You did. And you saw a veritable tsunami of threads way back in the day around the whole Clinton/Lewinsky/Impeachment scandal went down as well.
The level of Trump-centered threads is about what I’d expect, honestly. What I woudn’t have expected is the devolution into unfocused anger and irrationality that I see this time around.
Moderator Note
I’m failing to see the ATMB relevance in this.
The OP’s comment was in reference to the type of thread or post that the OP believes has a negative impact on how this board is perceived by others. While any potential impact on the SDMB is certainly a topic for ATMB, the actual discussion of Trump’s literacy is not relevant to the rules or administration of this board.
This IMHO thread is a more appropriate place for the discussion about Trump’s literacy (or lack thereof):
Seriously, is Trump a Functional Illiterate?
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=819113
I have not read through that thread. Your request for a cite on that topic may already be discussed there.
Changing the name of Elections won’t do anything to prevent threads about Trump from popping up in any other forum. Trump could be a legitimate subject in GD, GQ, IMHO, CS, and really every other forum here.
If all threads about Trump were limited to some ‘politics’ forum where GD rules apply how would one post a factual question about Trump or tear off an insult laden rant about him? You’d get GQ questions answered by Pit like rants and 2 cent opinions. This board isn’t organized as much by subject matter as it is by the types of conversations that can take place within the various forums. We need places to discuss things factually, debate, opine, and rant. That can’t all be done in one forum under our current structure.
Take a look at the front page of any newspaper or online news site. It is dominated by stories about Trump. Why would a discussion board be any different? That’s what is on people’s minds right now.
The OP is complaining that the “bile and ignorance” is diminishing the Straight Dope brand. He was unconcerned about bile and ignorance when Obama and Clinton were the targets, suggesting that his complaint is due to partisan reasons rather than a dispassionate concern for the board. If bile and ignorance were his primary concerns, he should have complained before this.
I agree, and apologize. I had two similar threads open and screwed up.
ETA: thanks to all for not commenting on my own literacy or lack thereof.
If somebody has a factual question about Trump, or any political figure or policy, it should probably go in GQ, in my opinion. And if somebody makes a political jab they should be warned just like in any other GQ thread.
IMHO threads on political figures (not just limited to Trump) I could see being in either but really most of those could belong in a “Politics” sub-forum anyway since most of it will result in discussion of the policy and figure being opined on.
Anyway I kind of agree with Shodan. Great Debates right now is overrun with Trump threads and under the current forum structure that is the best place for them. I don’t see that stopping any time soon precisely for the reasons you state, just look at the newspapers. The actions, policies, etc of the administration are everywhere.
I think it’s already calming down quite a bit. If you recall, immediately after the election there would be some new thread every time there was any news item about Trump at all. Every tweet spawned a thread. This was also true at some point last summer (can’t recall the exact time period).
Anyway, now that we explored in infinite detail (and usually at least 3 times in 3 separate threads) every possible way that Trump might be removed from office, that sort of background noise is disappearing. Fact is, this is a liberal MB and there is going to be a lot of outage about Trump as long has he’s the prez. Trying to change that is a fool’s errand.
Not the person addressed in either case but when has that stopped any of us?
The relevance is to what the standards for the board should be is informed by what it has been and what motivates the question.
If the brand’s standard has been to accept alleged bile and ignorance when addressed in one direction then that has been the brand’s standard. Aimed by others in another direction is not “diminishing” the brand; it is a continuation with a different target. Someone who complains about it one direction but not another could reasonably be concluded to be not concerned about the brand but about their POV not being given a desired “safe space.”
The op claimed a thread questioning Trump’s functional literacy as evidence of unfair “slams” on Trump since, stated as if it was established fact, “Trump is not functionally illiterate.” If that claim is definitively true and something that everyone knows then maybe claiming the question as a slam is a legit. If it is not then calling the question a slam, a premise of the op, is a false claim. IOW it is not a slam to ask a reasonable question. Under some circumstances it could be a reasonable GQ one but putting in IMHO was probably the best place given the likely lack of a GQ answer at this point.
I see your point** John Mace**, but I still think that a lot of what you see as liberalism is just a reflexion of what many sites that are sticklers to facts in a generalist way are not seeing Trump as an example of “telling others the straight truth”, what we are seeing is a very dramatic increase of accusations launched to many other sites and places of being liberal. When in reality they are just not well setup to take bullshit in, and of the political kind too. Heck, even if they are full of right wing commentary some entertainment sites are also branded as liberal (Like YouTube).
