Political threads have through the end of this weekend to let people get the after-election stuff out of their system. At that point, I'm going to ask (but not mandate) that everyone quit the political threads.
I clicked on the "
Board Discussion" link for the first time today to come and make the exact same request that
Jakobud did at the beginning of this thread. A number of the other forums I frequent have split their "off topic" forums into "
politics" and "
no politics" for all the same reasons that we're seeing here.
While I can understand the decision to have people simply "
quit the political threads", I am not personally optimistic about that.
First off, it means that somebody has to define what "
is" a political thread and what "
isn't" a political thread. Is a
Monica Lewinsky joke a 'political thread'? What about a
'Bush is dumb' joke? What about a "'Did
anyone see Fahrenheit 911?" thread? Where is the line drawn? I don't think I've ever seen any thread in a forum that even mentions Michael Moore maintain any civility without additional warnings, moderation and/or post deletions. It doesn't take long for these types of threads to go downhill fast.
Secondly, what about users' signatures? Are political messages allowed/not-allowed in there? If messages like "
4 more years of Idiocy" are allowed but not allowed to be responded to, I can guarantee that tempers will continue to rise.
Finally, if nobody is going to "mandate" the rules, then I find it hard to believe that a no-political-talk-honor-system is going to work. I haven't seen it work on any of the other forums I frequent.
For these reasons, I simply want to put in my 2-cents to say that I am all for a "political rhetoric" forum. It provides a way for people to discuss these things without everybody else being overrun by them and without the need to moderate all the other forums.
my 2-cents