question: is the bullying of muslim children in school an acceptable topic of discussion here?

[stone space]

18. A discussion of this question there would constitute a hijacking of the OP you linked to.

That OP is not about the SOP of DU's Religion Group, which there may have been had some confusion about.

I think that the confusion has been cleared up now.

It is better to be clear about the rules so as to avoid meta in threads, which tend to hijack OP's.

What happened, I think, is that there was dissatisfaction with the fact that the OP was left standing, and a desire to second guess the moderation process by raising the meta issues directly within the thread itself, instead of accepting or appealing the results.

When this happens due to a misunderstanding of the SOP, it is better to clear up the confusion directly, so that people understand the SOP and don't feel tempted to derail threads with meta when jury decisions don't go their way.

Addressing the SOP directly avoids many of the alerts in the first place, which is better, since then people won't become frustrated when frivolous alerts fail (even frivolous alerts made out of ignorance in good faith), and won't be tempted to hijack the threads with meta to get around the failure of frivolous alerts.