Complaint: modding in Politics

[pvn]

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I've always wondered... why are those who are most vocal about the need to "do something" in the politics forum invariably non-posters or nearly-non-posters?

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The reason is that these people like discussing politics, but they don't like the current forum or how I run it. I would love to have people like BluffTHIS or Niss back, but they feel that they could improve their own and everyone else's 2+2 experience by implementing new ideas.

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Even when niss did post in politics, most of his posts were along the same lines.

[niss]

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niss,

You haven't answered my pop quiz yet to determine how good your judgement is on who is or isn't a troll. I'll give you another chance:

Is canis a troll the majority of the time? Yes or no.

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I've always wondered... why are those who are most vocal about the need to "do something" in the politics forum invariably non-posters or nearly-non-posters?

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I'm wondering this myself. Someone mentioned that Politics is hated by all the outsiders, but for some reason these outsiders want to come in and mod.

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If you're talking about me, you shouldn't be. I was a very active participant in the forum for quite a while, but largely stopped because I don't like what the forum has become.

[NeBlis]

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You know that you & I are on opposite ends of the spectrum regarding the best manner with which to deal with this problem, but I agree totally with you that I find blatant hijacking of threads maddening and frustrating. Many good threads in the Politics Forum have gone in the hopper because of this.

I like niss's suggestion to rename the Forum to Current Events, however it would be folly unless the guidelines were spelled out with some serious forethought.

By its' nature, such a Forum would then no longer be the place for philosophical issues, which would then be taken to the SMP Forum.

I don't think we need heavy-handed moderation....

I think we need more clarification of what this particular Forum is all about, and I again say that niss makes a very valid distinction, and I would support that change.

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Yes but sadly the forum is called "Politics" not "The lets make life easy on Myrtle group" Hijacking and trolling are one thing but you being unable to post well reasoned ideas is another.

Maybe we need a compromise. one liner hijacks like "ZOMG jackbooted thugz" are only legal when the OP or reply are so pathetic that one liners are more than they deserve.

[UATrewqaz]

I haven't bothered to read this thread yet but let me go on record to state that Nielsio is a retard and any complaint he's making is retarded.

I have him on ignore so god only knows.

Is he claiming Iron planted the secret government charges on 9/11?

[Mat Sklansky]

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When Nielsio claimed the American education system was causing US soldiers to rape and murder civilians Tom Collins made a a mockery of his post with just one sentence.

As Willy Shakespeare said, "Brevity is the soul of wit".
Nielsio is just mad that Tom Collins made him look foolish. Besides does not Nielsio claim that 9/11 was an inside job and explosive charges were used to bring doen the buildings?

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Nielso,

You need to respond to Felix's post above. If those are your true positions/beliefs, then it is difficult to impossible to give any credence whatsoever to your views in this thread on the politics forum.

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You need to be consistent. First you're telling people how you want them to judge people on their arguments and now you're gonna base your opinion of my postings on a trollish representation of my conclusions?

And this Felix guy even says it here 'Tom C made a mockery post', which is clearly NOT debating based on arguments.

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Nielso,

The point is that your views/assertions were shown to be ridiculous via based on flawed premises or bad logic. So if you *still* hold those views, is is an issue in determining your credibility here as well. And "making a mockery" of an argument is often a valid technique to highlight the far-fetchedness of a premise or the (il)logic used to reach a conclusion, and often involves taking things to their logical extreme to make that clear.

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Thanks guys. Based on these thoughtful posts on how to make the politics forum a cool place for more 2+2 members, it is clear to me what needs to happen.
I'm letting [censored] decide. He cares about the politics forum for some reason.

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I'm moving this thread out of my forum.

[niss]

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I've always wondered... why are those who are most vocal about the need to "do something" in the politics forum invariably non-posters or nearly-non-posters?

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The reason is that these people like discussing politics, but they don't like the current forum or how I run it. I would love to have people like BluffTHIS or Niss back, but they feel that they could improve their own and everyone else's 2+2 experience by implementing new ideas.

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Even when niss did post in politics, most of his posts were along the same lines.

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I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean, but if my suspicion is correct, it would be the height of irony, given that in my mind your posts (among many others) are a significant contributor to my lack of interest in the forum and a prime example of the forum's problem.

But I don't want to make this into a personal battle here with anyone. I wish you would do the same, and try to limit the discussion to the substance of how the forum can be improved. If a good suggestion is made, I'm not sure why it's relevant where it comes from.

[Felix_Nietzsche]

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say we use this thread to find iron some help. let the nominations begin.

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Is the pay good? [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[pvn]

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If you're talking about me, you shouldn't be. I was a very active participant in the forum for quite a while, but largely stopped because I don't like what the forum has become.

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Lead by example. Show us the way.

[BluffTHIS!]

I want to make a general comment here without singling out individual posters so as not to make this an overly contentious and attacking thread in line with what Mat asked.

Obviously I am biased in making the following comment, but I believe it to be valid nonetheless. And that is that many, perhaps a majority, of the regular "liberal" posters in the politics forum don't have a good grounding in logic, history or political theory. And furthermore they seem not to want to bother to rectify same. So many if not most of their arguments end up being ridiculous, if not outright spin with a total disregard for the truth. This certainly isn't true of all liberal posters like andyfox and DVaut. But it is true of the majority, and is probably related to the fact of them still being in college, not having gotten a good education, or not reading many books (as opposed to online stuff).

Whereas the majority of the conservative posters, who are a minority, are in fact more well-grounded in logic, history and political theory, and more well-read in general. That is, they know more relevant information about more topics and don't just rely on google and wiki for selective reading, and they simply think better.

As I said the above will no doubt appear biased. But if someone took the time to laboriously scan all past politcs threads for the word "logic", I would bet my roll that conservative posters accounted for the vast majority of such uses of that word, despite being dominated in the forum by liberals.

[tolbiny]

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I've always wondered... why are those who are most vocal about the need to "do something" in the politics forum invariably non-posters or nearly-non-posters?

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The reason is that these people like discussing politics, but they don't like the current forum or how I run it. I would love to have people like BluffTHIS or Niss back, but they feel that they could improve their own and everyone else's 2+2 experience by implementing new ideas.

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As a regular politics poster i think the main problem is the way people respond to what they consider trolling. Tomcollins calls Neilso a troll and his response instead of ignoring him is to every single one of his posts, Neilso replies in kind and the damn thread turns into one long bickering back and forth. IMO this makes TomCollins just as much a troll as he thinks Neilso is and if one gets banned or censored in some way both deserve to. Shake and Skidoo do something similar (but with more content overall and fewer personal attacks for sure) but consistently restating the same position for 2-3 pages worth of "discussion" gets very tedious for anyone on the side and I would like to see a mod either in the threads or via PM politely ask them to move on, and only resort to banning if they don't heed a warning or two.