Politics sub-forum

[theJanitor]

If my memory serves me correctly, the thread on lightfighter for the Christopher Dorner manhunt is an excellent example of this.

Yup. And the Baltimore riots too

[olstyn]

I'm on Tapatalk at the moment, so I can't see the poll. Yes, we need a subforum, and it should be open to all after six months of membership or some such fairly long probationary period. Not keen on keeping such a thing site-supporter only.

That's an interesting compromise - it would let basically everyone participate, but ensure that nobody who is a "drive by" could register an account, stir shit up, and then disappear.

[Zincwarrior]

It depends on how it's implemented. I hadn't originally thought to include all current events in with politics. Remember right now we're just spitballing. No decisions have been made, and certainly no rules have been formed. This is information gathering and then ultimately up to LL how to implement any, or no, changes.

Remember before you get sucked in, this is a pistol (gun) forum, not a politics forum. While they are interesting and fun to argue about, the mission of the board is related to firearms, and secondarily why I suck so bad in competitions. Be careful you don't drop yourself into a massive amount of work and garbage with minimal gain.

[Sig_Fiend]

Speaking as someone who has started and administrated a decent-sized forum for over a decade, my vote is make it a separate section. Much easier to manage and funnel everything there. Politics is like a nuclear hand grenade waiting to go off in every thread. Best not to infect the rest of the site too much when it can be avoided. Even better, maybe consider it being a separate, member-only section that is not publicly accessible...

Also, other considerations. When does politics move the goal post forward or not for the intent of the site? Speaking professionally as an SEO, it doesn't on this site IMO, except as relates specifically to firearms and crime-related politics. Sites always risk marginalizing themselves when they stray too far from their stated purpose, focus, and subject matter. Every site doesn't have to address all subject matter. At face value, based on the name/domain name, I would expect PF to be ~80% about pistols. Straying too far from that, IMO, risks devaluing the nature of the brand as "just another forum".

[JHC]

With something around or just over 170 threads on ignore, I really hope this change is implemented. As much as I like PF for discussions of shooting I don't much care for the cultural/political threads.

[beenalongtime]

The staff has been discussing the possibility of creating a sub-forum specifically for political and hot-button issues and to then leave general discussion for less controversial and more social topics. This would allow the people who just want to bullshit with friends to do so without having to "ignore thread" multiple times if they don't want to engage in the political discussions. Especially now, we understand that this can be rather divisive.

We'd like input from the membership and if it would be open to all members or only to site supporters (meaning for non-site supporters, there would not be an option for political discourse).

This would also apply to the "memes" thread, where political content would go in a new meme thread in the new sub-forum.

Lack of civility or getting butt hurt over what's deemed "political" would result in loss of access to the sub-forum.

This is all spit-balling now and nothing has been decided, so we want your input.

Thoughts?

(Poll is up and voting isn't public)

I am not going to go through this whole thread (probably covered by others, sorry).
The poll is by no means complete.
What is easy for mods, verses what is going to cause SO much more work.
My view is the bolded area, is only going to cause more work.
On multiple forums, I am on, a politics section is the section that causes members to go away forever.
This is by choice, where the bolded quote means are you going to start banning members that make a political comment somewhere because as a non site supporter, they have no access?

I didn't realize the joke about the pistol forum, going away, (dagga) was taken seriously and the politics forum is the way to do that.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

I really don't care. My view is that moderating it will be a shit show. Looking at some recent crap on racial issues, who needs that? Also, moderating another forum, we found that we get folks who ONLY post in the the non gun forum. While some is nice chat (like in General here), most is the same folks ranting politically, usually on one side of the spectrum. They contribute nothing to the technical side.

Pure politics will attract nuts of all the spectrum. Who needs that?

[BN]

I don't have any thread, or sub forum, or for that matter any member on 'ignore', at least as far as I can remember. As those irritating, to me, posts show up in any GD thread, I can simply skip them (often enough the name of the poster or the first few sentences tell me all that I need to know) but I can still read the posts of those who are more measured, or have a point that can be discussed less "passionately", or get a point of view that I hadn't thought about. Put those discussions in one sub forum and that is most likely the one I will put on ignore and miss on some of the more intelligent comments that would make me think. Spread out as they are now, I can much more easily pick and choose and I'd rather do that and be irritated every so often than put a whole bunch of discussions on 'ignore'.

This is the way I do it.

I'm going to vote no. I just clicked on new posts and there were only 11 out 40 threads that I am going to read. I always click new posts and never just go to the forums and sub forums. I read threads I find interesting and ignore the rest. I usually don't know what sub forum it is in.

I love thread drift. Some of the best stuff comes out with thread drift.

[scjbash]

Since mods here are shit wasn't an option I voted yes.

[scjbash]

And the Baltimore riots too

Edit: nevermind, was thinking about the Ferguson riot thread.