I read this one. It has it's strengths and weakness and engagement with those of different views is poor to the point there's almost no-one here who doesn't share similar very views.

And what you did is an example of the problem. I'm not 'super nice' and nor do have I ever advocated being 'super nice'. Attempting to be fair, understand and engage with people I disagree with is not 'super nice'.

takitaki is telling tall tales

Part of the problem, apart from the appalling bad modding, is that there were two forums so that most of the good liberal/lefty stuff was missing from the other forum.

Whatever people think of it, Pv7.0 was not remotely intended to be a 'right wing' forum, it was intended to be for everyone in the mainstream. Difficult when the mainstream is getting so extreme and worse when with a few exceptions the liberal/left were posting in P.

While my life would probably improve some from losing this time sink, I think it would be a huge loss in the grand scheme of things. I'm not sure how much influence this forum has in motivating and informing people directly, but I have a strong feeling the ripple effect is gigantic. This obviously doesn't sit well with an owner who is diametrically opposed to the prevailing majority viewpoint on here (which btw was actually anarcho-capitalism when a lot of us first got involved).

An owner shutting it down because he doesn't agree with the current leanings (lets be real - it's not because people are being a-holes to each other or SE would have been closed down a long long time ago) is to me a microcosm of the separate bubbles we're creating in this country. At some point we'll be in 2 different realities all together - as these rare touch points slowly get killed off for one reason or another. Most people are already self-selecting on social media and only consuming the news they want to hear. No one argues with family anymore. There is no Walter Cronkite any more to at least establish some agreed-upon baseline of reality. It terrifies me to think what's gonna happen when we've all completely retreated into our separate bubbles.

Liberal posters like me and some others are literally the only voice outside the right-wing media bubble that a lot of the hardcore right-wingers on Chiefsplanet ever hear. We make a joke out of it, but it's also a touch point across the bubbles. I've invited them to come here and debate many times. It's not like we're trying to shun anyone. Via that forum, at least they're vaguely aware of the other side's viewpoint - rather than taking it for granted as caricatured on FoxNews.

And the same goes here. Posters like InsO at least make some points that you don't hear inside the liberal bubble. We used to have posters like seattlelou for the moderate position - but the moderates seem to have gone into hibernation or something. grizy at least provides the original conservative viewpoint from 20 years ago. We do get a bunch of new right-wing posters when something like Kavanaugh happens. But then they disappear when it's over.

Yeah this site is overrun with libtards right now. But if Jeb! had won I think it would be pretty sleepy around here. Trump has legitimately scared the **** out of a lot of us. Maybe we're wrong. But we aren't faking it. I think Trump is also kind of hard to defend on a lot of things, so the conservatives have given up for now. Get a Dem president in and they probably come back to rag on him/her.

I agree there's groupthink on here and I've been the brunt of it plenty of times. But that happens in every single forum in 2p2. The great Cutlahhhh wars were as bad as anything on this forum imo. I do agree we should stop with the personal attacks and absolutely stop trolling Mason. However, Mason you seem to make these drive by posts lately and then disappear and refuse to engage on the issues - which doesn't help the situation imo. I'm sitting there reading the comments that come after your drive-bys going "this is not gonna end well".

And here we are.

In the current climate a “politics forum” without strong moderation against racist, fascist, anti-semitic or neo-nazi sentiments always devolves into a pit of racism, fascism, anti-semitism and neo-nazism. That’s just the nature of the internet.

Chez still chezzing.

Indeed and any lack of that strong moderation was a failing in Pv7.0. That wasn't due to a lack of intent or effort. Certainly failed at times but it's a very tough line. I'm not criticising you or wookie on that btw - it's a tough line for you as well.

Do you not see a problem when you to implore posters not to troll MM? We should have no problem treating him like we treat everybody else.

they were treating Mason like they treat everyone else. That's the problem. You should treat people that you don't agree with with respect. You should argue with the points they make rather than try to diminish them as a person.

The reason there is "almost no-one here who doesn't share similar very views" is not because those who do come here with opposing views fail to find their ideas engaged and challenged.

Tempered a fair bit* Even so there's appeals going out to posters to behave and, either way, there shouldn't need to be.

Of course. It's not something that should even be contentious.

*I may have missed some deleted stuff.

