I don’t know why you want to try to have an argument with me. We used to have conservative posters on here and now we have almost none. I personally think that makes us less unique and worse off, even though I’m not a conservative myself. This shouldn’t be controversial; it’s merely an observation of the board, and not in itself a debate. Although if you want to start one feel free to open a thread, I’m not going to stop you.
I haven’t noticed a reduction of transgender, minority and female voices, but if there has been then that is pretty shitty. I hope you are not insinuating that I am somehow indifferent to those issues but it sounds like you are. Which is a pretty shameful thing for you to do with no evidence for it whatsoever. More importantly however, how do you know if a poster is female, transgender or a minority? How do you know we are losing them?
I’m at least one of those three, can you work out which?
I’ve noticed at least Great Debates has lost some of its quality over the past few years. Used to be able to spend entire evenings reading very well crafted exchanges on a wider variety of deep topics, now it’s degrading into another cage fight screaming match arena. I do appreciate the recent attempts at soft-rebooting the section, though.
It’s whole lot harder to debate in any normal sense of left/right perspective when the Republican Party has been lost to a lunatic faction. The current administration and its enablers have turned American politics into simply good vs evil. These people are the enemy of civilization, there is no room for nuanced debate over the subtleties of policy. They can’t be reasoned out of their insanity. Until their are removed from power, the country is in grave danger.
When sane Republicans take their party back, we can go back to debating them. Until then, what’s the point?
They may well be accurate, but they are not my perceptions.
SDMB is becoming more homogenous and I think the loss of the political right, the conservative, the dissident quasi fascist, the economic dries (whether driven out or in the face of incessant opposition) is making the SD poorer.
Sorry, way outside my ken.
Yes, the encyclopedia in 140 characters has had a detrimental effect. But also the American chutzpah has copped some severe self-inflicted kicks to the goolies in the past decade, and the collective and more introspective “you” are not as much fun to cross play with.
Don’t think so but the forums were becoming more behaviorally and culturally homogeneous to me and Discourse makes them all a bit more folksey. On the old board, posts that quoted the full several paragraphs from post immediately above and added merely a drive-by gave me the screaming idjits. That Discourse can strip that malarkey out is a boon, IMHO.
This is why I want to “have an argument with” you - because i don’t agree with you. I think,possibly bar one, all the conservative posters we’ve lost are the proverbial bad rubbish that it’s good to get rid of. There was nothing unique about being an internet haven for racists and misogynists. Unless you mean the uniqueness was that some of you uniquely didn’t acknowledge it.
We are better off without them. I like this place a bit more. I’d like it even more when the last of them are gone.
When we made the switch to Discourse, I think anyone with a valid email address got an email notification, included banned members. Perhaps this brought a few back to create a sock account and continue the behavior that got them banned originally?
Of course, that would depend on the first observation being correct, that there are actually more such posts lately. I suspect it’s more confirmation bias than a true increase.
I’m pretty sure that only happens when you reply to the entire post immediately prior to yours. You can partial quote such a post and it won’t be dropped. This post is a good test - I replied to your entire post, and I expect to see it still there when I submit this.
This may fall into the “be careful what you wish for” category, but it does resolve one of my pet peeves, where the first response in a thread quotes the entire OP before their answer.
IMO the disappearing full quote of the immediately prior post is one of the best features of Discourse. There was nothing as useless as a full quote of the prior post on vBulletin. Pure screen-clogging clutter and often the sign of a clueless user. Og protect us from such goofballs.
What I would like is if they changed the disappearing feature slightly, so there was still a boxed user name & clickable reference to the quoted post, just no body text. That’s so we could all tell the difference between someone commenting on the thread as a whole versus someone specifically speaking to the immediately prior post/poster.
Here I quoted my own immediately prior post with nothing between the two quote tags. Just the two tags on separate line. Works perfectly. You get a visible indication that something’s being quoted and if you click the up-arrow at upper right of the quote box it takes you to the quoted post.
Shame Discourse can’t do that instead of removing the whole quote including the tags. They should have excluded removing the tags.
I don’t particularly like this. It always take me a half second or so to realize that they’re probably responding to the post immediately above. I will probably “train” myself out of that. But what is really annoying is when a post sneaks in between. This happens quite a lot.
Lots of the political threads are about things far removed from conservative thought, like the Democratic primaries. Also, as mentioned by MrDibbles, certain elements of mainstream conservatism are bigoted. I mean, good heavens, imagine if the President of the United States was a member here.
In my personal experience, it seems that whenever I discover another conservative member, they end up being banned or leaving. For cause, mind you. But I think this is just confirmation bias. In actuality there are lots of conservative members.
Hmmm. My $0.02. Technically, I’m a newbie, as I had lurked on the boards for years and years, but didn’t post. With the old system, it felt like an inclusive (not unwelcoming mind you) community and I didn’t feel right joining in. With the move to Discourse, I figured it was a fine time to start, as everyone would be rediscovering themselves and the board.
I will agree that there does seem to be a different feel - more games, more Pitting, less scientific debate. I don’t think it’s the move, I think it’s (as others have suggested) a change of the last few years nationwide where anyone can find a cite (or site) that supports whatever they think. Few people are moving from their decisions, and this is not unique to the SDMB.
As for conservatism, I personally am middle of the road politically, as what would once have been described as a fiscally conservative Democrat, or a socially liberal Republican. Since the Republican party has disavowed fiscal responsibility as nothing more than their own political fiction and a tool to harass Democrats with . . . yeah, I’ve probably been pushed left of center, but that’s a problem of their own making.