Yeah, I know, which is why I said "part" of the reason. We all know the biggest part was that you guys hate Idaho.

It's the damn_potatos

Can you admins start hating Iowa too?

Dave99 is from Iowa, you know.

Banning Brantley would rip the heart out of otter.

As an unofficial representative of the right wing of otter, we are requesting the ability to strike no less than three proposed moderators from the list of potential politics/elections sub-forum and are willing to pass a referendum to officially support our position!
;)

Randy might hate idaho because of the damn_potatos, but we have corn here. And corn gets turned into taco shells, and tacos are yummy, and I'm sure randy would agree. So your plan won't work, asshat.

dave

i would also like to see a politics subforum, just for the year.



please, please, please, please, please!!!!!!!!! :D

Actually, I think mods who don't care about politics would be more objective.

I'll second that sentiment...without the smilie.

I think a separate political forum would work. I read the forums over at macaddict and the specialized political subforum there seems to work well and hasn't affected the volume in the off-topic forum that much.

The MAF has a different demographic, though. Lots more college students/younger people and more non-US posters than we have here.

Yeah, but someone has to at least have enough interest in politics to actually want to read the threads. ;)

As with all threads, if there's a post/thread that you feel needs mod attention, report it. That's what the "Report this post to a Moderator" link is for.

I don't know that those that don't care as much would be seen as objective, because polarized people will still often see the middle as "the other side." However as AndyCapps mentioned, the problem is, I normally never read the political threads unless someone sends a report about one. I find them way too tiresome and non-productive.

I agree. My son's poop thread did not get the respect it deserved. :o

http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthr...highlight=poop

I ignore the political threads since I don't care for the arguments.

I think X would like to moderate it. It seems like he starts those threads quite a bit. :)

I'm giving in. I was originally against this idea, but now think it would be great.

Is this currently being discussed in the mod forum?

There's been no real say either way on this issue by any of the mods here yet.

The war forum worked great when the War on Iraq was going on. When it died down, the forum was gone and that was that. Now with the election coming up TEN months from now, there's already a ton of threads about the candidates, the caucuses, etc. It'll only get worse before it gets better.

It would have to be a zero-tolerance forum.

First personal attack= Suspension.

Second= Banned.

The war forum may have seemed great to some people but it sure wasn't for great for the moderators. That single forum easily tripled the amount of time they had to spend moderating.

While I could see limiting the number of political threads in Other I still don't understand why the people who want more variety in topics don't just post them themselves.

Hmmm... That gives me an idea.... :lol:

Those topics tend to sink pretty quickly, especially in the daytime.

Perhaps limiting the threads is one idea (for instance, is it really necessary to have a new thread every single time someone finds some obscure poll to further their agenda?). However, have you noticed that the Sports forum (and Mature forum) that were once part of the Other Forum really doesn't require much moderation at all?

Granted, people get a little more enflamed about politics than whether someone likes anal or not, but that can easily be solved with a stricter code of conduct, I suppose.

The bottom line is that those of us who have been here a long time and remember what the Other Forum used to be -- a large variety of topics, some entertaining, some informative -- now find the place overcome by political bickering or discussing the most recent news article posted on the Drudge Report. I'm not saying these threads need to disappear. I'm just saying that it's rather bothersome to see these threads continually dominate the forum.

Is anyone going to do anything about our 2 new political trolls in Other, or what?

I agree with you completely. But, like X said, our emails were bombarded with "Report this post to a moderator" emails when that forum was up. One a-hole, who is now banned thankfully, thought it would help his/her case if he/she reported 10 threads at a time.

And for a quick second I thought, maybe we can allow a seperate Political Forum for paying members, and no politics in Other. But then there would have to be a painstaking methodology in dealing with members who get suspended or banned from personal attacks. And of course, the "paying" part would make it even more of a mess, for obvious reasons.

I am interested in politics, but I have seen some of the most fair and intelligent mods and posters get attacked by one side or another by a fool or two--you know, like when an idiot mistakes that mod or member for being an extremist liberal or right wing nut, when in fact, it is very far from the truth. I don't like to play those kinds of games.

So, when I find myself moderating a thread that is remotely political, I try to use extreme amounts of discretion.

I think part of the reason it to get some of the uber-politicos out of Other... people who do almost nothing but post about politics (even in non-political threads).

If you could find a kvrdave counter balance, I would mod a political forum for the period that it was in existance. I can't imagine that I would want to do this on a full time basis though, as mods suck sour frog ass. At least that's what they say about you guys in the secret forum that mods can't access. :D

No big deal either way, but to have a good community/organization, everyone needs to take a turn "taking one for the team" and this place has certainly put up with me long enough to warrant me giving back.

I can team up with Dave... but only if we get banning powers! ;)

I vote for a political subforum and no moderator. Just let 'em fight it out amongst themselves. Suspension and banning for anything that spills out into Otterland.

I'd say maybe later in the year (i.o.w. closer to the election) it might be worth it to break it into a separate forum, kind of like the LOTR in movie talk, or how the war forum was done
until then maybe a sticky asking people to be sure to use the search feature and try to limit the number of threads we each start, especially political threads