roachboy

which would be a question about questions or rather the lack thereof.

the forum seems to have gone all moribund.
why is that?

no new threads, a trickle of posts---has the xmas season taken folk's minds elsewhere?

and where did the conservatives all go? there were quite a few who would play here, but since the election ritual, most have disappeared.

very odd.
perhaps this metathread is an exploratory probe aimed at checking the state of rigor mortis. or perhaps little more than a signal that the stasis of things here is noted.

what to do, comrades?

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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

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mixedmedia

I have noticed a marked decrease in the number of conservative posters, as well. I've only been here a short while, but there weren't more than a handful to start with. We certainly do need representation from both sides to make a debate.

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PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

magictoy

In a word, overmoderation.

The conservatives will have ample opportunity to nitpick everything the Democrats do, so it isn't the lack of targets.

Also, Ustwo's absence is palpable. Like him or hate him, having him around was entertaining. After he posted that his warning level was at 80%, it was only a matter of time.

Chances are, many other conservatives are tired of being modded to death as well.

dc_dux

Magictoy.....Can you provide examples of conservatives being "modded to death"?

Perhaps, therein lies the problem.....a new found feeeling of persecution?

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Elphaba

Perhaps we are just experiencing a "lame duck" pause until the 110th Congress returns in January.

pig

yep, i noticed that there's not been as much barking going on around here for a while. i know that the certain someone mentioned by magictoy has been one the site, i guess he just can't post for a while. that should be an interesting development. but neverfear, i'm sure some new neo-con / "libertarian" / whatever will come along and the whole thing will start over again. i guess this is just a bit of holiday relaxation for all.

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Rekna

I had a couple thoughts

1. The elections are over, the dems haven't taken power yet. There isn't much for them to criticize.

2. They are demoralized from the election

3. There may be a slight shift toward the center from conservatives.


I don't think it is over moderation, please cite specific examples of a conservative posting something that was modded and then a liberal posting something similar that wasn't modded.

loquitur

It's December, guys. I think everyone has other things to do. I know I do, and I'm about as free-market liberal (in the classic sense, not the modern sense) as can be.

It could just be that everyone is now adopting my "live and let live" ethos, so the argumentative forums are just withering away from a surfeit of brotherhood and good feeling........... <ROFL.........> Or it could just be the season. Yeah, that's it.....

stevo

I've been poking around, but too busy at work to really get involved in anything. Also, kind of tired of the same ol that goes on in politics. Maybe when somehting interesting happens or is worth discussing. until then...

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Willravel

Maybe the polarization is finally over...it's a Christmas mericle!!

jorgelito

I think people just got tired of the same old hashing and rehashing of basically the same old subjects to the point of stalemate. The habit of one-offs or back and forths has not really produced any conversation or discussion.

It seems like people just got fed up with posts going nowhere.

Really, we're all guilty. No one has really posted or responded in awhile. It's not like there hasn't been anything going on in the world. Maybe we all got lazy (the whole it's December people are busy is utter hogwash as people have been posting in other threads).

pig

jorgelito, i think you're waxing all dreamy. the cycle shall begin again, after a brief hiatus while everyone does whatever they're doing and gets all re-energized. i really don't know that the basic give and take of the politics forum is going to ever change, but i guess you never know.

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jorgelito

Piggy, I don't know what you mean by dreamy but I think my post was pretty clear and straightforward. In any case, I think we just need an injection of energy (posting etc) to get out of our lethargy. New blood would help in that regard as well as old timers (perhaps certain ones-mentioned-by-others-in-this-thread-who-seems-to-have-dropped-off-the-board-lately-but-no-one-is-really-sure-so-we'll-just-have-to-wait-and-see-unless-some-new-so-called-conservative-libertarian-types-decide-to-start-posting-again).
Maybe I will start posting again when I return this afternoon......

