Is the SDMB the only forum you know of which has a subforum akin to the Pit?

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1

I almost started this in MPSIMS, but since it is about the board’s design and modus operandi, figured it best fit here.

I have yet to see another board which has a subforum akin to the Pit. [Assuming the admins in question have ever considered such a notion independently] Do they feel like they don’t need such, as a release valve? Do they feel like it degrades the entire culture of the rest of the board? Does it require a very dedicated team of mods who will strictly moderate Pit-ish posts in non-Pit subforums?

[We’ll not count the Giraffe board since it is a spinoff of this one so no real surprise that they simply copied the entire Pit concept over there.]

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I mean, at this point, “Is the SDMB the only forum you know of”, by itself, is a reasonable question. Not many message boards left.

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a similar concept somewhere, though I don’t recall exactly where, and I don’t recall the details of how it was similar and different.

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I think there are a number of special-interest message boards, the format works very well for folks at all levels of interest and experience, asking questions, and giving or getting answers, sharing new developments, and so on.

I belong to such a board, it is owned by one person, some people pay to support it but many users post for free, there are volunteer moderators, and there is no recourse and usually no dialog at all about moderator actions. That board has a very strict policy about things that cannot be included in posts: politics, religion, and slamming other posters personally. You can object, calmly, to a post, as long as you don’t make it personal. If you start to get into it with another poster, be prepared to see that part of the thread disappeared. That’s the worst I’ve seen done, I don’t know if they’ve ever actually sanctioned anyone. There is no outlet like the Pit on that board. I find it refreshing sometimes, and frustrating at other times.

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I’m not really aware of, and certainly not a member of any other general purpose discussion boards out there. @Chronos is correct - not many message boards left, it’s all in comments on channels or largely on reddit. I’m aware of quite a few specialty forums that I ghost on, and they either ban any such discussions, or happily ban anyone that has a dissenting POV rather than have an open complaint option.

For all people sometimes think this place is a echo chamber, you have to see what a firearm/self-defense message board looks like!

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I would guess that most boards never considered it. Whether or not they would do it if they had thought of it notwithstanding, I just don’t think a lot of board admins think ‘lets create a place for our users to shit on each other’ and, instead, opt to shut down conversations long before they get to that point.

While it can create much more meaningful conversations, I think a lot of other boards moderate conversations quickly enough and deal with potential trolls early enough that people don’t have time to get that worked up.

I, like others, still spend some time on traditional, but specific, hobby oriented, boards. They tend to have one (or more) general ‘off topic’ forums, but even with that, most people are there to talk about that specific hobby and, even more so, tend to say in a few specific forums/topics within that hobby. Between that and new posters coming to the boards to ask specific questions and old timers enjoying answering them, threads tend not to get too heated. Plus, users tend not to interact with the same people day in and day out like they do here. Less time to get to know people beyond the hobby, I think, means less arguments. That guy I get some great advice from might be at the entire opposite end of the political spectrum as me, but I’ll never know it and don’t particularly care.

Another thing about hobby-oriented boards is that a lot of what gets people fired up here just doesn’t exist there. For example, I can’t think of any examples on reef tank message board where someone will continuously make stuff up and back it up with cites that prove them wrong.

We give people a lot of leeway here. And that leeway often translates into member feuds.

Like ParallelLines said, I don’t see many general purpose boards these days, they tend to be about something specific. On the other hand, you have reddit, and particularly, subs that aren’t well moderated where every thread seemingly turns into a pit thread.

I really miss the 3D printing subs I used to belong to. I learned so much and I think I helped a lot of other people too. But as soon as the Bambu printers showed up those subs turned into dumpster fires. I stopped posting to them when, if you weren’t actively praising Bambu, you got downvoted. I once made the mistake of suggesting there were brands of filament better than Bambu’s.

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I occasionally post on a board that started out mainly as a gardening and homesteading board, and in the early 2010s turned into a very right-wing oriented forum. We’re talking about people who homeschooled their kids because they didn’t want outsiders finding out about their guns (but you posted this on the Internet?), that sort of thing. So, they created a board-within-a-board where you have to apply, and be approved, to read, let alone post, on it.

I don’t even want to see a board like that.

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When message boards were a thing there was a very common evolution that would happen. They’d start about a certain hobby or avocation but people would get to know each other and start having off topic side conversations so a MPSIMS-like side forum would start for those conversations (people getting sick or having a kid or real life meetups). Very often there would be a “anything goes” forum either for flame wars or for discussions that couldn’t be had under the stricter rules of the main topic. A Pit like forum was very common.

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About 10 years ago, I happened across a board that was an off-shoot of a poker website. It’s a bunch of mostly liberal poker players. The board is focused more on politics but they do have a few different forums. There was a poll lately on becoming private and I think around 80 people voted. I’m not a member. These people have known each other for a long time and some of them have beefs going back years. If things start to get out of hand in a thread, the posts are all moved to a dedicated forum which I, as a lurker, am not privy to. So they do have somewhere where they can let off steam but out of the public eye. (By the way, I don’t know shit about poker and don’t read any of those threads because it’s like reading a foreign language. But I do enjoy the other conversations there.)

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I don’t remember one in any forum I checked out around the time that I joined (in 2008) or since. I have seen some with “off topic” boards, but they don’t usually permit insults. And I do remember a few that allowed insults (as they were rather trolly boards in general) but not a specified place for them.

I remember “anything goes” subforums would be where people would discuss politics and get heated about them.

