Updated slightly by Puzzlegal, 12/29/2021:
This forum is about anything related to the Coronavirus (COVID-19). Keep politics and debates out of this forum. Great Debates and Elections may be used for those threads and posts. Also, some posts, such as the “Your pandemic playlist” currently in CS, may be better suited to another forum if they are not directly related to the virus.
As with MPSIMS breaking news threads, feel free to use threads and posts here as springboards to new threads in GD or Elections, or even the Pit if you feel so inclined.
If you want a purely factual discussion, post it in this forum (not in GQ FQ), but clearly indicate in either the title or the OP (or preferably both) that you want the discussion to remain purely factual. We have also created a “factual” tag to indicate threads that are intended to be factual. The basic rules of GQ FQ apply to all threads that are clearly marked as such.
Breaking News threads should also be clearly marked, again in either the thread title or the OP (and again, preferably both). Any thread clearly marked as breaking news is restricted to direct discussion regarding the news event. You may of course use breaking news threads as a springboard to other threads seeking opinions or a wider discussion, which would not be marked as a breaking news thread.
A suggestion regarding Breaking News type threads:
Place the date, possibly with the phrase “as of”, in the title of any such thread.
When the crisis is over will the forum be folded into IMHO or something? Otherwise the only options I can see are
[ul]
[li]Hanging around unused forever as a record of the Day the World Got Sick[/li][li]Kept in place for the next pandemic[/li][li]The posts lost forever, like tears in the rain[/li][/ul]
The ban on politics in this forum is completely untenable. Like it or not this is inextricable.
We have the Chinese government (and likely others) suppressing and lying about the data. We have politicians and propaganda here in America spreading dangerous misinformation at every turn. We have daily briefings that are veiled campaign stump speeches. We’re going to have a major election to conduct amidst a lock down.
What’s the point of this place if we can’t talk about the sources of this misinformation and their dishonest motives? About how our federal, state and local governments are or are not managing it and why?
It would be nice if this slow moving catastrophe were depoliticized and we could come together to deal with it, but that’s a fantasy world.
This has nothing to do with what you can and can’t post. It’s all about where to post it.
If you want to discuss the political aspects of COVID-19, you are free to do so, just not in this forum. Use Politics and Elections instead.
Maybe you should amend the rules to remind people that they can use tags, rather than just “clearly indicate in either the title or the OP”?