Now that we've heard what people have had to say so far in this thread, I hope I can shed some light on issues raised here.
Background
This is background information for those who don't already know it.
We have separate forums for political discussions and political news in order to allow established forum members to discuss issues over which there are often strong disagreements. Why don't we keep these threads in the main forums and allow ALL forum members to participate? Because it would allow "hit and run" posts, flames, and attacks by users who joined MacRumors just to make an inflammatory comment and depart. Having separate forums limited by post count is an inconvenience for well-meaning new forum users, but it's a practical solution to the problem, and a new user's restrictions end if they choose to continue their forum participation.
We feel that useful and interesting discussions, that will be of benefit to most forum members and site visitors, need to be at least minimally civil, not the free-for-alls that some sites allow. That's why we created the forum rules, which we fine-tune from time to time.
Which threads are put in the political forums? Users generally know to post their own threads about politics and religion and social issues in the PRSI forum. The MacRumors editors decide when a news thread will be in the Political News forum. They try to predict which topics can best be discussed by all forum members and which ought to be restricted to established members. When they guess wrong, because a thread that's not inherently controversial ends up with a controversial PRSI-style discussion, they may change their minds and relocate the thread.
We noticed that the forum rule about off-topic PRSI posts failed to also mention the Political News forum, so we've corrected that. It's important to note that the rule is about "threads and posts on
controversial political, religious, and social issues." Not every post related to social issues is automatically treated as a problem.
The "off-topic" rule is in the minor rule category, meaning that rule doesn't lead to suspensions and bans the way the "insults" and "trolling" rules do. So why do we have it at all? To prevent a thread that is useful or interesting to most readers from being derailed by posts very likely to lead to off-topic arguments. And how do we know when a given post will derail a thread? Experience. The moderators can't read minds or know the future, but they are very good at recognizing the situations that they've seen before. If they're not sure, they leave posts alone.
Because application of the "off-topic" rule to political posts depends on which forum the thread is in, and because a thread sometimes moves from the main News Discussion forum to the Political News forum, it can be a point of confusion for users. The moderators are aware of this, and are always willing to offer explanations. That's also why, if a news thread needs to be moved, we try to move it early in its life. If a thread already has many posts and a useful discussion, it makes more sense to leave it where it is and remove off-topic controversial posts.
I've been referring to "political" posts, when the rules and forums we are discussing refer to "political, religious, and social issues" posts. The key is that we're talking about controversial issues, as stated in the rule. In years past, heated religious debates were much more common, and social issues might be about civil rights, the death penalty, abortion, and other topics where many users had strongly held opposing opinions. That's the origin of the PRSI forum name, a catch-all for these types of topics. These days, a majority of controversial discussions stem from the high degree of political polarization, especially in the USA. Politics seem to dominate almost every social issue, and social issues that don't involve politics tend not to be as prone to heated arguments. It's been a gradual shift, but it's true that the P in PRSI has become more dominant when posts lead to major arguments.
Posting outside PRSI
The question asked in the title of this thread is why the "Posting outside PRSI" rule is applied unevenly, with the implication that every post about a social issue, outside of the political forums, should be considered off-topic and removed under that rule. This would severely limit discussions that wouldn't otherwise have problems.
In the thread titled "Apple Stores in Victoria, Australia to Reclose Following Return of Lockdown", users posted about the cornavirus, COVID-19, stay-at-home orders, closed businesses, government responses, and even an occasional mention of the specific Apple Store closings that the article reported. Almost every post was related to those pandemic social issues, but the pandemic is the reason for the store closures. Therefore, we judged almost all of the posts to be on-topic. The thread did not devolve into shouting matches, and was left in the main News Discussion forum so that everyone could participate.
What was moderated:
Three posts in the thread were removed by the moderators for containing personal insults.
Two frivolous posts were deleted.
Some posts were removed for being off-topic for a non-PRSI thread, such as a post about economic inequity. (Economic inequity is arguably related to the store closure topic, but less connected than the pandemic. The moderators considered that post to be too likely to turn the thread into an off-topic debate. Allowing such posts, and moving the thread to the Political News forum, was the other choice, but that would leave new users, even ones who had already posted in the thread, no longer able to participate in the discussion.) Obviously, identifying off-topic political posts requires judgement calls by the moderators, four of whom handled that thread together.