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Couple of mcycle forums i belong to have spots to dump the unredeemable fracas

The James Randi forum as well but don’t think it can be added to.

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I’ve followed a few hobbyist boards before, but none have had anything like the Pit. But really, in those situations, it’s hard to get worked up over, “You like building model airplanes? You’re an idiot! Real modellers build model cars!” for example.

I do still belong to another general-interest board (which has nothing like the Pit), and have happily contributed to such sub-forums as Sports, Movies, History, Travel, and other inoffensive topics. Let’s face it, a lot of what gets posted in such sub-forums is subjective, and while “You’re an idiot for liking The Godfather over The Godfather Part II,” will likely draw a suspension (ad hominem, you attacked the poster), all you need do is frame it as, “attack the post, not the poster,” as we do here: “Well, that’s fine, but I think The Godfather Part II is better because …”

It does have a particularly toxic Politics forum, which is the closest it comes to having a Pit. I stay out of there, though I do read it. Calling other posters “idiots” and worse seems to be perfectly fine there, but it in no way approaches our Pit.

Meh. I’ll stick to subjective things like Sports, Movies, History, Travel, and the like. It’s hard to run afoul of the rules and TOS when you state an opinion like, “Well, I think that the Forty-Niners deserved that win because …”

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I belong to a few D&D boards, and used to belong to a few General purpose boards like this one. None allowed personal attacks on members, but IIRC one did allow rants in general in a special area.

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The only message boards I’ve been a member of (and there have been admittedly a large number of them for nearly 30 years now) have all been specialized in some form or another. Specifically, I think I can divide them into 3 categories… A forum for a particular online video games (MMORPG to be exact), a tabletop RPG, or a forum for IT professionals to share ideas and help each other, particularly in terms of training and certification. (I was actually a moderator for a couple of different IT certification forums back in the day.)

I’m still a member of a couple of MMORPG/RPG forums. I even know a couple of people here on the SDMB who are also on one or two of those gamer forums that I participate in.

None of them have “Pit” style categories, but as others said, things never get that heated. Anyone who does get that heated just gets banned. There just isn’t anything worth getting heated over. Anyone who goes that far is either trolling or has severe behavioral issues that are just incompatible with a discussion board like that.

The SDMB is the only forum that is generalized enough that serious topics come up, serious enough that you can understand tempers flaring and you need a space for that. And it’s also the only forum I’ve been a part of where people have been around for decades, and it’s sort of an online home for people. I think that makes it very different, and explains why it makes sense for things to be handled a bit differently.

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The Giraffe Board has its own Pit, appropriately for an SDMB offshoot.

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We set up the GB to be mostly a clone of the Dope from the get go so it shouldn’t count. The Pit there doesn’t really get used because the whole place is very loosely moderated and doesn’t typically get many posts outside of the game threads. It’s very seldom that someone new joins outside of short lived regularly appearing trocks.

We have a sub forum there called The Box that’s used in lieu of suspension and before banning. When you’re under sanction, you can only post there. A few people are there permanently.

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As many have noted, there aren’t many boards that are comparable size + comparable generality. So this question may be more of a historical one, a la ‘twenty years ago were there Pit-equivalent subforums on most boards?’

I’d not also that our Pit isn’t really a hotbed of insults and flame wars.

There ARE insults, of course. But I would bet, were we allowed to bet, that analysis of the content of the Pit would show “insults and flaming” to be only a small fraction of the total. Take every sentence currently visible in all currently visible threads in the Pit, and score them ‘contains insults or other negative personal commentary’ or ‘contains NO insults or other negative personal commentary’…and I bet the first would be well under ten percent of the whole.

Again, just guessing. But so far as I can see the Pit has largely become a place to post about politics when you don’t want to refrain from making venomous observations about those adhering to a particular political position.

Yes, of course there ARE the ‘pick on one poster’ dedicated threads. But look at the list. Those threads are only a fraction of the whole.

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I can’t comment on a lot of other forums, but the outlet to release steam has to count for something. One of the worst boards I ever posted on was (decades ago) a Buddhist forum that they refused to moderate because “we should accept things just as they are” and every troll was to be seen as a “practice opportunity.” Great Buddha it was a mess.

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I used to be a member of a sports message board that had a section called Smack Talk. However, even though it was meant for quarreling, it wasn’t so much meant for omnibus attacks of all kinds as it was meant specifically for rival fans of sports teams to talk trash to each other. Politics wasn’t the thing.

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I’m on one that started as fans of a particular webcomic, developed a batch of pages about other things including members’ lives, and has survived the rather controversial death of the webcomic several years ago, though with rather less frequent posting.

It has nothing remotely like the Pit. We are very polite. There is a NSFW section, which you have to ask to access; it’s sometimes pretty graphic, but it’s also very polite. There’s also a political section, which you have to ask to access and ask to start a thread in; usually nobody bothers. I don’t think most political subjects would be all that controversial, though; the board has open LGBTQ members, many people show pronouns, and the one time I remember an open bigot showing up (I’ve forgotten their particular brand of bigotry, it might have been racial) they were gone as soon as the moderators woke up and noticed them.

I used to be on the snopes boards, before they died. Nothing like the Pit there either — I was pretty taken aback by it when I first came here. Definitely no arguing moderation there, either.

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So did Fathom. I can’t remember what we named the pit over there. Something to do with Hell (Maybe) since Satan was the first moderator.