The_Jazz

Personally, I've just been too busy to visit Politics or any other forums. That's one of the certainties of my life at this time of year, though. Personally, I miss Ustwo's contributions. While some of his points may have been overly sharp, they were at the very least entertaining and generally added to the debate. There are several others that have gone missing in the last 6 months, but it may indeed be the cycle of things. Regardless, I hope for a return of some of the conservative members and an injection of new blood, preferrably new blood that's all pissed off about the midterms and ready to fight hard for their side in '08.

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Charlatan

The orgasm of the election has left everyone spent.

When they've had a nap and a smoke, they will be back for more.

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abaya

Wow, Ustwo got banned? That sucks. I, um... kinda miss him.

Also, I've noticed that host is posting OUTside of Politics. I think that's the problem... (just kidding host, it's great to read about your non-political side).

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hiredgun

I think it is partly a function of the time of year. For my part, I'm currently embroiled in finals and only check the forums at times of weakness and procrastination.

But I like Charlatan's answer.

Elphaba

U2 is not banned (check his profile). He probably has other things going on right now, or he is a lilly livered righty coward... or something.

I don't think I'll need more conservatives here come January because I intend to hold the Dems feet to the fire to get the right things done. That's the fun of being an Indie.

mixedmedia

I have to say, I miss UsTwo's contributions, as well. And being a refugee of a sort from another political forum, I think the conservatives I have seen here are top drawer. It's nice to be able to talk about politics without being called horrible names. To talk to people who can put forth a strong viewpoint without resorting to base knee-jerk reactions and radical misrepresentations. From both the left and the right points of view. There are a few people here who I know know what I'm talking about as they were fellow members with me there. Not that everyone was that way, not at all, but there were some pretty nasty, ugly-minded people there. I don't feel like I've fully engaged myself on this forum thus far, but I'm looking forward to when it picks up a little again.

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Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

Seaver

I got sick of the labeling.

Conservatives are racist, stupid rednecks who do not realize they are voting against their own interests. The Conservative leadership are massive power-grabbers who would kill unheard of number of Americans (let alone anyone else) in order to hold onto power living in their own "culture of corruption". Anyone who wishes to fight terrorism is either stupid, a neo-colonist, or racist.

Liberals are America-Hating, racial card playing, UN-appeasing tree-huggers who because they can not manage their own money want to manage yours through income redistribution.

Sadly I can find a post where every one of these insults was thrown. THAT is why I stopped posting.

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shakran

y'all seem to be assuming a lot - - -Ustwo is not listed as being banned. Perhaps he just has other stuff on his plate lately.

ubertuber

If there's any doubt, ustwo wasn't banned. He's busy with his real life.

I suppose over-moderation is possible, but for my part, I doubt it is the culprit. In fact, I can probably count the number of non-spammers we've banned in the last 9 months on one hand. It just doesn't happen very often. In fact, we don't even warn people very often - it tends to come in spurts, and judging by the warning levels I see on the posters in this thread, it's pretty well distributed.

You can start from the obvious place: some people aren't posting because it isn't rewarding enough to them to seem worthwhile. Working backwards, it's either because they're too busy (coincidence), because there is so little to talk about that they don't bother to make the effort (doubtful), or because discussions here aren't scratching their itch (this one is my guess).

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Sticky

My theory:
Now that the democrats control the house and the senate there are alot less poiting out what the republicans are doing or are not doing.
As a result there is less reaction on the part of conservatives (or maybe republicans) to defend republican actions or inactions.

Just a theory.

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Sticky The Stickman

shakran

i think it should be pointed out that control is a very relative term. While the dems have enough power to STOP the republicans from doing something, they also don't have enough power to necessarily get any legislation passed.

Let's take a for-instance. Congressional democrats try to take the power to randomly declare war away from the president where it should never have rested in the first place. A small majority votes for this proposition. The president vetos. Dems do not have the 2/3rds required to override that veto.

So while we may have a majority, we still don't have all that much power, realistically.

pan6467

I think it is the lack of anything new. Plus, I come on TFP and for whatever reason the whole site has lost something. this place used to be jumping but now it seems different, not as warm and as welcoming. People don't seem as open to talking anymore, everyone is set in their opinion, not willing to bend, unwilling to truly discuss why they believe what they do etc. Not just in Politics but throughout TFP. It seems it's an argument in all threads, not educating, sharing ideas, truly showing respect and caring about each other.

