We used to have an erection board, but most of us didn’t measure up.
“Elections and National Accountability”
Really the same as “Elections and Partisan Politics”, but it has an edgier feel.
Since Nov 6th has passed, we could also lock the election forum and enjoy the avalanche of extended play GD threads and subsequent gnashing of teeth in ATMB.
Also we could try “Elections and Comparative Patriotism”. I for one am sick of the Pit being over-run by US political discussion. Well, not really.
‘Politics’ is right, I think.
You wouldn’t have to move so many threads if you made the headers clearer and more descriptive.
It doesn’t really matter what you declare beneath ‘Mundane and Pointless…’ people will resist posting things you want there, because they feel it’s neither Mundane nor Pointless. Mundane and pointless should be the descriptors, not the title. No wonder people are always starting threads in the wrong forums.
This would be a step in the right direction, I think.
the polls confirmed that.
How about “Current Politics”?
Not sure, as it stands its a good record of the 2012 US elections. If it was to become a general politics forum then that record will be lost among other international and local political events.
Whats about Political Polls? Will they be removed from IMHO? I would suggest keeping it open till January and after the inauguration lock it.
I dunno, either TPTB are mulling it over amongst themselves, or they don’t agree that it’s currently a mess, or they just prefer ignoring it to the effort it’ll take to address it. (My guess: the last one.) Because, as I touched on in my previous post, it’s not only the name that should be changed, but probably also directives as to what type of posts should go where, and any resulting shift in modding responsibilities.
But, again, the thing is that it’s *already *a general politics forum. Naming it *Politics *won’t really change the content - only a more concrete directive and modding will do that. Renaming it would only serve to be realistic about how it’s been/being used, and will continue to be used (unless it’s locked) now that there are no upcoming elections.
It’s now possible to do polls in the *Elections *forum, so few of those end up in IMHO these days. As to locking it, that was the original plan two years ago, but didn’t end up happening that way.
Somebody might have something to add to an old thread, so I wouldn’t lock it. Ok, I’ll admit it: I will have something to add: the final Q3 GDP data will come out next year and I’ll want to post how Obama did against Romney after controlling for fundamentals.
Overall, I’d keep the forum with its current name. Its purpose is to avoid aggravating people in GD. It’s doing that now.
My own tuppence: I think that Great Debates (which includes “politics”) is about debatable issues (presumably those that are not resolvable by factual answers.) There certainly are partisan discussions, but they are debates/discussions.
The Election forum does include similar discussions, but also covers IMHO-type comments related to elections (conversations rather than discussions.)
Is there some degree of overlap? Sure. But we’ve always had overlap, by the nature of our forums. We don’t think of that as necessarily a bad thing. When we started these boards, the first inclination was to have boards by academic topic: physics/chemistry, social sciences, biology, literature and language, etc. We dropped that really quickly because most of Cecil’s columns don’t neatly fit into such categories. Instead, we organized based on the type of discussion:
- Questions with factual answers: General Questions
- Questions that can be debated forever: Great Debates
- Comments and socialization (before Facebook): MPSIMS
- Responses to Cecil’s Columns: Comments on Cecil’s Columns
Over time, we split off IMHO from MPSIMS, to allow a forum just for spouting opinions, but that was still based on the type of conversation/discussion rather than the topic/subject.
We deviated from this pattern when we added Cafe Society because there were so many question on arts and entertainment. We recognized that there would be overlap, and some confusion about what goes where; we dealt with it. By now, people have become used to the distinction and we don’t have confusion much anymore.
Our second deviation from the pattern was to add the Games forum, because Cafe Society was being swamped with games (and there was general feeling that sports wasn’t “arts & entertainment”.) Again, there was some initial confusion, but it’s settled out over the years. And that confusion was minor compared to the convenience for most readers, most of the time. E.g., people who want to find a discussion about the Chicago Cubs don’t need to scroll through pages of movies and music.
The third deviation (i.e., forum based on topic rather than type of discussion) was the Elections forum. We originally thought it would just be opened when US elections were looming, but we’ve left it open all the time (I guess elections are always looming.) Yes, there is some overlap and confusion about which post goes where, but that seems a minor annoyance compared to the general convenience for most readers (viz., people who want to find a discussion about theology don’t need to scroll through pages and pages of election-related froth.)
So, my vote would be to leave things as they are.
How about calling it ‘American Politics’ and leaving European, Canadian, Australian politics etc. in GD?
I’d rather topics on policy should be in Great Debates forum. Topics on elections and partisanship should be in the Elections forum. I think this division is clear enough to be usable and useful.
The division is clear enough, in theory.
In theory, there’s no difference between practice and theory. In practice, there inevitably is a significant difference.
Create a distinction like that and you create a tsunami of misplaced threads, junior-modding accusations of misplaced threads, increasingly frantic attempts by the moderators to move misplaced threads and tamp down on junior modding, lots of hot-tempered meta-debate about which threads belong where, mod warnings… and ultimately, everyone’s perma-banned.
We’re all God’s children here. Why won’t someone think of the children?
Why? we’ve had threads about those types of elections in the Elections forum; made sense; easy to find; and, it gave us “others” a chance to clutter up a forum with our arcane and foreign elections to bemuse 'Murricans for a change.