Off-Topic Forum & the Recent / Popular Thread Section

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**Etna's Vassal**

Just a question, but is there a particular reason the off-topic stuff shows up there? As far as I can see, this forum is about gaming- not so much about politics, gun control, climate change, religion, or any of the other myriad things that get posted there. The forum exists (please correct me if I am wrong) for anything not otherwise relevant to the site.

I know that those sorts of threads show up there because they are "new" and/or "popular", but is that it?

Sorry if this comes off as rude or anything, but I get enough of those other things on the evening news. It kind of annoys me to see it plastered across the top of a forum I go to in order to read about/discuss my diversion from such things.

That said, it's not my site to dictate.

Thanks.

**Ouze**

Yakface tangentially answered this when addressing a different topic recently:

yakface wrote:
To give some background: when the OT forum was originally made by Russ back in the day, it was noted as being the place to discuss anything that wasn't miniature game related, but it specifically mentioned stuff like 'video games', 'movies', 'books' as examples. In other words, the idea was that it would be a place to discuss stuff that geeks (us) wanted to talk about but wasn't related to miniature gaming. However, it became clear that something else people like to discuss (or rather 'argue about') is: news/politics/religion. And because these topics tend to generate so much heat (i.e. constant responses), they tend to stay at the top of the forum. Combine that with the fact that the world is never at a shortage of hot-button news topics to discuss, means news/politics/religion discussion drowns out almost every other type of non-miniature thread.

I can say for myself, that I literally have no interest in discussing news, politics or religion. In fact, I actively try to avoid these topics in my general life because they tend to bring me down. So it saddened me that there wasn't a place on my website where I could read and discuss stuff I'm actually interested in (TV shows, books, movies, etc) without having to wade through dozens of topics, that even just reading their subject headings, can be a huge downer.

When we (the mods and Admin) were discussing making the new forum, there were discussions and disagreements about what to call it, and there was definitely talk about the potential confusion that you guys are expressing. But at the end of the day, I think the forum name and mission of 'Geek Media' expresses the main goal of what we're trying to have go on in that forum. Are there a few topics in the forum that some people don't consider 'geek' or 'media'? Sure. But for the most part, it is the safe place of fun, cool, non-gaming topics that I want it to be.

---

As for the question of why do we even bother allowing news/politics/religion topics in the OT forum at all (or why not just say 'no crap posting')? There are a few reasons.

1) Some people really, really like to discuss those things. I'm not one of those people, but obviously the OT forum is filled with people who like to do exactly that, so there's at least that reason to keep that as an option on the site.

2) There is the belief that if we didn't allow a specific place for news/politics/religion discussion to occur, it would slowly infect other areas of the site, because of point #1, people really, really like to discuss those types of things and they'll find a way to do so.

3) If we wanted to have only a single OT forum, but tried ban topics that make people 'crap post', where exactly would the line be drawn? Religious discussion is pretty easy to define, but where politics ends and general discussion about news stories begins is a very blurry line. So even if we said 'no politics or religion discussion', pretty much any news story could quickly devolve into exactly the same type of heated discussion because people have very different viewpoints on life and how people should live.

4) We already do our best to try to get people to not make ridiculously OTT assertions (aka 'crap posting'). The problem is, news/politics/religion topics tend to be very divisive. So unless we tried to ban those topics all together (which would be problematic as illustrated in points #2 & #3 above), there is no easy way to have people 'just get along' when it comes to the real life issues that completely divide our societies. Hell, people get pretty riled up talking about Space Marines and Orks, so its no surprise that when they're talking about things that actually affect all of us they wouldn't have strong opinions they want to express.

To answer what is almost certainly going to be your next question, yes it would be awesome if you could hide/not display forums you don't want to see, but doing so on a per-user basis was deemed too database intensive by Legoburner.