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Because it's going beyond the scope of US politics. This is in reference to this thread: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/761634.page

Note that Jordan Peterson is Canadian (still a separate country and not just a hat for the US), and became famous because of his commentary on a Canadian law. The OP in the thread is from the UK, and specifically mentions the context as being more than just a single country's politics. But yet because the concept of left vs. right, a concept that exists in a lot of places outside the US, it was locked and redirected to the US politics thread. This is pretty absurd, the discussion would be off-topic in the US politics thread because it is not about US politics. It's bad for the people who care about the US politics thread because it adds even more posts to a thread that already moves too fast and across too many sub-topics, and it's bad for the people who want to discuss a subject outside of US politics without immediately getting it buried under all of the US politics posts. And this is hardly the first time I've seen a thread that was maybe tangentially at best related to US politics locked and redirected there, as if the thread is just a dumping ground for any thread a moderator doesn't want to read.

And just to make the policy even more inconsistent there's this thread: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/761424.page

Still open, still not dumped into the US politics thread, despite being about a US military aircraft and its associated political issues along with general commentary on things like "is the US obligated by treaty to defend Taiwan in a war with China, and should they do it".

OP is complaining about political bias of American media, a longstanding and I daresay ubiquitous claim among American conservatives. OP's own nationality is irrelevant as is the nationality of the alleged target of political bias of US media. I'm not convinced we can have a non-political discussion of media bias. Perhaps if some users from neither the US or UK wanted to start one about media bias where they live? Or people wanted to talk about media bias in countries other than the Us or UK? And also such a thread was not hijacked by people who want to discuss media bias in the US or UK? But that seems rather ... hypothetical.

Now on to the question of whether a thread debating the legitimacy of Jordan Petersen's ideas should be locked and funneled to US Politics: So long as the discussion hewed closely to that topic, I believe it would not be locked as duplicative of US Politics. But I'm skeptical that would be the case, given the "culture war" flavor. I can imagine it being locked for other reasons, too.

Finally, the F-35 thread essentially qualifies as a "specific event." As explained here:

 Manchu wrote:
As you will recall, the ban on discussing US Politics did not automatically forbid discussion of specific events (like massacres, terrorits attacks, etc). Although, as explained above, those threads may eventually need to be locked/merged into US Politics on a case-by-case basis, there is still no (and there never was a) blanket ban on starting a thread to discuss a specific current event that touches on, as many things in some way do, US politics.

That thread may eventually need locking/funnelling to US Politics but that would probably entail it going well off the rails and it is reasonably focused as of now.

It's also important to remember that the US Politics thread is in fact a dumping ground. The goal of the policy is not to encourage or facilitate discussion of politics on a miniatures gaming website. The idea was to grudgingly tolerate it. The current policy replaces a policy of totally banning discussion of US politics.

By the logic of moderation and US politics thread, any discussion about Jordan Peterson would inevitably end up funneling into US politics thread because it requires a deep dive into psychology, psychiatry, neurosciences and eventually into history of philosophy and discussion about marxism/critical theory vs positivism/scientific method which is basically left/right debate at philosophical level. Or, as you yourself have proven, it can take a shortcut through complete inability to contemplate levels of serotonin in lobsters and end up locked right away.

So I find it funny, that is you Peregrine who whines about closing it, as I'm fairly certain, that it would be because of your style of "discussion" that any of such threads be locked fast...

Err, no, the OP did not complain about the bias of US media. In fact they specifically stated that they were looking at non-US/UK sources (German, French, etc) when they were inspired to post about it. And the first reply in the discussion is a link to a UK interview with the subject of the thread. And I have no idea why you'd insist on a discussion that excludes media bias in the UK, as media bias in the UK is very obviously also not about US politics. In fact, the only relation to US politics is the fact that people from the US are able to comment on their opinions/portrayals of a Canadian political figure. Is that the general rule now, that Canadian political discussion goes into the US politics thread because US posters/media comment on their neighbor?

As for the F-35 thread, I'm failing to see how anything in there qualifies as a "specific event" in a way that discussion of a specific Canadian political figure doesn't. Nothing new has happened with the F-35, politically or otherwise. It hasn't been in the news any more than its average (minor) presence. And the extended discussion of US political issues involving Taiwan and foreign relations/war in general certainly is not new. There is no consistency at all here.

