Politics forum thread making guide

[poxpower]

Hopefully this clears some things up.

1. Does your thread contain your opinion or did you just paste a news story / article / video?
2. Is your opinion more than 2 lines long?
3. How many threads are there on the first page that deal with what you want to talk about? More than 2-3? The don't waste your time.
4. Does your topic relate in any way to politics, science or philosophy?
5. Are you ready to stand behind your opinion or do you just want to put it "out there" and not have to argue for it?

If you make a thread, all 5 of these criteria have to be fulfilled.

And for future reference: no, the politics forum is not just for strictly political discussion. Feel free to open debates on anything you think is cool, thought-provocative and worth talking about.

[Brick-top]

What if I made a thread showing my opinion and then backed it up with a story / article / video?

Like for example, Creationists shove their beliefs down people's throats and here's a story / article / video.

[Jon-86]

The politics forum should have a "politics forum rules" thread. It helped quite a bit in the programming forum after it was put together and eventually made official!

[BrianEtrius]

At 6/28/09 08:15 PM, Jon-86 wrote: The politics forum should have a "politics forum rules" thread. It helped quite a bit in the programming forum after it was put together and eventually made official!

Well, time to plug in again this listof what I'm sure most mods agree on for the politics rules.

Plus, if you have suggestions, PM me.

[Jon-86]

At 6/28/09 08:16 PM, BrianEtrius wrote: Well, time to plug in again this listof what I'm sure most mods agree on for the politics rules.

I noticed "9. DO NOT MAKE IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD THREAD." do people seriously make them and/or take them seriously? I would laugh but I'm too tired.

And thats no fair you have seven mods and we have 1-2ish I suppose programming dosnt really need mods but their is the occasional time you wish we had more and Afro is busy creating cool stuff a lot of the time.

[ChickenReaper]

At 6/28/09 08:16 PM, BrianEtrius wrote:

Well, time to plug in again this listof what I'm sure most mods agree on for the politics rules.

Plus, if you have suggestions, PM me.

STOP YELLING IN YOUR NEWS POST damnit it's catching on

[poxpower]

At 6/28/09 08:16 PM, BrianEtrius wrote:

At 6/28/09 08:15 PM, Jon-86 wrote: The politics forum should have a "politics forum rules" thread. It helped quite a bit in the programming forum after it was put together and eventually made official!

Well, time to plug in again this listof what I'm sure most mods agree on for the politics rules.

Plus, if you have suggestions, PM me.

Damn, who wants to read that?
My simple 5 rules usually deal with 99% of the shit I lock and delete anyway.

[Jon-86]

At 6/28/09 09:48 PM, poxpower wrote: My simple 5 rules usually deal with 99% of the shit I lock and delete anyway.

Then make that the "New to Politics READ THIS" thing then.

[aviewaskewed]

At 6/28/09 09:48 PM, poxpower wrote: Damn, who wants to read that?

Yeah dude, seriously stop pushing that would ya? I get that it took a lot of time, effort, and whatever to do. But that in no way makes it official as we have discussed before, and the fact that you keep pushing this thing every time new rules are mentioned, or changes to the site are mentioned just sends the wrong message about you. Please to be cutting it out Thanks.

My simple 5 rules usually deal with 99% of the shit I lock and delete anyway.

And I wholeheartedly agree with them as something people should be using as a guideline and as rules because it's the same kind of stuff I tend to be locking and deleting for myself.

As far as Brick-Top's question, I feel pretty confident in believing what pox is getting at is people like Dante who constantly copy pasta most or all of an article and then make two lines of their own text underneath that. It's lazyness and it's trying to make a crappy post seem more important because ooo, you can hold down the mouse key long enough to do a copy paste? Big deal.

[aviewaskewed]

At 7/1/09 07:54 PM, Jon-86 wrote: Then make that the "New to Politics READ THIS" thing then.

We don't have the power to make stickies. We have to get the admins to do that.

