That was my point. They won’t go away, they will always come back. I participate in the occasional political thread but my wish would be that they have their own forum.
Ivn1188 I’m not sure why you picked the least consequential part of my post to respond to. My main point still stands. The pit is now and always has been more than a place to insult and call out other posters. It has always been a rant forum. You may not like that and wish it were otherwise, but that is what a great number of posters here want. You haven’t given any compelling reason why their wishes should be denied. Threads like "Is Obama’s health care proposal fiscally sound?’ go in GD. Threads like “Fuck Obama!” go in the pit.
I’m not sure why this bothers you. There aren’t that many threads in the pit now. There’s plenty of room for both rants and calling out other posters.
The question of whether GD should be subdivided: please start a new thread on this, if you want to discuss it (yet again.) There are lots of people with opinions on that who don’t care about the Pit and won’t see this thread.
On a personal note, I like to think that one reason there’s fewer Pittings of other posters is that a lot of the jerks have left the building. (Some voluntarily, some not.) I also think that some people who enjoy hostility and aggressiveness, and like to use Message Boards for venting/outlet, left the SDMB when we put some (fairly mild) limits on pittings.
I started a pit on Obama only a week or so ago. That is not conservative bashing. That wouid be liberal bashing.
It is natural for any one to think their viewpoint is getting shorted. But that often not rooted in fact. Just human nature.
I think the Pit is dying in general, possibly because of the new rules. So it’s not that there are more political threads than usual, but just that all the other threads are drying up. When people don’t feel safe to pit anything they want or post the way they want, they may stick with easy, tried and true targets. The board is predominately liberal, and Glen Beck/Limbaugh/Palin/etc. are pretty much always wrong and always assholes, so they make really easy targets. The stuff that’s more controversial may be on the wane due to dissatisfaction and uncertainty regarding the new rules. I know I’ve felt some small need to restrict myself.
Rescinding the new pit rules and easing up on the moderation would probably breathe a little life back into it. And I’m someone who doesn’t particularly care - I don’t really pit anyone and I rarely get involved … but if you’re going to have a forum for that purpose, why neuter it? It’s clear the traffic is way down.
A big part of it is the (not mild) total restriction on being able to discuss moderation issues in the Pit at all. That has nothing to do with the admittedly mild language limits. Easily half of the threads in the now much more active ATMB would have been in the Pit a year ago and they’d probably have more posts and be less prone to being locked.
I know, right? That **Gfactor **guy is a tyrant. Everyone says so.
From my perspective nearly every place I frequent, both on- and offline, people are obsessing about politics these days.
Speaking only for myself as a poster, I think these two items together explain a lot of the difference. Personally, I don’t see a problem with less threads in the Pit. I know another board that has a Pit that’s even slower. 
Specifically, I see the move of moderation discussions as a feature and not a bug. The Pit wasn’t and still isn’t moderated in a way that allows for linear discussions of problems. Little was resolved by those pittings. Moreover, many of them would not have been topically pit-worthy absent the invented* requirement that *all * moderation complaints go there.
*It wasn’t based on a written rule or even any ruling that I’ve ever seen.
What do you have against breathing life? Do you hate America?
I’m not blaming you personally or even saying you’re doing a bad job, unless you were a big factor in deciding to try to make the pit more family friendly, or whatever it is the goal was.
It seems clear to me that pit traffic is significantly down since then, but that topics on Beck/Palin/etc are roughly steady, so they’ve become a greater fraction of the discussion without actually growing.
And this should be seen as proof that if a bunch of “hostile and aggressive” jerks are allowed to say the c-word, it still won’t make the Pit a livelier place.
I like it, but I think I would adjust it to something like The Wind Tunnel, since windbag is primarily known as a person, not a place.
I see your point but Wind Tunnel is actually cool which is not the point. Maybe call it The Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. A place with a lot of windbags.