As noted, we do have non-US mods. We pretty much always have.
No. The problem is that not that many staffers think it’s necessary. I’d be okay with it and a couple of us seem to find the idea unobjectionable (based on past conversations) but nobody sees a compelling reason to create one. ‘Some posters don’t want to see politics thread titles’ isn’t an overwhelmingly great reason. But we’re discussing the idea again now.
Then how about “Some posters don’t want to see politics forum request thread titles”? Or “The idea is unobjectionable, people have been asking for it since forever and it wouldn’t hurt to try it?” Or maybe “Ever since we created the Chicago and Barn forums we really have no excuse for not opening new forums?”
Politics threads don’t bother me and I would never set foot on the new forum if it happens. I really have no dog on this fight. I just think it looks silly that people have been asking for this so consistently and for so long and being denied for no good reason while so many other forums have been created.
It’s not a bad idea. (And I’m speaking just for myself here.) I think the staff here has always been concerned about the idea of splitting the SDMB up into too many forums because they think it will keep people from mingling and makes the main page a little less readable. I think they’re probably right. Polling about this every six months might leave things kind of bloated but we could ask once in a while.
I agree it’s unobjectionable, and I’m not against it. But I think the question is, do we need to change the way the site is organized? Would that improve the SDMB (beyond the fairly small number of peopel who don’t want to see politics threads in the forums they frequent)? I’m not sure ‘it wouldn’t hurt’ is quite a good enough reason.
Who needs an excuse?
Well, you guys do, if you want to foster the image that you are responsive to the posters’ wishes. I mean, tomndeb says that was the case in the past. What is so different adding a Politics forum compared to CS or IMHO?
Purely practical question: where would something like “Gun Control” or “Abortion” go? Those are hot debate topics now placed in GD, but largely because of implementation issues, which makes them all about politics. Would those topics belong in the Politics forum? Remain in GD?
Something to think about.
It’s a messageboard. NONE of this stuff is “necessary”. Some staffers may not want it, but there’s certainly far more demand and need for it than there was for The Game Room.
"A lot of posters seem to want one and we have this discussion every 6 months, precisely following the ebb and flow of the American political cycle. " strikes me as compelling…inasmuch as it’s a messageboard and not all that much stuff is really all that compelling. (Entertaining? Yes. Informative? Certainly.)
And right there is the problem. It’s not “nobody” sees a compelling reason to create one, it’s “no staffer” sees a compelling reason to create one. And the staffers are discussing the idea again now. Not “the board”.
The current system is “Members propose, staffers decide by fiat with no recourse to the posters except to start another thread”.
If (and I don’t suggest that this is the case here) 95% of the active posters wanted a new forum, it still comes down to hoping the staff grants the request. At least a presidential veto has a method for an override.
Six months was off the top of my head. Maybe every 6 months until/unless a new forum is created and then a year after that.
Cafe Society was created for exactly the same reason the Politics forum should be created. It was a single topic (entertainment) that was taking over MPSIMS and (IIRC) IMHO, drowning out everyone else. If you look at the last iteration of the Politics thread, I did a breakdown of the first 150 posts for The Pit and for GD and they were overwhelmingly politics related. The Star Wars/Buffy/Tolkien threads never took over that much MPSIMS/IMHO real-estate.
But while I do strongly think a political forum is important, especially to let The Pit and GD deal with other topics, my primary concern here is the mechanism. Some kind of vote, some kind of user feedback needs to be more formally implemented. Not because the mods are doing a bad job, but because empowering posters tends to engage posters.
My memory may be fuzzy, but it seems to me that quite a few votes for what became Cafe Society were by people that wanted to contribute to it, while the current call for a political forum is almost completely dominated by those who just want to rid Great Debates of the topic.
Am I wrong?
Obviously. But we’re talking about whether or not it’s necessary in terms of improving the board. Does it make the layout more sensible? Does it make it easier for people to find what they want? That kind of thing.
I understand there are people who want to see this. After all we have this conversation pretty regularly for a long time, like you said. Does ‘people ask every six months’ = ‘it’s a good idea?’ Not necessarily. Here’s one potential problem: this would take politics out of the Pit. I know some people support that, but that means non-Pit rules are applied to all political discussions, and you can’t call someone names for supporting or opposing health care reform. I’m not sure how many people would like that.
And I’m not sure this is tied to any political cycle. The last presidential electoral cycle lasted for close to two years, and health care debate picked up shortly after that and went for almost a year.
This is not the first time the staff has discussed the politics forum idea at the behest of posters. The needle just hasn’t moved on it.
Your conclusion is that the SDMB isn’t a democracy. You’re right, it’s not. But I don’t think anybody ever said it was. This is what I asked you about earlier: unless you’re saying we should give administrative powers to everybody or give posters a veto on moderating decisions, for example, at some level there is always going to be a pattern of posters asking for something and the staff making a decision in favor or against it. Do you have a different model, or do you just not like this one in general (or in this instance)?