It's also important to remember that the US Politics thread is in fact a dumping ground. The goal of the policy is not to encourage or facilitate discussion of politics on a miniatures gaming website. The idea was to grudgingly tolerate it. The current policy replaces a policy of totally banning discussion of US politics.

And this is a problem. Your personal dislike of the subject, even when no rules are being broken, is getting in the way of proper organization of the forum and constructive discussion of even subjects with minimal, if any, relation to US politics.

TBH there are ways of conceiving of conflicting ideologies other than the superficial (and frankly unhelpful) "left-right"/"red-blue" dyad. As far as I have seen, however, Mr. Petersen himself is pretty committed to that worldview. That's what makes me skeptical that Dakka Dakka is a suitable forum for discussing his views.

nou wrote:
Or, as you yourself have proven, it can take a shortcut through complete inability to contemplate levels of serotonin in lobsters and end up locked right away.

The lobster debacle was junk science, period. People with far better qualifications than me have comprehensively explained why it is junk science, the same sort of superficially media-friendly nonsense that taints most of the field of evolutionary psychology. Which is the problem with Peterson, completely unrelated to any US politics issue: he may have some professional competence in there somewhere, in some specific field, but he frequently speaks nonsense about subjects he very clearly does not understand. So why shouldn't we mention the lobster nonsense?


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 Manchu wrote:
TBH there are ways of conceiving of conflicting ideologies other than the superficial (and frankly unhelpful) "left-right"/"red-blue" dyad. As far as I have seen, however, Mr. Petersen himself is pretty committed to that worldview. That's what makes me skeptical that Dakka Dakka is a suitable forum for discussing his views.

Whether or not that is true it's still unrelated to US politics. The left/right division is present elsewhere, including in Canadian politics (where, again, Peterson first became famous). The mere mention of left/right politics does not make it American.

First, you might want to read deeper about serotonin levels in humans, and especially the role of amygdala in human aggression/iritation mechanism (I strongly advise on having a read of "Behave" by Sapolsky, a left leaning affective neuroscientist, so it might be easier to swallow for you than following a suposedly alt-right figure in his thought process) and then come back and talk more about those lobsters "nonsense". Or if you don't like to read, you might find it interesting to listen to an interview with Sapolsky on Radiolab podcast, where he talks about differences between sentencing of judges before and after lunch... This might, just might change your view on what exactly fundaments of society really are.

Every "better qualified" article about those lobsters I've seen is written from a "tabula rasa society" Maxist POV (as in critical theory and dialectics meaning, not as in "alt right conspiracy" theory). You mentioning evolutionary psychology instead neuroscience is also typical way of trying to discredit anything biologically related in explanations of human behavior.

The problem with Peterson in this context, is that he is a PHD in psychology but has only recently dwelled deeper into brain biochemistry and he does not have the same proficiency in building an argument in this area, on that I agree - he pretty much is just above a layman level in understanding neuroscience, but it does not mean, that what he talks about is fundamental nonsense.

The one-thread-each policy for US and UK politics is a settled mattered. It works as intended and does not require fixing. It could break down if, for example, users consistently refused to abide by the basic tenants of the site rules when discussing politics. The "fix" in that case would be to go back to a total ban on the topic. The staff will not put into effect any approach to discussing politics that requires either strict, rule-heavy moderation or no moderation at all.

I don't doubt that the goals of this site misalign with those of some of its users. Frankly, posters who crave political discussion should look to a different venue. Dakka Dakka is a website for discussing miniatures gaming. The Off Topic subforum exists because people who share a niche hobby are likely to share other, unrelated interests. But when those off-topic interests veer into territory that is almost by its nature hostile and even confrontational (see, e.g., off topic posts ITT), the discussion will be curbed. Politics generally falls squarely into that category.

