As a non-mod (aka this is just an idea thread), I'm wondering if we should have a moratium on News and Politics?

[Tribble]

First off, I'm not a mod, obviously. Nothing said here means anything unless a Mod / Governor wills it. This is merely something which I would like to talk about, nothing more.

Second I am not pointing out anyone in particular; this is a general thing that I've noticed, and yes I admit I am just as much a part of the problem.

Anyways, IMHO it seems that for the past while a lot of our news and politics threads end up getting derailed, sometimes very quickly. This happens whether or not the news is good or bad and regardless of topic (though admittingly we tend to post negative news far more often than positive news). They seem to get derailed by one or more of the following: Whataboutism (often though not always directed towards the US / western countries), cynicism (why are you bothering to post this when nothing can get done / will get better?), and now apparently some feel that simply posting about news and politics in the News and Politics section amounts to trolling.

As one example here is this recently posted thread which IMO is already displaying traits of all three;

https://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic ... 2&t=167974

If this is the kind of quality of discussion we can look forward to in news and politics... I have to wonder if its worth continuing these kinds of threads at the moment. We banned things like Israel v Palestine threads because they inevitably ended up being little more than a waste of time / space, cause flamewars and bitterly the board.

Perhaps the time has come to consider an overall mortarium on news and politics?

After all, the primary purpose of this board is "Get your fill of sci-fi, science, and mockery of stupid people ideas", not
[/b] "argue tediously about the poltical issues of the day". There are plenty of other forums for that already.

Just like to hear your thoughts.

[Crazedwraith]

I don't think we should stop posting about news and politics because some people can't behave. Rather enforcement of rules is all the really seem to be required.

[LaCroix]

If we do not post about politics, where else do we get stupid people to mock?

I'm with Crazedwraith - N&P is meant for posting news. If people are deliberately trolling, we got rules for that.

[aerius]

When the first post in the linked thread ends with, and I quote, "I can't wait to hear how this board's Kremlin apologist contingent will defend/dismiss this", you know the thread is pretty much DOA. I might as well post a thread about a school shooting and say "I can't wait to see how the 2nd Amendment apologists will explain this", it's blatant baiting and arguably pursuing a vendetta. Unfortunately it ain't 2005 anymore and we can't tell the worthless shit posters to go douse themselves in gasoline and light themselves on fire without getting mod warnings or bans.

[The Romulan Republic]

When the first post in the linked thread ends with, and I quote, "I can't wait to hear how this board's Kremlin apologist contingent will defend/dismiss this", you know the thread is pretty much DOA. I might as well post a thread about a school shooting and say "I can't wait to see how the 2nd Amendment apologists will explain this", it's blatant baiting and arguably pursuing a vendetta. Unfortunately it ain't 2005 anymore and we can't tell the worthless shit posters to go douse themselves in gasoline and light themselves on fire without getting mod warnings or bans.

Aw, poor you. The mods only sometimes call you out when you harass and slander me.

Making a snarky comment about how these debates tend to go is not vendetta, at least not by any definition I'm aware of, though if you feel otherwise, you're welcome to put your money where your mouth is and report me. Going into this thread and making a post specifically targeting me, and falsely accusing me of vendetta, on the other hand...

Edit: Beyond that... I'd almost be inclined to agree that we should shut the whole shit show down, if not for the fact that I know perfectly well that the intent of certain posters is ultimately to stifle discussion of views they do not agree with.

[Tribble]

When the first post in the linked thread ends with, and I quote, "I can't wait to hear how this board's Kremlin apologist contingent will defend/dismiss this", you know the thread is pretty much DOA. I might as well post a thread about a school shooting and say "I can't wait to see how the 2nd Amendment apologists will explain this", it's blatant baiting and arguably pursuing a vendetta. Unfortunately it ain't 2005 anymore and we can't tell the worthless shit posters to go douse themselves in gasoline and light themselves on fire without getting mod warnings or bans.

