Petition to keep the forum apolitical

Should political discussions be allowed on this forum

  • Total voters
    87
G

gourav

Innovator
The way social media has gone, every space is now filled with political discussions. This forum, being a dedicated tech forum, is a refuge to get away from all that hullabaloo.

But lately I've been noticing a string of political posts over here as well. So I wanted to petition the mods and admins to keep this space free from political discussions. I think there are enough and more places where people can discuss politics to their heart's content. A tech forum can stay away from all that.

If that's not feasible, can we introduce a prefix for political discussions and allow users to ignore the same.
 
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I voted for allowing them but pressed the wrong one so keep note

Things are going fine and it shouldn't be those that contributed nothing that get to dictate what happens. Why does this happen so often?

Don't like it, ignore it. Nobody is forcing you to read anything.
 
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Renegade said:
Sorry I had to delete and recreate the poll as the votes were not visible publicly. Please vote again.
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The poll does not make sense.

Every where besides general talk is apolitical.

It should say political not apolitical

And I'd rather you allow for sections to be ignored so we can end this discussion
 
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There is growing number of NEW & some old members who really really keep animity against others who do not agree or defend whom they want to de-fame and also use very very low level words/language to vent angers. Before such low civic sense and members also spread like infection all over forum and old sensible forum members will opt either leave TE or just use TE for their tech gadget purchase/solutions, just stop it now, it's TechEnclave.. speak about technology only.

I would no advocate such ban if found that such attackers talk about other issues also, but they are talking about ONE only and keep mouth tight shut when issue arise in their favorite states or in states of their favorite political party?

if you do not want to breed such one sided gang (of any party or mindset) and make TE political fight ground.. Re-Think ...
 
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Renegade said:
Sorry I had to delete and recreate the poll as the votes were not visible publicly. Please vote again.
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Apologies, I didn't realise what that option meant, so left it unchecked.
Renegade said:
The poll does not break the rules of the forum. Its ok to gather opinion. The solutions can be many or none. TE is not a democracy, this is not a winter session, the thread is not a bill.
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Thanks for this. Yes, that was the intent of the poll. The post is just my opinion. Having the poll allows others to chime in easily without having a bunch of posts saying yes or no with no summary as to where the discussion is headed.
 
gourav said:
The way social media has gone, every space is now filled with political discussions. This forum, being a dedicated tech forum, is a refuge to get away from all that hullabaloo.

But lately I've been noticing a string of political posts over here as well. So I wanted to petition the mods and admins to keep this space free from political discussions. I think there are enough and more places where people can discuss politics to their heart's content. A tech forum can stay away from all that.

If that's not feasible, can we introduce a prefix for political discussions and allow users to ignore the same.
Click to expand...
set Ignore for the whole section, it goes away. I hope that mods then don't allow political stuff outside that.
I did not join to read about war and ayurveda and all that noise really, so since yesterday i am pressing ignore on everything.

I had to ignore 'Current Events & Debates' which filters most out, some non-political too i guess.
Ideally, we could have narrow sections for different things and we can set ignore on what we don't care to look at.
 
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There is a forum for https://techenclave.com/forums/current-events-debates.157/ and it can be ignored as a whole using https://techenclave.com/forums/current-events-debates.157/ignore If anyone finds any topics which are outside that section, then they can be reported and moved there. Plus threads don't open up automatically on tabs in users browser.

That also brings up the point that these threads get more visibility because users are participating less in the tech sections. We all joined for tech but we dont contribute to tech. Just reading is not contributing. Lets bring up more tech news, lets discuss that. Lets trigger and seed technical discussions instead of only passively reading. Anyone who is an active user will have at least 15 posts a month on an average.
 
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Renegade said:
There is a forum for https://techenclave.com/forums/current-events-debates.157/ and it can be ignored as a whole using https://techenclave.com/forums/current-events-debates.157/ignore If anyone finds any topics which are outside that section, then they can be reported and moved there. Plus threads don't open up automatically on tabs in users browser.

That also brings up the point that these threads get more visibility because users are participating less in the tech sections. We all joined for tech but we dont contribute to tech. Just reading is not contributing. Lets bring up more tech news, lets discuss that. Lets trigger and seed technical discussions instead of only passively reading. Anyone who is an active user will have at least 15 posts a month on an average.
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ok, i changed my vote to yes, keep it. People like me can ignore.

Tech news will have its cycles, so other sections will bring in traffic too. have seen forums die out with time so better not to be too specific.
 
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It maybe entirely subjective and apply only to me but seeing reddit or twitter like political posts here just kills the appeal of TE and sours the experience. Then again, reading this thread, I suspect more people likely feel that way.

