Someone asked whether there were conflicts before the 2015 political threads turned up.
Yes, vociferous ones. On the old site we went through a long phase of great acrimony about religion. I used to refer to them as the Religious Wars. One ex-member, Pink Harp, used to introduce controversial subjects, one was whether prostitution should be legalised. And there was a lot of conflict on music topics, Pelleas and Melisande anybody? The worst that I recall was an extended firefight about Haydn chamber music. Saul, that name will make a few here shudder. He could have caused a fight in an empty topic, musical, political, religious, ethnic.
I could go on.
Where people of strongly held opinions come together there are often outbursts. We have been through some swings and roundabouts of moderation starting with basically next to no censorship and the mods spending what felt like most of our spare time writing behind the scenes to try and persuade a few troublemakers to change the wording in their posts: to clamping down too much. The latter caused a general turpitude, the site was becalmed, dull frankly.
I don’t like the politics thread, but the forum needs somewhere that people can let off steam somewhat. I think that is important and it tends to take pressure off the music threads. As has been said, it is simple to avoid threads you are not interested in. I can’t stand the rash of one, two or three word topics, but as they don’t seem to cause trouble, I ignore them.
Rob suggests new people be prevented from posting in the Diner, but that damages the possibility of new people bonding. Someone has suggested we hive-off politics. Well, what is really meant here is American Politics. The Brexit topic has not needed much moderation. The world is full of politics and we have members from large swathes of it. So the problem thread is US politics. I am not keen on a Restricted Area, like a club within a club. I think we learn how to cope with ups and downs with each other, continue to more closely moderate that topic and I recommend we permanently ban any member who over an extended period posts more or less exclusively in the US politics thread.
The rules of that thread are clear and we don’t get into discussions with people, material will be deleted. Someone suggested that was pointless. I disagree.material is deleted and many posters remain unaware that there had been a problem or action taken. It also means those possibly personal insults are not there to be subsequently read by, for example, new members.
Knight
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