off discussion of politics to put to the test the claim that a surge of creative posting was being prevented by the political atmosphere.

These attempts at political non-discussion produced only silence, maybe because people were only too aware that any post they made might end up being judged on its content as to whether creativity and genteel valuable discussion had flourished.

The obvious fact is that this list and its struggles and strife is a reflection of part of our societal issues and this fact seems to have raised the question as to whether a prospective citizen should be shielded from this discord. Well, this list is the equivalent of a virtual arena at times, where virtual body parts are scattered around in one argument or another. It always seems to have been so reading previous years' posts. Now many say that this list is not all that Nova Roma is. That is true, in theory, but since political issues dominate, this list is actually about the key issues of the day. Returning to the frequent claims of how ghastly this list can be, and how many citizens it has cost us, if that is so and given the failure to alter that my one means or another, over the course of years and years, then logic dictates that the prospective citizens should not be exposed to this "vileness". After all, you can't have your cake and eat it.

The new list will give prospective citizens a chance to be exposed to the other side of Nova Roma, that many have complained never gets to truly flourish on this list. Why would we, if those claims are true, not want to present the best side of Nova Roma to prospective citizens? There will be time enough if they join us for them to be corrupted by all the terrible horrors that occur on this list, and take their place in the stands, popcorn in hand gawping at all the verbal duels to the death and egos and arguments hitting the sand here.

Come now, all of you who have made almost careers out of denouncing what goes on here, why would we not want to protect those valuable and vulnerable assets, prospective citizens, from all this wickedness here?

Of course I don't believe that this place is terrible, and I do think that some people among us have used these scare tactics to "political" ends, to steer new citizens to the purity and light of one faction or another.

Well now we have an opportunity to remove from this list non-citizens bent on participating in political debates that only concern the citizens of Nova Roma (would the ancient Romans have tolerated a Greek for example standing on a soap box yelling about how rotten Rome or some of its politicians were, or would he have been manhandled about and tossed out the gates?)and at the same time answer once and for all all these endless complaints about what a detrimental effect the atmosphere on this list has on prospective citizens.

Since we have proven we don't seem to be able to change the nature of this list, then let us remove the non-citizens and the vulnerable prospective citizens, so that all of us seasoned veterans can either return to arena watching, or be down on the sand clubbing each other over the head.

Cake anyone?