i've had a few people express the opinion that this forum is not working as hoped.

if people have serious and compelling reasons to see this forum remain open, now is the time to speak.

pretty much the only thread that's useful to keep is the bad posters thread, just port that over to the main forum and have it be a safe haven and then delete this

woudlnt you need a majority in order to close this sub forum, as opposed to a few voices.




PU should stay

+1.

It's been a good run for UNCHAINED, brother. But like my friend Mr. T once said, all good things must come to an end.

I just don't seen this forum as solving any problems, and instead creates some new ones as lousy folks think they have freedom to share their hate. (and stupid gimmicks).

There might be some value in an "insults are cool" politics forum, but this has been less about that and more about bigotry and idiotic conspiracy claptrap.

PU should remain open.

Politics Light.
Move the lower content treads from regular here.
Keeps quality of reg + more ppl can join in discussions, imo

I said to a friend of mine when we were discussing the very idea of discussing politics at all in a forum. He said that he didn't see the point of arguing with a bunch of nutjobs who he had no ability to influence or reason. Besides that I think there is room for people to influence each other (even if that's not what mostly happens)... My response-

I live in work in a pretty liberal area. I don't see racism in 'real life' all that often. I work in a place that is incredibly diverse. There's not a lot of sexism in work as my workplace have a lot of women in high places. So I live in a liberal bubble. If we don't see beyond the bubble then we don't get a realistic view of what other people believe, how they explain and defend their views, etc.

Even though I think unchained has drawn some of the local racists, sexists and homophobes out - I think its important to see them, see how they think, etc. Its educational.

Beyond all that, I think its a needed outlet. Its a place for ugliness to come out and a place where that ugliness, instead of just being erased and hidden, can be mocked mercilessly. Its cathartic and also sends a message.

Why end it? If people think its a failed experiment then the traffic will end and it will die quietly. It would seem the forum is popular enough to give it value.

I think the critics of this forum are a bit on the whiny side, but we do live in a golden age of whiny criticism. Kinda odd they don't have to click on any of it. Meh, Whatever.

The deciders decide, and then it will be decided.

this is how i currently see it. i'll have to be swayed from this position to shut it down.

What was the original hope?

Also +1 IRT not reading things that irk you. The way things are set up you really gotta go out of your way to read things you don't want to read. Just click ignore on ppl you can't stand or roll your eyes and scroll down if you encounter something which insults your sensibilities.

I guess I thought (incorrectly?) this was where people went to express views with next to no regard at all of how the view sits with, or is received by, others. Seems like creating this space with the thought that prejudice wouldnt find its way in is a little naive...

I can see how the orginal intentions didn't work out. Several key posters who lobbied for unchained, well, they didn't work out. I got the impression that the expectation was that suddenly making the mods go away in the politics forum would make bad arguments or illogical viewpoints magically work. Instead, it just took away the scapegoat.

I also think, and I have stated this before, that undesirable posting behavior has a magnifying effect. We all forget the funny joke, or who was a bad poster of any given day. But everybody knows which poster with sensitive racial veiwpoints bragged that one time about skipping a handwash.

I don't think we need to give them a voice in this forum to know they exist. I live in the same liberal bubble you do, but 15 minutes on the internet is all I need to be aware that there's still a lot of awful people out there.

I think you way overvalue what you get out of actually interacting with bigots and idiots. Who learned anything from yelling at Silver_Man? There's some therapy to it, and I sometimes enjoy the intellectual exercise of picking apart a bad argument, but in the end it's just one guy saying awful stuff and a bunch of us making predictable responses. In the end, I think we're better off just not having the awful stuff there in the first place.

The forum's value as "a place for ugliness to come out" would be more true if it was being used as an outlet by more established posters. I feel like what we've got now are posters who in large part aren't active anywhere else on the forum, and are now coming to UNCHAINED specifically because they know they can get away with spewing hate.

Especially considering that 2p2 is trying to make money, and that what's allowed in this forum isn't likely to be the sort of thing advertisers love, I just don't see how keeping it around makes sense on a cost/benefit analysis.

Move Bad Posters to the regular forum, have loosely modded Anarchy and Conspiracy threads. Make MissleDog stop making crap gimmicks of other posters and limit him to his original account. Whole lot gets better.

I'm going to suggest, once again, that us Politard Regs can set and effectively enforce our own community standards here in Baja Politards... while at the same time honoring both the letter and spirit of 2+2's site wide rules and traditions.

