27 Sep, 2009, Igabod wrote in the 21st comment:
Votes: 0
My opinion is that we can and HAVE had politics/religion debates on here without flame wars erupting, see the god faq thread for one example. The point is that we can all be adults about it and discuss these things, we just have to keep a close eye on our own tempers. I don't see any reason for those topics to be banned, I just think we need to police eachother in those debates (politely) and if someone gets a little out of hand then he/she should be politely informed that they need to calm down a bit. This method DOES work and it is how we had that whole 300+ post debate about religion and evolution. Sure we had a few minor flare-ups in that thread, but those problems were quickly corrected and we managed to get back on track and I even learned quite a bit during that debate.

I think maybe we should have a separate opt-in board (meaning you must select an option to see it) devoted to "scandalous" posts and that any conversations of that nature should be diverted to said board. We have moderators for a reason, to keep an eye on conversations and if things start to get out of hand they are supposed to try to calm things down. Well, instead of just locking a thread that gets heated up, just move it to the opt-in board and let it run its course. Usually the threads get back on track if they are given a chance. Just locking a thread forces us to bottle up our opinions until they burst out on other threads and cause major havoc. Besides, we've seen lately that locking an otherwise good thread causes more problems than it solves. The people that were keeping on topic are pissed cause they wanted to finish the conversation but the entire thread was locked because of two or three people having their own personal conversation. Maybe instead of locking that whole thread, just move the posts that are problematic into the opt-in board. If a person decides they still want to continue the flame war in the original topic then suspend/ban/warn them, whatever is required.
27 Sep, 2009, flumpy wrote in the 22nd comment:
Votes: 0
IMHO, I think these things should be allowed, but not be "broadcast" to things like MudReading or appear on the front page. We should perhaps move them to an off topic sub forum of general chatter.

I think this is a call again for some kind of personal filtering too, since there are ppl here it drives crazy to see all the bickering.
27 Sep, 2009, Dean wrote in the 23rd comment:
Votes: 0
flumpy said:
IMHO, I think these things should be allowed, but not be "broadcast" to things like MudReading or appear on the front page. We should perhaps move them to an off topic sub forum of general chatter.

I think this is a call again for some kind of personal filtering too, since there are ppl here it drives crazy to see all the bickering.


This
27 Sep, 2009, Erok wrote in the 24th comment:
Votes: 0
Samson said:
Disallow: As in made a formal rule of the site that politics and/or religion topics are expressly forbidden.

May want to re-phrase to "controversial topics not related to MUDs, such as religion or politics", because there are bound to be other topics (e.g., abortion, parenting, boxers or briefs).

Edit: Note that I didn't take a position on banning or allowing these topics, but think we should first decide what is considered on and off topic for this site, and then decide where these topics belong (if at all).
27 Sep, 2009, bbailey wrote in the 25th comment:
Votes: 0
Sandi said:
Seriously, I agree with Crat. It's more about personalities than ideologies. I voted no, valid.


+1
27 Sep, 2009, Ssolvarain wrote in the 26th comment:
Votes: 0
You realize this thread is going to go on for another 100+ pages, filled with the usual stupidity?
27 Sep, 2009, Guest wrote in the 27th comment:
Votes: 0
You would expect any less? :)
27 Sep, 2009, Ssolvarain wrote in the 28th comment:
Votes: 0
Not really. But, it's usually the same opinionated people who steamroll over other ideas and thoughts with graceless obesity. That's your problem, but the problem to the problem is that you'd have to ban these people. They obviously can't be trusted not to cross lines of civility as have been done repeatedly. In other words, a field of uneven ground.

So, all in all, continue with your clusterfuck. I stamp it with approval and go back to my observation :)
27 Sep, 2009, Tyche wrote in the 29th comment:
Votes: 0
flumpy said:
IMHO, I think these things should be allowed, but not be "broadcast" to things like MudReading or appear on the front page. We should perhaps move them to an off topic sub forum of general chatter.

I think this is a call again for some kind of personal filtering too, since there are ppl here it drives crazy to see all the bickering.


I think it's a good idea to allow user and fora filtering. +1
27 Sep, 2009, Runter wrote in the 30th comment:
Votes: 0
I kinda skipped over what everyone else said but my opinion is make it a subforum like some places have for QQ and flamers and hide them far far away from the front page. Not that I even read those posts to begin with, in any event. I almost skipped this one until I saw it wasn't actually about religion or politics.
28 Sep, 2009, Zenn wrote in the 31st comment:
Votes: 0
Why not simply have a forum entitled 'Flames' or something of that nature that DOES NOT appear on the main page 'recent topics' list, and is for anything related to such things?

Anything posted elsewhere can just be moved there. People who don't care don't have to see it, and people who do care enough to go and check the forum manually can flame each other all they like.
28 Sep, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 32nd comment:
Votes: 0
I'm not entirely sure why people think that flames would magically only happen in the "flamewar forum" simply because it is created. The very nature of disagreement is to pop up wherever it does, and it must be handled appropriately (i.e. maturely and politely) in that instance.

