Petition to Restore US Politics

Overheal

Trying to keep this short and to the point, (edit: kinda failed?) all US Politics talk has been negligently lumped into the Donald Trump thread, as everything else seems to be shot completely off the front page within a day or two of inactivity, which is a normal thing to happen in politics. Eg. it's not everyday there's a development on most topics of interest (eg. a confirmation hearing, attempts to ban immigrants, supreme court rulings, net neutrality, etc). So the lumping has happened from users just hanging on to the active thread, which is an ugly step child in a forum that otherwise is largely disinteresting/irrelevant to read/parse Over Here. May as well have topics about Fantasy Books and Classic Cars in the same forum.

As such that thread has a massive identity crisis where if you've logged off for a day or two the topic has already shifted to something completely different. It's why I haven't posted there in months, it became exhausting to try and read: just in the last 24 hours, you have people talking over each other about

• govt shutdowns,
• FBI director Comey,
• gerrymandering,
• Obamacare repeal attempts,
• election post-mortems (still, guys?),
• religious freedom,
• transgender bathrooms,
• a commercial run by the White House,
• and more!

And, that's in the last ~40 posts or less! And there are still other topics that there is no breathing space for (Jeff Sessions, Police Brutality and Homicides, Net Neutrality, the Mass Media (did you know FOX News is imploding? /popcorn), Sean Spicer's alleged clandestine-ish bitcoin transactions, The May-Day Riots, etc etc etc). As such the thread/US Politics talk is totally dysfunctional and not at all pleasurable to read: you have to keep up with and/or give a **** about all of those topics I mention (and more!) or none at all. It actually gives me anxiety/stress trying to just follow the flow of conversation, much less god forbid treat the place as a way to keep up with current events. So speaking for myself, my interest in reading/contributing has fallen completely off in the last couple months, maybe others will chime in here. Trying to peek back in there today, I was reminded why I left and am pretty frustrated that its a lost battle at this point. So here we are..

Trying to split/create more threads in Politics is just going to lead to the same issue of shoving other threads out of the way/being pushed off themselves (the last US Politics-tagged thread of any merit was last bumped in early March), which is far from ideal when the topics are things about ongoing/developing issues over time - and not the AH fare of "[This funny thing for a laugh on Tuesday afternoon]," which don't have a problem being bumped off the first/second page constantly.

So please, restore the US Politics forum. Thanks.

LuckyLloyd

Seconded

Zaph

I know it's kind of stating the obvious, but have you spoken to the Politics mods about this?

blanch152

The latest post in the thread at the bottom of the first page of the politics forum is dated 18th April, over two weeks ago.

That hardly suggests the forum is overwhelmed with threads being pushed onto other pages.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

ThisRegard

blanch152 wrote: »

The latest post in the thread at the bottom of the first page of the politics forum is dated 18th April, over two weeks ago.

That hardly suggests the forum is overwhelmed with threads being pushed onto other pages.

The 2 separate Trump threads, which is an issue in itself, across Politics and Politics Cafe seem to swallow up all American politics topics.

ancapailldorcha

Zaph wrote: »

I know it's kind of stating the obvious, but have you spoken to the Politics mods about this?

Not that I am aware of.

I'm personally against this idea. Traffic in Politics isn't too high at the moment. I don't think a subforum can be justified at those current levels, especially when said subforum was closed very recently.

I'm quite happy for people to start more threads on US politics and would encourage them to make use of the tags.

Overheal

Zaph wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Not that I am aware of.

I'm personally against this idea. Traffic in Politics isn't too high at the moment. I don't think a subforum can be justified at those current levels, especially when said subforum was closed very recently.

I'm quite happy for people to start more threads on US politics and would encourage them to make use of the tags.

Indeed I did not before starting the thread. Maybe I jumped a step, but I don't see it as much a moderation issue as a question of facilities. That said, if it comes down to a little more nudge to get users to stop lumping everything in one thread I'm all for it.

Whether or not the subforum was closed recently, I contended then and I still contend it was not a good decision. I'm a piece of furniture around here normally and tbh I feel that if I've been that put off, it's not a stretch to think others have also.

blanch152 wrote: »

The latest post in the thread at the bottom of the first page of the politics forum is dated 18th April, over two weeks ago.

That hardly suggests the forum is overwhelmed with threads being pushed onto other pages.

In spite of that, nobody has posted/contributed to another US thread since March (and that was me). Prior to that, everything appears to have been pushed back and the users (of whom there seem to be plenty of contributing to that thread) have apparently seen no impetus - either from tools available or from gentle nudges - to create new threads.

Permabear wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Perhaps this is the underlying problem. It means however that the utility of vBulletin is severely underutilized. It actually becomes easier to track topics in this same manner on Facebook; topics/posts change day to day, are forgotten, and each post has comments and sub-comments. A megathread, by contrast, is a very ineffective way to follow a discussion. Most particularly when like I mentioned you're talking about a myriad of topics and not just one something like Water.

ancapailldorcha

Overheal wrote: »

Indeed I did not before starting the thread. Maybe I jumped a step, but I don't see it as much a moderation issue as a question of facilities. That said, if it comes down to a little more nudge to get users to stop lumping everything in one thread I'm all for it.

Whether or not the subforum was closed recently, I contended then and I still contend it was not a good decision. I'm a piece of furniture around here normally and tbh I feel that if I've been that put off, it's not a stretch to think others have also.

Looking at it in terms of facilities, do we want to add more when the current setup is quite underused? I'm quite wary of the idea of funnelling the already small amounts of traffic Politics gets.

That said, I do see where you are coming from regarding megathreads. Sometimes they're a necessity for bigger issues but most of the time they are just pains to sift through and moderate.

I think the solution is that people start more threads if they think that the topic they're interested in would sit outside the remit of one of the megathreads.