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Seriously. Great Debates on a what is essentially a message board internet forum. Does anyone expect that members are going to write some long winded academic dissertation on the meaning of life or any other profound topic with multiple paragraph content. And of course some of the parameters of what is acceptable is so vague that unintentional violations of the TOS are common.
No one is expected to "write some long winded academic dissertation" and, truthfully, there really haven't been any that I've seen. Just read and follow the rules, please, as posted at the top of the forum. Many people are doing exactly that, with the understanding that Great Debates was never intended to be an extension of the P&OC forum. The City-Data Administrator (who wrote the rules) stated that the Great Debates forum is an "experiment."
If you have any questions about or difficulty with these forum-specific rules, feel free to direct message a moderator for the GD forum. Thank you.
Different forums have different dynamics. I think that the moderators for P&OC are doing the best that can be done for that forum, while still allowing people there to express their opinions. Strong opinions lead to angry words that result in less than respectful language in postings. Nevertheless, there are forum members who actually seem to enjoy that kind of contentiousness.
Great Debates, on the hand, isn't just about opinion. People can express opinions in GD, of course, but they also have to put in extra work to back up their assertions with facts. For those people who can't trouble themselves by putting in extra work to present cogent, unemotional arguments in Great Debates, I'm personally grateful that they at least have the alternative forum of P&OC.
Thank you for the response and for providing the clarity concerning the difference between the two forums. I really do appreciate it.
I was called a Moron by a member the other day, reported this and don't know what has happened...Rude rude people that's for sure.
You probably won't know what happened because moderators generally do not discuss moderator actions with forum members. Rest assured, a moderator has no doubt assessed the situation and decided how to deal with it.
I’m sick of everything being politicized. I’m mostly liberal, but I don’t like to show it and prefer to keep my views secretive. But when a thread gets political in a non political forum, it is very annoying, especially if it’s linked to one of your non political hobbies. How can we prevent this from happening?
I’m sick of everything being politicized. I’m mostly liberal, but I don’t like to show it and prefer to keep my views secretive. But when a thread gets political in a non political forum, it is very annoying, especially if it’s linked to one of your non political hobbies. How can we prevent this from happening?
I’m sick of everything being politicized. I’m mostly liberal, but I don’t like to show it and prefer to keep my views secretive. But when a thread gets political in a non political forum, it is very annoying, especially if it’s linked to one of your non political hobbies. How can we prevent this from happening?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marka
Any ideas how?
I believe most non-political forums have an injunction against political drift. More rigid enforcement of that limit, however tiresome for all, might be a start.
In forums where politics is an inextricable part of the scope (Economics, for example), how about a simple but inflexible rule against unsubstantiated opinionating? If you have to express a political aspect, it requires a valid link or cite — NOT to blogs or fringe websites — or it will be deleted. Again, tiresome, but if someone wants to say the _______ administration ______ed ______ing for everyone, they can arse themselves to find a supporting citation from a valid authority instead of reducing it to an antagonizing smear about liberals or progressives or whatever.
It may not be possible, but I'd love to see a new subset of forums that are moderated with an iron fist. Leave the existing ones as is, for those who don't mind a cadre of yammerheads riding their hobbyhorse through every thread; create a parallel for those who actually want discussion to progress and lead somewhere without being smothered by ignorant bias or the meme of the week.
I finally had to uncheck a whole lotta forums because I couldn't take one more thread that had interesting developments overrun by boilerplate reading of agendas... agendas read out in full every time the member hit a keyword trigger.
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