At the same time, not everything that touches on politics is necessarily so toxic. The geopolitical context of developing and deploying a speciifc weapons system - and many war gamers are quite interested in military hardware - is a great example of how discussion around politics can be relatively benign. The ideology of a public figure who has made his career engaging in culture war is basically the complete opposite. (I'll note, however, that we've left unlocked the thread on the recent alleged battery at GenCon, as it has obvious bearing on the interests of table top gamers. But it's not hard to imagine that it could easily go off the rails and require locking/funneling.)

To be clear, I am offering explanation - not soliciting debate.

 Manchu wrote:
The one-thread-each policy for US and UK politics is a settled mattered.

Apparently not, because you yourself just stated that there can be multiple threads on US/UK political issues as long as you feel like having the extra thread(s).

The staff will not put into effect any approach to discussing politics that requires either strict, rule-heavy moderation or no moderation at all.

You know my thoughts on that in general, but it's not relevant to my complaint here. Not dumping unrelated threads (such as discussion of a Canadian political figure from the point of view of non-US media) into US politics does not require changes in moderation style. It only requires keeping the US politics thread for US politics, not using it as an excuse to kill off threads that might be, by a very generous interpretation, somewhat kind of tangentially related to US politics.

At the same time, not everything that touches on politics is necessarily so toxic. The geopolitical context of developing and deploying a speciifc weapons system - and many war gamers are quite interested in military hardware - is a great example of how discussion around politics can be relatively benign. The ideology of a public figure who has made his career engaging in culture war is basically the complete opposite.

This is just your personal biases showing. Military hardware is interesting to wargamers, therefore it is acceptable, but political issues you don't want to talk about aren't acceptable despite clear evidence that many wargamers are quite interested in them? Why is political discussion not considered an example of a shared hobby that wargamers want to discuss? If political discussion is outside the mission of the site then the excuses for having all that other off-topic stuff (sports, guns, etc) are flimsy at best.

And of course this is a separate issue, really. The excuse for locking the thread was "discussion of a Canadian political figure in non-US media is US politics because it mentions left vs. right divisions" with a statement that the discussion can happen in the US politics thread, not an order to refrain from discussing Jordan Peterson. If the subject is explicitly stated to be an acceptable topic of discussion then why can't it have its own thread? Why must it be dumped into an unrelated thread?

To be clear, I am offering explanation - not soliciting debate.

And that is the problem. You've made poor decisions on policy, and declared that they aren't open to debate.

As explained, the thread RiTides locked was directly relevant to US Politics. OP posted a US media source, complaining that it was politically biased. General discussion of political bias of US media should happen in the US Politics thread. If it's UK media, the UK Politics thread is where it goes. If it is neither US nor UK media, it may merit its own thread to the extent it doesn't function as a proxy for US or UK politics - which, on an English-languge forum, is pretty likely (but will of course be judged on a case-by-case basis). I understand that OP wanted to talk about political bias in (western) media generally but the immediate discussion was US and UK politics - which is why it was properly locked/funneled. Defaulting to funnelling to the US Politics thread rather than the UK Politics thread is reasonable given Mr. Peterson is likely more relevant to the former than the latter. This is also potentially one of those awakward "Canada isn't America eh" moments but while Mr. Peterson is Canadian he has quite a following among conservatives in the United States (e.g., his involvement with PragerU.)

I did not draw a distinction between politics and military hardware in terms of being interests gamers are likely to enjoy. I distinguished between general politics as an almost unavoidbly toxic subject and military hardware as an innocuous one. There is no question that discussing planes and tanks is OK on Dakka Dakka. The relevant issue is, discussing them in context means some incidental discussion of politics that (unless it gets severely derailed) doesn't necesarily qualify a thread for locking/funnelling because politics is context rather than subject.

Don't be too hasty to assume things you don't like/understand/agree with are "problems" resulting from "poor decisions" and "personal dislikes" that need to be "fixed."

Peregrine PM'ed me about this, but I'm not sure if he's seen my reply yet as I just got to it this morning. Since we're discussing this here I'll copy my text below:

RiTides wrote:I think discussion of Canadian political figures can jump in either the US or UK politics thread (We could even rename US to North America if it became prevalent enough), but we are trying to keep these discussions to the minimum number of threads possible. Similarly, we get a lot of EU politics in the UK politics thread (and could also eventually rename it if discussion merited it).