...and the responses were equally poor. My point is that this seems to becoming more and more the standard for threads in this particular area, and I'm wondering why we're even bothering if we all know the threads are inevitably going to devolve into some form of "Champion my cause or else!" vs "Who gives a f^&k!" vs "Blame 'Murika!"

[The Romulan Republic]

Frankly, I think part of it is that this is a small board, mostly people who've been around for a long time, and over the last few years in particular, with the various real-world political cluster fucks that have occurred, a lot of animosity and ill-will have built up. I know there are a number of posters on this board who I have sometimes started to try to avoid responding to at all (unless they target me first), because I know it'll be a shit show. I think that there is a lot of built up hostility, and people inclined to see the worst in others (with or without merit), such that it makes productive discussion almost impossible. Last spring I took a voluntary leave of absence from the board for about a month, hoping it would help things cool down. It did, I think, for a while, but now the shit show is just starting up again.

[K. A. Pital]

I think that whataboutism is an issue, and freely admit I am part of the problem. I tend to see everything as a conflict between the bad West & poor rest. But leading every thread to this debate is unproductive. Maybe I should remove myself for a while.

On the other hand, sometimes the discussion flourishes despite the different views.

I have been mostly a proponent of allowing everyone to speak out and not removing even stupid or offensive posts. Sometimes in a mundane thread serious questions can be brought up and people link to articles and news which have not been hitherto discovered.

[Jub]

What should be expected when vacuous posts are allowed in N&P? It does nothing to be a spam bot that posts negative articles without any form of transformative, insightful, or interesting comment. We could get the same content from a news crawling bot with a random one line sentence generator as we do from posts that are nothing more than Article + Invective.

When did this site degenerate to the point where copy pasting a news article without a - meaningful - comment became normal and had admins defending it?

If we want to bother with N&P all we need is a simple change to the sub-forums rules. That change simply being, "All new threads must contain constructive thoughts about the article posted. It is unacceptable to post an article without comment or with a single line comment of a derogatory nature towards another political group or ideology. If you want to point out how awful the other side is use your own words and make an original argument or fuck off."

It seems that used to be the standard around here, so what's changed?

[Elheru Aran]

When did this site degenerate to the point where copy pasting a news article without a - meaningful - comment became normal and had admins defending it?

On occasion one may want to let an article speak for itself. At other times, perhaps the OP wishes to gauge people's response to something they find interesting before putting in their two cents; the equivalent of putting out an idea and letting people critique it before going on about it yourself.

Granted that it shouldn't be the norm, however, and that a substantive comment expressing a personal view in regard to the article would be appropriate in most cases. I should note that I have not personally observed admins defending posting without comment, but I don't follow every thread in this forum.

It seems that used to be the standard around here, so what's changed?

Complacency, mostly. It just isn't as busy as it used to be, and most of the staff are content to let the member base wrangle things among themselves. Some posters draw more attention than others. In general it's not *usually* too bad, so pushing people around for every post made without comment would just generate headaches.

[Lord Revan]

I'd say that problem isn't so much N&P itself but that some members (out of respect I won't name anyone) can't seem to not respond to obvious taunts and attempts to provoke them.

Those people also seeem to be the ones that outright refuse to see their opponents point of views as anything else then pure evil, so the thread are reduced to a kindergarden level shouting match where both sides pick up pretty much the worst possible recent example and act it's the norm for that side.

This removes any hope of intelligent discussion as that means you try to figure out why would someone think a certain besides "they're evil!", oh and before someone claims otherwise there's people on the both sides of the spectrum that are like that, it isn't exclusive to our right or left wing members.

