Politics Forum inundated with "new" posters

BonnieSituation

One of the best things about the Politics fora on boards is generally the quality of posting.

A lot of commendation must go to the mods for certainly doing their best in trying and emotive threads on Brexit and Trump.

However, recently there's been quite an influx of new posters which follow a very similar pattern in their method of posting.

They start off generally being typical and centrist at the very least consensus-based, however over time their style degenerates into right wing sloganeering which then takes over the thread. This is currently the case with 2 posters on the Brexit thread who are on the way down the slippery slope.

Given the level of discussion on Politics should be higher and more informed than CA/IMHO it becomes frustrating when all you see is rhetoric.

And usually this is always in the form of a new reg.

Surely the time has come to perhaps consider minimum post counts or reg dates to post in Politics as I can only see this getting worse during the UK election campaign?

EmmetSpiceland

Are these the same “types” who trot out the line ‘I’ve been a FG voter all my life but never again, the dirty traitors!!’?

Or something to that effect.

Nody

EmmetSpiceland wrote: »

Are these the same “types” who trot out the line ‘I’ve been a FG voter all my life but never again, the dirty traitors!!’?

Or something to that effect.

Yes; usually they voted against Brexit but have now changed their mind and want Brexit to be delivered (but are 100% against any new vote on the topic because only politicians are allowed multiple votes on the same issue apparently). And they like EU but see some issues with it which in a few posts turn out into bendy banana law type of laundry list of supposed issues with EU pretty much copied from the Brexit party.

Boards.ie: Niamh

BonnieSituation wrote: »

Surely the time has come to perhaps consider minimum post counts or reg dates to post in Politics as I can only see this getting worse during the UK election campaign?

While I can understand the frustration of seeing a pattern like this to some users posts, minimum post counts or restricting posting until you've been a member for X amount of time are not something that we can set automatically by forum. It would have to be monitored and acted upon by mods, as it is in the Feedback forum here.

I think the Politics mods probably have enough to do without adding this to their workload but it might be a good idea to PM them with your concerns around specific users. The only technical way to restrict who posts in a forum is by making it access only and have people request access to post. As we saw with the Politics Cafe 2.0, this does not always work very well and not something we'd want to see happen to Politics.

looksee

It might be a good idea, its not to say you will get a response.

Beasty

The access process was probably the one thing that destroyed PC2, and resulted in a lot of negative feedback.

We do though keep an eye our for banned re-regs. We may be alerted to possible matches by the Politics mods, or indeed through our own scrutiny of certain new posters, particularly if suspicions are aroused via reported posts. It's not something we can prove all the time though, and in some cases we will typically need to allow them a bit of rope before we can act at site level

The Politics forum (unlike Current Affairs) does retain a requirement for a higher quality of posting, and that is enforced by the local mods. Again though they will be reliant on reported posts to pick up on particular problems

Headshot

I personally would be in favour of posters having a certain amount of posts before they post in the politics. It might weed out the "new" poster trolls.

In saying that the Politics forum is well modded, the likes of ancapailldorcha do a great job

ancapailldorcha

I don't normally post on Feedback any more but since we are specifically discussing the Politics forum, I'll engage.

As a mod, I have to be constantly open to the idea that each new or "new" account that posts start appearing from is genuine. The alternative is, and I've caught myself slipping into this on occasion before, the mentality that each new account is a rereg, specifically one created to troll the site. That can lead to overly cynical modding which is fair on neither the site, new users or the community as a whole. We all had post counts of zero at one stage or another.

While I like the idea of limiting posting in politics to accounts of, say 50 posts or one month old in good standing, we such such a restriction destroy the second iteration of the Politics Café before it ever got going. I think it would be highly detrimental to the forum even if it could be implemented on a technical level which I do not think it can. I am of course no expert and remain as such open to correction.

That leaves the status quo. The OP mentioned the Brexit and Trump threads. All I can suggest is reporting the posts when they appear to violate the charter of the forum. Even if it appears that no action has been taken, it will mean that potentially dubious accounts will be flagged and monitored. Admins are better equipped to spot reregs than we are but there exists a system for us to flag them. Believe me, I gain no enjoyment from combing through pages of a megathread in order to delete the resultant effluent from a rereg.

All I can really say is to ignore posters you think are trolls and report it. Even if they still post, they're on the radar. Ultimately, as mods we need to endeavour to maintain and open forum and that's what we want to do.

Disclaimer: I've typed this myself and haven't run this past the other mods so any issues anyone might have with this are down to me and me alone.