I wonder if we can have a major category for “in the news.” Not everything is a debate, sports, entertainment, mundane and pointless or an opinion. For example, the Haiti earthquakes. It’s kind of silly to pit an earthquake or try to frame it as a debate just to post about it, and what else is there? “In my opinion, there’s an earthquake in Haiti?” It’s definitely not mundane or pointless.
I realize this has been suggested before and rejected, but I’m not sure why not. It is certainly a poorer board for not having a general non-debate discussion about current events.
I’d say the above categories covers pretty much everything. We’re not a news aggregate, we don’t give barebones facts on cases. We’re a discussion site. Categories help us to isolate aspects of whatever is happening to discuss. I don’t really see any kind of discussion in a News forum going beyond what discussions we already have, except it’d be harder to focus on separate aspects without continuous back and forth.
Further, there’s the implications of what happens to the threads once the subject stops being newsworthy. Do we sort them out into appropriate categories? Do we enforce a strict divide between “news pertaining to X” and “information pertaining to X.”
And lastly, MPSIMS is the anything and everything forum of the Dope. It’s the catch-all, although I’ll grant you that the forum’s name might not be as covering as I’d (personally) like. A general “Haiti hit by earthquake, disaster, catch the news” thread would be a perfect fit for MPSIMS. (Which, if you’ll read the forum description, isn’t necessarily limited to trivial things.)
Yes, she did. That’s why she was pointing out that the existing categories in the forums already cover pretty much every possibility about talking about the news. News that you want to debate, like proper reactions to/causes of Haiti’s fucked up situation? GD. Rage at politicians’ reactions to Haiti? The Pit. And so on.
There’s no need for an entirely new forum for things “in the news” that would combine everything from sports trades to supreme court votes just because the newspaper articles have a recent datestamp.
Despite the M and the P in MPSIMS, not everything that gets posted there is actually mundane and pointless – it’s also the home of threads about births and deaths and marriages and other life-changing events.
There were a couple of threads there about the Haiti earthquake in which people discussed the events and their reactions to the events. It was also, famously, where the 9-11 thread happened.
So – ignore the forum title (and, yes, there are periodic efforts to change it – I’m personally advocating for “miscellaneous personal” so we can keep the acronym) and post general threads about breaking news in MPSIMS.
No, you didn’t. You said “It’s kind of silly to pit an earthquake or try to frame it as a debate just to post about it, and what else is there?”.
If you just wanted to post “Hey, there’s been an earthquake in Haiti and I want to just talk about it”, MPSIMS. If you wanted to say “Hey, there’s been an earthquake in Haiti and I wondered what your opinions were?” IMHO, and so on. Just because something is ‘in the news’ doesn’t mean that it doesn’t fit solidly into one of the forums.
I refuse to call an earthquake that kills a hundred thousand people mundane and pointless, and it’s not my opinion it happened. So my question has not been answered to my satisfaction, but apparently it’s been answered to yours, so you may lock the thread.
Well, you can refuse it all you like but your join date shows that you’ve been around long enough that you could have learned MPSIMS isn’t necessarily only for “mundane” things. If you really wanted, you could even put in a thread title “Haiti earthquake: Not Mundane! (but let’s talk about it folks)”
I’m also a bit surprised that you don’t understand that IMHO isn’t about things that it’s only “your opinion that it happened.” It’s for soliciting people’s opinions about various things. I mean, look at the front page of IMHO right now. Do you really think that the existence of laptops, knee pain, yoga, etc… are only opinions?
Do you really believe that if someone started an IMHO thread with an OP that pretty much ran “Earthquake in Haiti, what are your opinions on the situation?” that a mod would respond “Sir, this is a factual event and it is not only your opinion that a country named ‘Haiti’ exists or that an event called an ‘earthquake’ happened there. Official Warning issued!”
Did someone get chocolate in your peanut butter again?
Purely out of curiousity, did you think that thread offering a modest proposal qualified as “BBQ”? Was it a “rant about the world” or “[a] beef with another poster”?
You didn’t seem to have a problem dropping this thread in a forum with that description. Why the angst about posting about an earthquake in a forum whose description reads “For general discussion: from frivolous chatter to deep thoughts; from harmless diversions to life-changing announcements”?
Clearly you don’t judge every book by its cover. Why pick this one?
Mundane is derived from root words referring to the world. While mundane is more commonly used in its commonplace/ordinary meaning, its less commonly used “of this world” meaning is perfectly valid.
As the planet features tectonic plates, and as seismic activity is a standard feature of these aforementioned plates, and as said earthquakes do happen on the actual planet, mundane correctly applies.
@ Finn: well, you tell me. I’ve seen such arbitrary, fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants modding and such little accountability, nothing would surprise me. Why, immediately after your post laughing at the idea, some mod does spray spittle because I so carelessly posted to the wrong thread.
Cric, I see your point and agree. The policy here is improving the board is a no-no, we are all just supposed to learn the culture and the rules because it was set up by perfection and cannot be improved. To change anything means it was not already done right and that just can’t be.
It is always the poster who just does not understand how perfect it all is. This has been whacked into me over and over in just the month I’ve been here. Always you are to accept, never to try and make anything here better.
Because there was no set place for the Haiti quake, threads got opened in every forum and what a mess it was. If one made a comment you’d forget where that was forum wise and who you were answering when you’d try to find it again among the many. As a result, most all threads died quickly.
