Putting category information in the post-links list could allow you to hide post-links when a user has muted an entire category. Even on other boards if someone doesn’t want to deal with meta drama, they can ignore the meta category and have a clean Discourse experience.
Right now, if I’m not mistaken, muting a category does not save you from seeing drama spill over via post-links. (Otherwise we could simply have the Pit muted by default)
Actually, no, that’s not a fair characterization of the Pit. More accurately, it’s a place where many of the normal rules of civility don’t apply. Think of it as a forum with minimal moderation. Sometimes this exemption is used to attack other posters, but a lot of the time it’s also used for rants about the world, politics, and the events of everyday life. And believe it or not, conversations there have sometimes evolved into informative and constructive discussions.
There may be some truth in that observation, but it’s obviously not correct to say that the existence of such a forum “always” ends badly, since the Pit has existed in the SDMB for a great many years and in my view, and the view of many members, the SDMB remains one of the best general-purpose message boards on the internet today in terms of quality of discourse. I don’t think you’re wrong in the typical general case, but the SDMB membership by and large is not “typical”.
I agree, but, people being people, there can be bad feelings about other posters. If there’s no outlet for it, it keeps popping up in other forums, with perpetual bad blood between different posters.
The idea of the Pit is that’s a safety valve to drain off the bile and venom from the other fora.
Personally, I’ve never been really convinced of that. I think it drives off frequent Pittees, even if they contribute to other fora. Too much of a dog pile for my taste.
Far better to have cough other boards cough for vileness.
I rarely go to the Pit, except for threads about non-Dope people, like a certain delusional former federal official.
This is correct. The idea that having “just a little” toxic waste nearby is OK? You’ll still suffer the same consequences. Don’t just toss a tarp over it. Bury it deep, deep underground at a remote location!
I used to feel the way you did about the Pit. I’ve participated in online discussions since the old AOL days (not SDMB specifically back then) and I’ve been a moderator at a number of sites. This is the first site I ever was a part of that had anything like the BBQ Pit and I was uncomfortable with it. I avoided reading it for years and avoided participating in it for longer.
But for some time now I’ve spent a lot of time there. There’s something very appealing about a place where you can be uncivil without being called out for it. And strangely enough, most of the conversation there is pretty productive. For some reason it actually works here. I don’t think it would work very well in other places. Maybe it helps that it has always been here, and the culture evolved around it. Sort of like animals that live in harsh deserts or frozen landscapes; not only are they able to survive there, they would struggle in other environments. That doesn’t mean that your hamster would be fine if left in the Sahara or you should take your Chihuahua on a casual stroll on an iceberg so approach with caution.