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 timetowaste85 wrote:
I also feel that if you feel the need to kill political discussions about one country, in fairness you should kill discussion about the other ones.

It has nothing to do with politics being a taboo subject, it has to do with people not being able to play nice when discussing US politics specifically.

I'm in agreement with timetowaste85. Hell, I said it first.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
I'm in agreement with timetowaste85. Hell, I said it first.

But why? There's nothing wrong with political discussion. There's a problem with 1 specific thread always going off the rails. I don't see the logic in shutting down other threads that aren't going off the rails (at least not as frequently).

i come here for hobby related content hoping to put the dog pile of crap that is the world out of my head for a few minutes.
i'd actually like to see it taken a step further and get rid of any non hobby related talk or at least figure out a way to mute threads.

 usernamesareannoying wrote:
i come here for hobby related content hoping to put the dog pile of crap that is the world out of my head for a few minutes.
i'd actually like to see it taken a step further and get rid of any non hobby related talk or at least figure out a way to mute threads.

You can just not read the off topic section...

 usernamesareannoying wrote:
i come here for hobby related content hoping to put the dog pile of crap that is the world out of my head for a few minutes.
i'd actually like to see it taken a step further and get rid of any non hobby related talk or at least figure out a way to mute threads.

Real talk: what would you use as your personal google if that happened?

hey listen, its not my fault they wont rename the place usernamesareannoying dakka dakka...

that also reminds me that i need to change my oil, thanks ouze...

Every US politics thread I looked at (prior to the ban) was insult after vulgar insult directed at me, my preferred candidates, and my preferred party/alignment.

If you are even remotely conservative OT is a hostile place to be.

 Cothonian wrote:
Every US politics thread I looked at (prior to the ban) was insult after vulgar insult directed at me, my preferred candidates, and my preferred party/alignment.

If you are even remotely conservative OT is a hostile place to be.

This is a great example of why US politics is banned; statements like this demonize one side while exonerating the other, it provokes negative response. The only difference between this and trolling is the speaker (presumably) believes the statement at hand.

 greatbigtree wrote:
I say the US should be annexed BY Canada, like some kind of inverse Fallout thing in which instead of the world going to hell, the world enters a new golden age.

Then you wouldn't have US politics to consider, but instead the relatively tame Canadian Politics to simply observe. Given that we have 3 major parties, and an additional 3 minor parties, we generally are more accepting of others' views, even if we don't agree with them.

So rather than fixing Dakka, we should just fix the US. Boom. Problem solved. Apply to your governing bodies to be assimilated into the Great Dominion of Canada.

No, we don't need that kind of negativity up here.

Maybe just take californina in on a trial basis after they vote to leave



It has been a year on the ban for politics though, maybe give it another go?

new topic "US politics: why does trump support the pedophile moore and why does the party of "family values" support either of them?"

Oh nvm, I see the ban staying for another 3 years, deservedly so, or until after trumps indictment and/or impeachment. I'm sure that would make for a polite topic to have a conversation about

Is there a ban? I don't see one here. There's a new US politics by proxy thread every other day, and that's not counting all the US politics cliches that get dragged into non-US politics threads and suddenly they're about US politics. It's not as bad as it was right after the ban was put in place, but it's still kind of hilarious to talk about a ban when people talk about US politics as long as everyone pretends they're not.

I said it before; the problem is and never has been the topic but a small handful of users who flame bait those topics. Many of them seem to be gone now cause I haven't seen certain parties in months. Any improvement in discussion likely owes more to their absence than any improvement in maturity. But some of them are still around, doing the same things they've always done. At least one still throws up US politics threads and manages to derail them as badly as they derailed the old mega threads.

Why is there a desire to talk politics on a primarily wargaming website?

I think this sites offers some unique attributes that's hard to find on the 'Net.

Think about it...

We're all primarily a member of this site due to our hobby.

We are also aware that this site draws from all over the world, with unique backgrounds and perspectives.

The leads to some really interesting conversations on various topics... including the OT/Politics forums.

You really can't get that on "YourPolitics.com" forums.

So now, we're in a weird place where on some sincere topics, we're having to "tip-toe" around the subject of valid US political conversation.

But, then again, we're guest on this site where yak & mods contribute their time to be good stewards of this community. The least we can do is abide by their rules.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
It's different when the discussion is US politics as pertaining to a certain issue than when it's US politics in general.

That's a really good point and I agree.

Could dakka have stumbled in to a way to make US political conversation about actual policies and issues?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:
Why is there a desire to talk politics on a primarily wargaming website?

I think this sites offers some unique attributes that's hard to find on the 'Net.

