So what is to stop the further balkanization of forums? If politics is going to be split out of GD, shouldn’t Religion also have its own forum? And shouldn’t Politics be divided into subcategories, so that righties can avoid seeing lefty threads altogether? Where does it stop?
Good question, but to me, a good indicator would be:
When any topic takes up 1/2 to 2/3ds of 2 different forums front pages for 9-10 months.
I never thought about it that way before. The board could have 13, 14, or even 15 forums!* Anarchy would rule! The seas could boil, fire and brimstone falling from the sky, forty years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanos, the dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifices, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria! We’d never be able to handle it!
*No, I ain’t counting the Chicago ones or the Barnhouse vanity forum. They don’t count.
It’s a stupid idea. Why not have a hundred forums? Why not have forums for everything??
Answer? Because then it would be even more of a pain to go through everything.
Games was split out of Cafe Society because it was demonstrated that the people who are interested in the Games forum aren’t substantially the same as the people who are interested in the remaining subject matter in the Cafe. Further, the sheer number of threads in the Cafe got overwhelming; splitting out the Games threads makes it possible to come back into the Cafe after half a day and not have so many threads that you need to look at two to three pages worth to catch up. So far as I can tell, that’s not true of GD; I can miss being here for two days and still not have more than one page of GD threads that have been active in the interim. Further, while it may be the case that there are some posters who would not visit a “Politics” forum, but would visit a “GD Minus Politics” forum, I doubt there are many posters who would visit Politics, and not the Truncated GD forum.
And finally, Fenris and others have yet to provide the one compelling piece of logic behind their request: why it is so vital that they not have to discriminate among threads in GD when they open that forum?
I’ve been to message boards that have 30-40 different fora, and they get along just fine. Enough people have asked for it and it’s simple to set up, so why not just give them what they want?
Fine–let’s split the issue
Politics out of the Pit and ALL politics go into GD. If you can’t make a coherent GD appropriate argument about your political outrage-du-minute, then learn how.
I’m more concerned about the Pit where (as of now 18 of 25 of the top threads are U.S. Centric-political)
Fine–but when I answer this one, I’d like a response to a question I’ve been asking for a while:
My compelling piece of evidence is from our own Lynn–one of the three head honchos (along with Tuba and Ed). Her own words, verbatim.
Yes, it’s sad that many readers don’t look beyond the front page. But the fact is (cited by Lynn) they don’t. So when one topic crowds out all others in a Forum and has for years and years, it’s time to consider splitting that topic into a subforum. (Which are no harder to navigate to and from) so that other topics can have more than a few minutes on the first page.
I can’t do this without a script and I’d never run a script on the SDMB even if I knew how (banning offense) but I’d also bet that it’s not that there’s a huge percentage of the Dope that’s invested in all political threads, it’s a core group–say 50 to 75 people who are really, REALLY passionate about it and because of the heat of the debates, they post fast and furious, so those threads stay active while slower threads don’t have a chance to find their footing.
My question: Why is it such a big deal to try it out for 6 months? If it flops, fine. It flops and the threads can all be merged back into the parent forum with (I think) one or two button-pushes on the VB control panel. If GD becomes a barren wasteland or The Pit dries up, then fine. We tried, it failed, the argument ends.
It doesn’t take Jerry the Tech Guy to do a child-forum. On another board I saw an admin create one on request in about 2 minutes, real-time. Apparently creating it is as easy as folding the posts back into the main forum–and VB won’t mess up the links–so there’s absolutely no damage whatsoever.
So what’s the harm in trying?
This is probably the best argument against the split. If what’s left is mostly nothing, then the question is not whether politics deserve their own forum but whether the rest of GD needs a separate forum. Maybe all it takes is a change of name and/or description.
I suspect more people might be prepared to post in GD if they knew their threads weren’t going to get hijacked with politics or ignored in favour of politics.
As everyone in favour of this has said, why not try it for a few months? Or is it being ignored because of the uncertain future of the boards?
Could someone give me a simple definition of “politics” that most others would agree with?
No: bad indicator.
If you don’t want to participate in a politics thread, then don’t participate.
Q: What about Game Room/MPSIMS?
A: Even after the spinoff, the first page of MPSIMS contains only about 15 hours of threads. That’s the metric for overcrowding, insofar as it’s a problem. I see that Great Debates currently has about 26 hours of material on the first page. That seems manageable to me, though admittedly I’d prefer 2-3 days.
In the pit, fast turnover is actually desirable, all the better to let sleeping dogs lie.
Thinking things over, I’ve evaded GD recently since the debates are such a time sink. I suppose it’s plausible that nonpolitical GD threads would move at a slower pace, which might encourage my participation. Notwithstanding my first admonition in this post, in practice I avoid GD mostly because I don’t want to be tempted by a time-consuming thread, which may or may not be political.
