Quote:
Originally Posted by Patricia
The moderators are discussing this issue.
There is a case for just stopping ALL political threads. However, what exactly counts as political? DRM threads get political at times and its not always easy to see where a line should be drawn.
Last year we tried moving all serious political threads into a forum called the Conservatory. It was a disaster, and generated more rancor and bitterness than we had ever seen on MR. Alex eventually decided to close it because it had nothing to do with our central mission: to promote mobile reading it all its forms.
Now we have a resurgence of overtly political topics and some people have been very intemperate. We'd like to find a solution that allows members as much freedom as possible, without causing gratuitous offence to others. This is more difficult than you might think. For example, we had to ban the so-called "Rattler" earlier because he turned out to be a sockpuppet for Recluse.
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Well, as I was not apparently around for that I guess I wonder WHY it was an unmitigated disaster?
Surely a politics and/or religion (or wild wild west if you want) should work. It does on other forums which I frequent (art and drawing and science and even gun and religion forums).
I mean look at the global warming thread. It's gotten heated at times, but we (with a little from our moderator friends) have brought it back around.
I think particularly in a reading/literary forum like this where all the children are above average we should be able to discuss virtually anything and keep it away from the personal attacks. Members as well as moderators must help to manage if things start veering out of hand.
I would hate to see banning of any topic.