Political forum discussion and planning

[Cain]

So, as you're probably aware, Alty is kindly setting up a political forum for me to run.

Here, I want to solicit ideas and opinions about what you'd like to see.  Honestly, I haven't been giving it too much thought because a) personal drama, which is none of your business b) reading c) odd sleeping patterns making it hard to sustain thoughts more complex than "check emails" and "acquire coffee".

Here is a very rough plan I came up for of the forum, as I'd like it to be.

Main

General Political Chat – stuff is happening.  Talk about it, if you must.  Threads from here might be promoted to other forums, as the situation develops.  Otherwise, consider this a catch-all forum for things that don't fit elsewhere

The Dismal Science – the place to talk about the economy, and related issues

The Foreign Office – place for discussing foreign policy and regional/global affairs.  Please note, your benevolent overlord will likely be keeping a close personal eye on this section.

Related Specialisms

History – some stuff that happened a long time ago, which probably isn't relevant

Religion – you're only going to discuss it anyway, so consider this your ghetto for C+Ping arguments from Dawkins and Deuteronomy.

Science – I want jetpacks, and I want them now

Speaker's Corner

The Partisan Divide – this is the place for where all "my political party can beat up your political party" threads go.  Because they're boring, and so are you for engaging in them.

My Elected Representative is a Lizard, Your Argument is Invalid – if you start to jabber on about David Icke or insist on posting links from Prison Planet, your threads will end up here.

Off-Topic

General Discussion – I'm just dying to read about what you're listening to right now

Housekeeping– because I know I'll get thousands of confused and angry emails if I shut down the forum for 20 minutes to do a routine software update without telling anyone first

You'll note, I'm trying to keep the number of excess forums to a minimum.  This is intentional, as nothing is more ridiculous and off-putting than a forum with thirty sub-sections, and less than 20 posts in each.  My hope is to later expand them, adding sections for things like military and security issues, cyber-issues, rights, geopolitics and parapolitics, political science and maybe some others, but for now, to keep it down to the bare basics.

The descriptions and names of forums are not ones I'm especially insistent on having either, chosen mostly for amusement factor.  However, they should convey the general idea for how I envisage that area to be used.  The main is designed for the meat of discussions...it is ideally where most of the posting should be taking place, and be the largest section of the forum.

Specialisms is for things that are related to political discussion, but may not necessarily directly impact on it. I would like to encourage a higher calibre of posting in those and have it be less busy than main discussion.

Speaker's Corner is the dustbin of the site, for things that annoy me and that I want to discourage.  I fully realise that giving them their own ghetto may just encourage such behaviour, but I'm hoping shame and mockery will provide sufficient incentives to discourage these things, for the most part.

And then there is the obligatory off topic and forum announcement sections, which I have merged.  Should the site attract enough traffic, I would possibly split Off-Topic into several sub-topics, based on broad genre, but for the moment that is mostly certainly unnecessary.

I haven't given a huge amount of thought to the rules yet, but what I'm hoping to do is to encourage intelligent political debate with a minimum of partisan bickering or posturing, and facilitating education on political issues.  As such, things like personal attacks, trolling etc will be stamped on pretty heavily, as will people posting obvious disinformation and using sources where the bias is obvious and unquestionable.  I am going to think more about my exact aims and how to implement them here, but feel free to jump in if you have some ideas on that front.

Or, indeed, any other.

[Juana]

I like what you've got so far and don't have anything constructive to add.

[AFK]

Political Panic has a "Society" section that tends to get a decent amount of traffic.  So, it isn't strictly politics, but are topics that can inform or influence politics.  Stuff like gender roles, non-policy education topics, impact of

• on society, etc.,
  
  But, your "Specialisms" section may end up covering all of that.  Or, it may simply not be a spot of interest for the user base of this new forum. 
  