[Solauren]

I think the bigger problem is the smaller threads that are really part of a larger topic.

i.e All announcements that someone is going to run for the POTUS in 2020 should be in a 'Election 2020 Lead up' Super thread.
i.e A Generic Trump Dump for miscellanous stuff not related to Internal Policy, Foreign Policy, of the Muellar investigation (which have there own super-threads/dumps)
i.e Canadian Politics (possibly with a sub-thread for Doug Fords crap)

Enforcing posting the little subjects into the main subjects would remove alot of clutter from N&P, and let those of us that don't care about the larger subject, avoid it. (Really, I could give a shit less who's planning to go for the Democracts nomination until it's close to their convention)

[aerius]

...and the responses were equally poor. My point is that this seems to becoming more and more the standard for threads in this particular area, and I'm wondering why we're even bothering if we all know the threads are inevitably going to devolve into some form of "Champion my cause or else!" vs "Who gives a f^&k!" vs "Blame 'Murika!"

Garbage in, garbage out. Most of the stuff that's getting posted these days is about as worn out as the Israel vs Palestine shit in the old days, shockingly, results are remarkably similar though not as entertaining because we're a kinder gentler place now. You're not really going to get any decent discussion out of the threads unless they're derailed into some other topic or side debate.

[The Romulan Republic]

I'd say that problem isn't so much N&P itself but that some members (out of respect I won't name anyone) can't seem to not respond to obvious taunts and attempts to provoke them.

Those people also seeem to be the ones that outright refuse to see their opponents point of views as anything else then pure evil, so the thread are reduced to a kindergarden level shouting match where both sides pick up pretty much the worst possible recent example and act it's the norm for that side.

This removes any hope of intelligent discussion as that means you try to figure out why would someone think a certain besides "they're evil!", oh and before someone claims otherwise there's people on the both sides of the spectrum that are like that, it isn't exclusive to our right or left wing members.

There's some truth to this, but I would ask why you seem to put the bulk of the blame on those who respond to the taunts and baiting, rather than those who engage in it in the first place. Likewise, not naming any names.

[Tribble]

I think that whataboutism is an issue, and freely admit I am part of the problem. I tend to see everything as a conflict between the bad West & poor rest. But leading every thread to this debate is unproductive. Maybe I should remove myself for a while.

On the other hand, sometimes the discussion flourishes despite the different views.

I have been mostly a proponent of allowing everyone to speak out and not removing even stupid or offensive posts. Sometimes in a mundane thread serious questions can be brought up and people link to articles and news which have not been hitherto discovered.

Nah, I don't think you need to remove yourself- like I said, IMO we're all part of the problem, as it were. I have certainly overreacted sometimes when uncalled for, and said my fair amount of stupid crap. I suppose its easy for things to get out of hands in news and politics because unlike our fantasy scenarios, the things that are happening in these threads are real… and generally speaking, we have very little control over them, as individuals (unless some of us happen to secretly leaders of major companies and/or political parties of course) Makes it easy for these threads to devolve into little more then venting IMO, if we are not careful.

I think the bigger problem is the smaller threads that are really part of a larger topic.

i.e All announcements that someone is going to run for the POTUS in 2020 should be in a 'Election 2020 Lead up' Super thread.
i.e A Generic Trump Dump for miscellanous stuff not related to Internal Policy, Foreign Policy, of the Muellar investigation (which have there own super-threads/dumps)
i.e Canadian Politics (possibly with a sub-thread for Doug Fords crap)

Enforcing posting the little subjects into the main subjects would remove alot of clutter from N&P, and let those of us that don't care about the larger subject, avoid it. (Really, I could give a shit less who's planning to go for the Democracts nomination until it's close to their convention)

Perhaps it might be useful to create some subforum topics for News and Politics? It would certainly make finding things a bit easier. Maybe we could do it geographically?

[The Romulan Republic]

I think the bigger problem is the smaller threads that are really part of a larger topic.

i.e All announcements that someone is going to run for the POTUS in 2020 should be in a 'Election 2020 Lead up' Super thread.
i.e A Generic Trump Dump for miscellanous stuff not related to Internal Policy, Foreign Policy, of the Muellar investigation (which have there own super-threads/dumps)
i.e Canadian Politics (possibly with a sub-thread for Doug Fords crap)

Enforcing posting the little subjects into the main subjects would remove alot of clutter from N&P, and let those of us that don't care about the larger subject, avoid it. (Really, I could give a shit less who's planning to go for the Democracts nomination until it's close to their convention)

There might be some merit to this, but it could also lead to a single side conversation derailing the whole larger topic, or driving down the overall level of activity in what's already, let's face it, not the most active board.

