Who knew answerMug has a penalty box? xD

Overall, we have very few issues. It's incredibly rare for someone to intentionally rile others up or go around starting fights. What we see most often is when people either have a personal history with another member or someone used a generalization, particularly as it relates to politics. For example, someone saying "X party is hurting the US because..." And, those kinds of statements, no matter how wrong, get a pass. Political parties aren't protected, whereas a sincere statement of something similar about race, religion, orientation, etc., would be classified as hate speech and the same about a specific member would be classified as a personal attack. So, if you were to say, "Just Asking is ruining America because..." that's a "personal attack." The problem comes in when people associate their party as being them. Like, if you had said, "X party is ruining America..." but instead I took it personally and read/ internalized it as "I am ruining America," if that makes sense. It's times when people take general comments as personal attacks that they get a bit prickly and sometimes fire back with... "Oh yeah, well if my party is bad, you're an idiot." And, the person calling someone an idiot is then violating the TOS, whereas the person making comments about the party is not. 

What usually happens is that we simply remove the content and send the person a short message "Hey, we removed this because it violated our respect guidelines." And, then the member usually knows they crossed a line and they don't do it again. Some particularly passionate individuals don't stop, and so a second occurrence in three months results in an immediate 48-hour break.

If they come back after the break and do it again, then they're put back on a break right away again, but the moderators vote as to whether they think the person should be allowed to come back and, if so, when. I can count the number of people who have received permanent bans on my fingers. Most people do want to be here and engage in civil discussions. Those who don't usually bail and go someplace they can attack people or they get removed rather quickly. 

We do have other rules, such as no cursing and no adult content in the main sections, but I don't believe anyone has ever been put on a break for those things. The biggest issue is personal attacks, but again, even that is fairly rare. I might have done one or two breaks for harassment over the years as well. Very rare though. Again, most people who want to be nasty leave or get shown the door.