[Cain]

Society sounds like it could cover a lot of potential ground.  I'll have a look at Political Panic's section, to get a better feel of what it involves.  Thanks

[AFK]

Yeah, I don't really think it would be crucial or anything, but might be a good collator if a lot of those kinds of topics seemed to come up.  And I do have to throw out the caveat that it gets a lot of traffic by Political Panic standards.  That place has seen its user base shrink a bit over the last year or so.  But I chalk that up to some really bad (read uneven and partisan) modding.  Basically if you are center or left of center, you get the hammer. 

[Doktor Howl]

Let me know when:

1.  I can reg, and

2.  If & when you want the CG crowd (the sane ones, I mean).

[Cain]

Will do.  Alty said he would be setting it up on the weekend, if he had the time, so I'll likely be tinkering for a day or two, then I'll unleash it on the internet at large.

Might also be worth recruiting the disaffected Political Panic posters....

[Salty]

I will load the software tonight, patience in this matter will be appreciated as I've never messed with SMF before. But it should definitely be done by this weekend, Sunday latest. I'll keep you posted.

Any thoughts on a domain name? Have I missed that?

[Cain]

I kinda assumed you already had a domain name, and I was just taking it over.  In that case...I'll think on it.

[Salty]

All I have is esotericaltd.com
I can use that as a placeholder until we have something else.

[Don Coyote]

All I have is esotericaltd.com
I can use that as a placeholder until we have something else.

That would make an odd name for a political forum, but it might work because politics are generally hidden from the general public and thus being an esoteric subject, BUT it would likely drive away people with Judeo-Christian beliefs AND Atheistic beliefs, while potentially attracting the woowoo crowd.

[Triple Zero]

The descriptions and names of forums are not ones I'm especially insistent on having either, chosen mostly for amusement factor.

I do like the descriptions how they are, actually. Especially the parts about "posts might be promoted to/if..." and "XYZ will end up here" because it gives a very clear idea about how the modding will go.

I noted that on PD, during times when the subforum descriptions weren't all that ... descriptive (esp. to n00bs), stuff tended to end up a lot more wherever than after we re-fixed them. Best to keep that in mind, also as the forum evolves and subforums "feel" or purpose naturally change, adjust the descriptions accordingly. Regulars won't read them after a while, but new people do, and on PD we seemed to have ended up with a kind of generational flushing at some point, and even today people have differing ideas on what TFYS is really for [which is a shame because what I think it's for was one of my favourite subforums second to O:MF ]

Speaker's Corner is the dustbin of the site, for things that annoy me and that I want to discourage.

... Hyde Park, right?



And of course, if you need any particular kind of server/tech/G32 help with something, just shoot me a PM here.

[The Johnny]

id like to engage political issues from a certain social psychology and subjectivity angle

like on how certain actions affect the populace, or the thougth processes of politicians and their ideological constructs

i mean this might fit in any of the boards se tions u memtioned, im just sayin my interests and what i could bring to the table

exlusion, inequity, discrimination, how power perpetuates itself, etc

[Cain]

Brainstormed a few potential names:

Axis Of Malice
The Disorder of Things
Blood and Debt
Broken Hegemonies
Complex Deterrence
Crisis, Complexity and Conflict
Crude Democracy
Dirty Politics
Dominoes and Bandwagons
The Guns of September
Hyperpolitics
Inside the Mirage
Managed Chaos
Negotiated Risks
Shadow Globalization
The Mask of Anarchy
Violent Globalisms
The Post Modern Prince

[Reginald Ret]

Brainstormed a few potential names:

Axis Of Malice
The Disorder of Things
Blood and Debt
Broken Hegemonies
Complex Deterrence
Crisis, Complexity and Conflict*
Crude Democracy*
Dirty Politics*
Dominoes and Bandwagons
The Guns of September
Hyperpolitics*
Inside the Mirage
Managed Chaos
Negotiated Risks*
Shadow Globalization*
The Mask of Anarchy
Violent Globalisms*
The Post Modern Prince

* = good
I would avoid using Anarchy, having mostly internet anarchists quickly becomes boring.

Axis of Malice? That could pull an interesting crowd, maybe not the one you are aiming for though.
Sounds more like the name for a MAD SCIENCE forum.