Changes to the Politics Boards

[Mike Bobbitt]

Folks,

While much of the discussion occurring in the Canadian and Global Politics boards is great, we are finding that a disproportional amount of our moderating effort is being spent there. After a great deal of consideration and consultation with the Staff, I have made two simple changes to the Politics boards:

1. You must accrue 50 posts in order to participate in the Political boards. Users will not see these boards until they hit 50 posts.
2. Posts made in the Political boards do not count towards your post total (like Radio chatter).

These changes are made to dissuade folks from coming here to purely discuss politics. We are a military site first, and while a developed political discourse is useful, it is not the primary focus here. Happy to discuss with the membership if there are concerns.

Thanks
Mike

 

[Blackadder1916]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huV_Z0f7098

 

[Donald H]

Folks,

While much of the discussion occurring in the Canadian and Global Politics boards is great, we are finding that a disproportional amount of our moderating effort is being spent there. After a great deal of consideration and consultation with the Staff, I have made two simple changes to the Politics boards:

1. You must accrue 50 posts in order to participate in the Political boards. Users will not see these boards until they hit 50 posts.
2. Posts made in the Political boards do not count towards your post total (like Radio chatter).

These changes are made to dissuade folks from coming here to purely discuss politics. We are a military site first, and while a developed political discourse is useful, it is not the primary focus here. Happy to discuss with the membership if there are concerns.

Thanks
Mike

Highly supportive of your changes!

A possible added solution might be to ensure that politics being discussed are somehow related to military business. That is, the topics can be screened to fit in with military business and so discourage political topics that don't relate.

:cheers:

 

[Edward Campbell]

Good move, Mike.

Politics does have a major impact on the military; politics has an impact on almost eveything, even pandemics. Politics is, almost by definition (from Greek Πολιτικά, politiká ~ the affairs of the city) inherently, opinion-driven and, therefore, divisive. Partisan, party-driven politics promotes divisions: Conservatives vs Liberals vs Dippers and so on ... it is in the nature of our system which is, as Churchill said, very imperfect, but less bad than all the other systems we've tried.

It is possible to have political discussions that are respectful, edifying and even friendly ... it's also possible to have a pleasant colonoscopy, so I'm told, anyway.

Good luck with this change, Mike and Team. I really hope it works. I might even be persuaded to visit the Politics pages again.