It seems to be widely ignored, including by mods, and not enforced. I enjoy a clever political jab, and that one was well enough played, plus I agree with the perspective. But neither of those things are relevant, or at least I don’t think should be.
My guess is that most, or at least the mods, would prefer to have jabs and rants be permissible in MPSIMS (at least if the rant is attached to something else) given that they have been handled as such. I have no objection, not sure that anyone would. Why just make that official and remove the guidance sticky? If not then one should expect that a mod would at least not ignore it.
I’m almost certain that sticky was added as a direct result of one of my OP’s and the comments I made in that thread. I’m eternally grateful to Ed and the mod staff for adding/clarifying that rule.
Which means I’d like to see the damn thing enforced. This Pit thread started in MPSIMS. As usual it immediately turned into a political rant, which is unfortunate—there’s enough of that crap on this board already. In that case I wish that the MPSIMS mods would have came in with their jackboots a-stompin’ rather than simply move that thread to the pit. Some of us, amazingly enough, prefer to have civil conversations on this board. Moving a breaking news thread to the pit is a really shitty way of encouraging that.
I like political jabs as much as the next guy—hell, I used Colibri’s line when discussing the Trump Tower fire on FB with a buddy of mine. However, it was inappropriate for that thread.
Christ. Is it really too much to ask that we leave Trump and guns out of these kinds of threads? There’s the entire rest of the board for that kind of commentary.
It’s enforced all the time–basically every shooting thread. Granted, it wasn’t enforced that one time recently, but **Loach **admitted that was just because he wasn’t around, and did enforce it by moving the thread to the Pit.
I suspect the issue is that this isn’t being treated like a breaking news thread, despite technically being one.
That was a good one. The fire was in Trump tower. I don’t see a political joke as a political jab, at least not a jab at another poster. That’s my opinion. You can’t keep politics entirely out of anything with Trump in the title or on the building.
If it isn’t possible for posters and mods to stop themselves from taking shots at Trump, then the sticky needs to be amended. It’s not fair or realistic to expect the impossible.
I would be interested in an explanation as to why self-control is not possible with Trump, but is with every other topic and conversation. But by all means, the mods ought to be up-front about it - no political digs in MPSIMS, except a little, and only if it is aimed at Trump.
Absolutely agreed, we should all respect the rules. Know the limits and stay within them. Observe decorum. Be civil. Avoid petty partisan sniping. You know, act presidential.
I think the sticky explains the rules very well. Ed is certainly a much better writer than I could ever hope to be. I know this has been discussed multiple times but I’ll just try to hit the main points.
Hijacking or derailing a thread is against the rules pretty much in every forum. It is very strictly enforced in GQ. It is more loosely enforced in MPSIMS. A few off topic comments won’t be modded unless it’s ruining the thread.
Political jabs, quips, one liners or other types of tomfoolery are not against the rules in MPSIMS. In a cat thread if someone says “that cat looks like Trump” it won’t be modded unless the political discussion derails the thread. Derailling a thread for the purposes of putting out your political agenda can be modded. Context as always is important.
MPSIMS became the go to forum to report breaking news items. Often those news items involved hot button issues like gun violence. It became clear that those wishing to find out factual information would get drowned out by those who wanted to argue the politics of overall issue rather than the particulars of the breaking news.
Having one thread on a subject that is only there to provide facts to an incident is beneficial. We have posters from all over. They are able to provide local information the rest of us don’t have. Or they can check in to say they are ok. Or posters can link to information that the rest haven’t seen.
No one is being stopped from discussing politics or the big debates involving an issue. They are just asked to do it in another thread.
It was decided that the rule about hijacking a thread would be more strictly enforced when it’s a breaking news story. In the past many of those threads had to be moved to the Pit because they devolved into shouting matches and the news item was no longer being discussed. It wasn’t a new rule it was the decision to enforce the existing rule more strictly. Breaking news threads often move very quickly and can turn into a mess before a mod even arrives.
Lately it seems that the breaking news threads are dealing with gun violence. We want those threads to stay on topic and not turn into a gun control debate. Just in that one thread. Gun control discussions can be found all over the board. Although that’s what has been happening lately it goes for other topics. Terrorist attacks and arguments about Islam. Natural disasters and debates about the merits of various politicians. Any breaking news story that has a hot button issue attached. Discuss away but if someone opens a thread to talk about the factual information coming in then don’t derail their thread.
Unfortunately sometimes when there is a big news story I’m busy and I don’t have the immediate response of jumping on the board and seeing if everyone is behaving. I didn’t see that thread until it was over 100 posts in and had been completely ruined for factual discussion. It happens. The reason for the rules clarification and stricter enforcement was to keep threads like that in MPSIMS and to keep them from turning into a Pit thread. I think it has worked better than before.
The sticky is linked to in the OP. If you are asserting that a thread about a fire is not a thread about a news item, or that calling Trump a liar is not a political dig, :shrugs:
Just out of (genuine) curiosity, how many times would a politician have to lie before calling them a liar is merely a statement of fact rather than a political dig? Because while I agree with the statement in general, there are current politicians whose lying is on an absolutely unprecedented scale; orders of magnitude greater than anyone who has held their office before: they’ve been caught making explicitly factually incorrect statements (not just stating unpopular opinions) literally thousands of times. I think at some point a boundary has been crossed, and “liar” is merely a description, not even a partisan comment.
Hijacking a breaking news thread to make political jabs is going to be strictly enforced.
Every news item is not going to be “breaking news.” Sometimes the story as presented is all there is. Sometimes there isn’t going to be a lot of different information and viewpoints coming in. Those threads won’t be viewed as breaking news threads and will not be modded as strictly. Hijacks and derailments are still against the rules. What constitute a breaking news thread will be context driven and in the eye of the (mod) beholder.
The aim of the sticky is to allow certain threads to exist not to protect you from seeing Trump being insulted. For that particular thread it has 16 replies in 24 hours and a couple of links to factual information. It’s not a rapidly developing situation. No discussion is being derailed. I didn’t see a need for any modding. Another mod might see it differently.