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.

I don't think there is any specific plan to go off the dedicated server, though -- to me it feels like a "maybe someday" kind of thing.

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

I like this thought.

I'm not sure how I feel on the thread, but the 6 months rule applies to everything, right? We could shut the thread down shortly after the election, depending on how it's going.

I had a whole long thing half-thought-out and quarter-written, but upon consideration (may change my mind later), careful reading of tina's post, and reflection upon my own experiences in the TT Politics threads, for now I'm'a just say, "What tina said."

Based on my study of the Phoenix code, MySQL, Apache and PHP, adding a politics thread will not significantly increase server load, nor will it make it any harder to return to a shared hosting environment in the future.

I think the best way to contain the problems of talking politics is not to encourage it.

Who wants to talk politics in a dedicated thread? Is this just a NIMBY thing?

The only people I can remember wanting to post in this thread last time we talked was Gar and Jen K.

Who wants to talk politics in a dedicated thread? Is this just a NIMBY thing?

I'll play Hellboy's advocate: There's always a lot of it around, and it might be nice to keep it all in one place so it's avoidable, and so the discussers can not feel like they're annoying the nonpolitical.