Can we all agree most of us are here for political discussion? Most of us say we want civil, thoughtful discourse. Let’s talk about some common characteristics of good political threads here.
The Title
A little effort goes a long way. Thread titles can be trolling, even offensive, to whole groups of people. There is a fine line between catchy and crap.
The OP
There is nothing like a good, thoughtful OP to start a thread off on the right foot. Links are good, but not enough. The most important part is the analysis of the poster. We have some members here who really put a lot of effort into crafting a good OP. If somebody did, maybe we should acknowledge it and show a little respect - even if we don’t agree.
“Some dude tweeted this! So and so sucks! Haha!” Is not a good OP.
One thing to keep in mind is what you want the discussion to be. It is very easy to let readers take it in a whole other direction, make it all about something else, because we included one line too much.
The posts. Staying on topic is important. Threads naturally evolve as the back and forth happens. If a poster gets off topic, the inclination is to chase them down the rabbit hole they created for themselves until they can’t back.
When the off topic happens immediately, it’s not natural. It’s trolling to disrupt.
There’s nothing wrong with a little on topic humor or even clever - as long as it’s close to on topic. If we do, often by the third reply to clever, we’re headed down the wrong path. If it starts and we feel that strongly about it, we can always start a new discussion; and even link the old one to it.
“In this thread (link) it was said grass is green, I disagree and here’s why”. Now I own the discussion.
There are going to be some “mistakes” made. What we thought would be a good topic might not be. No shame in that. The better we start off, the better we’ll end up.
Courtesy and respect go a long ways.
The politics forum is our bread and butter. If we want our threads and posts to stick, we need to up our game a bit. Or we can discuss it in a different forum…or it gets deleted.
We can discuss this, as long as we stay on topic and are civil with one another. Any posts to the contrary will be immediately deleted without further warning other than this. Repeat offenders may receive further sanction at mod discretion.
No internet lawyering, nobody is telling you “You have to do it this way”. These are suggestions.
You can delete this if you want, but how many variations of “Is Joe Biden Senile” Are acceptable?
No one here is Joe Biden’s doctor, so it’s just one’s opinion. There’s no debating his mental capacity because those who side with Trump think Joe is senile and those who side with Biden see him as a 77 yr old who makes gaffes. There is no middle ground. If you truly looking for debatable topics, topics about the health of the candidates should be deleted. But that’s my opinion.
One can insert any one of Trump’s ridiculous statements he makes instead of Biden, just to balance out the argument.
Sneaky I get you are trying to rise the level of debate but in my opinion this intense micromanagement is going to push people away.
We dont need instructions on how to start a thread or how to reply. Again I appreciate what you are trying to do and your intentions are good but its going to backfire.
I would say a lot of posters come here because they enjoy hanging out and shooting the ■■■■ with other posters. But now its almost as if we are writing the equivalent of college papers. What next citing and referencing?
This forum does not exactly have a huge userbase and its in danger of becoming even smaller.
How long do you think the owners of the site are going to fund resources into keeping a message board going that has a handful of posters?
Discussing the mental capacity of a candidate? No. There’s no debate involved. Its all “internet diagnoses”. And it’s gonna be a constant theme. Weekly.
How many times can folks engage in the same thread, week after week, trying to argue if Biden or Trump is mentally fit.
This is all nice and well, but it doesn’t explain why the Trump interview with Axios thread is in Fever Dreams. What makes that a “bad” political thread?
Regardless if its politics, posters come here to relax and be entertained with discussion. Not stick to some rigid form of thread creation and instructions on how to reply.
While your OP is currently a suggestion, from observing everything that has happened since you became a mod, it wont be long that any thread or reply that does not meet this ridiculously high standard will be deleted.
The NRA thread started out pretty good…there was some common ground about abuse until someone started bringing up Trump. And then it basically died afterwards.
But that would also require some honestly to our discussion as well. As mush as I hate abuse of using fund to live a lavish lifestyle, we haven’t even touch about the abuse of state government using public tax funds to go after political opponent less then 100 days out of presidential election.
And that was real story behind it. And would have made a great discussion as well if other side shown some honestly.
I do have to give @PizzaReverend a shout out. He nailed it early on.
You couldn’t be more incorrect if you tried.