Slashdot Mirror
Running a Non-Partisan Political Forum?
cptnHaddock asks: "The internet was supposed to give a new breath to democracy. While there has been some interesting initiatives, I feel a lot more could be done. Do you have any experience, tips to share, about running a non-partisan political forum? How to encourage well-thought postings and filter out the cynical ramblings, and how to moderate without censoring? Is there any good software that you would recommend for that task? Are there other solutions even better suited to running a policy-oriented discussion board?"
If it's an obvious troll, delete it.
Speaking as someone over the years who has been derided on political forums as both a far right rightwing extremist and a left wing nut job, when it comes to politics, trolling is often in the eyes of the beholder. What would be considered trolling in a left wing forum would be seen as a valid opinion in a right wing forum and vice versa. This is due to the different "hot buttons" partisans of different parties are programmed to have.
I'm currently struggling with just this thing myself. I'm in the process of setting up a blogsite/message board for people who refuse to dirty themselves through alignment with a political party. You are right that freedom of speech must be maximal for proper discourse in one sense, but in another, unrestricted political discourse goes like this once partisans of any major group join in:
partisan: "This issue that my political party told me is important is important so I'm arguing it."
partisanx: "Really, well why do you personally care about it?"
partisan: "for the reasons outlined by my political party."
partisanx: "yeah, I've heard of all that before, do you have any opinions of your own?
partisan: "these are my opinions, I just happen to agree 100 percent with my political party.
partisanx: "yeah, sure you do. When I want to hear your political opinion, I'll go read your parties talking points. Thanks for playing."
partisan: "This issue that my political..."
ad nauseum.
"Our morality is good, theirs is repressive."- Partisanship Rule #3
Not if you ever visit any of the 'intellectual property' threads here, where you're likely to see hordes of posters who haven't the slightest clue about the differences between patents, trademarks, and copyrights; nor the slightest desire to learn. You're lucky if you actually find a poster who's willing to look up primary documents rather than repeat mere rumors and bogosities, even when the documents are obvious (ex -- the US Code regarding Federal statutes) and the myths debunked years ago (ex -- the alleged legal validity of the 'abandonware' concept; the myth that copyright infringement is only infringement if it involves money, no matter the scope or scale; or the US sending $30M to the Taliban pre-2001. They're both bogus. If you believe 'em, do the research.).
You'll also find people that seem to think "I patent patents! Ha ha!" is +1 Funny or Insightful, instead of ludicruously stale and inane. How droll.
For most discussions, I think one will nowadays find more insight and genuine debate with less groupthink on Fark, with more references to informative sources and a lack of moderator bias since the mods are few and very, very rarely intervene. These are large reasons why I'm rarely on this site.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Unfortunately, politics in the United States have become so very partisan that most open discussion of this sort will devolve quickly into shouting matches between kneejerk liberals and dittoheads.
I could see that it might not be too bad if there were no anonymous posting.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
A few reasons :
If it's a US-centric forum, you can't avoid partisanship. One of the very cornerstones of US political practice is partisanship - the system has largely been warped from a rational discussion of issues and direction into an "us vs them" argument ("this isn't an argument, it's just contradiction!" "No it's not..."). Of course, there'll always be a few truely non-partisan people around - the people you want to attract - but they always seem to end up being attacked by both sides.
And that's another point: you will be attacked. Trolls, swarming, astroturf, DoS, legal threats - anything and everything, every dirty trick, will be used by one or the other to destroy you. Because you threaten their beliefs, because you threaten their cosy bipolar system, and sometimes just because they need to rile up their army of like-mided followers to attack something.
(A little aside: every organisation of any power or size has some sort of hidden master/slave structure. In left-wing organisations, the two parts are sometimes called "members & militants". The militants are, well, militant; they make policy, choose targets, etc. Members exist so that (a) the militants can point and say "look, we have 30,000 supporters, so we must be right!", and (b) because 30,000 members turning up at a rally is much more impressive than 10 militants...)
Finally, it's impossible to keep it non-partisan. Gradually, in 100 different little ways, the group will show a consensus biased towards one side or the other. Even these little biases will attract one or two like-thinking members, and discourage one or two others. Eventually the tipping point is reached - and in these things, that point is almost invisible - and the bias becomes unrecoverable.
So, nice idea - and one I applaud tremendously; I can see my own country's political system becoming more and more party partisan every day because that's what the parties desire. But, ultimately, doomed to failure. It'd be a nice windmill to tilt at for a while, though...
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?