Presidential Debates

He's saying politics suck in an expressively politic thread. Gee, that sounds like perfect forum behavior, wouldn't you agree?

And if we're going to play the blame game here, I in turn was responding to a post by LJS.

Tiel wrote:

He's saying politics suck in an expressively politic thread. Gee, that sounds like perfect forum behavior, wouldn't you agree?

Yes, in fact, it does. 'Politics sucks' is a perfectly valid opinion, and, I think, really a masterful summary of much of the recent history of the planet. That's very similar to posting about atheism in a thread about religion. It is likely to incite flame wars, but it is on-topic and a valid continuation of the discussion. And, really. If you're making a thread about either religion or politics, flame wars are all that're going to come out of it in the end.

>Make Star Wars thread

>>Guy comes and says Star Wars sucks

To put it in terms you're more likely to get. It contributes nothing to the topic at hand and is the very damn reason almost every thread here gets derailed within 15 posts. And then the moderators go and threaten the people who try to keep it ontopic, yes?

This forum is dysfunctional. I'm sorry, but there it is. You have assholes like me going around hating on people for no reason, we have dicks like hyper and Vinyl running about wantonly derailing threads, and then to top it off you of the higher authority pick and choose when you intervene instead of fulfilling the role of administrators and actually cracking down on infractions of the rules above 40% of the time.

I used to think this made the forum unique, special in its own right. But you look at other forums, and then look at this one. I've seen both of the extremes now, one that has too much control, one that has too little, and one that's just right. None of this should be happening in the ideal Goldilocks community messageboard. This mod isn't going anywhere until fr0st finds the time to work on it, which is perfectly understandable save for the fact we have around 60% of the developers just lounging about with moderator powers while not actually contributing anything to the mod's progress, proper moderation included.

I'm making a mountain out of a molehill here, but I think the forum could benefit from some serious reforms.

In that case.

I'll get back to you on that.

And then we have the people like me who aren't particularly inflammatory, and the new people who look at the last page on every thread and think what the fuck are these dumbasses doing?

This forum seems fine in its operation to me.

I never said it didn't work, it just isn't the most noob-friendly.

ACH0225 wrote:

This forum seems fine in its operation to me.

Yeah, you keep saying that.

I stand by it, because, though we go off topic easily, they have led frequently to better ideas.

They have also led to the 200 or so topics that no one uses anymore, just wasting up the forums bandwidth.

Who cares ? When topics go off-topic usually the exceed their usefulness in the initial topic (At least temporary), instead turning it into a currently more useful topic as it discusses more timely topics that maybe wouldn't be brought up in other contexts, making them unique and relevant, as long as it doesn't derail to useless spam which is a real off-topic. Such posts are not unique to the specific thread nor contribute to any other matter rendering them useless.

Everything I said above can be compressed into one word: Conversation. Think how it works in RL, you don't "stick" to a specific topic and move on between them as the conversation progresses.

I'm sure this thread will go back on topic after the next debate.

By the way, tiel, my post was a perfectly valid opinion about the state of your current presidential candidates. Stop flaming.

Avenger_7 wrote:

By the way, tiel, my post was a perfectly valid opinion about the state of your current presidential candidates.

Nope.

Avenger_7 wrote:

And the "choice" you have basically involves which politician you want pushing your **** in for the next 4 years, because there's really no one in a position to be a contender who's actually worth voting for.

Because this is fundamentally based on your own views of government which in no way relate to the thread at hand. This is about the democratic process and which candidate a poster believes is right based on the recent debates, not what flaws you feel are in the system as is. If you want to create an anarchy thread, go right ahead, but I am not about to allow that in here, just as I'm not going to get down on one knee to an admin that's clearly biased against me.

Iv121 wrote:

Who cares ? When topics go off-topic usually the exceed their usefulness in the initial topic (At least temporary), instead turning it into a currently more useful topic as it discusses more timely topics that maybe wouldn't be brought up in other contexts, making them unique and relevant, as long as it doesn't derail to useless spam which is a real off-topic. Such posts are not unique to the specific thread nor contribute to any other matter rendering them useless.

Everything I said above can be compressed into one word: Conversation. Think how it works in RL, you don't "stick" to a specific topic and move on between them as the conversation progresses.

Then let me put it like this - Either way we're going to need to see changes in the forum rules and how much moderators enforce them.

In particular, rule 4 "[but] try not to derail threads. Even the dumbest (related) ideas sometimes have one great part which can be incorporated elsewhere."

As you say, discussion can shift momentarily to another topic for a few posts. In that regard, my post was a response, but Fenway's was completely unwarranted and only goes to show how impartial our admins are as is. And even so, a few posts. We do not see a few posts here, we see threads getting ransacked to the point of their original titles becoming all but irrelevant. This is not how a forum should operate.

Tiel, if I were a mod I would be banning you right about now for inciting pointless flame wars.
LOOK AT MY COMMENT; IT IS EXPLICITLY ABOUT THE CANDIDATES. YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE WITH AN ISSUE. CALM DOWN AND MOVE ON.

Avenger_7 wrote:

Tiel, if I were a mod I would be banning you right about now for inciting pointless flame wars.
LOOK AT MY COMMENT; IT IS EXPLICITLY ABOUT THE CANDIDATES. YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE WITH AN ISSUE. CALM DOWN AND MOVE ON.

I'd say someone needs to quit trying to start something. Your post had nothing to do with candidates or whom you support, it essentially said the system sucks which is not only irrelevant, but intentionally inflammatory. Go home, bucko.

Sigh. Let's all turn down the theatrics, and get back to whatever political discussions we would have. Remember the saying,
"I disagree, but respect your right to be stupid."

I request a mod or dev to move the last few posts, beginning with Fenway's, to a new thread titled "This forum. (asdf)"

It would be most appreciated. Somewhat hypocritical of me to argue there's a problem with derailments in this forum while indirectly initiating one myself.

*stufuzzycat plays avoid the topic.

Round 2 of debate.

I jobbed your job for energy because jobs need American jobs energy jobs cars.

^ See, this is the type of bullshit I was bitching about.

ACH0225 wrote:

Human politics make me.... For lack of better words, giggle.

You know, for once my owl friend, I agree with you.

On a positive side your elections make at least a bit of sense, not every country in the world can say this about itself ...