Politics board closed

First, moot.

Now, mute.

 

I didn't post over there very often, but I'm sorry to see the politics board close.

As others have said, it's not the only arena of political "discourse" that has gone downhill in this country.

Whole lotta shouting, very little listening (or, in the case of SportsJournalists.com, reading).

We all could probably do a little better at that.

 

Just my two cents, but segregating politics into its own board was an experiment bound to fail, for many reasons.

Politics aren't removed from the rest of life. They color everything.

By separating politics out, the board encouraged politics-only posters, and politics-only posters have no attachment to the rest of the board, so, of course they're going to be less likely to find any common ground with anyone else.

Now, that said, I see where some of this is coming from, because the people worth talking to over there either don't post anymore or don't post very often. There's less worthwhile stuff, which makes the ugly stuff look worse, and it's on a board that is, essentially, set up to say, here's where you argue, so long as you're nice to everyone on the other boards. That might not have been the intent, but that was what happened in practice.

Still, now we're left with a message board that is, essentially, for journalists, but we can't start a topic about anything in our newspaper this morning that might be political. Seems absurd, but there it is.

 

A bunch of professionals who can't discuss things without resorting to personal attacks... now that's absurd.

 

I never called anybody any names except for the asshats who deserved it. ... Oh, and Zeke.

 

Damn you.

 

Well, I can't say I'm surprised. I tried to stay out of most of the politics crap on the board and interjected only when I wanted to add a point or two, but it got to the point where more yelling and name-calling was going on instead of discussion.

The way things are going, maybe it's best we just discuss the baseball playoffs, the NFL, new job openings and news about journalism. As a conservative, I feel like I'm a dying breed as it is when it comes to journalists. I'd much rather talk on here about the 2010 baseball season than the midterm election chances.

 

I blame President Obama. The politics board never got shutdown under Bush.

 

In socialist America, politics board shuts down YOU!

 

Moddy, why don't you charge $100 a year for the premium politics board?

Many of these whackos couldn't help themselves

 

I seem to remember there being plenty of politics-heavy or politics-only posters back when it was integrated with Anything Goes. And most of the politics board-heavy posters still managed to make their way into other boards -- unholy flamewars about health care at Politics turned into back-slapping agreement about 80's music at Anything Goes or building a paywall for news content on the internet at Journalism Topics.

Perhaps, but there were still plenty of locks on the Politics board. Maybe it seemed more encroaching when you go to a board that's nothing BUT politics, so it's overwhelming in its effect, but it wasn't like /b/ either.

Not so absurd, actually. It's probably just as well that a board that purports to represent, at some level, journalism not be so heavily featuring partisan politics. People think of us as highly left-leaning anyway, do we really presidental polls that show us voting for Obama at the same rate as D.C. residents to be out on Broad Street?

Probably the best thing would be if the boards were limited to journalism topics. But that genie ain't walking through that bottle ... wait, I'm doing it wrong.

 

I can now see my abandonment of the Politics Thread earlier this year as early adopter behavior. Cool.