"Now with 100% less closures"

The last thing we need is more politics on the forum

It should be kept in one place, then if you want to get involved with it you can, and if you dont you can easily avoid it

Talking about politics or social issues or whatever in other threads would just turn them into more politics thread clones, it wouldnt gain anything... some here are drawn to controversial topics and cant pass up an excuse to act like morons... I kinda wish things were different, because politics doesnt need to be about "you disagree with me, therefore you are a stupid xyz" but apparently here it is, and having more threads to discuss more topics wouldnt stop that just spread it, as many threads (both nothing to do with politics whatsoever and only slightly related to politics) have shown

It sucks, but I think the less of this stuff the better to be honest... not because of the topics people discuss but the way they discuss them. Want to talk about different viewpoints and ideologies, even a little destructively??? Youll here no complaints from me. But spend your entire time on the internet moaning, complaining and attacking people who arent you both inside and out of political discussions??? Then ill start having problems with you

But just imagine from the moderators perspective too, not only would they have more threads to keep an eye on before their eventual and very deserved lock, but theyd have to give immunity to so many more people than they already have and it would just turn into chaos

If you try to convince people to change the way politics works on this forum, youll have my full support on talking about stuff like this... but it would just cause so many problems with the way things work and the atmosphere (and the people) here... not a good idea

So I disagree, I think recently the moderators have been responsible and smart in closing threads

But thats all it would turn into anyway... not sure what pol-esque means but im totally running with this

Even if you had different threads for social issues, it would just get weighed down by the same stuff in the politics thread, guaranteed. It really wouldnt gain anything. Youd still have the same pol-esque rhetoric and the same memes because its just the nature of the forum, you cant discuss social issues here without people turning it into a political discussion, there are lots of examples around

Ive wanted a thread for a while to talk about LGBTQ stuff in the off topic section, but it wouldnt be a good idea, at all. In no situation would it be a good idea on this forum because of the need to politicize everything, I agree with you on things but I just dont think it would work, it would just be ridiculously close to what the politics thread is already and cause more trouble

I think the only reason why the discussion we were involved with was what it was was because it would be locked if it got out of hand

Hey, at least it's still open. More than I can say for a certain discussion thread I happened to be fond of.The movie is a documentary about the Men's Rights movement as seen through the eyes of a feminist. Trying to discuss it without discussing the gender issue would be like trying to discuss An Inconvenient Truth without talking about the global warming. It's what the movie is about...If I preferred only discussing things with people who agree with me, this conversation would have ended a long time ago.

Liked for Stannis gif.


In all seriousness, we are reviewing this request. In the meantime, standing policy applies. Personally (and sometimes I need to stress the "personally" bit) I am not in favor. The politics thread is an exception, not a rule. Allowing any and all social issues on a board that's about BioWare games and general gaming/internet stuff may be a can of worms we don't wish to open fully. The pinhole we have is currently within acceptable levels.

Secondly, and this may be the more relevant point to you (and as others have pointed out), multiple threads will not achieve your aim of avoiding certain users or "posting styles". Anyone is welcome to post in any thread. If you dislike memes and "/pol/-esque rhetoric", do you really believe they wouldn't follow in the new threads? Threads that don't have the history and the expectations of the politics thread, where people will fly off the handle, break rules and necessitate us to intervene? I find that unlikely and I don't think that's desirable, for anyone. The idea of "thread culture" is secondary, because any new thread will inevitably draw some or all of the politics regulars because those are the topics they choose to engage with, even if they do so in a way you disapprove of. Thread culture develops naturally and you can't exclude users to develop it along the path you desire. We enforce the rules, I don't believe we will ever enforce thread lines. The only thing that can work to that specific respect is PM.

If I may share my experiences in the politics thread, it is not quite the uniform shitpostfest it appears. People do carry on their own discussion and there is disagreement or even indifference on certain topics. I can atttest to the later personally, being cheerfully apathetic. I mostly react to "SJW cringe", and throw the occasional hypothetical or more philosophically inclined post in once in a while. I don't engage everyone or everything and not everyone engages me. It could be the same for you, or anyone else. There will be users who will disagree with you and will do nothing but lob memes. But here's the thing: that's not a function of the politics thread. That's a function of you, them and that issue in a room together. And it won't be fixed by segregation of issues. It may be "fixed" by segregation of people, but that's not what we're about.

I would support a change to:

"Now with 95% less closures"

And you can discuss social issues in the context of those games in their relevant threads to your heart's content. That is "accepted here in the context of a relevant, on-topic discussion as long as every post furthers the discussion in some way." Go ahead and talk about population control in the context of the genophage or eugenics in the context of Miranda or Grunt. Making a thread about those things in a vaccuum however, is something else.

BioWare makes games. They do not make political or social manifestos. As we mirror that, we discuss games. Some social stuff is interweaved, sure. But opening the floodgates to social issues threads is not interweaving. It's turning a entire section of the forum into full blown social issues discussion. Because simply calling it "the occasional" discussion isn't getting at the full scope. On what grounds would we limit the amount of threads being open then? On what definitions? "Racism isn't the same as sexism! Yes it is! No it isn't" and on and on. Any ruling we'd make would be hilariously arbitrary. We had initially made the executive call that we won't open that can. The politics thread is a pinhole, because of how it's watched and moderated. One thread, as both outlet and sink for those that just have to talk about this stuff here. That may be arbitrary to some extent as well, but I'd much rather arbitrary-ness be an exception, not a rule.

And again, the politics thread is an exception. The rule is: we don't do "RL" here, except for this one case. "...except for this one case, and also these other ones" is far flimsier and invites the dreaded slipperly slope.
 
This is a difference of definitions. You feel they're different. The case can be made that they're not, or they're related enough to make belonging to the same thread feasible. Then there's the catchall consideration mentioned above.

That's because it went on for all of 20 minutes. Not really fair to judge such a short sample. And despite said shortness, I still had to act on a personal attack. The details of that don't matter, but the fact remains that despite the apparent chaos of the politics thread, we are keeping very tight reins on "sensitive" subjects in RL, and for good reason. Page counts are less of a problem compared to chasing reports across multiple threads. I believe you've witnessed some of the trouble there for yourself.

Yep, nothing controversial about history.