Now, since we most seem to agree that problems seem to come from a certain kind of topic, it would make sense to isolate those topics, and allow people to ignore that entire section.

That said, that's only curing the symptom and not addressing the causes, as it were, although that's better than nothing. The real solution lies with the community. That doesn't mean it wouldn't help to more or less gently push things away from "problem topics", especially if people can't help being provocative with their language when such topics come up. It's easiest to just avoid them, while realizing that the real problem is something other than the topic inherently.
28 Sep, 2009, Tonitrus wrote in the 33rd comment:
Votes: 0
Are you going to disallow comparisons of editors, browsers, operating systems, and/or programming languages as well? People get upset about these things.

See also: Holy Wars

As long as people care enough about other people's views to cry about them, there will always be drama.

(vim > all, firefox (gives me vimperator) > all, linux > all, C > C++, etc)

For reference, I only read the first few posts, then vaguely skimmed the rest.

Besides, anything having to do with people is politics. If we can talk to and about one another, there will always be politics, and it's not much of a forum if we can't. If your concern is off-topic discussion, that's a separate issue. If people can't avoid topics that upset them, how is that anyone else's problem?
28 Sep, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 34th comment:
Votes: 0
Tonitrus said:
Besides, anything having to do with people is politics. If we can talk to and about one another, there will always be politics, and it's not much of a forum if we can't.

There are lots of forums and other discussion groups (mailing lists, etc.) that work perfectly well, have extremely good signal to noise ratios, and where politics are all but unheard of. So I'm not convinced that this statement is correct.

The point is that as a community we need to decide what we want to talk about. A lot of people would like to talk about MUD-related material, and move other stuff elsewhere. So, as a community, we need to do what it takes to make that happen, and one thing is to just avoid talking about stuff that is off-topic, and likely to cause trouble.

I guess one issue is that MB is perhaps not meant to be a generic hang-out community, but a MUD-specific community – and in that regard, should focus on MUD topics. The funny thing is that communities tend to make of themselves what they will, be it for better or for worse.
28 Sep, 2009, Runter wrote in the 35th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
I'm not entirely sure why people think that flames would magically only happen in the "flamewar forum" simply because it is created. The very nature of disagreement is to pop up wherever it does, and it must be handled appropriately (i.e. maturely and politely) in that instance.

Now, since we most seem to agree that problems seem to come from a certain kind of topic, it would make sense to isolate those topics, and allow people to ignore that entire section.

That said, that's only curing the symptom and not addressing the causes, as it were, although that's better than nothing. The real solution lies with the community. That doesn't mean it wouldn't help to more or less gently push things away from "problem topics", especially if people can't help being provocative with their language when such topics come up. It's easiest to just avoid them, while realizing that the real problem is something other than the topic inherently.


The point is things can be moved there pretty quickly. And a large majority of these posts are obvious attempts at being controversial from the get-go. You know, the ones with titles like "Proof God Doesn't Exist" and the body of "Oh, not trying to start an argument but I thought this <insert link or reference material> was interesting|funny|right."

And absolutely the only thing keeping those threads alive is the fact they update to the main page.
28 Sep, 2009, Runter wrote in the 36th comment:
Votes: 0
Tonitrus said:
Are you going to disallow comparisons of editors, browsers, operating systems, and/or programming languages as well? People get upset about these things.

See also: Holy Wars

As long as people care enough about other people's views to cry about them, there will always be drama.


Well, empirically this has not been true on this site. Furthermore, comparisons of technologies are productive to know strengths and weaknesses. Nobody is bound to only one language, editor, or operating system. Inversely, discussions about politics and religion have brought nothing to the table but flame wars and a few people enjoying their own trolling. (Which is why I think most reasonable people stay out of them in the first place.) However, there's no way for me to just keep them off my front page. I'd like that.
28 Sep, 2009, Guest wrote in the 37th comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
However, there's no way for me to just keep them off my front page. I'd like that.


That's something we'll look into setting up regardless of how this poll turns out. I think you're right in that keeping it from showing up on the front page via the recent posts box will probably take quite a bit of the fuel out of the fire.
28 Sep, 2009, Ssolvarain wrote in the 38th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
I'm not entirely sure why people think that flames would magically only happen in the "flamewar forum" simply because it is created.


This is where I snort derisively.
28 Sep, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 39th comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
And absolutely the only thing keeping those threads alive is the fact they update to the main page.

Oh? What about the recent posts page, are we going to change that too? How about the post-read status? Are we going to force people to go directly to the thread to find out that things were posted?

I think this is creating an awful lot of engineering solution for a social problem, IMHO at least. (In other words: you can't really engineer away a very social issue.)

Ssolvarain said:
This is where I snort derisively.

You know, for somebody who complains about people making less-than-useful contributions, you could maybe try to make some somewhat-more-useful ones yourself. :thinking:
28 Sep, 2009, Sandi wrote in the 40th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
Now, since we most seem to agree that problems seem to come from a certain kind of topic….

David Haley said:
A lot of people would like to talk about MUD-related material, and move other stuff elsewhere.

Considering the majority has voted, "[Politics and religion] are as valid a any other subject." the above statements appear to be untrue.
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