My initial instinct is Pro. Sometimes a person feels like talking politics and other times not so much. I have never felt that I could not mention movies or music in Natter, because Natter. If I was looking for concentrated conversation I would move to the appropriate thread, and probably find Natter.

As concerns scary newbies flocking to the political thread, the same rules that protect the existing threads would apply in a new thread.

I'll be skimming the thread for the next few days as I am still on the fence, unlike the big vote. This is a very important election and many of us will feel a need to discuss the process.

As usual, I don't care which way this goes.

However, I do put this challenge down.

Can arguments in a politics thread STAY in the thread?

If you think they can, I'm all for it.

Refresh my memory, what's our annual cost on the dedicated server?

Can arguments in a politics thread STAY in the thread?

Meaning, not bleed over into other ones? I think for the most part, yes. There might a bit of crossover like with other subjects brought up, but if a bigger scale discussion rows from the initial cross over, say a GWB joke or something, at that point, as members of this community, we should say, "Toepick" and the discussion could be moved or, if the participants did not want to continue, then it would die.

Can arguments in a politics thread STAY in the thread?

I don't see how. Part of the reason people are talking about the thread is because political discussions in other threads almost always turn acrimonious, right?

The first time someone calls someone else a fascist or a neo-pinko commie scum, I think it's going to cause a fracture, and it'll be felt elsewhere. (Yes, I am ultimate Non-Confrontation Girl.)

Have people had experiences at other boards with maintaining polite relationships with those they argue with in politics threads? Anyone got some anecdotes? Was anyone here active in politics at TT?

If this passes, let's call the thread Las Vegas. Because what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

We hope.

The thing about the server, whether dedicated or hosted, is that it wasn't the posting volume that was the problem. It is a bug in MySQL that is the primary problem. We have to be on the dedicated server until the code gets changed so that we can do the kind of tweaks to MySQL that we wouldn't be allowed to do on a hosted server. We were never close to our bandwidth maximums, IIRC.

Thanks for that clarification DX, that's what I remembered about the server.

I haven't caught up in Bureau yet but my immediate thoughts are this:

I'm a politics junkie. I loove talking about that stuff. But I avoid posting politics stuff here for the most part because I've just seen internet communities too often get really ugly when it comes up. Even here, people I really like and respect have written things that totally offended me in just offhand political comments. Of course, being used to reading offensive stuff when politics is discussed, it's not really a big deal, I'm sure they didn't mean to offend me or anyone, and I just let it go. But that is just in regular everyday Natter.

As much as I enjoy politics - I would probably avoid the thread. I can handle arguments that come up here and there and am fine with confrontation - but I it's not like I enjoy confrontation.

Politics threads at TT where I participated where segragated. It was clear if you were a rabid Gore supporter or whatever - you went to this thread - if you wanted to talk about the intricacies of the legislative process and avoid election talk - you went to that thread. With just one - it seems more likely you will have people who disagree with each other all in one place.

Nothing invites the troll like a politics thread. Nothing. And there are a huge population of folks who just go out there with the sole purpose of finding internet communities to flame when it comes to politics. No matter how much you are aware of this - it still affects the community negatively.

Right now, I'd probably vote against it.

One more thing: I feel really guilty because there are times, like last night, when I drop into Natter specifically to talk about the OC. I know it annoys a lot of people. But I want to discuss the show. Personally, I think it makes more sense to talk about in Boxed Set - especially given that the shows that BS was set up for are almost never discussed there - but it's been discussed that OC talk should go in Natter. I don't want to annoy the Natterers who don't want to talk about it or deal with the whitefont - but I don't want to go against the preference to not make Box Set the de facto TV thread. My point here is that I certainly understand the desire for a politics thread. It sucks to feel like you are hijaking the thread with a discussion that the majority of people there don't want to participate in.

I don't know how to solve that problem. But I do know that I think a politics thread would solve that issue for some, but, right now, I'm afraid it would cause more harm than good.

That said - I think everyone has to keep in mind that with the election coming - politics talk is going to happen. And it is going to get confrontational. These are some f-ed up times - no matter who you support. People are frightened, frustrated and angry. And that leads to short tempers and we all just have to be aware of that.