Why isn't there a political forum on MMAF? I understand that it can start pretty heated discussions, but with an effective moderator, that can be kept to a minimum.
One or two political threads are more than enough, discussions get out of hand and despite the best efforts and often warning being given out we rarely can have a political thread burn out before we are forced to start handing out infractions and close it. An entire sub forum would be full of closed threads since there would be nothing to bump them. People can't discuss politics like adults they always end badly.
I think the problem might be that precisely because it pops up in the 'lounge'or 'ufc' that people get heated over it. They don't immediately think 'this is a political thread I should tread carefully' but that its an invasive/disagreeable opinion popping up unexpectedly in what is usually a leisurely area.
If you designate a place for it and lay down and emphasize some rules before hand I think people will come into the discussion prepared to have their opinions and values challenged. Its like if you're at a bar and someone makes some contentious statement , maybe things won't be so amicable, but if you're going into a debate knowing beforehand that its an argument and that there are some formal rules, things are going to be alot more civilized.
In summary, the very designation of a separate 'political' space may in itself effectively make for more civilized discourse and secondly, could prevent the contentious threads from popping up unwanted in other areas.
I agree with toxic, Political Forum is a bad idea, when it comes to politics people can't/won't except someone elses opinion on a certain subject and it ends up turning into a crapfest of name calling...
ARe you telling me the other forums discuss politics like adults?
In my experience, NOBODY discusses politics as adults when its over the internet. Im part of other forums as well, and it ALWAYS spills into the other sub-forums.
If you think one guy is a douche because of his political views, you're still gonna think he's a douche when he's discussing MMA.
Also, if every other forum you are part of has a Politics forum, doesnt that satisfy your need to discuss it?
Once again, that's not true. There are some people that can't handle the heat, but they don't last very long anyway.
I'd also like to let everyone know that the other forum I'm referring to with the politics forum has over 1,000,000 members! I honestly don't think it'd be a problem here, if kept under control.
A political forum!?! A political forum!???!?! Thats just what those left wing, tree hugging, hippie liberals want!...Sorry, I got caught up in the moment...Vote Nader in 05!!!
A political sub-forum would definitely be interesting, however, with the past experiences this forum has had with any sort of political discussion, it could very well turn out bad.
One of the problems when it comes to debating politics on this forum, is that mainly people debate over MMA, and when you debate about something like MMA, a lot of favoritism comes into play, and a lot of the time posters will end up disliking a certain poster, or not see eye to eye. In my own observations, it's these people who end up causing political/religion threads to close, cause they already do not like said poster(s) from heated MMA discussion, and they transfer that into those topics and that leads to them being closed after it all goes south. It would be difficult to manage, even in a controlled setting.
It's an interesting idea, and, sometime in the future I think it would be interesting to "test" this idea, as in create a few test threads in the lounge or something, but as for an entire sub-forum, it's a bit premature to do it as of yet because of the past experiences with such topics.
We'll keep it on the list of things to check out and work on, though.
really, if people can't handle talking about MMA without the threads turning into a crapfest, there is NO way in HELL people here can handle a subforum all about politics...
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