Poll: Role of Political Advertisement on ChiefDelphi

[Cory]

Originally Posted by SilverStar

How would people like it if I started a thread advertising some company? Or if I replied to such a thread by explaining why the company is evil?

All Microsoft bashing must stop immediately

[Steve Howland]

I am one of those who voted for no political advertisement threads.

ChiefDelphi is a very valuable and important resource and gathering place for tons of FIRST participants from practically every team. Nobody should have to risk their privileges of participating because of a heated political debate.

Many times people at my school have argued endlessly about elections and political parties, and the only results are hurt feelings and added frustration. Although our moderators are very good and I do not find that political debates get out of control when a close eye is kept on them, if one erupted when no moderator was there to stop it somebody could lose their CD account (or all credibility on the site) due to rash behavior on a topic for which these forums were not fully intended.

There are plenty of places to discuss politics, such as in chatrooms or other forums, however ChiefDelphi is just too terrific and precious a place for people to lose. If we could all be gracious and professional all the time, we could have these threads. Unfortunately that is not the case and it would be a shame if anybody was unable to be a part of this community just because of a different political belief that they failed to express in an acceptable way.

It was mentioned earlier that political discussion and attacks are hard to distinguish from one another sometimes, and to avoid attacks I believe it is necessary that political stances not be taken on a robotics-based site. We all are entitled to our opinions, I am just afraid that they will breed anger or cause the loss of use of these forums to even a single person.

-Steve Howland

[Bharat Nain]

I feel sometimes these arguements should just stay out of ChiefDelphi. People have extremely strong feelings about something and it turns into a flaming fight rather than a debate[Not referring to the recent one]. It's happen in the past. Moreover, lets discuss robots, its more fun

[Koko Ed]

I am a veteran of numerous messageboards polarizing subject matter like politics and religion are almost always I'm right/your wrong nonsense (remember most messageboard don't have a logical presence like Ken suggesting that people use communication skills when posting instead of being rude idiots. The moderators are there just to deal out justice not to guide the posters to better posting behaviors).
There is a possibility that Chiefdelphi could actually have reasonable debates here instead of inane shouting matches that eventaully turns into brutal trolling (my favorite messageboard is rife with annoying political discussion that has caused both liberals and conservatives to not only produce obnoxious threads that are for no otehr purpose than name calling but also has cause posters to create alias that are direct insults to other posters.

[Max Lobovsky]

One of my main complaints with ChiefDelphi is that it seems so extremely worried about any sort of conflict. I can't imagine why any sort of discussion (as long as it doesn't degenerate into a flamewar) should be banned from the Chit-Chat forum.

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

I most definitly think that these discussion should remain, however, I selected "Moderators should keep a very close watch on these threads" for a reason. Referring a recent thread, moderator David Kelly quickly closed it after noticing the pattern it took. See thread in chitchat. It was necessary and it was taken care of. I've also noticed that there are a few users out there who make it a point to step in and try to help sort things out when there is a conflict.

No matter how much conflict we allow, there is a line between personal attack and discussion, and it's battled like mad every time there is a controversial thread. If one can't control their behavior in a post, they're generally informed about it in a reply or a private message. I don't think there is any need to ban political threads if this self - moderation continues, but it's still unreasonable to expect a large number of educated people in this situation to pull off a flawlessly sportsmanlike discussion.

So is there a reason behind the banning of political material from signatures? Personally, I think our signatures should be held to the same account as our posts: fine as long as its not personally attacking someone. Banning signatures because they are of a political nature does not seem fair. Why isn't this ban extended to religious or ideological signatures also? Drawing the line on the topic of discussion, instead of the type of argument seems dangerous.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...threadid=30697

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

Originally Posted by SilverStar

So is there a reason behind the banning of political material from signatures? Personally, I think our signatures should be held to the same account as our posts: fine as long as its not personally attacking someone. Banning signatures because they are of a political nature does not seem fair. Why isn't this ban extended to religious or ideological signatures also? Drawing the line on the topic of discussion, instead of the type of argument seems dangerous.

I have not seen a single signature on this site with a caption similar to "My religion is better than yours because...". You make a good point that it needs to apply, but I think this is a reasonable ban. While I had no problem with political banners, a few users did, and it was getting to the point that people were arguing over their signatures. I think if there was a problem with religiousness in the signatures, it would be brought to light and fixed. The question is, what do you define is a problem?

