Forum - View topicPolitical Soapboxing.
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16963 |
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So recently in the Community section the topic of political soapboxing got brought up. It was suggested by Tony that someone create a thread here in the Feedback section on the topic to discuss the issues that were brought up in the Community section. So here it is.
With the plethora of more politically themed news articles and threads in the Talkback section in recent months (such as the infamous pricing thread we won't go into) political soapboxing has become a problem. Posts and threads are being reported on an almost daily basis for the issue of political soapboxing that are ultimately derailing threads from any sort of fair and equal discussion. As was mentioned by Keonyn "the articles the threads are associated with are political in nature so I can't tell people they can't discuss things politically when the entire topic is entirely political." The problem is many of the soapboxing rants wind up far OT from the actual topic of discussion and derail the threads. Posters are heavily berated and the topics simply become hostile and OT from the original point. So while discussion of a political nature should be allowed in a relevant thread, the OT political soapboxing and thread derailing really needs to stop. Hopefully Keonyn and Tony will hop in to post their thoughts here. I'll copy mine from the Comm section. I propose this; start with a public warning in the Announcement area. Make it clear there will be a strict policy from now on regarding OT political/religious/moral soap boxing. That thread would serve as the warning and no more shall be given. Make it clear people can discuss the SPECIFIC POLITICS OF THE TOPIC and only that. If you go from discussing the politics of say, releases and what titles a company should get for example, and then go into NRA, financial cliff, etc etc bits, then your posts will be deleted and warnings can be given out. You can discuss politics if the thread calls for it but only for that specific singular aspect. No branching out into misc OT crap. Not the NRA or whatever else, or berating and insulting others for their personal beliefs in a thinly veiled attempt to further your own OT soapboxing bs either. |
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Tony K.
 SubscriberModerator  Posts: 11448 Location: Frisco, TX |
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I've said this before, but I honestly can't stand the Talkback forum simply because of all the soapboxing that goes on where people absolutely feel the need to cut others down for liking/not liking something, which may or may not involve argumentation and rhetorical nonsense over issues such as politics, showing/lacking support for companies/ideals and their business models, preferences in anime tropes/genres, etc, which then result in posts of grandstanding, finger-pointing, personal insults, and various other cases of defamation. And then people get angry/feel insulted/get tired of seeing such tripe, report it, and I've got half a dozen reports or more for just the one thread. It eventually became such a hassle and eyesore, that I really just stopped dealing with Talkback reports at all.
So let me make this clear:
Late last night (or rather early this morning since I'm a night owl), I got a few reports for this thread. The article for this thread simply states that the show got a surprisingly high rating for a really late time slot. In the the thread, people were talking about how equally surprised they were with how high of a percentage it got, and even went so far as to talk about the quality of the show, what production aspects they like about it, how it's good for business, etc. And then it got derailed when one person, which later turned into many persons, focused solely on the show's lolicon undertones and essentially threw everyone who finds the series entertaining under the bus. And because of the few reports I found, I ended up deleting close to 30 posts; posts that not only fueled semblances of soapboxing and trolling, but ones that were also in clear violation of other rules (numbers 3 and 6, but I'll save the lecture for separate threads). Now I'm not gonna' go through every single Talkback thread just to look for problem-posts, but if any of you have been tired of seeing said posts like I have, I urge you to report 'em. And if I happen to be the moderator that deals with it, then your chances of hard rule-enforcement are more likely. Problem-posts = blah blah. Blah blah's not the law.. I'm the law. |
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Dessa
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Honestly, fear of this kept me out of the thread about Obama calling for a new study. Because I knew exactly where it would go.
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yuna49
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As a follow-up to Tony's comment, I find the level of discourse on this site quite unappealing at times. There seems to be a contingent of members who spend much of their time hurling insults at each other. Like Dessa I no longer post anything in threads where subjects like copyright law, guns, or violence in video games come up because I know well in advance that such discussions offer few insights and just regurgitate the same tired positions. I often wish ANN would avoid posting stories like the ones about videogame violence since they seem to serve little purpose other than to encourage flame wars. Other topics I avoid include the influence of moe~ and the related "why isn't anime as good as it once was" type of threads.
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egoist
 Posts: 7762 |
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The Three Little Politically Correct Pigs
exerpt from J.F.Garner's book "Politically Correct Bedtime Stories." Once there were three little pigs who lived together in mutual respect and in harmony with their environment. Using materials that were indigenous to the area, they each built a beautiful house. One pig built a house of straw, one a house of sticks, and one a house of dung, clay, and creeper vines shaped into bricks and baked in a small kiln. When they were finished, the pigs were satisfied with their work and settled back to live in peace and self-determination. But their idyll was soon shattered. One day, along came a big, bad wolf with expansionist ideas. He saw the pigs and grew very hungry, in both the physical nad ideological sense. When the pigs saw the wolf, they ran into the house of straw. The wolf ran up to the house and banged on the door, shouting, "Little pigs, little pigs, let me in!" The pigs shouted back, "Your gunboat tactics hold no fear for pigs defending their homes and culture." But the wolf wasn't to be denied what he thought was his manifest destiny. So he huffed and he puffed and he blew down the house of straw. The frightened pigs ran to the house of sticks, with the wolf in hot pursuit. Where the house of straw had stood, other wolves bought up the land and started a banana plantation. At the house of sticks, the wolf again banged on the door and shouted, "Little pigs, little pigs, let me in!" The pigs shouted, "Go to hell, you carnivourous, imperialistic oppressor!" At this, the wolf chuckled condescendingly. He thought to himself: "They are so childlike in their ways. It will be a shame to see them go, but progress cannot be stopped." So the wolf huffed and puffed and blew down the house of sticks. The pigs ran to the house of bricks, with the wolf close at their heels. Where the house of sticks had stood, other wolves built a time-share condo resort complex for vacationing wolves, with each unit a fiberglass reconstruction of the house of sticks, as well as native curio shops, snorkeling, and dolphin shows. At the house of bricks, the wolf again banged on the door and shouted, "Little pigs, little pigs, let me in!" This time in respnse, the pigs sang songs of solidarity and wrote letters of protest to the United Nations. By now the wolf was getting angry at the pigs' refusal to see the situation from the carnivore's point of view. So he huffed and he puffed, and huffed and puffed, the grabbed his chest and fell over dead of a massive heart attack brought on from eating too many fatty foods. The three little pigs rejoiced that justice had triumphed and did a little dance around the corpse of the wolf. Their next step was to liberate their homeland. They gathered together a band of other pigs who had been forced off their lands. Their new brigade of porcinistas attacked the resort complex with machine guns and rocket launchers and slaughtered the cruel wolf opressors, sending a clear signal to the rest of the hemisphere not to meddle in their internal affairs. Then the pigs set up a model socialist democracy with free education, universal health care, and affordable housing for everyone. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Okaaaaaaaaaay.
I don't know how that story relates to this discussion, but it was pretty funny. |
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