I’ve rather enjoyed participating in the 2010 US Election forum and I’m sorry to see that it will be leaving us in the near future. Is there any chance that it will be replaced with a 2012 US Election forum sooner than later?
Well, there are elections in the U.S. every year. Why not an ongoing “U.S. Elections” forum?
My understanding is that Ed was going to evaluate the experiment after the end of this election cycle and decide then whether to make it a permanent or recurring forum.
twickster, 2010 Election forum moderator
I just looked at the Elections forum, and the Great Debates forum. There are 9 threads that are active today in the Elections forum, and 23 in the Great Debates forum. That doesn’t seem like enough to make the Elections forum a going concern, separate from the Great Debates forum. This is the last week before the US elections, so you would imagine that the new forum is at its busiest these days.
Don’t forget the whining and gloating after the election. To the best of my recollection, that is when the most action occurs. It would be a mistake to close it down until a couple of weeks after the election.
The traffic is not surprising for an off-year election. But for the sake of consistency, I wouldn’t be opposed to a permanent forum, even with peaks and troughs.
I am also thoroughly enjoying NOT participating in the election forum, and would join my voice to those wishing to keep it around so I can easily ignore all political talk in one easy-to-avoid chunk.
That’s more than CoCC and CoSR combined.
Hear, hear!
The problem however is that this is an “off” election, with Congress (Reps. and 1/3 Senators) but not President up for election. (Local/state offices in most places as well.)
That could skew the numbers lower than what we would have seen two years ago or would see two years hence.
+1
Seeing as how this message board was originally built as an adjunct to the newspaper columns, I understand why those forums exist and are separate.
And what exactly is the cost to the boards of keeping around a forum with less-than average traffic again?
I just think that a board with fewer, more active forums looks more inviting, and is more apt to attract people, than a board with a bunch of less active forums.
Also, I think that more people get involved when the discussion topics are less fragmented, e.g. the person who is not fond of political discussions may never go into the Politics forum, even though that person might end up commenting on one of the topics in there, if they saw it in the Great Debates forum.
Kaiser permanente got its start building boats in WWII, but they don’t still sell boats just because they used to. Why should we keep two unpopular forums alive just because they relate to the failing print-media based column? Just put a comments section at the bottom of each column, like every other online article-based site has. Let the SDMB sever its tie to Ed or Cecil or whatever the hell his name is.
I think most people, or at least a huge percentage, just hit the New Posts button and don’t pay attention to the forums. That’s what I do anyway.
The Election forum was started because every two years there are tons of complaints that election talk drowns out everything else so it would be better to put the threads there for people who want to avoid it completely. I didn’t then and still don’t think it’s necessary but it’s not that big of a deal either way, IMO. I mean it was definitely worth a try, right? It takes no more than two minutes to create or move the threads from a forum.
Because the person running the board wants them, is my guess. It doesn’t fill me with rage to see those two forums there. Also, I think that people finding straight dope columns via Google are one of the things that get new posters to the board.
If that were true, then we wouldn’t need a new forum to hide the political threads from the GD people. I can’t remember ever using the New Posts button.
Who said it wasn’t worth a try? Of course, the two minutes that it takes to create a forum is not all that is involved, from an administration point of view, to create a forum. On the same token, if an idea has been tried, I would hope that it shouldn’t be such a big deal to have the opinion that the idea was not worth doing, after all.
Have you tried their medicine? They should have stuck to boats.
And when they arrive and find a forum devoted to political interests they may be more inclined to stay vs finding those threads spaced between “what color should my poop be” threads.