Susan would. If she has time, that is.

And if it is divisive and flamebaity there, it'll be divisive and flamebaity anywhere. Better to have a concrete bunker for such things than an unsuspecting front parlor.

I don't totally agree with this. Not every political discussion here has turned acrimonious. I can remember quite a few that haven't, and I think that the ones we remember as flamey are the exceptions, rather than the rule. But I think that one thing that's kept some discussions from turning into flame wars is that they're in the natter thread or other threads, mixed in with other stuff.

To go with your "front parlor" metaphor, a debate in the front parlor will be kept more civil than one in a boxing ring, because the people are aware of all the nice breakable things around, and there are people walking through to use the door, and maybe someone coming around with tea. All this stuff keeps it from exploding. My fear is that an all-politics, all-the-time thread will turn much more firey very quickly, because there is no cooling-off period where talk shifts to other things and the people involved can have time to cool off and then come back when they're a bit calmer.

I like discussing politics. I like debating things. I would almost definitely avoid a politics thread.

And also, I think that tensions in one thread do spill over to the rest of the board. I don't see how they couldn't. I know that, for me, if I'm reading a thread where people are saying things that are pissing me off, then I go over to another thread, I'll still be pissed off and much more likely to get annoyed at somethiing that I otherwise would have let slide.

I don't know if I would post there. I worry that it would detract too much from my Buffista experience.

Moreso than discussing politics in Natter, Minearverse....?

Heh, the Monty Python Argument sketch just ran through my mind as a potential source of titles.

I'd like to have an argument, please...

I have no idea which way I'd vote on this yet. I really wonder how likely it is that trolls would even find it. As mentioned above, the big influxes of people we've had were due to someone already reading our board linking to VIP posts on other boards. I'm not sure that would be a factor for a politics (or any other non-show) thread.

If trolls do show up, we can stomp them.

Yes, moreso than the same discussions in Natter or Minearverse, because I worry that the discussion in a Politics thread would be different from the discussion in Natter or Minearverse.

The discussions never bother me now, but I worry about what a Politics thread would be like.

I don't totally agree with this. Not every political discussion here has turned acrimonious. I can remember quite a few that haven't, and I think that the ones we remember as flamey are the exceptions, rather than the rule. But I think that one thing that's kept some discussions from turning into flame wars is that they're in the natter thread or other threads, mixed in with other stuff.

See, I would expect the denizens of the politics thread to adhere to the same level of conduct that we expect in every other thread.

It's a law of networks that the more nodes for communication there are, the more communication there will be, even if the number of communicators stays stable. So, yes, adding a politics thread will add traffic.

It's a bad idea because we shouldn't be adding new threads right now until all our coding issues are done.

We have at least one volunteer to help with the coding in BaBB, btw.

I've got mixed feelings about a politics thread. A total Ban on Politics (BOP) is preferable, in my opinion, but you can't stop people from talking about the topic in a US election year. Is segregating the conversation the answer, or the route to more madness? I tend to think the problems we've had have been about personality clashes, not clashes over political POVs -- I get the sense that maybe what happened with Jen K was the exception there? I wasn't here for that -- which makes me think the problem isn't with political discussion in the wrong places, but people just being assclowns.

See, I would expect the denizens of the politics thread to adhere to the same level of conduct that we expect in every other thread.

I'm not talking about things like overt personal attacks and trolling, which I'd assume we wouldn't have too much of. It's more that, in most threads now, we've got periods of tons of disagreement, where tempers might flare or buttons get pushed, alternating with periods of relative calm. And when there are hotter periods, if frequently seems to happen in a lot of threads at once, and I think at least some of that is spillover. I've be worried that a politics thread would be constantly at the "tons of disagreement" stage, and that the heat from there would spill over into other threads.

Also, I like discussing politics, and I've enjoyed a lot of the politics conversations here. If there were a thread for politics to be quarantined, than I would miss the type of political discussions we've had up until now.

I'm anti-proliferation, since being on the dedicated server so far means that problems can be ignored.

If we don't want to keep shelling out the $$$, we need to fix those problems. Haven't yet. So I can't bet on that horse.

Without that consideration, I really don't care whether it exists or not. But the idea that ALL the politics discussion had to go there is seductive, in a pipe dreamy sort of world.