Yeah, I can't speak for why dakka is as it is, but my experience is there's a core of posters with some interesting pinions on US politics that I enjoy reading. I don't agree with all of them, and they don't often impact my opinion, but I feel I generally get a bit of insight in to how other people see various issues. Whether other places give a similar experience I don't know, this is the place where I've found it.

Of course, there's also lots of other people who also have opinions about US politics, and some of them are pretty deliberately disruptive and seem intentionally so. And that's the problem. Because if you take just the long time dakka politics posters and look at the number of times they had knock down fights with each other that required mod action, well it happened but it's no more common than similar issues in the wargaming boards. What made US politics bad was the churn of new, short stay posters who made some ridiculous claims, engaged in dishonest, hostile debate, and then burned out, with warnings and bans splashed out to lots of posters.

Control those posters and I think US politics could be reasonably debated.

I work in US politics.

Dakka is where I go to not have to deal with US Politics.

Keep the ban. It's a good thing.

I work in IT, and I don't wan't to read threads from people asking for help with their computer or some tech issue. I've never felt like the need to extrapolate that out to a forum-wide rule, and just don't click on those threads instead.

 Ouze wrote:
I work in IT, and I don't wan't to read threads from people asking for help with their computer or some tech issue. I've never felt like the need to extrapolate that out to a forum-wide rule, and just don't click on those threads instead.

I tend to avoid threads on forums related to my work but it'd be fairly silly for me to think that no one should be allowed to talk about archaeology or ancient religion - especially since they're often controversial, engaging, and fun for other people to get wired into!

There are plenty valid arguments for keeping a ban on as volatile a topic as US politics, but when it's restricted to one subsection of a substatial forum, 'this is where I come to get away from the world' is not one of them.

 Ouze wrote:
I work in IT, and I don't wan't to read threads from people asking for help with their computer or some tech issue. I've never felt like the need to extrapolate that out to a forum-wide rule, and just don't click on those threads instead.

I work as an accountant in government. I never have to worry about that invading any forum anywhere because no-one discusses that for one second unless they're being directly paid to do so.

As an engineer I'm sad there's not more topics on Dakka about engineering for me to get sick of it enough to not want to read threads about it

My take, I've been a member of Dakka for something like 12 years now.

Look at my friends list, you'll see I've got folks on there who I frequently disagree with, but I have come to respect in that time. I'm a man in my thirties, been all over the world, seen a lot of things, done a lot of things. I found a community I like, with some people that I respect as being honest, thoughtful, and respectful.

There is only so much war gaming that I can discuss though, especially after 20 years of it. So there is another part of Dakka that keeps me coming here more often. So in regards to Ouze's thoughts on shutting OT down, I'm definitely against that. Anyone can look at my posting stats to see where I spend the vast majority of my time. Other war gaming forums that don't offer that, I just don't bother with anymore.

As for politics, well... it drives traffic. It drives clicks. If the mods don't want to deal with it, ask to see if someone else would?

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Cothonian wrote:
Every US politics thread I looked at (prior to the ban) was insult after vulgar insult directed at me, my preferred candidates, and my preferred party/alignment.

If you are even remotely conservative OT is a hostile place to be.

This is a great example of why US politics is banned; statements like this demonize one side while exonerating the other, it provokes negative response. The only difference between this and trolling is the speaker (presumably) believes the statement at hand.

Yeah... good point. People are so blinkered and victimised that they can't take a step back and be objective. It's like team sports and people on both sides of the political spectrum have taken it to a disgusting new level (although that is a false equivalency, considering the GOP have literally opened their big tent to Nazi's, White supremists and child molestors.. where-as the left have just become super annoying)

However, I stand by what I said and think the ban should be lifted... perhaps we could have an 'Ice-box forum' where all bets are off, anything can be discussed, people can flame, be mean ,and not be beholden to any rules. US politics could be discussed there.

And I still say that if the US politics ban isn’t lifted, we should consider closing down the others. I just don’t think it’s fair to exclude one nationality whilst allowing the others to carry on.

 Hollow wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Cothonian wrote:
Every US politics thread I looked at (prior to the ban) was insult after vulgar insult directed at me, my preferred candidates, and my preferred party/alignment.

If you are even remotely conservative OT is a hostile place to be.

This is a great example of why US politics is banned; statements like this demonize one side while exonerating the other, it provokes negative response. The only difference between this and trolling is the speaker (presumably) believes the statement at hand.

Yeah... good point. People are so blinkered and victimised that they can't take a step back and be objective. It's like team sports and people on both sides of the political spectrum have taken it to a disgusting new level (although that is a false equivalency, considering the GOP have literally opened their big tent to Nazi's, White supremists and child molestors.. where-as the left have just become super annoying)

However, I stand by what I said and think the ban should be lifted... perhaps we could have an 'Ice-box forum' where all bets are off, anything can be discussed, people can flame, be mean ,and not be beholden to any rules. US politics could be discussed there.

