Is there some reason for not having a forum dedicated to politics so that the moderators don’t end up bouncing threads from Great Debates to MPSIMS to The BBQ Pit and then back around again? I don’t mind politics threads and it is certainly a legitimate topic for discussion and/or bowdlerization, distortion, and name calling, but it seems to be a topic of sufficient proliferation to justify its own forum.
Stranger
Things just get crazy before the election. It was like this in 2004 as well. Also it would still need to be split between relatively civil debates and insult filled rants.
I have a feeling that no matter who wins, politic talk will be with us for a while. I vote yes give us that forum. If nothing else to keep the other forums clean.
I also agree. It would keep GD from becoming the “you’re an idiot” room, I think.
Would it follow the rules of GD or the Pit or something in between?
Are you striving for an end result of a cleaner GD or something else?
If it did not follow the rules of the pit, it wouldn’t really clean up the pit and if it followed the rules of the pit, it would be much use for those that post their threads in GD & IMHO or even GQ.
I think these are some questions that need to be answered before the admins and mods decide to add a Politics forum.
Overall, for what little it is worth, I think a Politics forum that worked like the non-pit forums would be a worthwhile addition. Does it matter if it goes through slow periods? The pit is not usually that busy anyway. I think we can keep the political rants there without a problem.
Jim
I wouldn’t want to see a good forum ruined by insults and name calling as I believe a politics forum would become if it followed the pit model. I’d vote for more of a GD like forum.
I would envision a catch-all for genuine political debate and discussion. Ad hominem, name-calling, and other nonsense would still stay in The Pit.
Of course, if I had my wishlist, I’d also have a Mod Bitch forum for people to whine about jackbooted moderators and administrators (redirected to /dev/null), a Vanity forum for Doper/child/pet picture and “Who’s your Favorite Doper This Week!” threads, and a Natural Science & Engineering forum so I could block out everything else except the occasional Cafe Society discussion on the merits of Rear Window or the upcoming Bond film.
Stranger
I like your idea for the Political Forum. I think it would work and plenty of people really seem to like the idea. Maybe they should turn on the poll function but make it Mod controlled for now and take an anonymous poll of the Dope about forums.
*
I think the pit is the perfect place for the Mod complaints though I get your joke.
MPSIMS is already the Vanity forum, why would we need anything else? It does invade the Café anyway.
I don’t think the NS& E forum would generate enough activity to pull it out of GQ. *
Jim (Why yes, I just parsed you joke.)
We go through this about every four years. And the last couple of months are intolerable.
It seems to have been especially hateful and invective-filled this time around but on reflection I believe it’s always like that, just perhaps more so over the passage of time. It wasn’t so ugly before the Internet, or before bloggers, or before hanging chads, or . . . I could go on and on.
It’s not referred to as “The Silly Season” for nothing.
But it passes and things go back to normal – or what passes for normal – and we move forward.
We are not convinced that there’s enough of this to justify a forum of its own. And we don’t want to cannibalize Great Debates while we’re at it.
Respectfully, no.
I hear and understand, but I must query as to how would this cannibalize Great Debates? The abstract for GD is “For long-running discussions of the great questions of our time. This is also the place for religious debates and (if you feel you must) witnessing.” This implies (to me) a certain level of intellectual and philosophical discourse that most politics threads don’t even aspire to on their best days, i.e. questions of philosophy, ethics, the implications applied knowledge, et cetera. Politics (again, to me) tends to fall more in the camp of defending one’s team rather than engaging in honest debate, and while I recognize that the political threads are cyclical, they’re also very intrusive and (for the most part) obnoxiously void of actual content or intellectual rigor.
At any rate, it is just a suggestion; have with it as you will.
Stranger
Honestly, I feel like there would be a lot of fluff if most of the political threads didn’t have to try to provide a debate. There are too many redundant threads about Sarah Palin as it is.
An alternative approach would be to create a Philosophy forum, and rename “Great Debates” as simply “Debates” (meaning arguments over politics or anything else people have strong feelings about that isn’t necessarily particularly philosophical.)
I personally think the existence of a Philosophy forum could stimulate some really interesting discussions – but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it’s needed.