IMO, this happens to all platforms as they grow in numbers. Reddit, digg, other forums boards used to be niche places where hobbyists used to gather but once they go mainstream, political and social discourse takes over the niche spaces and pushes the OG users out gradually.

As TE grows, more people who like tech or other such hobbies are likely to be turned off by such political talks and the tech based discourse will plummet even further, outside of maybe tech support related. This is my personal observation and I may be wrong, and in that case, I would like to hear counter arguments if any.

Could we have a seperate tab or section for that part so that threads from that section do not appear in the general section or on the front page? And yes, I have used the suggested ignore button for the section myself but I still feel that keeping the front page clear of such stuff would be better for encouraging more participation in tech discussions.
 
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I suggest, by default, non-tech related/ political sections and posts should not be featured in what’s new.

The new recruits may be asked about their preferences while signing up where by default checkbox will hide the non-tech/ political sections/topics.

A checkbox can be included in the Preferences section for the same.

Members can turn the setting on and off as per their requirements.
 
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What constitutes a political discussion? How do you identify one discussion as political? If it has keywords like Trump, Musk,. BJP, political party names, political figure names, religion names in it? Will LGBTQ be political? Will Covid 19 be political? When will a thread be considered derailed into a political discourse?

Lets understand the classification.
 
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I'll simply chime in here from my experience on another forum, which

1) is a specialised, niche, highly technical field

2) is an international forum, which means most of the audience there is American or European

3) completely bans all political discussions regardless of which side of the aisle it comes from, including in the off-topic area

The logic of the admin team is very simple; vitiated political atmospheres (as is the norm now rather than the exception) almost always create highly polarised opinions.

These opinions, when admitted into the forum, create biases between members and clusters of members. The more vitiated the political atmosphere, the worse the division. We live in such a time as of this writing.

These clusters can be pitted (and have been) against each other, resulting in fractious and bitter arguments, lots of mud-slinging, requiring severe moderation.

In absence of moderation, one side or the other feels slighted. Even if one does not participate in the discussion, one can and usually does form opinions and bias about other members, which influences the free flow of discussion - because the information then received from other members is corrupted by the bias formed for or against them.

Over time, the core of the forum hollows out and loses weight and gravitas, leaving only the bitterness from political bias (religion is also not allowed there, for similar reasons). There are events that have led to 15- and 20- year old memberships being terminated, people putting each other on ignore lists and some just going silent and dropping off the radar. You end up losing a lot of talent, a lot of content. Families, friendships and brotherhoods are ripped apart due to politics, what chance does a forum have?

I understand this forum exists for everyone, but there are plenty of spaces on the internet to discuss politics, many are very welcoming of such discussion. We are (or were, back when I joined) a tech forum and a tech forum only. I would welcome a return to those days.
 
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Seconded. A very simple example of what I liked was on the indian gaming discord.
'Everything has to be in English'. No other language is allowed.
Initially I felt it was elitist but seeing how the discussion around language has gotten so political/divisive undertones, it just weeds out any potential for random 'e-lafdas'.
Are there people who leave the server immediately when they get to know the rule? Sure.
But it's civilized & drama free (at least from what I've seen in my time there).

A similar approach to anything that has the potential to polarize people, I feel will ensure the forum stays healthy.
 
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I voted for political discussions to be allowed. Just because one or two or even a majority of people here don't like political discussions does not mean that it should be banned completely. Once you ban political discussions, next it will be something else. People will find anything to complain about and make posts on it. Here people are saying there's too much political discussions and the forum will go down. But what''s stopping them from starting tech based discussions in the rest of the forum? All is see are most of the discussions are mostly centered around buying gadgets or in deals threads. I think political discussions at least make the forum look lively. There are one or two people who get emotional when they take sides but if they manage to talk properly and get a hold of themselves, we can have proper discussions in political threads. there's no need to generalize the entire forum based on one or two bad threads. Then by your same logic, since most of the "tech" discussions on TE happen in sales or amazon deals threads or in gadget buying advice threads, that means TE has been reduced to only these silly discussions and not real tech discussions. Where are the discussions on AI or robotics other "tech" areas here? No one is bothered to even start topics on them. I only saw Renegade and 2-3 guys start topics on it. Instead of saying stuff like TE has gone down the drain or quality of discussions has gone down, why don't you take the initiative to start such discussions here? All I see are people complaining like little kids when they don't like something and want to completely ban such talk. Banning such talk will only give you talk about buying advice on phones or laptops or smart plugs or ssd's.
 
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Title: Petition to keep the forum apolitical
Question: Should political discussions be allowed on this forum

I see what OP did. lol. :p I, too, almost voted 'Yes' without looking at the question.

If the forum is made apolitical, it'll cut the traffic by a significant percentage.
 
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