Is that a post about US Politics in a thread discussing that US politics are banned, primarily because of such wide sweeping offensive statements as contained in your post?

The irony is thick here

 LordofHats wrote:
Is there a ban? I don't see one here. There's a new US politics by proxy thread every other day, and that's not counting all the US politics cliches that get dragged into non-US politics threads and suddenly they're about US politics. It's not as bad as it was right after the ban was put in place, but it's still kind of hilarious to talk about a ban when people talk about US politics as long as everyone pretends they're not.

On the other hand there's the post/thread I linked in the OP, where the discussion was shut down with threats of bans for anyone who came too close to US politics. I suspect the answer is that the US politics in all but name threads only exist because they don't attract attention, at any point the thread could be locked and/or full of red text and disappearing posters. And that's kind of the point I was making, the ban is clearly both ineffective and counterproductive and turns a lot of threads into an exercise in seeing how long you can carry on a conversation before the red text appears.

 Alpharius wrote:

Still, it is worth considering, especially if we just kick the offending parties completely out of the OT Forum if they can't behave.

I responded to this post in a silly way, earlier. However, if the MODs agree and have the stones to carry it out, not only could civil discussion of US politics return to the off-topic area, but baskets of deplorables, binders full of women, and poor little snowflakes could be removed!

It's win-win, really. Or win-win-GTFO.

Either way, I like it!

 Hollow wrote:
perhaps we could have an 'Ice-box forum' where all bets are off, anything can be discussed, people can flame, be mean ,and not be beholden to any rules. US politics could be discussed there.

I've gotta a...

 Hollow wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Cothonian wrote:
Every US politics thread I looked at (prior to the ban) was insult after vulgar insult directed at me, my preferred candidates, and my preferred party/alignment.

If you are even remotely conservative OT is a hostile place to be.

This is a great example of why US politics is banned; statements like this demonize one side while exonerating the other, it provokes negative response. The only difference between this and trolling is the speaker (presumably) believes the statement at hand.

Yeah... good point. People are so blinkered and victimised that they can't take a step back and be objective. It's like team sports and people on both sides of the political spectrum have taken it to a disgusting new level (although that is a false equivalency, considering the GOP have literally opened their big tent to Nazi's, White supremists and child molestors.. where-as the left have just become super annoying)

However, I stand by what I said and think the ban should be lifted... perhaps we could have an 'Ice-box forum' where all bets are off, anything can be discussed, people can flame, be mean ,and not be beholden to any rules. US politics could be discussed there.

Hey look! A wild generalization and false stereotype being used as an insult! Doesn't this count as an insult, and should be enough to warrant moderator action? The comment there serves no purpose other than to throw an insult. It doesn't justify or go against an argument, it is literally just an insult. I mean seriously, how does this not prompt moderator action?

As such, I am quite happy with the removal of US politics from the OT. Seriously though, does that not count as a flat out insult? Isn't that against forum rules? Honestly asking, as I've seen harder core insults than that go unpunished.

 Hollow wrote:
However, I stand by what I said and think the ban should be lifted... perhaps we could have an 'Ice-box forum' where all bets are off, anything can be discussed, people can flame, be mean ,and not be beholden to any rules. US politics could be discussed there.

I can't imagine the mods would ever go for that. You also need to consider that such a forum, were it to go forward, would immediately contain so much noise vs signal, there would be no value in it. Part of the appealing aspect is that you can engage in these topics with people you know, and respect even if you disagree with them, while also having the support of knowing that mods will step in if things get too out of hand. If you remove the latter, you functionally wind up with youtube comments.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
And I still say that if the US politics ban isn’t lifted, we should consider closing down the others. I just don’t think it’s fair to exclude one nationality whilst allowing the others to carry on.

It seems vastly less fair to shut down the well-behaved UK politics thread just because a handful of people in a different country can't control themselves. If you have a blunt knife and a sharp knife, it's better to fix the blunt knife by sharpening it than deciding to blunt the sharp one.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
And I still say that if the US politics ban isn’t lifted, we should consider closing down the others. I just don’t think it’s fair to exclude one nationality whilst allowing the others to carry on.

I look at it like this--the discrimination isn't against "Americans", it's about "people who can't have a discussion without being dreadful". One would be hard to justify, the other is completely fair.

 Elemental wrote:

 Future War Cultist wrote:
And I still say that if the US politics ban isn’t lifted, we should consider closing down the others. I just don’t think it’s fair to exclude one nationality whilst allowing the others to carry on.

