At 1/20/08 08:48 PM, BananaBreadMuffin wrote:
I don't like the politics board. From my experience of the politics forum, people there are generally arrogant, self centred, and polarised in their opinions. They're too provocative (not the right word at all, I mean, too eager to jump into argument), and I feel almost more obsessed with long words and flashy statistics than a convincing argument that they truly believe in.
I have actually found that a large majority of the users in the Politics board are quite useless at using facts to hold up their debates. wikipedia is NOT a valid source for information. ever. If your professors don't accept it as reputable, than chances are it isn't.
and I agree that they are too opinionated. years ago it was much more about debate rather than opinion. at 13 the difference seems subtle, but there is a huge difference. In one you take a stance, research your side and the other side equally and try and make the most valid argument for the side you choose...it is NOT about picking what you believe in and using what daddy told you all through your childhood as facts.
I have very basic debate experience, from a highschool forensic team (not science, forensics means speech). and even from that I can tell the fucking difference between debate and flaming. what you see a lot in the politics board is morons flaming each other and generally making asses of themselves. a prime example is cellerdoor. kid's got his head stuck up his ass so far he can see what he ate two weeks into the future. people think he's smart because he can look up wiki articles all day long and put as many yellow links into his posts as possible...that's not smart, and frankly most of his arguments have huge holes in them, but he uses personal attacks (flames) instead of well formed arguments (debate) to get at anyone who disagrees. look at how he treats somebody like Grammer. he will start linking topics and newsposts and screen shots of things Grammer has done instead of actually staying to the topic of the debate.
you guys may dislike the politics board because it seems like too many smart people, but I dislike it because there aren't enough. if there were some intelligent debaters on there, it would be an awesome forum. and it was never created with the idea that it would be a cool place to hang out..that's why we have general. but the politics board also has its regulars lounge to get away from the flame wars and to not have to be drown out in the general crowd's ramblings.