[Jon-86]

At 7/1/09 08:36 PM, aviewaskewed wrote:

At 7/1/09 07:54 PM, Jon-86 wrote: Then make that the "New to Politics READ THIS" thing then.

We don't have the power to make stickies. We have to get the admins to do that.

Aye a know that one. We had the same thing over in the programming forum as a mentioned. It had to get to version 3 or something and the idea got revived about 4-6 times throughout last year. Before liljim approved (am sure it was him if memory serve me) But it did help a lot and continues to do so.

[aviewaskewed]

At 7/1/09 09:03 PM, Jon-86 wrote: Aye a know that one. We had the same thing over in the programming forum as a mentioned. It had to get to version 3 or something and the idea got revived about 4-6 times throughout last year. Before liljim approved (am sure it was him if memory serve me) But it did help a lot and continues to do so.

Hmmm, might be worth looking into I guess then. What sayeth the OP of this thread?

[Malachy]

thanks pox.

I've been using pretty much the exact same criteria for moderating new threads as well.

[Ericho]

At 6/28/09 09:48 PM, poxpower wrote: My simple 5 rules usually deal with 99% of the shit I lock and delete anyway.

You can lock and delete things? I didn't know you were an administrator.

[Malachy]

At 7/2/09 03:27 PM, Ericho wrote:

At 6/28/09 09:48 PM, poxpower wrote: My simple 5 rules usually deal with 99% of the shit I lock and delete anyway.

You can lock and delete things? I didn't know you were an administrator.

I have no idea what you think we're able to do, but the FAQ may clear this confusion up for you:

Q: What do the moderators do?

A: Site moderators (also known as "mods") help maintain select areas of the site, generally making sure that members of the NG community are somewhat polite and policing the site for stolen content.

Forum Moderators - The forum mods the Forum rules, and they can lock threads, delete threads, posts, signatures or signature pictures, and ban users. When a user is banned from the Forums by a moderator it only affects his posting privileges; the rest of NG is still accessible.

[joshhunsaker]

Oh, and if a mod does not like what you have to say they will delete your thread even if it has those qualifications. They are always right and can be immature if they feel like it. You should append your list to include those things.

[SolInvictus]

At 7/10/09 11:30 AM, joshhunsaker wrote: Oh, and if a mod does not like what you have to say they will delete your thread even if it has those qualifications. They are always right and can be immature if they feel like it. You should append your list to include those things.

you might want to reread forum rules, what you did just now is frowned upon.

[joshhunsaker]

At 7/10/09 12:37 PM, SolInvictus wrote:

At 7/10/09 11:30 AM, joshhunsaker wrote: Oh, and if a mod does not like what you have to say they will delete your thread even if it has those qualifications. They are always right and can be immature if they feel like it. You should append your list to include those things.

you might want to reread forum rules, what you did just now is frowned upon.

No need. Posting anything in this forum is like walking through a midget convention with spiked stilts. I can see from the one post I made here that it's nearly impossible to even postulate an idea and respond to criticism without burning the important people's biscuits. I won't be back.

[poxpower]

At 7/10/09 09:21 PM, joshhunsaker wrote:

No need. Posting anything in this forum is like walking through a midget convention with spiked stilts. I can see from the one post I made here that it's nearly impossible to even postulate an idea and respond to criticism without burning the important people's biscuits. I won't be back.

Don't know what you're talking about but in case you didn't know, a mod's account was hijacked this morning and just about every new thread in politics was deleted.

[joshhunsaker]

At 7/10/09 09:32 PM, poxpower wrote:

At 7/10/09 09:21 PM, joshhunsaker wrote:

No need. Posting anything in this forum is like walking through a midget convention with spiked stilts. I can see from the one post I made here that it's nearly impossible to even postulate an idea and respond to criticism without burning the important people's biscuits. I won't be back.