I look at it like this--the discrimination isn't against "Americans", it's about "people who can't have a discussion without being dreadful". One would be hard to justify, the other is completely fair.

So it really comes down to making everyone who can discuss it civilly pay for the actions of those who can't.

 Elemental wrote:
I look at it like this--the discrimination isn't against "Americans", it's about "people who can't have a discussion without being dreadful". One would be hard to justify, the other is completely fair.

Except the group in the second category is being defined as "Americans", not specific people who have been unable to have a discussion. It's just presumed that Americans can't behave, regardless of who the Americans involved happen to be. And, as has been pointed out, it's a bad assumption to make. The problem is not Americans or US politics, it's specific people who do not argue in good faith. The pattern happened over and over again: one person showed up to post the same blatant partisan cheerleading they posted the previous week as if the thorough rebuttal they received never happened, dropped a drive-by copy/paste job from their favorite fringe website, made dishonest and easily disproved arguments, etc, in very polite words, and then when people inevitably got frustrated with dealing with that specific person and slipped in a or two the moderators showed up and started putting red text everywhere. But rather than deal with the instigators of the problem the moderators jumped on the people who maybe crossed the line a bit in yelling at them, and the cycle inevitably continued again the following week.

Take away those specific people and there's no reason that US politics can't be discussed just like any other country's politics. It may get a bit hostile from time to time, but not to the point of being a problem.

(And no, those specific people are not just my political opponents. There are people from the OT politics threads that I disagree with on pretty much every topic, but post constructively and aren't guilty of that behavior.)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ouze wrote:
I can't imagine the mods would ever go for that. You also need to consider that such a forum, were it to go forward, would immediately contain so much noise vs signal, there would be no value in it. Part of the appealing aspect is that you can engage in these topics with people you know, and respect even if you disagree with them, while also having the support of knowing that mods will step in if things get too out of hand. If you remove the latter, you functionally wind up with youtube comments.

It's obviously a bad idea in the most literal form of "hands off", but there's some truth to the concept. Drop the standards of moderation a bit, to allow heated debate and an occasional or but not blatant spam or hate speech or whatever, and the section can be mostly left to handle itself. Anyone who posts in a debate on politics/religion/etc should know that they might get yelled at a bit, and implicitly accepts the chance of it happening.

One of my favorite forums that I used to be a member of had a rule that was the exact opposite of dakka's moderation policy: profanity was accepted, but stupid, hateful, and/or dishonest people were not. If you had a history of, say, posting economic arguments without supporting facts and ignoring the people who requested evidence for your claims and/or provided evidence to disprove them then you'd end up banned. If you told the first person " you" in the course of posting the evidence to disprove their argument then nothing happened. The result was interesting and constructive debate, even if it had more profanity than dakka accepts, because the right people were removed (whether by being driven off by the members or by outright ban). Dakka's biggest problem is that it gets this completely backwards. It's ok to lie and evade and generally drag the quality of debate down into the sewer as long as you don't use any bad words, but the moment you say to someone you get the red text.

 Cothonian wrote:

 Hollow wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Cothonian wrote:
Every US politics thread I looked at (prior to the ban) was insult after vulgar insult directed at me, my preferred candidates, and my preferred party/alignment.

If you are even remotely conservative OT is a hostile place to be.

This is a great example of why US politics is banned; statements like this demonize one side while exonerating the other, it provokes negative response. The only difference between this and trolling is the speaker (presumably) believes the statement at hand.

Yeah... good point. People are so blinkered and victimised that they can't take a step back and be objective. It's like team sports and people on both sides of the political spectrum have taken it to a disgusting new level (although that is a false equivalency, considering the GOP have literally opened their big tent to Nazi's, White supremists and child molestors.. where-as the left have just become super annoying)

However, I stand by what I said and think the ban should be lifted... perhaps we could have an 'Ice-box forum' where all bets are off, anything can be discussed, people can flame, be mean ,and not be beholden to any rules. US politics could be discussed there.

Hey look! A wild generalization and false stereotype being used as an insult! Doesn't this count as an insult, and should be enough to warrant moderator action? The comment there serves no purpose other than to throw an insult. It doesn't justify or go against an argument, it is literally just an insult. I mean seriously, how does this not prompt moderator action?

As such, I am quite happy with the removal of US politics from the OT. Seriously though, does that not count as a flat out insult? Isn't that against forum rules? Honestly asking, as I've seen harder core insults than that go unpunished.

Yeah... I see the point in the ban now. I certainly didn't aim to insult. When it has gotten to the point that a literal statement of fact can be considered "a terrible insult" then perhaps its a topic best left banned.