In [76]: text
Out[76]: u"The problem with all encompassing policies is that people tend to use those instead of using the brain and determining whether a question possesses or not the bad qualities that make game-rec's toxic for the site. \n What exactly is a game-rec? \n"
In [77]: re.findall("[^@][a-zA-Z]*", text)[:5]
Out[77]: [u'The', u' problem', u' with', u' all', u' encompassing']