I’m looking to join an online forum or message board where there are intelligent people who talk about all kinds of stuff, including possibly taboo and offensive subjects, but where there is little moderation or organized efforts to “control” the dialogue. Anyone know of any? Not 4chan, please.
Sounds like the Straight Dope to me…
S^G
How about The Straight Dope?. They do have* the Pit*. You can say anything you like there.
You are already here.
I think the SDMB attracts intelligent conversation because of good moderation - and it’s not all that restrictive of “taboo or offensive subjects”, so I’m not sure what more you could ask for.
Some Usenet newsgroups might qualify. Usenet is only a shell of what it was in the 1980s and early 1990s, though, before spammers and Eternal September chased off most of the old-timers.
I found that moderation on the SDMB is actually less intense than on many other message boards, for example Something Awful where users are regularly banned or suspended for such violations as using tired catchphrases. For example, if any of the SDMB cliches (Hi Opal, Marianas Trench, 1920s style death ray, etc) were used on SA a month or so after they first emerged, and the mods said “no more”, anyone using them afterwards might find themselves suspended for a day.
In my opinion, the SDMB has very strong self-moderation compared to other boards. “Groupthink” is quite prevalent around here, and the offenderati are a touch more sensitive. Okay, a LOT more sensitive. For instance, any post that implies anything negative about obesity or fat people is met with the same reception as a post critical of some aspect of Sarah Palin on Free Republic. I feel that I have to walk on eggshells around here more so than on other message boards.
A forum with no rules whatsoever wouldn’t be a place in which intelligent people would want to linger. It would quickly fill up with lunatic posts replete with capital letters and copious exclamation marks.
And this is why I don’t think this board qualifies. I really don’t feel like I can be myself here. I do find it useful when I have factual questions, and I do find it interesting to read-- but I sort of feel like I’m in the home of one of my parents’ friends and I need to speak politely and not say anything too controversial. Offensive humor is a no-no, sometimes saying what you think (especially if it falls outside of the boundaries of typical “progressive” thought) is seen as uncivilized and inexcusable. I also feel like it’s a somewhat academic environment, where any statement you make is parsed to such an extent that you must constantly cite sources or be stripped of your right to have a particular opinion. I’m not saying that we should live unexamined lives-- not at all; I guess I want a message board where I feel like I’m hanging out with intelligent people who don’t mind hearing some fucked up comments and opinions now and again, without the constant fear that some (over)sensitive person is going to get offended, and start taking things too seriously. This board just feels way too serious sometimes. I mean, I’m just here to kill time and to have fun, but a lot of people here seem to demand order and want rigid rules to guide interaction. Sometimes to its fault in my opinion, this is very genteel environment.
Right, like I said-- little moderation. Not NO moderation.
I think this is probably better suited for IMHO than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I don’t think the board you want exists. It would be like… a thing in the middle of a lot of other things that make the thing’s chances of existing very remote.
[sub] I tried, but I couldn’t think of a better analogy[/sub]
Try one of the chans. Not 4chan, but one of the smaller ones, the ones who attempt to be less moronic.
Yeah, I hear you. The CITE? rebuttal, and tiptoeing around offending anyone obese get a little obnoxious here. Some posts I can’t hep but read in Quentin Tarrantino’s or Comic Book Guy’s voices.
There are a few conservatives around here, not as many as there were at the beginning of Bush 43’s first administration. There aren’t as many intelligent right-wingers in the world; now that the neocons have fucked up the middle east so fabulously, and the world economy has ben dealt a blow by the US housing finance debacle the political pendulum has swung far to the left. Give it eight to twelve years. But I haven’t found anywhere with the same amount of intellect that is displayed here. And our few defenders of conservatism do have their intelligent statements buried among their tu quoque and strawman rejoinders.
The rules at SA are pretty strictly enforced, but there aren’t that many of them. Whether the discussion is intelligent depends a lot on which forum you’re in.
But would that really be a bad thing? Repeating catch phrases is very rarely funny, and I don’t think the level of discourse here would suffer here if such behavior were strongly discouraged.
This is very true. This really is the kinder, gentler message board, sometimes to the point where reasonable views will be shouted down.
okay , since we’ve already mentioned the Something Awful forums, can we talk about them behind their backs a bit?
What’s that site all about? I’ve tried to understand them, but it’s a little weird. I mean, heck, they call themselves Goons, and we call ourselves Dopers, so shouldn’t we be able to communicate on the same level?
But I feel like I’m missing something. The somethingawful.com site proudly states that it is making fun of the internet, but it has some pretty good forums, mixed in with some bad ones.
Their “Ask me/Tell me” forum is a good combination of our GQ and IMHO posts “ask me about…” And their "D&D forum (=Debate and Discussion) can be as good as our GD. But then it has a sub-forum called “advanced D&D” which is very low-brow.
And the forums are only a minor part of the site, which seems to be focused on odd attempts at humor.
I think part of my problem is that the site is run by college aged people, and I’m too far over the hill to get it. But gee whiz, I’d like to think that if I was 25 years younger, they’d let me join 'em too.
Are there many other Dopers who hang out there, and who could maybe explain to me what I’m missing?
Something Awful trawls the internet for (sometimes funny) trash and serves up the creme de la creme to you. Check out the Weekend Web section to see what I mean. It’s pretty hit-or-miss I think, but sometimes there’s stuff that walks a fine line between horror/great comedy. The goons churn out content for stuff like Photoshop Phriday if I recall correctly.
I think it really says something about my taste or lack thereof that I can provide this summary.
I think the reasons you’re dissatisfied with the SDMB have more to do with the intelligent people here than with the moderation.
Cagey, the other board I frequent with not-quite-as-much, er… frequency, is the JREF forums. It sounds like they might be more up your street. As long as you avoid the conspiracy theory forum, and probably politics too! Though those have their, um, charms.
They’re free, so sign up, hang around a bit and see what you think.
The Pit seems to fit your requirements. What’s your objection to it?
My view is that this is more about the nature of nerdy intellectuals than about the moderation here on the SDMB. Many very smart people are clueless about aspects of social interaction such as making jokes. People who have always been the nerdy outcast who sat at home reading rather than socializing often have never considered that sometimes it’s better to be polite rather than “correcting” someone in the name of pedantry.
If you don’t take this board seriously enough to care about fitting in or not, you can have fun here. You might make some people angry by saying something that goes against the common stance on this board, but it’s not like you’ll get banned just for the viewpoint you present as long as you’re not being hostile about it.