[The Romulan Republic]

I'll also add this: many of the complaints in this thread seem to be directed, at least in part, at things I have done (or am frequently characterized as having done). So there are a couple of things I feel I should say to the board at large.

First, I do not apologize for honestly expressing my political views, but I do apologize for whatever role I have played in the toxic atmosphere on this board by being too easily provoked, or too sloppy in how I present my arguments. The thought that I have done a disservice to issues and causes I care about in how I have presented my arguments is a deeply troubling one to me.

And secondly, I will reiterate what I said in a recent thread: if the general consensus here is that my presence here is the main thing that makes productive discussion of the issues on this forum so difficult, then, however unjust I find that conclusion, I will voluntarily depart in the interests of allowing the issues, not my personality or peoples' grievances against me, to be the focus of discussion. Because it bothers me to see serious topics again and again turned into an argument over my personality or character or posting history. It makes me feel like an egotist when I continue the derailment in order to speak in my defense, and it makes me feel like a whipping boy if I keep silent. I have no desire to serve as a tool for those who wish to derail discussion by ad hominem and Whataboutism. And I have no desire to inflict my presence on people who genuinely find it intolerable.

[K. A. Pital]

A lot of news, eg US electoral news, do belong together, I think. Reducing the number of threads is not bad when news can be grouped together sensibly.

[mr friendly guy]

Because the OP was a good enough sport to put the option of calling him an idiot in the poll, I simply voted NO instead of option 4. I like to point out, even with IvP, there is nothing stopping someone putting new information about the Israel / Palestine conflict as long as it doesn't just retread old grounds.

Now I think there are still worthwhile discussion in N & P. For example the guy who died because he couldn't afford insulin thread. We got to compare prices of medicines in Europe, Australia and the US.

Other threads on China I can contribute - and as noted some of what I have said about their pollution has filtered through, the creator of this OP even mentioned in another thread about improvements in China's pollution (this one to be precise).

So I would argue that there is still useful information disseminated in N & P threads, which enhances people's knowledge.

Even though I disagree on several things with TRR, I don't want him to stop posting. Occasionally I will look at some articles he post and find it about something I want to know about. So yeah, he contributes.

Now there are arguments which potentially could degenerate into accusations of cynicism or derailment, I would suggest we have guidelines on it and appeal to a mod if there is a problem. Someone tried to be an amateur mod, accused me of derailment because I did the same thing he did (ie compare some of Trump's policies with previous presidents), but came to a different conclusion. I asked him to report me to the moderators and lo behold, he chickened out. Seriously, just put up a sticky clarifying some of these rules, what counts as derailment etc.

[Darth Lucifer]

Other - Castrate Straha

On a more serious note, I rarely post in this forum. Even in the pre-social media era, I mainly did a lot more reading than posting because there are more articulate and better learned people than myself. And please don't go, TRR, I like your articles and posts.

[Ziggy Stardust]

What should be expected when vacuous posts are allowed in N&P? It does nothing to be a spam bot that posts negative articles without any form of transformative, insightful, or interesting comment. We could get the same content from a news crawling bot with a random one line sentence generator as we do from posts that are nothing more than Article + Invective.

When did this site degenerate to the point where copy pasting a news article without a - meaningful - comment became normal and had admins defending it?

If we want to bother with N&P all we need is a simple change to the sub-forums rules. That change simply being, "All new threads must contain constructive thoughts about the article posted. It is unacceptable to post an article without comment or with a single line comment of a derogatory nature towards another political group or ideology. If you want to point out how awful the other side is use your own words and make an original argument or fuck off."

It seems that used to be the standard around here, so what's changed?

