I was particularly surprised by this: https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=22234955&postcount=123. The DeBlasio thread was also tangentially about his Covid response, though it did veer into other topics. And the stock market thread remains in GD.
Not complaining, just curious… What exactly is the rule we’re applying as to whether a covid thread goes in TQZ or elsewhere?
There is a sticky at the top of the Quarantine Zone with the forum rules.
Basically, to prevent politics and debates from completely swamping the forum and to prevent overlap between forums, political threads related to Covid-19 still go in Politics and Elections, and debates related to Covid-19 still go in Great Debates. Most other Covid-19 topics go in the Quarantine Zone.
Breaking News threads or threads that wish a purely factual GQ type discussion should be clearly marked as such. Those threads will be moderated per MPSIMS Breaking News and GQ rules respectively.
Given the OP itself was about the political impact of Trump’s position, Politics and Elections is the appropriate forum for it. In fact, the OP said:
Emphasis mine.
If someone had started a thread on “What’s the Straight Dope on the efficacy of hydrochloroquine?” and asked for factual information only, then such a thread could have remained in QZ.
If the primary emphasis is on the coronavirus and its impacts itself, it should go in QZ. If you want to debate aspects of it, discuss political implications, or rant about it or responses to it those should go in the appropriate forums.
As it turns out, I read that! I’d point out the very first sentence of that sticky is “This forum is about anything related to the Coronavirus (COVID-19).” Then, it immediately contradicts itself and goes into how you should not debate anything or introduce politics, which seems to me to be a pretty inevitable result of most of these threads. So I inferred that there was some other line that was being applied. A de facto vs de jure standard, if you will.
Anyway, if the intent really is to get political and debate threads out of there, you still have some work to do…
ETA: and by the way, Colibri, that thread is mostly about debating research studies at this point, regardless of the OP’s intent.
I moved it because I got several reports suggesting it be moved by people who wanted to respond to the political aspects of it.
I’ll admit to not having been strictly rigorous about moving every thread that had some debate or political aspects. I’ve mainly moved the more obvious examples, and tried to moderate political hijacks of other threads. If you feel a thread should be moved to another forum, report it.