It's not the moderation (as someone stated above), the mods are easy targets but they aren't any more or less dominant than before.

No, the problem lies within the posts and the members. It just doesn't seem as fun, educating or mind expanding as it used to.

As for the "conservatives", I think there is a great amount of soul searching. I think they spent a lot of time defending policies and actions they didn't truly agree with and now that the country is shifting left they are reevaluating their stances.

I'm sure there are some "hard core" that would disagree, but when you have someone like Rumsfield talking about how sorry he was that Abu happened and there were many a conservative on here that defended it....... well, your defense was just blown to shit.

You had people defending the war and being so vapid, then everyone around Bush and highly regarded Conservatives come out and say it is a losing proposition with no true planning...... again the defenses of it become hollow and the defenders lost credibility.

I just think that the Conservatives are looking at what they truly believe and the true direction of the country.

The liberals, well, they have nothing to cry about right now and the signs are, that the leaders in the House and senate are truly going to fuck things up and this maybe a very short lived reign if they don't prove themselves out of the gate.

But those are just my opinions.

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I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

pig

pan - you're just nicing out with that smoking ban? seriously, i got through times like that with tfp all the time. sometimes i'm gone for weeks or months, and then something happens that brings me back in. usually a function of what's going on in real-world as much as anything. i think the place is over-modded at all - the only thing i wish is that some of the mods were more present, as posting members, than they are...but i guess that's part of the evolution of the board and life in general.

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pan6467

Well passion does get the best of us at times....


That is true, I have seen it in posters, that when they become mods their whole attitudes change, their posting styles change, they aren't here as often as just posters. I don't know if it is the label and they are afraid to talkas themselves because they feel they havce an "example to set" or if the responsibility burns them out.

I feel if you are a mod it is because your posts and style allowed you to be, so why change and if it's burnout, quit go back to being just a poster and having fun here..... don't get so caught up in the "label" and "power" that you lose who you are, your smile and what you believe in.

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

roachboy

i think that there is something other than seasonal factors and the disappearance of the cadre from the right for me at least--i wondered about what it is exactly as i decided to post this kind of thread rather than simply putting up something about, say, the baker report and/or the new rounds of lunacy in and around iraq.

but i am not sure what it is, this something other.

i found myself repeating myself here more than i would like, as if roachboy had become a little machine and that machine developed characteristics and began preforming its characteristics as much or more than exploring new avenues for thinking about stuff in the world.

maybe this is a function of the non-cumulative nature of debates in this kind of space.
maybe it is a reflection of these degenerate ideological times.
maybe it is a limitation of messageboards as forms.
maybe all the above.
maybe it is also a function of the strange state of my personal 3-d land--but it is odd to think that others may find themselves in parallel 3-d lands, with parallel features. i cant tell if i am simply projecting, but there seems a kind of malaise abroad out there, a kind of thickness in the air that slows you down if you think with a wide compass, makes it feel difficult to move your focus like there is some weight you work from under.

but the worlds, mine and the big one, feel like they are drifting, and drifting does not necessarily make for good commentary, it just is, in a kind of bland, grey way, what it is.

and within that, the machinery of argumentation shaped by the machinery of repetition doesnt seem a generative as it has in the past.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

hiredgun

There is a sense in which the repetition has gotten stale.

Take the Baker report, for example. Given that its recommendations (and its modified assumptions) contain basically nothing new, and that this is all stuff critics of the war have been shouting from the rooftops all along... there seems very little left to discuss about it. Those who opposed such ideas will continue to oppose them. Others will be glad that the political space is now open for some change to take place.

Ironically, I'm not sure that the report's work has actually changed anyone's mind about what's happening in Iraq, which probably should have been one of its functions.

Maybe the forum has simply gone too long with a particular configuration of actors and viewpoints such that we've exhausted the interesting possibilities for discussion of the current state of affairs. The solution to this would seem to be either new blood, or topics of debate that have heretofore gone unnoticed.

