We've had some interesting political debates lately. Some have gotten somewhat harsh, and I find it hard to believe it won't get bad eventually. The forum isn't there yet, but these things move in bits and pieces, not overnight. I never really gained anything when I took part with my old account except for hard feelings. Now that I've decided on neutrality, I find it isn't always easy, as stuff can tend to turn political. What Are You Thinking does so all the time. I understand that straight up banning political chat is wholly impractical, but I don't see why we couldn't have established areas for it. Perhaps News/Current Events could gain a Political Chat subforum, and Chit Chat could be designated as an area where political chat is not permitted. We do that on another forum I use, and it works great. The idea is to have a place for people to hang out and chat where things are guaranteed not to turn into political debates, while maintaining the ability for such debates to occur. If we have neutral ground for people to just chill, we can cut this trend off before it becomes a serious problem.
The internet is the easiest place to ignore things you want to ignore. If you don't like political threads or if the conversation does pop up in the WAYT thread, just ignore it. It's incredibly easy. If you're so insecure that you feel you have to respond, but can't do so civilly then maybe you should add people who you don't like to your ignore list. Your solution to the problem is unreasonable, because having political chat in the Chit Chat forum ensures that people will for the most part keep things civil because threads are expected to be more relaxed there. If we do remove political discussion from chit chat, people might feel less constrained to hold back and unleash the cruel things that pop into their head whenever political debate springs in the forum. As I've duly noted, EC is one of the few places where people can debate their hearts out without becoming uncivil, except for veganism. For the first time since I've been back, the only time I've witnessed a debate turn into a flame war on EC was when the vegan thread got derailed by some angry meat eaters who resorted to insulting once they couldn't disprove the arguments I was posting.. It's remarkable how most topics here, no matter how controversial, usually don't turn into flame wars. It's amusing that my predictions were true: arguments about animal rights/veganism always turn into flame wars, and the meat eaters usually commence with the personal attack.
I was using the ignore list, but I very quickly stopped liking it. The problem is that it's not a matter of two people hating each other, it's a matter of the subject being discussed. For example, you are heavily pro-Communist, and I am heavily anti-Communist. If one of us brings the subject up and the other is in a bad mood, their are liable to be sparks. Discussing privilege is similar. By ignoring you, however, I remove anything you have to say period, when I still want to hear most of what you have to say, as I don't hate or dislike you. From my perspective that's not the situation. It seems to me that things are gradually getting more heated, and I've seen forums slowly move into forum fire territory before. Nip it quickly with rapid moderator response, and a general culture should form that favors constraint, which should reduce moderator workload over the long term. I'm worried that it's moving away from that. I dunno. I remember a couple very heated rants I made about Communism that probably should have gotten me a warning to chill out, and the Conservative Comeback and International Men's Day battles wouldn't have broken out six months ago. Well, I am having a very hard time thinking up a non-inflammatory response to the issue.
Actually, if you were to dis Communism, I probably wouldn't care, bad mood or not as I'm so used to hearing it being denigrated all the time by Capitalist mouthpieces. It's something you'll have to adjust to as well since letting what others say about your politics get to you is a sign that you're too delicate. Now if someone's promoting a very vile idea (IE, genocide, racism, sexism, transphobia, or something along those lines) or if they're insulting you, then your reaction might be more understandable. But I think the members here, for the most part, have enough patience, flexibility, and self-control to avoid letting debates turn into squabbles unless the subject is veganism. Even then it was only one troublesome user who was committing personal attacks, thus they were accountable for the ensuing conflagration; the rest of the participants were being intelligent and mature about it. All the people I added to my ignore list weren't added because of any disagreements we had. No, they were added because they employed to many ad hominems or outright insults in their attempts to argue with me. Amidst a debate hitting a brick wall, because the opposition has trounced you is frustrating, but when that happens it's better to concede the debate instead of yelling at the opponent. The exiguous self-control some people have shouldn't be an impetus for EC to overhaul the forum setup and create a new forum for politics, and under the watchful eye of mods threads have been closed before exploding into flame wars.
I believe it should be segregated, yes. Some people come here very new to this whole thing. Do we really want to scare them away before they even get a proper chance to look around?
I'll never understand the problem some people have with engaging debates about topical issues. They're bound to get heated because, well, they're important and we're human beings. If you don't like it, don't read it, but don't spoil it for others.
I think that the most important thing is that we all learn to coexist. I admit; I've cut back on EC because I feel like *SOME* people can be way too overboard and feelings can get hurt. This isn't meant to happen, but it does. Call it people or the joys of the internet - it is what it is. I think we still need to have political conversations, because we can all learn a lot. We just need to treat everyone with respect and cool ourselves down a bit.
I don't think it's a good idea. A segregated political chat forum/subforum might encourage things to get pretty hostile. Chit chat is a good place for it. Only one or two arguments have reached the stage where they get hostile, and that's because someone resorts to calling people names and being defensively aggressive when they run out of arguments or someone calls them out on racism/sexism etc.
