July 31, 2010 12:30 AM UTC

It Happens Every Year

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• by: Colorado Pols

We’ve been writing about Colorado politics since late 2004. This means we’ve seen several election cycles come and go, and we’ve lived through–and diligently called the plays–for a number of hotly contentious primaries on both sides of the aisle.

In just about every case where a primary election is close at hand, the debate tends to get really heated. Because this is the biggest blog for political discussion in Colorado, everybody wants to get their particular spin in play here, and the first line of defense against an opponent’s attacks is frequently one of our comment threads. One of the best examples of this phenomenon was the primary between Marc Holtzman and Bob Beauprez in 2005-06, which turned into a daily battle royale between supporters of each–although you’ll find it to be the case for every high-profile contested primary that has occurred on our watch.

And inevitably, it gets out of hand at one point or another. Passions overheat, and people forget the basic rules of civility. Particularly in the case of an underdog seeking to take out a better organized opponent, it’s a standard practice to very deliberately ramp up the acrimony to a fever pitch. All of which, being entirely predictable, we don’t get very worked up about: our readers expect and enjoy vigorous debate, and when things do go too far our community usually self-polices very well.

One thing we can’t tolerate, however, is flagrant violations of our basic rules. In the last few days we have been forced to ban a couple of users who were trying to expose the identities of members of our site, in the context of debate over the current Democratic Senate primary. We have said repeatedly that this is never acceptable behavior, as it endangers the ability of many of our most valued community members to express themselves freely. The particular incidents that resulted in bans were egregious and repeated violations of this policy–there was absolutely no question that the individuals involved knew the rules and chose to disregard them.

Anyway, our point is simple: chill out. Don’t do things you know are wrong just because you’re really fired up. Understand that what you do while carrying your candidate’s flag in a public forum reflects on them. And above all, remember that you will still have to live with your actions on August 11th.

If you need a refresher, check out our posting rules. As we’ve always said: You can say just about whatever you want on Colorado Pols, and you’ve got more liberty to express those opinions here than just about anywhere else online in Colorado. But there are still lines that we ask you not to cross, with “no outing of someone’s identity” at the top of the list.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.