Well there will always be drama. Some will love the change, others will want to revert to normalcy. So absent compelling reason, a six month trial period isn’t as cut and dried as it may first appear.
Hm. Let’s list current page one nonpolitical threads in GD:
Nonpolitical:
Is “I know I am, but what are you?” a valid counterargument?
STS-80 UFO Video
Religion has Never Bettered the World (Multi-page thread 1 2 3 4)
Why should Christ be responsible for the crimes of Christians?
Why are we alive? (Multi-page thread 1 2 3)
Religious Experiences are not Hallucinations
Why should anyone take solipsism seriously?
Possible nonpolitical but probably not:
Whose non-existence would save the most lives, directly or indirectly?
Paul Craig Roberts: The economy won’t recover because there is no more economy left.
The role of the working poor in our society (Multi-page thread 1 2 3 4 5 6 … Last Page)
USA Founded on Deism.
Ok, so we have 7 nonpolitical threads, plus 4 out of about 50 first page threads. Of the 7, 4 are religious or spiritual, 1 is rhetorical (and therefore appropriate for a political forum, actually), one is philosophical and one is woo-woo. I’m guessing that GD without politics would contain more witnessing and freakishness. But if a slower moving forum is considered desirable, we might designate it Philosophy, Witnessing and Woowoo.
The mods have discussed this proposal very seriously, and we’ve certainly had differing opinions, but the high majority is to keep things as they are. There are several different reasons, somewhat related, but diverse also:
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First, we don’t know how to define “politics.” All of the topics listed by What Exit? are “politics” in one form or another. So, if they were all moved to a Politics forum, we’d have the same situation next time there was a US election.
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If the problem is really just US election threads during the (extremely long) period of US elections, then we would be glad to consider setting up such a forum in late 2011 (say), when US national elections start heating up.
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If the problem is US-politics vs world-politics, then, no, we’re not about to start separating Cafe Society or IMHO or any other forum into US vs European, etc.* Although the great majority of our membership is US-based, we like the global element very much, and we’re delighted when there are threads about Australian or Canadian elections.
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Several forums go through short periods when there’s a lot on one topic. The release of each new LORD OF THE RINGS movie, for instance, tended to produce a bevy of threads. Following 9-11, there were many threads on that topic in all the forums. We shrug and move on. The problem with US elections is that they’re not just a couple of months, of course, and (as noted above) we can consider a separate election thread when that starts to become a problem again.
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We did do some looking at the front page of GD, and we didn’t see any problem currently. Other than US elections, we didn’t see any past problems, either. GD is almost entirely politics and religion; if we separate out politics, then GD would be “Religion, Philosophy, and a few other bits” and that doesn’t appeal to us at all.
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We’ve always resisted the idea of using academic classifications for our forum. When we started, we rejected the notion of having separate forums for physics, chemistry, sociology, etc. We preferred “General Questions.” And we like that approach very much. The exceptions were Cafe Society, about arts and entertainment, which is a very broad category; and Game Room, about games and sports, which ditto. We don’t like the idea of separating GD into “politics” and “religion” anymore than we like the idea of separating GQ into “hard sciences” and “soft sciences.”
Note that, in that context, we don’t like the idea of a “politics” forum being separate either. Sticking to US politics, factual questions (“How many members are there on the Supreme Court?”) go to GQ; politics/art questions (“Should the government be subsidizing art museums?”) can go in GD or in Cafe Society; ranting (“The Vice President is an idiot”) can go in the Pit. We like the distinction by type of discussion, and we don’t mind the ambiguities.
So, we’ve heard the arguments pro and con, we’ve discussed them ourselves. We see that during US election period, we might want to consider some alternative approach, but we don’t see the need for change at present.
Please note, this is not just “digging in.” This is a decision following fairly lengthy discussion.
[sub]* We are, obviously, experimenting with city-specific forums, starting with Chicago, to see how that works. So, yes, we might eventually have London-specific forums, but that’s a long way off… and that’s not really relevant to the current discussion.[/sub]
Hey Dex,
I’m disappointed with the conclusion but I really, really appreciate the detailed response. Thanks for taking the time to write it all out.
One suggestion regarding point #2:
The 2010 mid-terms are going to be nasty and the 2012 one will probably be worse–you might want to consider a temporary forum runnning from like July-Dec 2010.
Anyway, other than that, unless something changes, I’ll shut up on this issue. (to everyone’s relief, no doubt. 
) Thanks again for the response and consideration!!
The degree of nastiness isn’t the issue, the question is the number of threads devoted to (basically) one broad topic. If it’s multiple threads on the same specific topic (let’s say, the Senate race for North Dakota), we can combine them. So, let’s see what the situation is, when/if it’s a situation.