[Bharat Nain]

Originally Posted by Eugenia Gabrielov

I have not seen a single signature on this site with a caption similar to "My religion is better than yours because...". You make a good point that it needs to apply, but I think this is a reasonable ban. While I had no problem with political banners, a few users did, and it was getting to the point that people were arguing over their signatures. I think if there was a problem with religiousness in the signatures, it would be brought to light and fixed. The question is, what do you define is a problem?

Not only that, some banners were jumbo sized, most of the time larger than any posts they ever made on CD. No offence meant to them, but it got annoying, and did not create an friendly-family type of environment. I like debates and stuff, but not to the point people go bluntly and attack each other. Some of the banners clearly had inappropriate content. In all seriousness, all it takes is common sense, think before you post.

[Steve W]

For the record, I was one of the people that requested that the political banners AND size of banners be addressed. I am Canadian and really don't care who you vote for or support. I do care that I come to CD for robotics. I really got tired of seeing half page political banners every post or two while I was trying to read a thread. I guess you should ask the question "Why are you here?" If for politics, I ask why CD. There are plenty of places that you would be welcome to debate politics.

To support David Kelly, I would have closed the thread if he hadn't. As moderators it is impossible to get to all of the threads just as they are starting up. As it is I spend 2 - 4 hours a day on CD and the amount of posts at times makes it tough to keep up.

The only way that I would agree to see political discussions on CD would be under a Politics thread. I could then disable it from appearing on my portal. I wouldn't ask to be a moderator so to me it would be as if it didn't exist.

When I was growing up (no comments) my mom gave me some good advice. "Don't talk about religion and politics." To have a one on one discussion with a person I know is even tough. People tend to be as passionate about politics as they are about FIRST maybe even more so. What do you think would happen if people started talking the opposite side of FIRST on these threads?

Let's stick to FIRST and robotics, that's why I am here and that's what I believe that CD is about.

[Jeff_Rice]

Note: I'm using myself as an example in this post

Looking at this thread, I noticed it had not input from anyone with a rep less than 4, so I figured I would try to represent that group. It seems to me that the majority of people on chiefdelphi are here as spectators, occasionally dropping a post here and there.

Something such as political discussion often just seems like clutter. Most of the time you aren't going to change anyone's opinion. It usually takes a vocal encounter to do that in my experience.

The reason? Chiefdelphi is on the Internet. It is hard to trust anything on the internet, as your English teachers no doubt will tell you when you are doing a research paper. Though it has a decent reputation, it is made up of people, and people are fallible, and will let their ideal end (changing the opinion of the reader) justify their means.

As such, many people avoid such threads, having informed themselves of issues via more reliable sources than an unrestricted membership forum. Most of them already have an opinion based on the information they have gathered, and reading what others say on that topic probably won't have any effect beyond wasting their time. To these people, the thread in question is just a link taking up space, bumping the one they were interested in down one notch.

To sum that up, to the casual surfer, the political threads are a small annoyance. That annoyance is outweighed by the benefits of good healthy debate experienced by the people who choose to participate in it.

[Wetzel]

Argument - A course of reasoning aimed at demonstrating truth or falsehood.

The discourse would be much better if people wrote on it as if it were a formal paper. Rather than just 'Lavery is an idiot', support it! 'Lavery is an idiot because he let us know where he lives.'

Also, looking at the list of people who don't post in those threads speaks volumes about what they don't say.

Wetzel

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Wetzel

Argument - A course of reasoning aimed at demonstrating truth or falsehood.

The discourse would be much better if people wrote on it as if it were a formal paper. Rather than just 'Lavery is an idiot', support it! 'Lavery is an idiot because he let us know where he lives.'

Also, looking at the list of people who don't post in those threads speaks volumes about what they don't say.

Wetzel

They casual poster may not be posting here but they are reading it and making thier own decisions. Just not here.

[Wetzel]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

They casual poster may not be posting here but they are reading it and making thier own decisions. Just not here.

I was trying to say something along the lines of - look at those with high rep and see who doesn't post in the political and other polarized chit-chat threads. It is a fairly big list.


Wetzel

[JohnBoucher]

IMHO The discussion on CD should be free from politics and religion. I appreciate the focus here. CD has the final word on this forum. Period. EOS.
If users want different discussions, please open up your own site and host those discussions.