Suggestion for Open Discussion Forum

[Highside]

This site has a ban on discussion on religion and politics (and by extension, philosophy as well) and undertandably so. Those topics result in flame wars erupting all over the site and it creates alot of work for the moderators.

However, there's a solution that I've seen work very well on other sites. You create a request only board for open discussion of all topics. This does 2 things to make it easy on the moderators. 1) it confines all potentially heated discussions to one place and 2) if there's members who habitually break the rules (make personal attacks and threats) that person can be barred from the board without being banned outright.

I've seen this used on other sites with good results (civil discussion for the most part) and with little intervention necessary on the part of the moderators. I know the main objection site operators have with these topics is the workload it imposes on the moderators, but from what I've seen, the increased work is minimal.

I think it would make this site a lot more fun, and it would allow people to get to know eachother better if such a board existed.

 

[Travis]

Sorry, this has been brought up before and it's not going to happen anytime soon. This site is for discussion of the XS650 and other motorcycle related topics. That is the main focus. We have The Lounge for off-topic discussion for everything else (except religion and politics) that might be of interest to the group. There are plenty of other places to go to discuss religion and politics on the internet. I don't see what good would come from it.

A member once said "I have been a member of one forum or another for the last 13-15 years. I NEVER engage in religion or politics. No one ever wins, and people just get pissed off."

It's so true. People get pissed off and those negative feelings toward each other could spill over into the rest of the forum. Then you're reading a thread about clutches and two people get into it and the reason they hate each other is because of a previous battle about politics. I'm not against healthy arguing and debate, but why allow useless arguing about politics and religion? You're not going to change anyone's mind on a motorcycle forum. Save the server resources for motorcycle discussion and take it to a site decided to those topics. Maybe I should start a religious and political forum??? Maybe you'd like to help?

Moderating all of xs650.com for religion and politics now is probably less work than moderating one section of religion and politics for people threatening each other. And that would mean a moderator would have to read and keep up with all of the bullshit in that section to find out who threatened who and deal with members being pissed off from being banned from the section. I'd rather focus my energy elsewhere.

 

[Downeaster]

Bravo, Travis.

The innerwebz are FULL of places you can go to participate in fruitless arguments.

 

[swbill]

Thanks Travis. We appreciate that.