That thread had also already generated 3 alerts in its infancy when I checked last night. So, given our current policy Jordan Peterson and his views would belong in one of the existing politics thread (whichever is closest to being appropriate).

I've just gone ahead and updated the title of each thread, to make it clear that North American political discussion should go in the US & NA thread, and anything across the pond should go in the UK & EU thread. Hopefully this is a lot clearer now!

It still leaves our rather large Australian contingent without a home to discuss their politics, so maybe we eventually need a "RoW" politics thread if use merits it . But I think this should cover almost everything people have been discussing currently.

-----

The goal here, in general, is for all political discussion to happen in just a few threads, so as not to overwhelm OT into just a political fight forum. So, given what I laid out above, we should only ever need 3 threads for all political discussion (and at the moment, just have 2). The idea that every political issue / figure / etc that is not in the US or UK gets their own thread is definitely not what we're aiming for.

So on Dakka, right now all political discussion goes in those threads. I could see considering changing the policy (with my preference being, no politics or religious threads at all but the opposite is also possible) but that's the rule as it stands. Given how terribly polarized online discussion of these issues has become, I think this really helps keep the rest of OT (and the site in general) from being inundated with really divisive issues / threads, on a forum meant for discussing wargaming.

I am afraid that DakkaDakka, like all human creations, is not perfect.

But, I really, really, like to piss and moan about how something isn't perfect by my own standards. If I were to simply accept that sometimes other people's ideas work in the real world, despite not being perfect in my mind, I might have to face the insurmountable possibility that I might be *wrong* about something.

Which is impossible because I'm better than everyone! I know best! Why won't people just do what I tell them to? It would clearly be for the best. Other people are just unreasonable.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I am afraid that DakkaDakka, like all human creations, is not perfect.

You clearly didn't see see the chocolate mousse I made earlier. Mm, mm.

Merging the US and Canada into one thread just brings us that much closer to Mega City One.

 Ketara wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I am afraid that DakkaDakka, like all human creations, is not perfect.

You clearly didn't see see the chocolate mousse I made earlier. Mm, mm.

.... nooooooo da chocolate.

 RiTides wrote:

It still leaves our rather large Australian contingent without a home to discuss their politics,...

Most of us don't care enough about Australian politics to bother discussing it, frankly. Aside from whatever current craziness Pauline Hanson is up to, there's not a lot that's worth the effort.

 insaniak wrote:

 RiTides wrote:

It still leaves our rather large Australian contingent without a home to discuss their politics,...

Most of us don't care enough about Australian politics to bother discussing it, frankly. Aside from whatever current craziness Pauline Hanson is up to, there's not a lot that's worth the effort.

Well nothing that will change by discussing it on dakka. We may agree or disagree with whatever the latest refugee policy is, but we don't tend to want to get online here and scream at each other about it. We save that for the Facebook comment section of ABC articles

And another thing... Canada doesn't want to be part of that <REDACTED - please do NOT circumvent the swear filter> that is the US politics thread, and Mexico is also refusing to pay for any incidentals required to merge the countries, particularly after having to pay to put up that damned wall.

I mean, the biggest problem most Canadians have is that our Prime Minister seems unable to stop himself from looking like a goof a solid 25% of the time. Which is a solid 75% better than our Southern counterpart's.

In conclusion, Canada respectfully wishes to distance ourselves from the complete and utter moronocity that is US politics.

(I get why. I'm just being a turd. Canadian politics is pretty boring, it doesn't need a thread of it's own.

"I like centrist, progressive, responsible government. Come at me bro!" Abosolutely no one challenged him, and the thread died. )

I feel Canadian and Mexican politics need a wall to keep them clear of US politics.

Australian politics, not even Australians care about Australian politics. The last time I heard about Australian politics was when that sleazy dude had an affair and got his secretary pregnant, and it took me all of 5 minutes to get sick of hearing about that too.

But really the politics of most countries don't generate the same vitriol nor the sheer volume of subforum overwhelming posts as US politics, so it's not really an issue if they live separately and have individual threads when some event occurs that actually makes them worth discussing.

