The forum would be called Fact Check, and would serve as a combination of General Questions and Great Debates for current events. The purpose is to have a one-stop repository for analysis and facts raised by whatever high-profile events are in the news, since those tend to generate lots of disputing in the rest of the SDMB anyway.
Case in point: Fahrenheit 9/11. There are numerous threads on this movie scattered through the SDMB already, and one thing the threads have in common are disputes over the claims made by the movie and its detractors, and corrections from Dopers to the same. Anyone wanting to get simple information about the movie would have to wade through all those threads, and would find some of the same points argued and (dis)proved several times. If there was a Fact Check thread on the movie, however, folks would have one place they can go to ask and answer questions about the information presented in the movie. The threads in the other forums would still exist for their own purposes (to debate the non-factual aspects of the movie, to flame Michael Moore, to talk about cinematic issues, etc.), but for non-partisan, non-inflammatory information, Fact Check can be used as a common reference point.
Other past events that could qualify for Fact Check threads would include the WMD evidence leading up to the 2003 Iraq war, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, evidence in the Laci Peterson and Nicole Simpson/Ron Brown murders, and the details of various treaties and accords.
Ground rules for this new forum would be similar to those of General Questions: only fact-based answers and cites are allowed, with no name-calling, unsupported opinions, or smartass behavior. The twist is that Fact Check threads can only be created by the moderators – that is, fact-checking on a topic will be enabled only when the modes feel it is timely enough and has enough interest to merit a common data repository. How the mods decide when a new thread is created is left undetermined, but non-moderators can petition for the creation of new threads on their pet topics.
To suggest that there be no “smartass behaviour” is just cloud-talk for these boards.
I don’t think your idea will happen because it would be a lot of extra work for the moderators. In addition to the petitioning, the threads themselves would have to be fairly heavily moderated.
That said, it’s a nice idea. It would be nice to have a repository of information that people in GD could refer to, particularly when topics come up lots of times. Perhaps posters could make it happen by themselves with less input from the mods. There are individual fact checking threads about GD issues in GQ now. Perhaps a poster could start a FAQ thread in GQ about 9-11 conspiracy theories. Rather than leaving the whole shebang up to the mods, perhaps a person wanting to submit such a thread could send a draft of the OP to a GQ mod to establish their bona fides. The old manhattan thing of deleting entire posts if they fail to conform to GQ standards would have to be pretty rigidly enforced.
Even that seems a fair extra burden on the moderators. A less good but still worthwhile option would be for someone to compose a fact checking composite out of a GD thread and post it within that thread.
You mention that a person currently needs to wade through several fora to find information on some topics. Under this proposal, that would change to having to wade through (several plus one). As it is, it sounds to me like every single thread which would fit well in this forum you propose would fit equally well in our current General Questions forum. I don’t really see the need for a new one.
Non-inflammatory information may be possible to uncover after great effort. However, on current events, I don’t believe much non-partisan iniformation exists.
What is a “fact”? What is “truth”?
(this ain’t a bad idea for a Great Debate, though it has to have been done in the past … right?)
Well, just adopt the guidelines for Great Debates and General Questions – back up your claims with cites, and stick to credible sources. That’s the best anyone can ask for, at least until we get psychic Dopers…
I mean that any cite can be considered partisan; any source can be considered not credible. But as you say, as long as human beings are gathering the first-hand information, that’s about the best we can hope to do.
