Quote:
Originally Posted by zikzak
I think the sort of forum you envision would be a ghost town.
The main purpose of this post (and announcement) is to find that out.
Quote:
Originally Posted by zikzak
I'm also pretty skeptical that there is value to be found in controversial or offensive arguments if everybody would just use their inside voice. Do you have an example or two of topics that typically get shouted down elsewhere which IYO deserve a wider hearing?
I don't think the rules I've proposed amount to requiring "inside voices", although it's possible we don't understand the phrase the same way. The rules require people to post some content, but I think you can be "interesting, informative, argumentative, thought-provoking, or entertaining" in an outside voice. Fly is a good example of that. I'm having trouble with the idea that there are topics that "deserve" a wider hearing or with the idea that certain ideas get shouted down. That's not exactly how I'm thinking about this. I'm going to address eyebooger's post instead and hope it's helpful. If not, let me know.
Quote:
Originally Posted by eyebooger
Is there a gap that isn't addressed by the current Politics forum? So I guess I'm on Team Loki with the "solution looking for a problem" as the best initial reaction to this idea.
I'll hold off voting for now until you can help me better understand the rationale for this.
Just to reiterate, the purpose of this thread is to determine whether or not this is a "solution in search of a problem". So I don't have much to offer on that front. The whole point for me is to get more information.
But I can tell you a little bit about my interest in the idea.
This might be a good place to start.
To try to sum up: I am personally interested in discussing political and "culture wars" topics with people that I disagree with. I like the main politics forum, but I am sympathetic to the idea that it's a bit of an echo chamber. I think there's some value to being exposed to a wide range of opinions and I enjoy debating some of these topics with people who see things very differently than I do. That's why I liked PU/P7, and that's the majority of my content in that forum while it existed. I think there's an argument to be made that there's some value in getting people who represent a wide range of perspectives to talk to each other, but mostly I'm just personally interested in it.
The point of this thread is not so much to make the argument that people
should want such a forum as to find out whether there's enough interest to reasonably support it as an experiment, and to try to solicit input from a wider range of 2+2 members than the ones who usually post in ATF threads about politics moderation.
P.S.A. I'm modestly drunk so if the above makes little sense ask me again tomorrow :P