Yeah, those last three are from the jokers at rational wiki, one should disregard what they did not cite, but we should check, for example what they link about Snopes:
Here is About.com:
Humor & Whimsy
In short: the point is that currently Trump and followers are a good chuck of Americans, and accusations like the ones launched to Snopes and others are increasing from the right side of the isle. But such efforts are not really much about what the sites report. They are really a more sophisticated attempt at “killing the messenger”.
A messenger that as I have pointed many times before it can be liberal indeed, but as I think, it is just a coincidence that this is the case now; someday the ones that are more liberal minded will not have many of the facts on their side.
But not today.
What exactly did the electorate expect when they elected a Twitter troll? I personally know dozens of Republicans, none of whom liked him, except one - and her reason for voting for him was “Well, at least he’s not a politician.”
Here is what I hope turns out to be an ATMB-appropriate post:
Where on this Message Board will I find a thread about Chex cereal that brings up Donald Trump? Would someone be good enough to link to it?
TIA 
Ask and ye shall receive (I couldn’t resist searching for this one).
You have to go back to 2005 to threads about The Apprentice.
The Apprentice – 2/3/05
The same quote is repeated in this thread:
The Apprentice – 3/17 (Happy St. Pat’s!)
The only instance of Trump and Chex showing up in the same thread since Trump became president is this ATMB thread.
You’re welcome
We will have to content ourselves with Trump Flakes.
Do you remember the thread(s?) about liberal hypocrisy and how the lefties told us that pointing out that hypocrisy is not a valid argument and adds nothing to the discussion?
What I find most worrying is that the board is becoming an ingroup, down that path reasonable and factual discussion is unwelcome.
Meh, around the late 90’s I found the forum and what I casually saw was a lot of criticism of Clinton and I thought this was a conservative site. After lurking for awhile I realized that there was good criticism made and that there were also good counterpoints to that. IIRC it was at a time when Clinton could had been impeached. What I’m trying to say is that even the fears of becoming an in group are exaggerated. Particularly when strong evidence made me change a lot of my views about guns, GMO’s, nuclear power and other issues.
Also, I decided to stay after finding that Great Debates is not the only forum here, try GQ and other forums.
I don’t remember anything at all like this. The hypocrisy of the right casting aside every principle and every item for which they would castigate the left instantly upon their political ascendancy is one of the single most damaging blows to civilized public discourse. Why shouldn’t they be accused of this? How is this not something they should be publicly shamed for? What makes them think they can avoid condemnation?
Of course, I may be wrong. Liberals may have argued incessantly for decades that hypocrisy is not a valid argument. But if so, then why shouldn’t they follow the lead of the right and instantly abandon that position if it sustains their current feelings? Or is the right’s position, “if you do what we do and say what we say, we’re going to vilify you anyway?”
It’s relevant in determining whether the OP is sincere with his claim that it’s about making the board better, or if he’s just using that as an excuse to try and get the mods to control what people talk about.
If he can show he’s been against this sort of thing before, then he can show that it isn’t just special pleading because of Trump.
What he’s said could easily be seen as “concern trolling.” The definition is “the action or practice of disingenuously expressing concern about an issue in order to undermine or derail genuine discussion.” I’m not saying that this is what he’s doing, but that people could see it that way.
So it makes sense to check and see if that’s the case, and establishing that you’ve put forth this sort of concern before goes a long way in showing you are not being disingenuous.
The board is a liberal board. It has been at least since I got here in 2008. This has not prevented reasonable and factual discussion.
It’s true that there’s very little reasonable opposition to the anti-Trump message, but that has entirely to do with the strength of the position. It’s really, really hard to rationally argue a pro-Trump position.
Just because the board basically agrees on being anti-Trump doesn’t mean it’s any more of an in-group than it already was. It’s just a testament to how bad Trump is. The rational arguments take the form of just how bad he actually is.
If you think there are good rational arguments to not be anti-Trump, then you are, of course, free to make them. But it’s telling that they don’t seem to have been made by anyone, including a bunch of people who are really upset that we’re so anti-Trump. They have the greatest interest in putting forth the best argument.
Even our best conservatives are anti-Trump. And, by best, I mean “those who put forth the best arguments.” Pro-trump sentiment seems to be entirely emotional.
While anti-Trump sentiment is emotional but backed with solid reasoning.
Trump himself is anti-fact. A board that is pro-fact is going to be really hard on him. Being able to debunk his “facts” is good for factual discussion, not bad.