We’re responding to this request by discussing it. Whether we’ll come to a different decision than we did the other times we discussed this issue, I don’t know. But that’s part of why I’m asking if Fenris thinks we should have an entirely different decisionmaking framework. It kind of goes without saying that people are going to disagree with the decisions we make sometimes.
Just thinking out loud about some potential practical issues:
How would you define the scope of the proposed “politics” forum? The subject of “US Elections” is narrower than “US Politics” is narrower than “Politics.”
No matter how you define the scope, I suppose there would need to be some line drawn, perhaps a fuzzy one, to decide which threads go in which forum. Are these lines too hard to draw? For example, a debate about nuclear Iran is a potentially a US Elections issue, but not necessarily. It’s also a US Politics issue, but it’s also an international issue. Global Warming threads pose a similar problem. So, the basic issue is how to decide which threads go in GD and which go in the new forum?
How would you propose treating debates about “historical” political issues (e.g., Civil War). Would the proposed thread cover historical politics? If there is a historical vs. contemporary distinction to be made, I guess some fuzzy line may need to be drawn as to what constitutes “historical.”
Depending on the scope of the proposed “politics” forum, what would be left for GD? Just curious as to what other GD topics come up that would stay in GD (e.g., Religion).
Ignoring weird hot-button issues like Health Care was (and judical appointments don’t fit either) you can pretty much graph the degree to which the Pit and GD will be overrun by politics.
Yeah, and there’s no way to get the needle to move other than begging/nagging.
I don’t know. Frankly this model isn’t bad except that there’s no way to override a bad mod decision or force a change. The mods overall do a good job, but there’s no accountability back to the posters.
Maybe something for board changes like “posters propose”, mods decide, posters can “veto” (or override) the mod’s decision via a vote (either way–posters propose a “Pictures of Puppies In Hats” forum. If there’s sufficient interest (50 unique posters in favor? 100 unique posters?) the mods decide and state their reason. Following that, a vote by poll. Hell, limit the poll to people with (say) 100 posts or more.
Not so much an entirely different method, but a change to the current method. Some extra step where posters can have some more formalized input into decisions and board direction.
I don’t have a suggestion off the top of my head and I don’t want mods to be neutered. You guys have to have the freedom to do your job, but I think that some more formalized poster input makes sense.
How would I define it?
“Current Events”, not “Politics”. If it’s quasi-political (“Sarah Palin’s Brownie Recipie? Good or Gross” would be a grey area…but it still is) and it’s going on now or, say in the last year or so, it goes in Current Events (and it shouldn’t be US Centric. Any current political event should go here).
That leaves general stuff like “Slavery: good or bad” or “Right to Bear Arms: Outmoded?” and more generic issues for GD. A discussion of the dumb thing Congressman X said yesterday isn’t great and it isn’t a debate. Nor is it a rant.
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GD used to be a great forum for stuff like crackpot beliefs (breatharians, etc), religion, large timeless issues, etc. That’s mostly been drowned out by the outrage du jour model.
I don’t think so. This question has been asked reasonably before, and we’ve discussed it before. I’ve been moderating for about two years and this is the third time the staff has talked about it amongst ourselves. I don’t think we reopen the issue every time someone starts a thread about it, but that would be excessive.
A more formal way of getting input isn’t a bad idea. I’m wary of the idea of overriding decisions; for one thing it seems like a warning against a popular poster might be more likely to be overturned than one against someone controversial. But the idea of more formal input in terms of policies or forum choices is better and that might make everybody happy.
The idea of a separate politics forum came up several times while I was modding – I always voted against it. GD is 95% politics already, so you’d basically be killing that forum to make a new one that is slightly more topical.
But I see the point of people asking to do something about US election threads, which are something of a special case. One idea might be to make a subforum of GD e.g. “US Election 2012” where all election-related threads go until the election is over, after which they can be easily moved en masse back to GD. (You can even keep them from appearing on the front page of GD by first locking the subforum for a day or two, then moving them.)
I don’t post in GD enough to have a dog in this fight, but I can see how some people might want to discuss general political issues without people dropping little turds about why Obama/McCain/Kerry/Bush would ruin said issue with their awfulness. A subforum wouldn’t require any special modding – all reported posts would still go to the GD mods. It’s just a sorting aid.
I think the longnecker makes a lot of sense here. I’ll drop this into the mod/Admin loop discussion and see if it might make sense to stick in a very narrow “US Election 2012-type thingy” rather than trying to define “politics” in another way.
I think mods should definitely do limited “tours of duty”. Ya know, just to keep them from getting jaded and shit. Choose straws for who takes a rest, let the remainder take up the slack, or promote a couple of junior mods, and when the ones who’ve had a rest come back all bright and bushy tailed, they can all have a good chinwag in the staff sauna about what needs doing.
Yes, it’s almost like he read my mind. Or post #15. 
Actually, I’d prefer seeing politics limited to Great Debates, and out of all the rest of the forums (I hardly go to GD 
).