Anyone else notice that qt3 politics forum is dead?

Lynch actually posted about it, but I'd been thinking it myself for a while now. Jason doesn't even post threads to both forums anymore. He just posts them here. I don't think Lum's separation of sub-forums is the difference. I just think there are a few factors:

1. Many of the people banned at qt3 were good posters on politics and religion
2. Lum actually bothers to moderate the politics forums...even Santorum.
3. Qt3 allows certain posters to shit up the politics threads
4. The discourse here is more civil, overall, with a better signal/noise.

Any others?

Oh, and I posted this in SS because I have no idea where this thread might go, and it's not really a debate thread. Dunno.

By default, forum posts tend to go in Drama Llama. Personally, I think it's healthier if we don't spend too much time comparing the fora.

What about the fauna?

Pretty much yes. Most of the people enjoy interacting with are over here. Also the D&D board lets me get the kind of discussion I enjoy most without the bullshit. Also the fact that it's moderated helps to restrain my worse impulses, when I flat out want to call someone an idiot.

Yeah, pretty much.

I agree. But I think in this case it is valuable because it can help us understand WHY this subforum is more successful here, which in turn may help us keep it so. That's why I didn't post it in the lama forum, actually. This isn't really about fighting between the forums. It's more of a question of what makes a good politics forum possible.

Good posters who are informed enough to be relevant, patient enough to educate and who disagree with each other enough to be interesting.

Also no D-0nes.

Your bad attempt at a joke would have gone better had the word you are riffing on been flora and not fora.

Part of the reason why this forum is better is that it better handles posts by ignored users. Not perfectly, but better.

The real challenge right now is finding ways of pointing out how disruptive Brett continues to be while staying within the D&D guidelines. There was a fair amount of hoo-rah on QT3 about Tom chiding other people, rather than Brett, over what he does*; the irony for me is that if you follow the rules on ad hominem attacks for D&D, you get pretty much the same result. Brett does descend into group ad-hominems, but mostly he doesn't, he just puts up false equivalences and relentlessly attacks progressives while claiming to be "neutral." If you point this out, you're addressing him and his posting habits, not his arguments.

The overriding D&D guideline is posting in good faith. I honestly think Brett mostly does this. He believes what he writes, it's just really skewed. It wouldn't matter if it didn't result in the derailing of otherwise decent threads, since people find it so annoying.

*yes, I know this is a QT3 comparison, sorry about that.

There are two Brett hypotheses which allow me to retain faith in humanity:
he's mildly retarded and does post in "good faith"
he's a tenacious, slightly meanspirited, easily amused guy who has developed an effortless formula for getting a rise out of the same handful of people

Also: moderation matters. The fact that Dawn Falcon still freely posts in P&R while lots of good posters were banned (not necessarily for P&R posts of course) says everything you need to know. Moderation matters, you get the forum your moderaters want you to have, & c.

Honestly you should just ignore Brett. Speculating on his internal world might be fun, but it's ultimately pointless. I long ago accepted that its very doubtful that he and I will ever be able to engage on a meaningful level and moved on.

What wrong with stating "your continuous partisanship and bad-faith arguments are tiresome and idiotic" ? Seems within guidelines.

I think you have problem with differentiating between people "you are an idiot" and ideas "what you say is idiotic bullshit". Don't go after people in D&D. End of story.

Something like 80% of the posters worth a shit in P&R moved over here in the great schismening. It's not surprising at all to me that both the Sanctum and D&D are far better forums than QT3's P&R. Popped my head in there a few weeks back and was appalled at the state of things. Ugh.

I still need to learn how to not respond to Brett when he's in one of his moods, though. Good grief.

I think that WAS the joke.

Mindless contrarians like Timex offer nothing to debate, either. Even after they get smacked around, they just slink back in a few weeks later and start their schtick back up.

I should point out that I've come around to feeling that some degree of trolling is actually healthy for a forum - it's an effective if not particularly enjoyable way to bring up arguments that would otherwise go unsaid. That is, sometimes it's better to knock down the straw man so we all know which side is right instead of complaining about trolling, that sort of thing.

Eh, Timex actually improved quite a bit from his (awful) first few months. I even took him off ignore! Dude still has some serious lolbertarianism going on, but whatcha gonna do.

I like that you guys seem to think this represents a net win for this site.

Adam B
Yeah, I dunno. I'm not going to get into cross quote and cross linking but that hasn't been my experience, such as it is, and I've honestly decided (in the last few weeks) to stop visiting qt3 partly because of his reemergence.

I post threads there about technical or academic stuff I know certain people will be interested in like JeffL, but the low-level bullshitting funny stuff is completely worthless on QT3 now. It's immediatelly overrun by dipshits.

Oddly the QT3 games forum has become less and less useful to me because god, I don't give a fuck about 90% of the game topics on there. I don't care about previews; I don't care about marketing; I apparently don't care about the genres the current QT3 demographic does.

Hipster!

Eh, based on our posting histories you probably have a shorter fuse than I do for posters like Timex. I don't go round QT3 much any more either, but it has entirely to do with the fact that far more posters that I'm interested in interacting with post here than there these days. Well, Tom's bizarro-world view of moderation doesn't help either, but I put up with that for years without too much trouble.

I agree with this post. Monsieur! More champagne.

Edit: Oh, and I forgot to add: Posters like Scuzz...nah, I'm not going to say it.

I didnt notice.

Maybe we can not turn this into a thread where we bitch about other posters?

C'mon jeff, you must've known you were going to get splashed with some santorum when you clicked on the thread. Look at the title, for goodness sake.

To be fair, any discussion of a forum is going to involve the posters, since they, ah, are the forum.

But I get what you mean.

I agree, but it's a well worn refrain that some people won't, and that he will derail threads as a result. That is after all what happened in your Boring General Election thread, which you took some pains to try and keep to the objective stuff.

I bring it up not to bitch about Brett, which is a dull topic, but purely as a pragmatic matter.

Well if you are going to bitch about posters there.

I think everyone who ever posted on the GT3 political forum was a fucking asshole and most of them were stupid too.


I love talking about his forum I have never seen.

Gt3? Yeah, I hate Gran Turismo players with a vengeance too. Fuckers!

Posts like that with the odd typos work really well if you run them through a crappy text to speech thing like http://www.fromtexttospeech.com/.

The posters can also continue on the woman.

I am not a political forum GT3 on a fucking asshole, and everyone was stupid of them the most.


I've never seen a forum like to talk about.


And yes because it oddly wasnt obvious - these were not a serious posts.

I've never seen forum talking like yours.

I propose Dartwick's title be changed to "off his meds."

Big words from a pustulent lima bean!

I dunno, "Herpus Derpus" is working out pretty well for him right now ;).

Plenty of people are willing to climb down from a silly roost when given the opportunity. Brett included.

But if you take this shit all serious and get all "oh hurf dohurf me mads and shouty", of course he's gonna put his back up too.