[Brandon Martus]

There have been many thoughtful and insightful responses in this thread.

In the very near future, I plan to sit down with the coaches of our team and come up with an official response (either in this thread, a new thread, or in the rules) which will expand the rules, moderation policies, and hopefully clear up much of what was talked about in this thread. We've talked about many of the things you've brought up (allow no political/religious/chit-chat/non-robotics, allow all discussion, allow with heavy moderation) and never come down to a definite solution.

The biggest problem, I think, is there are thousands of you (the general user) and less than 30 of us (the moderators/administrators) and it's really hard to keep track of everything and continue on with our normal everyday life. It will probably come down to just adding more moderators, and making a better set of 'what to do when...' rules.

So ... stay tuned.