Politics and religion are off-limits, unless you opt in

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Xanthe

...One of the forums I'm on broke up the political discussions into two rooms, Red (conservative) and Blue (progressive/liberal). Anyone can read the posts in either room, but if you post in one room, you're forbidden from posting in the other room for 45 days. You also can't quote or refer to specific posts in the other room. This cuts down on trolling and flame wars, and since news topics change so quickly, the 45-day time limit gives topics a chance to cool down (not to mention, if you're used to posting in a political forum, it's almost like going through withdrawal to not post for 45 days just to be able to change rooms. )

Surely that cuts down on the trolling, but at the same time, I can think of no surer way to prevent dialogue.

[FlorenceArt]

This whole thing makes me sad, really. I still think the mods had to do something, and this solution is not the worst they could have come up with, but what it may do is just create a closed environment where the most enraged "debaters" (I use this term for want of a better and still polite one) will discourage more reasonable posters to participate. I have already joined and left the group, and I'm sure I will do so again. I don't know if I will participate. I guess time will tell.

I just wish this had not been necessary.

[Graham]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

This whole thing makes me sad, really. I still think the mods had to do something, and this solution is not the worst they could have come up with, but what it may do is just create a closed environment where the most enraged "debaters" (I use this term for want of a better and still polite one) will discourage more reasonable posters to participate.

It seems to be having the opposite effect at the moment, with the debates in the closed group being extremely civil and friendly.

Graham

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by Graham

It seems to be having the opposite effect at the moment, with the debates in the closed group being extremely civil and friendly.

Graham

Thanks, glad to know that. But is it friendly because people make an effort to keep it so, or because they all agree with each other anyway?

[Graham]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

Thanks, glad to know that. But is it friendly because people make an effort to keep it so, or because they all agree with each other anyway?

Mostly the latter, I suspect, so far. But we have found the right room for an argument...

Graham

[Sparrow]

I'm finding it weird that some of the harsher posts here are from people condemning the harshness of those who might participate.
Maybe the absence of those voices is having a stabilising effect on the P&R debates.

I suspect part of the discontent is that they will now have to go even further out of their way to find stuff to be offended by (and they'll have less of an excuse when they do).

[ShortNCuddlyAm]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

Thanks, glad to know that. But is it friendly because people make an effort to keep it so, or because they all agree with each other anyway?

Originally Posted by Graham

Mostly the latter, I suspect, so far. But we have found the right room for an argument...

Graham

I completely disagree

(Sorry, couldn't resist )

[GeoffC]

Careful now boys and girls or this thread might find itself moved ...

[WT Sharpe]

Are pumpkins under attack in the United States?

[jinlo]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Are pumpkins under attack in the United States?

"There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin." -- Linus van Pelt

[darknessangel]

Finally! I think I joined the group and then... I just left it. Politics is not about my country and religion.... Thank God I'm an atheist! XD

[tompe]

I really do not get it why people join and leave the group. Most people can choose if they want to read a thread and not be upset so they should join to see every forum. People that cannot handle seeing a subject line without getting upset or having to join the discussion against their will should not join.

But most people should join to stimulate the discussions.

[thrawn_aj]

People have a right to free speech. People also have a right to stuff plugs in their ears and not hear that free speech if they so desire ("free" is not necessarily correlated with "meaningful" or "insightful" or "worth hearing").

Seems to me that the mods have found a way to preserve both these rights AND allow for free choice AND keep the boards from imploding. If it were any more perfect, one might think the solution was ... divinely inspired? (I keed, I keed )

Those who don't like this solution should take a minute to consider that the alternative is the people who're not interested in seeing these arguments putting the loudest and most frequent posters on ignore (which happens quite frequently I would guess). This way, they can do a selective ignore of the issues rather than the people. Yes, it's sad if they do that for ideological reasons rather than boredom issues, but it's not the mods' job to ram these issues down people's throats because it's for their own good.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by thrawn_aj;1189262
Those who don't like this solution should take a minute to consider that the alternative is the people who're not interested in seeing these arguments putting the loudest and most frequent posters on ignore (which happens quite frequently I would guess). This way, they can do a selective ignore of the [I

issues[/I] rather than the people. Yes, it's sad if they do that for ideological reasons rather than boredom issues, but it's not the mods' job to ram these issues down people's throats because it's for their own good.

But why can they not selectively choose not to read a thread? I do not get it why people would like to opt out.

On the other hand, the current solution solves the problem with new people with an agenda finding the thread using google and jumping in. And that is easier to undertand as a good thing.

[Xanthe]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

Thanks, glad to know that. But is it friendly because people make an effort to keep it so, or because they all agree with each other anyway?

I can only speak for one of the rooms. We definitely don't agree with each other on all points, but the majority of us tend to have some strong common ground. The political POV's tend to range from relatively centrist to out-there, the religious POV's range from fundamentalist to atheist. Personal attacks are nipped in the bud; belief systems and POV's are fair game.

There are some members who were formerly in the other room who came over to "our" side either because they got fed up there or because they got too aggravated with the POV's/comments in our forum that they just had to get in there and try to show us the error of our ways. There are occasional trolls, but most of us recognize them and either don't play along, or else we just pursue the conversation on our own and have a good time with it. If someone is a real pain-in-the-butt, the forum has an "Ignore" option so that you don't even see the posts of that person - it's like they're not even in the conversation. We tend to self-police ourselves, though the forum is modded and posts will get yanked if they start to get too heated and digress into the personal too much. But that doesn't happen all that often.

The website went to the two political forum system because apparently the previous single political forum virtually imploded because of those few people who always have to go offensively toe-to-toe and who forgot that the whole point of the forum was to encourge discussions, not post-wars.