This kinda organization could be effective in any forum that doesn't have "strong moderation" (paradoxically). But it should be especially compelling to us as Politards... because this would actually be doing politics, my kinda politics in a reality... instead of LOLtastically claiming we're trying to discuss the "real issues".

In fact, I'm loath to give an example (and this is just an off-the-top-of-my-head example)...

1. We elect a King of Baja Politards. Mods, gimmicks, and myself are not eligible. Hopefully we could get our new King a purple colored SN too.
   
2. The King, in turn, designates a Cabinet of Regs. This is a purely advisory group, which is tasked with advising the King on what our community standards should be. Preferably it should be ideologically diverse... but of course some 'ideologies', like white supremacy, IMO should always be excluded.
   
3. Any 2+2er who has an issue with a post not meeting our self-imposed community standards would have the option to petition our king for a Ruling of Censure. Note that under this plan the King himself would not be able to unilaterally issue Rulings of Censure.
   
4. When our King issues a Ruling of Censure, several different avenues are open for our own effective self-enforcement, including: Mass organized use of the ignore feature, a call to send in the pony herds (ala Trolly McTrollson), or our King making a "royal" post report to Mat Sklansky.
   
5. And most importantly... our King would not be, in any way, a Mod, employee, or representative of 2+2 itself. All 2+2 rules and traditions would still apply 100% here in Baja Politards. Our King would only have the legitimacy of gravitas, but absolutely no 'power' here at 2+2. All and everything our King and his Cabinet might do would necessarily always be 100% with the consent and indulgence of 2+2 and Mat Sklansky.

I agree that I can read the comments section on just about any random news posting and see ugliness galore. That being said, those comments sections really don't lead to any back and forth. They're more like post and run. I don't really go to any other forums where I would see any back and forth like here.

I agree there's some bad with the good. I'm just saying that I find it interesting just seeing the writings of people I rarely see in real life. I cannot say how much other people value it. I find it interesting (even if it is like rubbernecking a freeway accident), I actually think it prepares you for what kind of responses/arguments you would get in real life when the rare real life meeting comes with vocal people of these types, etc.

If this forum went away, I'd miss it. That being said, if 2+2 felt the bad outweighed any good, I'd get over its loss.

Maybe we should restrict everyone to one account and make people use their real names and use text message verification.

It does seem odd to me from a business standpoint that 2p2 has decided to become Stormfront Lite.


The one good thing about unchained is that pre-unchained there was a relentless whine campaign against Wookie that has mostly gone away. Although Inthink that has more to do with the fact that most of the whiners have left 2p2 altogether.

The silly gimmick accounts are the best part about UNCHAINED, and they should stay no matter what. Chimpstare4mod!

I don't see what PU has done besides let a few guys spam the **** out of a forum with ******ed gimmicks, have some idiots like ShaneG go nuts about conspiracies, some racist content, and Lirva being Lirva for awhile.

The positive side of this forum has been

Jiggs and other people being allowed somewhere to exist after being purged from regular politics
The Bad Poster Thread

'Stormfront Lite' is hyperbole of course... but sure, I don't see the business sense in any top 100 commercial website tolerating Stormfront like bile. However... IDK, but I'm guessing racists posting on Stormfront don't get mercilessly ridiculed by us Fly-boys, like they do here.

This is all very true.

In fact, I'd like to give Baja Politards some credit for this... as the ability to ruthlessly mock these mostly departed whiners, which we don't really have over in Alta Politards, may be one reason some of them thankfully departed. But I could be wrong.

Regardless of the reason, what is definitely the case is that, over the last year or so, the quality of poster and posts in Los Dos Politards has measurably gone up... and the number of truly odious posters has declined significantly.

Is MissleDog arguing with himself, or is Real Trolly somebody else?

Not being able to tell who is posting is incredibly annoying.

I'm obviously the real Trolly!

LOL no, I'm not The REAL Trolly.

WTF dude, how can you be so utterly obsessive with this whole interwebs posting thingee to have like 75K posts (or whatever), at a rate of like 15.67 per day (or whatever)... and not be able to recognize the simplest differences in writing tone and style. Do you have this same perceptional problem dealing with email ??

Anyways, sure. We, as Regs of Baja Politards, could effectively make and enforce a rule against out-of-control gimmicks... in the same general manner I sketched out above.

So... do you wanna work towards that goal? Or do you just really enjoy mindlessly whining about nothing?

Who knows...

But MD spamming has dragged down threads which is funny since he thinks posting quality has gone up. Also amusing he got all creepy a few months ago to the level he fit into the odious category.

Because MissileDog arguing with himself is something new?