At the end of the days I see the off topic rules not as some strict code that must be rigorously enforced but rather a tool to keep things civil and discussion flowing. If things remain civil and the forum isn't getting clogged up with threads the rules don't need to be enforced at all, they just exist as a fall back for when things aren't going smoothly.

Just for clarification: is the "UK and EU politics" thread about "UK and rest of EU" or "UK and European Union as an entity"? Say I wanted to make a thread on the political situation in Poland, would that go in that thread or in its own?

As I posted above, in general we would like all political discussion kept to 2 - 3 threads. I enjoyed the posts above about how even Aussies don't care about discussing AU politics but until if/when we do start a third "catch all / RoW" politics thread, everything should go in the two existing threads.

If there is enough demand we can certainly start a third, though! But right now US / NA and UK / EU politics are affecting each other so much that they can be discussed in the same place, since there would be crossover discussion even if they had their own thread (like the thread this N&B discussion was a result of).

 Peregrine wrote:
Because it's going beyond the scope of US politics. This is in reference to this thread: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/761634.page

Note that Jordan Peterson is Canadian (still a separate country and not just a hat for the US), and became famous because of his commentary on a Canadian law. The OP in the thread is from the UK, and specifically mentions the context as being more than just a single country's politics. But yet because the concept of left vs. right, a concept that exists in a lot of places outside the US, it was locked and redirected to the US politics thread. This is pretty absurd, the discussion would be off-topic in the US politics thread because it is not about US politics. It's bad for the people who care about the US politics thread because it adds even more posts to a thread that already moves too fast and across too many sub-topics, and it's bad for the people who want to discuss a subject outside of US politics without immediately getting it buried under all of the US politics posts. And this is hardly the first time I've seen a thread that was maybe tangentially at best related to US politics locked and redirected there, as if the thread is just a dumping ground for any thread a moderator doesn't want to read.

And just to make the policy even more inconsistent there's this thread: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/761424.page

Still open, still not dumped into the US politics thread, despite being about a US military aircraft and its associated political issues along with general commentary on things like "is the US obligated by treaty to defend Taiwan in a war with China, and should they do it".

Given that I hear more discussion about Peterson from Americans than I do from anyone else, I have to say, what? The dude, whether or not we like it is deeply ingrained with the current politics and social commentary in the US.

Also, why do you care so much? There is such a thing as over moderation.

Heh.
Seems like we need a "Outside of US politics thread."
What has the thrashing about from that country entails to yours?

Canada seems to be everyone's dog to kick: how to make a statement to warn others and see little of consequence to yourself pissing them off. Heck, the UK with the Trump/Queen visit has me all upset for them. I am waiting to see China finally lose their minds any day now. Mexico... oh my. Is it just me or is Trump doing the dictator world tour to compare notes?

Anyway, there you go.
I feel it is a whole different perspective being stuck in the middle of the US politics vs the outsiders looking in and seeing occasional collateral damage spin out of there. It is like family friends seeing a domestic dispute (run away or watch and dodge thrown objects).

 Togusa wrote:
Also, why do you care so much? There is such a thing as over moderation.

Over-moderation is exactly the problem! Rather than take a hands-off approach where if people want to talk about politics a bunch there are multiple political topics certain people have decided that they don't like politics discussion therefore it's going to be shut down and dumped into a pair of excessively broad threads where the discussion moves too fast to really talk about a specific issue. I mean, when a moderator explicitly describes the thread as a dumping ground for subjects they don't want then what else can you call it besides over-moderation?

Moving garbage to the dump. That's pretty much exactly what I'd call it. Just keeping the place clean. The weekly pickup. Flushing the John before it overflows.

You know, hygiene.

I'm fine with whatever rules Dakka and the mods want to have for the OT and the US Politics thread it's your website. If the US Politics ban came back into force tomorrow it wouldn't be a big deal to me because it wouldn't impact the utility and enjoyment of the site for me.

I do think that you guys should revisit the current policy. If you want to make one giant thread to be a dumping ground for every controversial political topic that involves the US in some way then it's going to get locked a lot. All kinds of stuff is going to come up in it, it's going to be difficult to maintain cohesive discussion about any particular topic because new unrelated stuff will constantly get posted creating a lot of simultaneous discussion.