Ch'i

Exactomundo. It seemed that nearly every political discussion boiled down to conservative vs. liberal wherein a flame war flowed in its wake, more often than not. It became tiresome.
Precisely. I think Charlatan was right when he stated that we are having sort of a letdown from the election.

aceventura3

I am generally conservative. I am not depressed and all that other stuff people have posted. I still post my views at the same rate as before the election.

What I have found is that there are more personal attacks than in the past. I recall a recent post when people tried to tell me that the view that I presented was not sincere. Others have taken the role of trying to read my mind and to make "straw man" arguments on points not in dispute. I have also noticed that when some are proven wrong or challenged directly they tend to ignore those points and back off, often picking something trivial to respond to. I often find it all amusing.

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Mojo_PeiPei

I'm with Ace on this one.

Also I don't suffer from cognitive dissonance as Pan attempted to pin on us "conservatives", inferring that I do is rather amusing.

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shakran

Exactly. It doesn't seem to happen too much here but on other forums you'll see some dude become a mod and you'd think he'd just been crowned King of England or something. It's the friggin' internet for god's sake. Chill out. Mods are here to make sure the board stays nice and pleasant for the rest of us, and to help people who don't know as much about foruming as they do. The only example they need to set is not breaking the board's rules.

magictoy

The inequality goes all the way back to phredgreen--it's hardly "newfound." Google the site for "banned" and you'll get your answer, if you care to see it.

Here is a perfect example of overmoderation. There was no reason to close this thread, and it's one of yours:

Soy thread

dc_dux

Magic.....but I'm not a conservative

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pig

what ever happened to old phred? haven't seen him post in years, it seems. i still don't think that over modification has much to do with any slump in posting - dc can re-open that thread if he wants to.

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aberkok

Discussion threads can only get so big and will tend to slow down under the weight of their own posts, as all available viewpoints are aired and discussed. It follows that the same thing will occur on the board as a whole. There comes a time in every member's stay when they start to feel like they've "heard it all before." I'm going through a period like that right now.

I won't be going anywhere soon. Beyond the function of this board lies a lot of personal connections that I've made and will continue to maintain, but it's getting harder for me to add to discussions. Maybe I just need to try harder.

One last thing. Threads are physically displayed in two dimensions (one?) as a line from the top, moving down (or up depending on your settings) as time goes on. This cannot reflect the thought processes of our brains. Maybe when OS' are fully 3D like in Minority Report, TFP can be a fully three-dimensional forum and threads can branch more effectively. I don't have the answers...I just sense the physical limitations.

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Charlatan

magictoy... That isn't overmoderation. Did you read the mod's post? The thread isn't closed forever. It is closed as per the rules. If the OP would care to PM a real discussion point then it will be reopened.

This is not a new rule and it's been happening since the board was born.


As for moderation in Politics, it's not an easy thing to do.

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matthew330

that's funny. I'll give it a go. there's a fundamental difference, clearly, in the way the liberal mindset works as opposed to someone more "normal", like myself for instance.

mathematically speaking, liberals outnumber conservatives here at least 3 to 1, at any given time conservatively speaking (no pun intended). When it comes to matters that we really philosophically disagaree on, one thought by a conservative will result in, conservatively, 3 replies by the left (very conservative estimate).

So let's take a topic on which we've found agreement, the OP, and apply the above mathematical theory: the politics board has gone nowhere in quite some time.

There we have it. It didn't require a question about questions of metathreads during the xmas season resulting in a moribunded trickle of threads probing the exploratory nature of the election ritual....or something.

You an Host have accomplished what you wanted. Succesfully created your own language that the other 75% have tolerated just because they know they agree with you. So don't step back now and wonder where everyone has gone, like you wanted more.

You make 2+2 sound more complicated than the theory of relativity, and host throws out the entire internet to prove....something. It was only a matter of time before you entertained yourselves to complete boredom.

That's what happened to the politics board.

docbungle

Ha ha, Host and Roach did it! Scared everyone away!

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