True, I think GD is very off-putting to many with the whole miasma of politics and even religion for many others. Although I originally joined the SDMB for GD, I abandonded GD a long time ago for that reason among several.
That said, I don’t think trying things to see how they blow up or work out is the way things are normally done, either here or in most other places. Yes, we could make a forum for questions starting in vowels and another for consonants and see how that works out after a few months. That doesn’t mean it would make sense. There are just too many things that could be tried to see how they work.
Is this really an issue at all? (I ask out of honest ignorance, not trying to push one side of it). How many threads are there in GD that you wouldn’t be sure whether they belonged in politics or not? (I haven’t looked myself).
We don’t have a good definition of “life” either, but I think I could separate the biology threads in GQ if I had to.
My post on the bottom of page 3 of this thread evaluated the ~50 threads in GD last night. The score was roughly 39-4-7 : 39 were politics, 7 were not politics and 4 were somewhat ambiguous (though I’d label them as “politics”).
The question seems to have been considered and answered, but can I ask just one more thing…
One point on which I agree with Fenris concerns politics threads in the PIT. I have no issue whatsoever with politics remaining part of GD, but why oh why are there so many politics threads in the PIT? As Fenris says, if people cannot speak back and forth on politics in GD then perhaps they shouldnt speak on politics at all.
The PIT was my favourite forum, but now it seems I open the front page, see the glut of US politics threads, my eyes glaze over and I click away somewhere else.
If a seperate forum for Politics is out, can we perhaps examine the moderation in the PIT, concerning whether many of the political threads posted in the PIT could really survive easily in GD? And if they should be moved as much as possible?
(I am aware GFACTOR has a thread open to discuss what threads should be in the PIT, but I felt this would suit this thread)
Part of it is that GD ends up with a selection of regulars that turn every debate in GD into a parsefest and nitpick of word usage fiasco so it is easier to debate politics in the pit quite often or most anything else for that matter.
Speaking generally (at a philosophic level), Pit threads should NOT be discussions. Pit threads should be rants and general forthing at the mouth, flaming of politicians rather than discussion. GD is where discussion and debate are expected.
Having said that, the practical side is that once someone posts a Pit thread about how Senator Tut-tut-tut is a racist, the odds are that someone else will counter that no, he’s not, and you’re an idiot for suggesting it. Hence, an element of debate probably tends to arise.
IF the main jist of the thread is debate and discussion, then the mods should (generally speaking) move it to GD. If the main jist of the thread is screaming and yelling, then it belongs in the Pit.
This goes back to our founding principles, the decision that our forums would be based on the type of discussion (factual question, debate, flaming, sharing, etc) rather than the topic itself (sociology, politics, physics, etc.) That used to be the way (long ago) that entertainment worked, as well: rants about how bad some movie was went in the Pit, listing the actor’s former roles went in GQ, sharing info about how great a movies was went in MPSIMS. We decided to split out arts/entertainment as a separate forum and ditto Games/sports, just to avoid the confusion. I’ve assumed that the discussion about a separate politics forum was along the same lines. The difference is that arts/entertainment (mostly movies, actually) were filling up MANY forums while Politics is largely the focus of one only.
Im sure, though, Dex, that you do recognize the difference between a discussion/debate and a very heated discussion/debate. I realize it must have been just an ommission, but just to make sure: when you say “[if] the main jist of the thread is debate and discussion, then the mods should (generally speaking) move it to GD.” The “(generally speaking)” is probably the out. For example:
PosterA: Obama is a fucking liar! And you people are just sheep for following him.
PosterB: Yeah, what about his health plan. Bastard lied about that. See this YouTube link."
PosterC: That’s why you can’t think your way out of a paper bag. Here is where the President clarifiedwhat he said in your link.
PosterA: That’s not a clarification. It’s back-peddaling. You’re just too stupid to tell the difference."
PosterD: He’s probably smart enough to spell “peddling” right.
PosterA: You can cram it.
PosterC: Here are some statistics from the NIHand from the CDC, with conclusions that support Obama’s health care plan.
PosterE: Why should we bother arguing with people who think cows fart carbon dioxide?
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Even though that’s a debate, doesn’t it belong in the Pit?
IF the sources are good and there is some actual meat to the argument, then it could be done in GD without the “stupid” and the “you can cram it”.
If it is mostly a parade of “stupid” and “you can cram it” with no actual content, then it is Pit material
ETA: On a further thought about this matter, the problem with making a politics forum would be that it would pretty much force making a religion forum since that would leave the exact same problem of a topic being 80% of the forum. And then there would really be nothing left in GD. That said, if I ran this place I would probably still make the damned politics forum just to stop the nagging and the repeated mention of the vanity barn house forum.