A discussion on the rules.

RecordStraight

Dan_Solo wrote: »

Well any -bot usage is as close to a straight up admission that you can't argue the point. There are pretty much zero cases where "you are an X" can be used as a substitute for debate, which is the only purpose -bot serves. Who cares if they exist or not? Someone is admitting themself they need to resort to an ad hominem by using it.

The problem isn't the Shinners who are actually debating, the problem is the Shinners who don't debate and just ridicule, divert and attack those with an opposing view, with lots of mutual back-slapping.

I don't think anyone has an issue with honest debate.

Dan_Solo

RecordStraight wrote: »

The problem isn't the Shinners who are actually debating, the problem is the Shinners who don't debate and just ridicule, divert and attack those with an opposing view, with lots of mutual back-slapping.

I don't think anyone has an issue with honest debate.

There's already a moderation system in place here to deal with such posters.
You are now proposing that "-bot" is back seat moderation.

Permabear

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Dan_Solo

RecordStraight wrote: »

ridicule, divert and attack those with an opposing view, with lots of mutual back-slapping.

Not making a great job of differentiating from the anti-SF side there TBH.

Dan_Solo

Permabear wrote: »

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That's interesting. So "shinnerbot" is back seat modding, only the Politics Café is more tolerant of back seat modding. Apparently.

Eugene Norman

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

Aside from the fact that you've taken to an arena where us "LibBots" cannot challenge you on your wildly silly dig at us for "misunderstandings [and] illogical posts" (and I submit that it's no difficult task to ascertain to whom you are referring), can we call an end to this constant obsession with the SF acolytes of discussing who "thanked" posts.

It's wildly immature and totally irrelevant to anything - on top of that, I was under the impression that this is still the Politics forum and that type of personal/group dig and mentioning who "thanked" posts as if it is at all relevant was against the rules?

What? All I did in my post is argue exactly the same way you argue against the "shinnerbots" except I said I wouldn't use the term libbots in normal threads.

RecordStraight

Dan_Solo wrote: »

Not making a great job of differentiating from the anti-SF side there TBH.

...aside from the ridiculing, attacking and diverting, obviously.

Jawgap

Is 'autothanks' the new 'acolyte'

RecordStraight

Jawgap wrote: »

Is 'autothanks' the new 'acolyte'

I have to say, I find it absolutely hilarious that it is being trotted out by a Shinner too.

Jawgap

RecordStraight wrote: »

I have to say, I find it absolutely hilarious that it is being trotted out by a Shinner too.

I was going to thank that post but I decided to quote it and use 'manual' thanks.......

.......does that also count as 'Attack. Ridicule. Divert.'

Every time that gets posted I've a vision of ranks of Shinner supporters undergoing training, except instead of bayonet drill (Thrust. Score. Develop) they're being schooled in the mantra of "Attack. Ridicule. Divert. Repeat........"

Dan_Solo

Jawgap wrote: »

Is 'autothanks' the new 'acolyte'

Thanks from: RecordStraight
Within 2 minutes.
Hilarious isn't the word.

Dan_Solo

Jawgap wrote: »

I was going to thank that post but I decided to quote it and use 'manual' thanks.......

.......does that also count as 'Attack. Ridicule. Divert.'

Every time that gets posted I've a vision of ranks of Shinner supporters undergoing training, except instead of bayonet drill (Thrust. Score. Develop) they're being schooled in the mantra of "Attack. Ridicule. Divert. Repeat........"

Oh dear. I don't think he knows that was originally Recordstraight's line... if you think it's that lame maybe you should take it up with him?

Jawgap

What's the obsession with 'thankses'?

Is there a proposal to ration them? Or punish 'thanks - whores'?

......and for the avoidance of doubt no one should 'thank' this post.

Phoebas

Didn't this thread used to be a discussion of the rules?

RecordStraight

Dan_Solo wrote: »

Thanks from: RecordStraight
Within 2 minutes.
Hilarious isn't the word.

Do I read too fast for you?

Sand

Phoebas wrote: »

Didn't this thread used to be a discussion of the rules?

Over the past couple of months, it does seem to have diverged from rules discussions between poster and mods into something else, with the discussion primarily between posters about each others behaviour and motivations.

I think its eventually going to end in cards for everyone, but hey, who knows - maybe a civil and polite community will spontaneously come into existence for the first time in history.

Have threads ever been moved from Café into Politics? Are there rules against starting the exact same thread in Politics that exists in the Café so as to actually engage in a substantive and useful discussion?

johnnyskeleton

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Have threads ever been moved from Café into Politics? Are there rules against starting the exact same thread in Politics that exists in the Café so as to actually engage in a substantive and useful discussion?

Theoretically yes. But it really depends on the OP and how the debate goes. If someone is a relatively new user and starts a serious discussion in the Cafe, it might be moved. regular posters are presumed to know what sort of standard of debate they will get.

Absolutely no rules against doing a main forum version of a Cafe thread. If someone wants to start a detailed and comprehensive thread about Irish Water, for example, its more than welcome. So long as the OP isnt just a "IW - discuss" type post.

Permabear

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Permabear

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Godge

Permabear wrote: »

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A good idea but the rules you suggest are too strict. Say you post your links and I post mine and we continue the discussion/argument without posting new links because we are now engaged in analysis and interpretation of facts. Should we be allowed post if we don't have new links?

Permabear

Permabear wrote: »

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3 tier Politics forum? (HQD - Standard - Café)

Just enforce the standard rules in Politics and it should be fine. Throwaway comments and 'noise' aren't permitted in general are they?

