This is tangential to the Paris threads. We’ve been talking off and on about requesting a new forum for Current Events. Currently, those threads get spread around in Great Debates, MPSIM, & the Pit. The Mundane Pointless threads always seem a little out of place, since Current Events, like the recent Paris attack, are neither Mundane or Pointless. Plus, having threads in the Pit or the Debates can be an issue because ranting and debating can drown out actual/factual discussion of what is going on.
What if we start using GQ for Current Event threads. I think the format of that forum would fit. The rules of that forum say it’s for factual information, ranting and jokes are (ideally) kept to a minimum, and no political potshots which can hijack a thread. Threads devoted to an ongoing situation can be labelled Current Event or [CE] in the thread title.
I think this would be a useful way of keeping at least one thread available for simple factual discussion without getting bogged down in debate or ranting.
I think you’re taking the title of MPSIMS too literally. Note that the forum description says
General Questions, by both its title and its description, is for questions. Let’s keep it that way.
I don’t have a strong opinion one way or the other on whether we get a new Current Events forum. But if you’re going to make one of our existing fora serve that purpose, it seems to me like Elections is the best choice: you’re just taking what the forum already is, and broadening it.
I think you’re greatly overestimating how much traffic a separate “Current Events” forum would receive. At present there’s only 20 or so threads on the first page of MPSIMS relating directly to current events, and many of them are merely commemorating special days (i.e. Edmund Fitzgerald Day) or sharing a meaningless fluff piece they read in the daily paper. At any given time, there’s only 2 or 3 major news events per week which get discussed in that forum.
And it’s fine by me to use MPSIMS as the de facto forum for breaking news discussions; it’s the least trafficked of the “big three” forums, for starters. And like others have said, the “Mundane, Pointless” title is kind of a misnomer, as the forum’s already used for talking about life-changing personal events.
So start a new thread with [Current Event] in the title and add a disclaimer at the top of the OP that this is just for discussing the events, not the politics, and provide links to the threads where the politics are being discussed or ranted about.
Perhaps it works okay, but couldn’t it be better? Why are “enormous real world thing happened that caused death and mayhem” threads in the same forum as “my cat’s farts stink”? I think a new forum Current Events might be worthwhile. MPSIMS is a huge forum (2nd biggest, I think) – taking out Current Events would probably result in two good-sized and better-organized forums.
Well, one reason is that the flux through MPSIMS is high, possibly the highest on this Board. That could lead to a ‘Current Event’ thread falling off its front page pretty quickly. More generally, the high flux of threads in MPSIMS would dilute any ‘Current Event’ threads with a lot of mundane and pointless ones. It would be nice not to have wade through them.
In any case, I think having a forum for current events is a fabulous idea. If it were created, I predict it would soon become one of the more popular of the forums here. I know I would go there.
I like this idea, too, but it’s apparently not happening. It would require a whole new mod, I think. My suggestion is a compromise between having a new forum and using the existing forum structure.
You can’t say, on the one hand, that I’m taking the forum titles too literally and then, on the other hand, insist that we can’t put the thread in GQ because that forum title is literally “Questions”.
I don’t care about the forum title. I just want a way to discuss Current Events without getting into debates and rants.
I agree that this might work in Elections, but Election is pretty much all debates - all the time. GQ is less debates and more factual discussion, which is closer to what I’m suggesting.
Well, that’s sort of the thing about the Current Events threads I’m suggesting. They wouldn’t really be open-ended discussions, so much as factual discussions about what’s going on. Open-ended discussion about what we ought to do would continue in GD, the Pit, and yes, maybe Elections.
Same reason the threads about cat farts are in the same forum as threads entitled “My Uncle Died of Cancer This Morning” – MPSIMS is a grab bag of threads that don’t fit neatly into any of the other 11 forums.
Actually, that’s not true at all. The first page of MPSIMS (assuming it’s like my setup, which is 150 threads per page) has threads dating back to Nov. 4th, eleven days ago. Comparatively, GQ and IMHO go back only six days, while Cafe Society (surprisingly!) goes back only five days. And in any case, if “Current Event” threads fall off the front page then they aren’t very “current” anymore, are they?
While I do find the idea of a Current Events forum intriguing, there doesn’t seem to be any practical need for one. Plus I agree with Colibri that moderation would become a major PITA – not just in deciding what constitutes a “current event”, but also keeping discussions on topic. Just look how fast any Mass Shooting De Jour thread gets hijacked by a pro/anti gun debate, or how discussions about the recent events in Paris got derailed by general arguments about Islam (and were moved out of MPSIMS as a result.)
Doesn’t that reinforce the OP’s point, though? That sort of behavior wouldn’t be tolerated in a forum like General Questions. Should level of moderating difficulty serve as an effective roadblock to flame-free discussion of current events?
I feel weird looking in “mundane pointless stuff” for threads on major political events, like the Paris attack. While I care deeply that my uncle died, I know that most people won’t, and that feels a lot less weird. And honestly, an ordinary death is pretty mundane, in the grand scheme of things.
Maybe “elections” could be renamed “current events”?
I agree, although I wonder if “Current Events” is even the right categorization. Lots of current events are natural events (hurricanes, etc.) or various miscellaneous news items that all seem to find a home in one of the existing forums. What we seem to be lacking is a focus for political events like what just happened in Paris, which may not be the right fit for GD because the poster isn’t presenting it as a debate question, but which may be controversial and may frequently lead to the kinds of political debates we see in “Elections”.
So I wonder if the forum we’re looking for is not really “Current Events” but rather “Politics”, and if you look at it that way it seems to be a natural extension of where “Elections” practically is already:
This forum is for discussion of elections and electoral politics. Discussions of electoral strategy and tactics, political parties, individual races, poll results, political news, and U.S. politicians and public figures are all appropriate for this forum … We recognize the difficulty of disentangling electoral politics from larger issues of public policy, and leave it to the discretion of users whether to start political threads in Elections or Great Debates.
So maybe the former “US Elections” which became “Elections” could become “Politics” and be a home for all political discussion, information, and debate, and GD a debate forum for everything else. There would be areas of overlap but as noted in the “Elections” forum description, there already is.
A CE forum would be nice. But it’s going to add to the admin and maintenance of the board, along with having some cranky mods assigned to the forum. It’s also likely to contain contentious threads without the artificial sense of decorum that is pointlessly attempted in GD. I can see the PTB looking askance at this idea. What make more sense is having the board indexed by more than the current super-categories of forums that we have now. Then anyone interested could take a look at all the current event threads in any forum. But again, more work, more time, more money, all for more of the usual.
Yes, in general that forum is MPSIMS. If I were the one to start a thread about the ongoing attacks in Paris, “Politics” is certainly not the forum I would think to start it in.
Despite its name, MPSIMS is traditionally the place for current event threads. The threads should be moderated for political debate or flaming, and posters who wish to debate or flame should be directed to the appropriate forum.