Finally, posts that quoted a deleted post were removed when they would no longer made sense.
In most cases, a user whose post is removed is given the reason. If not, or if the reason isn't clear, they are welcome to use the Contact form to ask for more details, and we'll be glad to provide them. The same applies if you report a post and are told that no action is necessary. You can be sure that there was a reason for the decision, and you're free to ask about it. If a user frequently submits post reports that don't require action, they may be misinterpreting how the rules are applied, in which case we may send them a personal message explaining this, to save them the trouble of reporting posts unnecessarily, and to save the moderators the trouble of handling those reports.
Specifics
I can discuss additional specifics since
Stephen R. has waived his right to moderation privacy. He recently used the Contact form to talk to us about a moderation concern. In that private conversation, we mentioned that it's fine to create a Site and Forum Feedback thread, like this one, to discuss moderation issues with other forum members as well. This lets us explain to everyone how our decisions are made.
As he mentions in this thread,
Stephen R. reported at least five posts in the "Apple Stores in Victoria, Australia to Reclose Following Return of Lockdown" thread. Each report said "This is clearly a post about a social issue outside PRSI." Two of the posts were about the dangers of COVID-19, one was about coronavirus infections, one about stay-at-home orders, and one about the Apple store closings. The moderators considered all of these posts to be related to the reason for the Apple Store closings, and therefore on-topic, and not likely to derail the thread or take it off-topic. Removing these posts would do more harm than good, in the opinion of the moderators.
Almost any news story can be related, somehow, to social issues in a broad way, since all but most technical news stories involve people and their lives and activities. We don't feel it would be appropriate to interpret every post about people and society as off-topic to a news story. We allow posts that are related to the topic and won't cause problems for other users.
Why doesn't it say all this in the
Forum Rules? If we explained all of the nuances of moderation for each forum rule in the rules themselves, the rules would be so long that nobody would read them. But we're glad to explain them when asked, as in this thread, and to tinker with the wording of rules if we can make them more clear without making them too verbose. In other words, the moderators follow the goal, intent, purpose, and spirit of each forum rule, rather than applying it mechanically just because they could justify removing a post based on the exact wording of the rule.
As I've said before, we're human and therefore imperfect ourselves. If we make moderation or administrative mistakes, we'll review them, explain them, and correct them. We're very picky about who gets to moderate here, even though the moderators are volunteers, and we hold them to a high standard. I'm a long-term forum user and a former forum moderator, so when I review cases of moderation I can view them knowing the tradeoffs involved in their decision-making, and how it affects users and their discussions.
Equal or unequal treatment
Some posts in this thread imply that the rules are applied unequally across forum members, or that some members are purposely allowed to break the rules. That's not the case. The rules apply to everyone equally, and that policy is a mainstay of our moderation habits. We never favor users based on the opinions they express in the forums or any other personal characteristics, we don't play favorites (since we don't know users personally), we don't excuse rule-breaking by users who have paid memberships, and we don't disfavor users even if they challenge moderation, since that's a privilege we offer to everyone. We also monitor the moderators to prevent bias, and periodically analyze the handling of post reports statistically.
However, there are three cases where we do treat members unequally:
One: If a post that violates the rules isn't reported, the moderators probably won't notice it. One user might get away with something while another user doesn't.
Two: We give more benefit of the doubt to established users who post favorably about a commercial product, whereas a brand new forum member won't be allowed to post product promotions. This policy helps us weed out spamvertisers, even though we often can't distinguish spam posts from earnest product recommendations by new forum members.
Three: A user is treated more leniently over minor rules, or a first offense, than over repeated violations or violations of serious rules. Members who break the rules are first given private warnings. Stronger consequences, such as temporary forum suspensions or bans, result if a user breaks serious rules after having been reminded about them previously. Even if that leads one user to be banned for personal insults while another seems to get away with doing the same thing (receiving only a private warning), that's a consequence of the escalation of discipline, and it's still based on treating all users equally under the rules.
I know that I've covered more than just the original question posed by this thread, but we have new forum members every day, so we find that it helps to go over this type of information periodically. You can find more reference information about forum moderation in the
Moderation FAQ.
