I’ve been getting increasingly sick of the various US Political threads in GD and the Pit lately; they’re everywhere and it is getting irritating when almost every thread on the front page of the forum is political.
Given that there’s room from Ed’s “Barn House” forum here now, how about a Politics Forum, so we can keep the political stuff in one forum and free up the rest of the boards for discussions that aren’t about the US Political Crisis Du Jour?
Agreed. Or make an “Election 2008” forum to cover the craziness that is and will be coming the next 2 months.
Digging through the 97 Sarah Palin threads to find something GD-worthy is annoying, to say the least.
Wouldn’t that make GD a little redundant (or worse, GD will turn into “the witnessing forum”)
There’s a big difference between “We are getting a huge number on threads on this particular something or another, so much that it would support a separate forum all by itself” (which is a good thing and a potential forum idea) and “A forum for something I dislike that I would never go into” (which is a lousy reason to do anything).
Just because you do not wish to see certain ideas expressed or threads on subjects you find annoying or distasteful is not reason enough to segregate those threads in a separate area.
My personal take is that that would leave only religious debates for GD and not much else. That’s a little broader than just witnessing, but I’m not sure there’s enough demand for that to have its own forum. Maybe things will change now that the board is free to post.
Either way, I’m curious what other fora people think we need here, so I’ll start a separate thread to ask.
Thirded
Edit> oh ill find the new thread …
Can’t it be both?
But GD is “getting huge number of threads on this particular something or another”, namely US politics. So, by your own logic there should be a US Politics forum.
You’ve missed the point entirely.
A quick glance just now at the first two pages in the GD forum showed me almost all politics, with maybe one or, at most, two threads not strictly political. Seems redundant.
But it’s cyclical. In another 60 days that tide will subside greatly and there’s just not enough going on after that to justify a separate forum.
I disagree. There are always people posting a lot of political stuff in GD/The Pit. It ranges from “Bush sucks!” to “The Mayor of Spindle, Iowa wants to outlaw Chihuahuas being carried around in handbags”, but it’s always there. It might not be immediately obvious to you in the US, being surrounded by it all the time, but to those of us outside your borders, it’s amazing how much political debate goes on here on the boards, regardless of the date.
:eek: :mad: To the barricades!
I don’t think we need a Politics forum. Yes, there’s a lot of U.S. political stuff in GD right now, but this too shall pass. There’s an election going on, folks.
What’s wrong with leander’s suggestion of a temporary “Election 2008” forum, where people can start threads all the live-long day on the demographic appeal implications of the birthmark on Sarah Palin’s left ass cheek? Once the brouhaha dies down, it could then be merged back into GD, with timestamps intact so as not to take over the existing front page.
The idea’s not unprecedented; we did something similar a while back for, of all things, Harry Potter. Granted that was a single thread, but in this case I’d think the higher volume of topics would justify its own forum.
I’m generally not in favor of splintering the boards by topic, temporarily or otherwise, but the dominance of the U.S. election threads on the front page of nearly every forum is getting a bit tedious…and if I’m saying that as a politically-interested American, I can only imagine what it’s like for our overseas contingent.
Opportunity may create its own demand.
Taking the politics out of GD might well lead to a much broader array of topics in that forum.
Right now, GD is, as you said, mostly just religious and political threads. I didn’t go in there that much because I’m not too interested in religious debate, and the political threads…well, I’m very interested in politics, but GD-style debate by the same old folks got really stale, especially in the P2P era. Occasionally I found something different, but not often enough to make a habit of going there. And I didn’t put threads in there, because it was so focused on the religion/politics things that I figured other topics would get little play.
But by taking out the politics, it would shake things up a bit. People might feel that that they have “room” to talk about other important issues. So maybe a Politics forum would lead to a greater variety of topics in Great Debates, and maybe even a greater variety of politics-related threads in that forum.
Look at the Game Room forum. That forum has resulted in an explosion of new threads. People are really into it. And it freed up MPSIMS a bit.
I think this idea should be considered.
Oh, for God’s sake. Just ignore the threads you don’t want to read. What the hell is it about this place that every three months or so, someone wants to create a new forum, just so they don’t have to wade through the threads to either ignore or find what they want??
Makes me think we should get back to two fora: Cecil’s Column’s and Everything Else. It’s been a slippery slope ever since.:smack:
As both myself and other posters have said here, it’s not just a case of wading through a few threads that we don’t want to read- it’s the entire first page or so of at least two, sometimes three, forums taken up with Political topics.
Regardless of whether you’re rabidly interested in politics or completely apolitical, the fact is that I think there’s more than enough demand for a dedicated “Politics” forum on the boards.
By the same token, you can just ignore the forums you don’t wish to read. What’s it to you if people want an additional forum or three?
This is why it needs it own section, throw in a Election 2008 and renew it every 2 years just to allow other threads to breath. Right now there are no debates, just rehashing, and rehashing. 
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