Permabear

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johnnyskeleton

Permabear wrote: »

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Because a brilliantly pithy reply can often be just as good as a long response, and an a priori logical argument can be more persuasive than a dubious factual source.

We also have to avoid the temptation (and I'm guilty of it too) to think that the more lax the Cafe becomes, the more regimented the main forum must get.

However, if there is a topic that really needs such a prefix/rule i.e. if you anticipate that the topic it will generate a lot of one liners, you can contact a mod and make a case that it should have such a special rule and then we can sanction it on an ad hoc basis.

Permabear

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johnnyskeleton

Permabear wrote: »

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I think the best way for that is to post in the main forum on a discrete issue and report any poor quality posts.

No guarantees as to how it will go down, because moderation is more art than science as you're aware. But we can give it a shot*




*not at 6 o'clock on a friday evening though

Tokyo

Hey everybody,

With the upcoming changes to Boards in terms of category reorganisation, we have decided use the opportunity to implement certain changes to the Politics Café to coincide with the category restructure. Points raised both in Feedback and in the Politics Café itself have been the subject of much discussion in the mods forum and CMods forum alike, and have been a major factor in the changes that we intend to implement.

The Changes to the Politics Café will be twofold.

Layout

The biggest visible change will be its location - it will no longer nested as a subforum of Politics, but will instead run in parallel with Politics, under the new POLITICS category (apologies for the confusion of names), as outlined in the diagram below:



As has been pointed out in various discussions, the Café started out as an experiment, a place to encourage a lighter discussion of politics, catering to those who specifically don't want to engage in protracted debate. But it's grown into something far more than that - it's not a subforum anymore, it has grown into its own very distinct forum with its own community of posters marching to the beat of a very different drum than the main Politics forum. And like any experiment, it needs to grow and adapt to its purpose. As such, this split between the relaxed standards of the Politics Café and the high standards of our other 7 Politics forums falls into place intuitively, makes practical sense, and allows for far cleaner delineation between 'tightly moderated' Politics (and its subfora), and Politics Café in terms of (a) content, (b) posting standards, and (c) moderation. It also fits well with the category reorganisation that Boards HQ has proposed for the near future.

Moderation

The second change will be to how the forum is moderated - with the above layout in place, we propose to have two mod teams - one group dedicated to the strictly moderated Politics forum and its related subfora, the second group dedicated to the Politics Café, both working independently of each other.

I would like to make something clear before I go further - this is not a reflection of the current mod team or how they have operated so far, and I won't entertain any discussion to the contrary. Without them, the Politics Café forum would not exist, and some of the accusations put forward in various discussions on Café moderation have been unfair, and some have been downright insulting to the moderator team. That being said, the Politics Café has evolved into a completely different creature from the main forum, and should be modded accordingly, without reference to the other 7 forums. Given the dramatic standards, modding, community of posters, and posting frequency differences between Politics Café and the other 7 forums, this makes intuitive and organisational sense to have a separate moderator team for each, especially when you consider the rapid fire posting potential and modding demands of Politics Café.

At the moment we are in the process of recruiting additional moderators to expand on the existing Pol Mods, the intention being to have two fully functioning moderator teams up and running as soon as possible. Two candidates have already been welcomed aboard, and we plan to expand the team further, particularly to meet the load and requirements of the Politics Café. Once the Politics Café team have had a chance to settle in, they will be taking on board points raised here in feedback, and collaberating on a modding strategy that finds the right balance between the relaxed standards of the Politics Café, while still meeting the requirements of basic etiquette as laid out in the overarching Boards rules.

As we move forward with this, I'd like to thank all who have provided constructive criticism here, and thank the constructive posters in the Café for helping the forum succeed, and who we hope will continue to bring insight and constructive discussion to the table.

Regards,

~Mike

K-9

Politics Cafe
]As above, the cafe will no longer be connected to the current forum and wil have a separate mod team, so no more discussion on the cafe here, it isn't the place to address any queries on it. The cafe mods will have their own ways of listening to feedback.

Current politics forum/subforums
We had some great suggestions from users about reorganising the different categories, and with the current site changes going on, now is a great time to implement these.

Personally I think something along the lines of 3/4 forums at most, one to cover US, EU and international politics, Ireland (to include Northern Ireland), Elections and Political Theory.

I'd be open to 1 main forum with tags to differentiate categories, but maybe keep theory and elections because of their special nature.

All suggestions are welcomed and thanks to the posters who kept bringing it up. I've mentioned it a few times in the mods forum but between one thing and another nothing happened.

The changes will come into effect on Tuesday so we'd need to bring the suggested changes to the higher ups on Monday at the latest.

Permabear

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nesf

Irish Economy was an emergency measure. It can go.

US Politics, eh, the big advantage of it was that it kept very specific to the US backbiting out of the main forum and seemed to have its own users (some people only ever posted in US Politics). Dunno, could be folded into an International Forum. Not sure an International forum is needed unless traffic on those topics greatly increases and a sub-community seems to be forming around them.

Northern Ireland, fold into main forum.

EU: Eh, move the referendums etc into the Election forum and the rest into the main forum?

Political Theory: Kill it with fire, then I was saying this in '07. :P

Election forum: This is the biggie. The main kind of traffic you want off the main forum front page is election spam. Keep and consider expanding it to encompass all elections, not just ones affecting Ireland.


TL;DR: Sub forums are only justified if there is a community for them. Most of our current ones were formed long ago either as experiments or to deal with a large surge of interest in a topic. It would be very wise to go through them now and decide whether they are still relevant.