Don't know what you're talking about but in case you didn't know, a mod's account was hijacked this morning and just about every new thread in politics was deleted.

Hmmm...? Oh, well - then that makes a little more sense. I had assumed (I guess not to correct effect) that my previous thread was deleted because it may have simply not jived with the crowd here.

[poxpower]

At 7/10/09 09:48 PM, joshhunsaker wrote:

Hmmm...? Oh, well - then that makes a little more sense. I had assumed (I guess not to correct effect) that my previous thread was deleted because it may have simply not jived with the crowd here.

Pretty much every thread created in the last 2 weeks was deleted and all the people who posted in them banned for 30 days.
It got cleared up before you logged back in I guess.

[zero-gravity]

How about flaming and trolling? I know there are some jerks who just make threads in this forum for the intention of trying to epically troll as many people as possible since about 99.9999999% of people who lurk/post in this forum are hotheaded and willing to pounce on the slightest logical flaw and sometimes w/o realizing that its just a troll. Also what about topics like "________ suck" or "Fuck _____" whose purposes are purely to attack one group or another disregarding if it has logic or not. All that ever erupts into is some incredibly stupid flame war which loses all logical taste after a while.

Also, if you want to make a sticky, how about we start with the unofficial general forum rules which have been sloshed around in mod blogs (Zerok's blog) and obscure, out of sight topics (Sanjay's rant on celebrity death threads)?

[BrianEtrius]

At 7/10/09 10:18 PM, zero-gravity wrote:

:All that ever erupts into is some incredibly stupid flame war which loses all logical taste after a while.

I don't see that happening a lot, because the only people who really do like flaming and trolling are new and pretty obvious, thus their threads get deleted. So I really don't see where you're getting at.

Also, if you want to make a sticky, how about we start with the unofficial general forum rules which have been sloshed around in mod blogs (Zerok's blog) and obscure, out of sight topics (Sanjay's rant on celebrity death threads)?

How about the fact that this has to do with the politics forums first, not the entire forum?

[zero-gravity]

At 7/10/09 10:28 PM, BrianEtrius wrote:

I don't see that happening a lot, because the only people who really do like flaming and trolling are new and pretty obvious, thus their threads get deleted. So I really don't see where you're getting at.

How about the fact that this has to do with the politics forums first, not the entire forum?

Touche, just throwing the idea out there lol.

[aviewaskewed]

At 7/10/09 10:18 PM, zero-gravity wrote: How about flaming and trolling? I know there are some jerks who just make threads in this forum for the intention of trying to epically troll as many people as possible since about 99.9999999% of people who lurk/post in this forum are hotheaded and willing to pounce on the slightest logical flaw and sometimes w/o realizing that its just a troll. Also what about topics like "________ suck" or "Fuck _____" whose purposes are purely to attack one group or another disregarding if it has logic or not. All that ever erupts into is some incredibly stupid flame war which loses all logical taste after a while.

I believe we have a pretty good track record of getting rid of threads the obviously solely exist just to start flame wars. But I would also like to see the poli regs be active in running these types of idiots off this part of the forums too like we did back in the old days.

Also, if you want to make a sticky, how about we start with the unofficial general forum rules which have been sloshed around in mod blogs (Zerok's blog) and obscure, out of sight topics (Sanjay's rant on celebrity death threads)?

Or how about we post something like that over in an appropriate thread in GENERAL instead of discussing it in POLITICS, where it wouldn't apply.

[SolInvictus]

At 7/10/09 09:48 PM, joshhunsaker wrote: Hmmm...? Oh, well - then that makes a little more sense. I had assumed (I guess not to correct effect) that my previous thread was deleted because it may have simply not jived with the crowd here.

usually the mods are fairly reasonable. i was referring to bitching about the mods; its frowned upon pretty strongly and can be resolved through pms most of the times.

[JackPhantasm]

I don't understand why you have to argue FOR it.

Can't I just argue ABOUT it?