Maybe introduce minimum posts required to post in politics forum??

turgon

One of the main reasons the politics forum remains civilized and psuedo-cordial is because of the strict, but pretty fair, modding by OscarBravo et al. However because its such a serious forum (Internet: Serious Business and all that ) its very susceptible to trolling, and extremists, who will many times have just made an account to target the sensitive issues in discussion on this board.

Like this crap

Should maybe there be a rule that politics requires you have a number of posts already (say 20 or so, something you mightened rack up in an hour), and joined a few days. This could help abate those people who spontaneously join just to post nonsense.

Also maybe a stricter rule on starting topics, something like 50 posts. I doubt many well-to-do people join boards and go straight to start a topic in Politics.

Just my two cents. And sorry to Cult who might have to do the extra PHP work should something like this ever be implemented

ShooterSF

You could do something like the soccer forum... but I dont think its THAT bad.
It's always going to be the case people can be very protective of their views (and sometimes very extreme views at that) when it comes to important subjects i.e Religion, Politics and Soccer.

leninbenjamin

ShooterSF wrote: »

You could do something like the soccer forum... but I dont think its THAT bad.

there have been plenty of times in the past that we've seen a sh*tload of blow-ins and duplicate accounts created to spam or propagate their viewpoint to the detriment of the forum. I think an access request system would be very valuable to such a forum.

stovelid

turgon wrote: »

I doubt many well-to-do people join boards and go straight to start a topic in Politics.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here. Do you suggest that people scan a copy of their P60 to OscarBravo before posting?

Bob the Builder

Maybe introduce a minumum post quota for the whole site before they could post. It'd be funny watching people trying to meet the quota by not posting.

On a serious note:
I don't know - do we really need it though?

GuanYin

In the same forum we have threads complaing about strictness and asking for stricter rules Priceless.

To answer your question, the problem with the post in question seems to be that English is not the first language of the poster or that they have a poor written english. The poster has tried and thanks to some sterling work by donegalfella, there is a topic clearly there to be discussed

We're not elitest, a little patience goes a long way and the people I'd tend to come down on in that instance are those who are rude to the OP. The reason soccer became access request only was because of the level of fighting and outright abuse between the posters. We just don't have that on politics.

On the wider issue, I like to think we're (especially OB) very quick and efficient at stopping spammers and spotting dupes in the forum.

We've had stormfront and many organized group stage planned invasions of the forum and survived well

Hagar

The flaw in the OP is that people who sign up with an interest in politics would be forced to spam other forums first just to get their post counts up.
A similar thing happens in soccer.
To misquote Eamonn Dunphy "It's a good idea but not a great idea.".

Bubs101

But you have to be a member for a while to get into soccer so spamming doesn't work. I wouldn't be against doing that for politics, might even post there again

javaboy

I agree with Hagar here. If someone stumbles across a poltical debate of particular interest to them on Boards, they shouldn't have to build up 50 posts in other fora they're not interested in or wait for a month before being able to post on it.

They simply won't join the site in many cases. I'd say the same thing happens with soccer but the access rules are considered to be more of a necessary evil there than in politics.

ShooterSF

GuanYin wrote: »

In the same forum we have threads complaing about strictness and asking for stricter rules Priceless.

One would think, as a mod of politics, you would be used to seeing bipolar views next to one another

turgon

I see where ye are all coming from. My OP was only based on the fact, that in my personal experience, posters writing in Politics with only 1 or 2 posts are up to no good. Obviously exceptions to that, but I though Id throw out the suggestion anyway.

GuanYin wrote: »

We've had stormfront and many organized group stage planned invasions of the forum and survived well

Tis a tough world, the internet!

bonkey

I could be wrong (it happens quite often), but I'm pretty sure that various ideas for "entry hurdles" for the Politics forum have been mooted before.

Back in my day (you young whippersnappers, you), we were against it on the grounds that when important issues arose, there tended to be two types of new arrivals on the forum.

One were those being the grounds for wanting entry hurdles....the sock-puppets, the trolls, the bigots, etc.

The other were those who were genuinely interested enough in the discussion to finally subscribe to boards...they were passionate enough about the subject and the discussion to want in.

Our thinking back then was that we were better served in the long run by ensuring this latter group could have their say...even if the cost was increased muppetry and increased work for the moderators.

Times change. Moderators change. I am in no way trying to suggest that the reasoning that we decided on back then is what should drive the issue today...but for what its worth, I back Hagar's position, and agree with GuanYin's assessment that Politics has weathered it well till now.

Fratton Fred

Is there a way of spotting duplicate accounts easier? maybe that could prevent some of the "Conveniently New" "suicide trollers".