I don't think a good faith argument can be made that a single poster in this forum posts more problematically than what can be currently found in the twitter feed of the President of the United States of America, who is not only the leader of our nation, but the center of all current political discourse.

Frankly think its an insult to our intelligence for Mason to claim that he is thinking of shutting down this forum due to "tone." If you want to shut it down as your donation to the Republican party then you are obviously free to do so but don't pretend to us or yourself that there is some kind of noble intentions behind this act.

So instead of Mason adding a directive on changing moderation tactics on a private board, he decides to threaten the extinction of a significant source of revenue publicly. Why? Because a few members dunked on the notion that Trump was going to revive poker?

Given that Mason is pretty heavily opposed to the overall political bent of this forum, I can't help but think that there is a political bias to his disdain rather than an actual concern with the running of it. As shown by multiple posters, political forums are generally cesspools of name-calling, racism, and bigotry in the form of one-line posts and offensive memes. The fact that this forum engages in opposing arguments and actively forces people to make them in lieu of one-line trolls or face a ban is a huge net positive that is being taken for granted.

Much of pol acts as a media curator for political news and information for me. Its members' posts are a significant part of my political knowledge. I feel that I gain more knowledge here than in any other forum by routinely reading posts by people much smarter than I am.

If Mat and Mason want to cut down pol because it doesn't coincide with their beliefs, then I'll see my way out.

Hi Mason. You have correctly identified that this forum is awful. Nobody with any sense posts or would want to post here; it is filled with either brainless pack animals or gluttons for punishment. Why is the forum so terrible? It comes down to moderation. The primary moderator is a naked leftist extremist, a one-man O'Sullivan's Law who allows, and joins in on, meanspirited, content-free dogpiles on any dissenting opinion, whether those opinions be from the left or the centre-left (there are no longer any right-wing or libertarian opinions here whatsoever).

Suggestions:

a) Delete the forum (probably the best option).
b) Insist on a minimum content per post. No more ten post streams of "LOL" garbage that has no value but clogging up discussion.
c) Reassign moderator to Computer Technical Help or similar, replace with someone who can moderate fairly and in good faith.

Who were you before I banned you?

Don't take the bait y'all.

That said, I actually like having a minimum character limit for politics. Something like enough characters to constitute a complete sentence as a minimum amount.

OP notwithstanding, literally today:

How detached from reality can you be? You accuse the ownership of being politically biased, oblivious to the fact that this forum could hardly be more politically biased. Forum forces people to make arguments in lieu of one-line trolls? The response to dissent is entirely one-line trolls, which the back-patting circle-jerkers here call "dunking", which is ironic because I'm positive none of the keyboard jockeys here would ever actually be able to use their withered muscles to dunk in real life.

95% of regular posters who have ever posted here have left this forum forever because of how terrible it is. You don't seem upset about them losing their politics forum, but you want people to care about "your" politics forum (you got it just the way you like it--a left-wing echo chamber, and now it's being ripped away from you).

So, all the deleted posts itt aside. Has Mason actually singled out any examples of posts that troubled him?

Again, patently false, people went to great lengths to explain to Fatwolf why Trump and McConnell own this shutdown throughout the last week, despite his extreme resistance to digesting it.

Please keep going, you're giving me great ammo to extoll the virtues of this forum through correcting you.

Thought those were Fly posts at first.

I'll say this. This forum is not kind to conservatives. I consider myself center-left and agree with most on in this forum, on most things, most of the time. But anyone with anything other than a far left viewpoint, on every topic, is in general subject to derision and personal attacks.

I suppose you can argue that dumb arguments deserve derisive responses, but it doesn't do much for the level of discourse. Eventually people get tired of the abuse and the forum becomes an echo chamber, the lefty version of chiefsplanet.

To be fair to Mason, jman is behind ~all of the deletions. I appreciate his fastidiousness while I was wrapping up at work.

Maybe the guy who put Make America Great Again in his signature.

Opposing views ~always generate "engagement" here, and it's usually met with whining. What they want is validation (or sometimes martyrdom), not engagement.

No one is stopping you from making actual political posts in the forum and defending your position.

Or maybe you can point us to the counterpart of this forum - a right wing forum where issues are actually discussed w/o resulting to much worse juvenile insults than you'll ever see here.

No, bahbah is ****ting in various oot threads.