Not that I really want to get into a debate with you on this, but if you personally find a thread or post to be vacuous, why not just ignore it? It just seems to me lately you've gotten into a habit of making posts like this, that just instantly shift the topic of discussion from whatever article is linked by the OP onto the topic of whether or not they should have posted it at all (it isn't just you doing this, but it's a pattern of activity that seems pretty common.) I really, truly don't understand why the idea of someone posting an article offends you so much that you are willing to get involved in a dedicated debate on the subject, as opposed to just ignoring it. Or posting an article of your own, with some constructive thoughts attached. It's just hard for me to buy any arguments about what a waste of time these "vacuous posts" are, when people are just spending all that time bickering and flaming each other to no discernible purpose instead of making any concerted effort to provide the meaningful content they find is sorely missing from the site.

[Jub]

Not that I really want to get into a debate with you on this, but if you personally find a thread or post to be vacuous, why not just ignore it? It just seems to me lately you've gotten into a habit of making posts like this, that just instantly shift the topic of discussion from whatever article is linked by the OP onto the topic of whether or not they should have posted it at all (it isn't just you doing this, but it's a pattern of activity that seems pretty common.) I really, truly don't understand why the idea of someone posting an article offends you so much that you are willing to get involved in a dedicated debate on the subject, as opposed to just ignoring it. Or posting an article of your own, with some constructive thoughts attached. It's just hard for me to buy any arguments about what a waste of time these "vacuous posts" are, when people are just spending all that time bickering and flaming each other to no discernible purpose instead of making any concerted effort to provide the meaningful content they find is sorely missing from the site.

I'll grant you that as entirely fair. I should be better if I'm to expect better from others. I don't post articles because I rarely follow the news these days and I'm not inclined to start. I follow scientific advancement, and other current events, but only see the news when it breaks through here or on social media. My anxiety and depression are deep enough without seeing the unveiled state of the world or acknowledging the celebrity news gets more press than a rocket launch or new discovery about climate change.

That said, I feel that the question I'm asking is actually profoundly on topic when talking about current events. Most people here are in agreement that that current system doesn't work. Nations, nationalism, the foundations of democracy are proving ineffective at dealing with long term issues and the rate of technological change. We elect old men and women to deal with modern problems but wisdom has thus far rarely proven to be equal to a true understanding of the modern age.

Then we have greed and corruption, likely factors behind both Trump's rise to power and Brexit. We take for granted that Democracy relies on freedom of speech, but when airtime is bought and paid for speech cannot be free. If my voice is not equal to that of a rich man's, or a news caster's when news can be falsified and manipulated, how can we trust the people to make the correct choice when they march to the polls?

I ask what can be done about current events as a comment on these events themselves more so than as an attack against the person posting. I ask for ideas because my own are woefully under-informed and often emotionally charged. I argue and push and hound because I don't want pretty words, I want raw ideas unfettered by politeness and decorum. Look at my last post to Broomstick in our often nasty debate and see my justification for having pushed and personally attacked a person I know to be good.

[Lord Revan]

I'd say that problem isn't so much N&P itself but that some members (out of respect I won't name anyone) can't seem to not respond to obvious taunts and attempts to provoke them.

Those people also seeem to be the ones that outright refuse to see their opponents point of views as anything else then pure evil, so the thread are reduced to a kindergarden level shouting match where both sides pick up pretty much the worst possible recent example and act it's the norm for that side.

This removes any hope of intelligent discussion as that means you try to figure out why would someone think a certain besides "they're evil!", oh and before someone claims otherwise there's people on the both sides of the spectrum that are like that, it isn't exclusive to our right or left wing members.

There's some truth to this, but I would ask why you seem to put the bulk of the blame on those who respond to the taunts and baiting, rather than those who engage in it in the first place. Likewise, not naming any names.

I takes 2 to tango, without the responce those taunting are nothing but spam and rules deal with spam and more often then not those are the same people with the response to the taunt another taunt.

a wrethed circle where neither person is unwilling to just walk away.