Given the breadth of topics, opinions and viewpoints that will come up things will get heated and alerts will go out and moderation will be needed and we'll have a cycle of thread locks. It's also pretty clear that regardless of what gets discussed in the thread that feuds between certain posters are just going to keep coming up and getting rehashed over and over again which is only going to make Rule #1 violations more prevalent. While I've found the thread to be entertaining and informative at times I'm not sure how worthwhile it is to have the thread when everybody knows it's constantly only a few posts away from being locked again.

Personally I kinda like the current thread. It mostly moves along, people argue, something else comes up, it moves along again, something sparks a flame war, it gets locked, tempers die down, new thing comes up and the conversation moves on again. People are getting better about the rules and I think the mods are handling it well. It's not perfect, the thread definitely had instances where being out of the loop for an evening takes it strange places, but I think its worth keeping, especially if it cleans up other threads.

Prestor Jon wrote:
I'm fine with whatever rules Dakka and the mods want to have for the OT and the US Politics thread it's your website. If the US Politics ban came back into force tomorrow it wouldn't be a big deal to me because it wouldn't impact the utility and enjoyment of the site for me.

I do think that you guys should revisit the current policy. If you want to make one giant thread to be a dumping ground for every controversial political topic that involves the US in some way then it's going to get locked a lot. All kinds of stuff is going to come up in it, it's going to be difficult to maintain cohesive discussion about any particular topic because new unrelated stuff will constantly get posted creating a lot of simultaneous discussion.

Given the breadth of topics, opinions and viewpoints that will come up things will get heated and alerts will go out and moderation will be needed and we'll have a cycle of thread locks. It's also pretty clear that regardless of what gets discussed in the thread that feuds between certain posters are just going to keep coming up and getting rehashed over and over again which is only going to make Rule #1 violations more prevalent. While I've found the thread to be entertaining and informative at times I'm not sure how worthwhile it is to have the thread when everybody knows it's constantly only a few posts away from being locked again.

Hi Prestor Jon,

I appreciate this view (as well as Vaktathi's), and am actually going to bring this up in the mod forum for a renewed discussion on the policy.

Obviously, if folks were watching just now they saw that I had to lock the thread, remove / edit most of a page of discussion (and follow up with posters via PM), and just now re-opened it. However, here's my questions for you guys to consider:

1. Would the heated topics necessarily get less heated in having their own threads - if anything, then wouldn't they be more highlighted, and thus attract more fire-balling back and forth? As Vaktathi says, things just kind of move along now, to the next hot topic in the big thread. This makes for less in-depth discussion, but also reduces the possible "flame points" by having it all in one place (there's only so much that can go wrong in one thread, and it can always be locked while it's dealt with, as I just did). What are your thoughts on this?

2. Do we really benefit from having these politics thread? Would OT have enough content to function if politics and religion were removed, and would the site (intended for discussing wargaming) be better off overall?

I personally am genuinely starting to wonder about option #2, given what a charged political climate we find ourselves in, and also just Dakka's role in general. As a miniatures discussion site, we can all agree on talking about wargaming, and can good naturedly debate things like whether TLJ movie is completely awesome or an aberration on the franchise. Do we need to continue bashing each other over politics here, when we can do that literally anywhere else?

Thoughts appreciated!

 Talizvar wrote:
Heh.
Seems like we need a "Outside of US politics thread."
What has the thrashing about from that country entails to yours?

Canada seems to be everyone's dog to kick: how to make a statement to warn others and see little of consequence to yourself pissing them off. Heck, the UK with the Trump/Queen visit has me all upset for them. I am waiting to see China finally lose their minds any day now. Mexico... oh my. Is it just me or is Trump doing the dictator world tour to compare notes?

Anyway, there you go.
I feel it is a whole different perspective being stuck in the middle of the US politics vs the outsiders looking in and seeing occasional collateral damage spin out of there. It is like family friends seeing a domestic dispute (run away or watch and dodge thrown objects).

People should not pick a fight with the the only nation that never lost a war ...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Edit: to the question, I think the modding and the one thread policy is working well. It keeps all that in one thread, much like OT for the rest of Dakka. Obviously I do not know how many alerts are popping up.