Quote:
Originally Posted by kennyc
Well, as I was not apparently around for that I guess I wonder WHY it was an unmitigated disaster?
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Because it was perceived as a place for "topics too hot for general Lounge discussion," rather than "topics not related to ebooks, but a bit more serious than the Lounge really supports."
When it opened, several people acted like it meant "political flamewars go here!" And it's not likely any similar board-splitting in the future would have different results.
We do okay, I think, with political (religious/military/etc.) discussions in the Lounge, even if they get heated sometimes. Even if people get banned for them sometimes. If people aren't able to follow Mobileread's guidelines for civil conversation, I'd rather that showed up in non-ebook topics than getting more of the copyright/DRM/pirate discussions shut down. I think those are *important* to Mobileread (even as repetitive as they can get), and on-topic, and I want all those issues thoroughly hashed out and dissected and analyzed.
I don't think that removing some topics is going to lower tempers any--people who believe they are *right* and those who disagree are *wrong* and can freely be insulted, are going to believe that no matter what the topic is. Those who recognize they have hot-button issues about a particular topic can learn to
stay out of those threads or risk being banned--the mods are not parents, and they shouldn't have to ban whole categories of discussion to avoid the occasional flare-up. The rest of us can manage to discuss politics with people who disagree with us as well as we can manage to discuss file torrenting with people who disagree with us.
And those discussions get heated at times. Sometimes, enough to make threads get shut down. Sometimes enough to get people banned. But not as often as discussions in the Lounge--which tells me that those people weren't as interested in discussions about ebooks, as they were about "proving their point," whatever they believed that to be.