General OT Politics & Religion

[Deleted]

Why is Religion a forbidden topic but Politics isn't? Both foster incredibly emotive arguments which neither side will usually back down from.

General OT either needs a dedicated Politics forum or it needs to be forbidden with Religion.

American Politics is filling General OT and it's getting ridiculous, pretty sure religious debates about certain countries would fill it as well if it was allowed.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

Religions and Politics may be irrationally subjective. However, religions are personnal, while politics are part of the public tribune. This is also why it's usually allowed on public platforms: politics are everywhere and discussed as they are bornt out of (theoretically) democracy. Again, not religion.

Therefore, it's not hard to understand why politics are allowed, while religions are forbidden.

[Super Kami Dende]

Rules are established by consulting with a magic 8 ball. Enforcement is then determined by a roll of a D20.

Some must use this dice.

On-topic - I would love for Political and Religious threads to be entirely purged from this website. Since this community used to be somewhat civil.

[Endus]

We don't have rules against certain subjects because people get emotional about them, we've decided not to allow certain subjects since they don't get used to discuss the subject, they get used to express hate speech and bait other users.

While political discussion is fractious, it's still mostly actual discussion, even if a lot of it is of the "you're wrong because blarg" "no you because flarg" variety. There's certainly ways to post badly about politics, but the other rules take care of that when it happens.

It isn't even really about people behaving well in threads. It's about how many break site rules. The topics we've ended up disallowing always ended in a rash of banned users for breaking other rules, and usually a closed thread as a result. So now, we just close it pre-emptively, and avoid the rash of bans. A lot of us don't have any issue with discussing those particular topics (I actually enjoy debating/discussing theology and comparative religious studies), but we don't like banning a ton of people whenever they crop up, so this is the lesser evil.

[Deleted]

We don't have rules against certain subjects because people get emotional about them, we've decided not to allow certain subjects since they don't get used to discuss the subject, they get used to express hate speech and bait other users.

While political discussion is fractious, it's still mostly actual discussion, even if a lot of it is of the "you're wrong because blarg" "no you because flarg" variety. There's certainly ways to post badly about politics, but the other rules take care of that when it happens.

It isn't even really about people behaving well in threads. It's about how many break site rules. The topics we've ended up disallowing always ended in a rash of banned users for breaking other rules, and usually a closed thread as a result. So now, we just close it pre-emptively, and avoid the rash of bans. A lot of us don't have any issue with discussing those particular topics (I actually enjoy debating/discussing theology and comparative religious studies), but we don't like banning a ton of people whenever they crop up, so this is the lesser evil.

Is a separate Politics forum or at least a Donald Trump megathread being considered?

[Endus]

Is a separate Politics forum or at least a Donald Trump megathread being considered?

"Being considered" is an odd way to phrase it. We're pretty consistent about reviewing our site policies, including the available forums and whether we need a new subforum. The possibility of a separate Politics subforum has definitely come up in those reviews before, as have a lot of other ideas, but at this point we've elected to stick with the current layout for GenOT. There's a lot of bleedover between those issues and others, such as ethics or world events, and separating the two would cause its own problems. The possibility is always "being considered", but GenOT really isn't that much worse in this regard than its ever been.

I can confidently tell you that a Trump megathread is not going to happen; we're not boiling American politics down into one megathread. We do that for events like elections, because there's a spam of new posts on all the candidates, usually, and a lot of repetition, but not ongoing. If you see pointless/duplicate threads, though, please report them or PM a GenOT or global moderator so we can take care of them.

[Darsithis]

As Endus said, we rarely open new forums because we need there to be enough activity to warrant them. "Politics" is a pretty nebulous grey area and currently GenOT serves that function just fine.