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Unread 27 Apr 2003, 12:30   #1
Marilyn Manson
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Exclamation Something of a dissertation on the subject of debate

This is my first 'big' thread in a while, which probably means I'll balls it up, but we'll give it a shot.

I just wanted to try to go some way towards debunking the idea that The PA Forums are a bad place for debating issues. They aren't. We do ourselves down constantly over this.

In my experience, usually every debate going on here will attract a wide variety of sensible, intelligent and reasonable people. Naturally, you get twats. But they become distinctly peripheral during any debate. I surmise that the reason that the intelligent people come out on top is the very freeness of the insults that are allowed here. But more on that later.

My experience of debate on the net is not, it must be said, overly extensive. It is however, pretty broad.

I completely rule out ideology-based forums for starters. These are the worst possible ones you can go to. Forums whereby you and approximately three hundred ideologically similar individuals gather are not places any reasonable, open-mided person should ever go to. They are little more than shoutting houses whereby the onus is on who can make the loudest noise and denunciations of the forces of global imperialism/The Jewish bolshevik conspiracy etc.

I go for those two very polar extremes, beause that is what these forums generally tend to be based around and cater for. Like all good extremists, debate is something to be completely destroyed in these places. Moderates generally realise the crappinesss of these places, and thence you don't tend to have social democratic based politics forums or liberal-conservative forums. These forums generally seem to serve quasi-fascist 'hang em high' types or Marxists that have supped on too much toilet duck. They are, needless to say, crap.

However, this is not to say that non-partisan forums are all good. Lord no.

What of non-partisan forums that are specifically orientated towards politics? Well, I find these exceedingly thin on the ground, and their quality seems to be variable. I don't know why. I would think these places would be best of all. However, they seem to contain very little life in them - even if you can find them, as they are decidedly thin on the ground as far as I can tell.

However, all is not rosy for politics boards that are appended on to wide forums. I am, for the purposes of this, going to give two examples of non-partisan forums, with both having strengths and weaknesses. One, however, is notably better than the other.

This is The Europa Universalis Off-Topic forum. It somehow manages to combine relaxed, friendly debate
with a generally above average level of debate, at least, on quite a few subjects. However, it seems to lack the philosophical depth that we get on here. There seems to be a strange 'consent' almost to act responsibly.

This is The Civfanatics forum. Now, I freely admit I am better at critique than exposition, and I am going to lay into this particular board for a bit. For starters, It is full of a large majority of twatish throwbacks. There are quite a number of intelligent people here, including one particularly insightful gentleman with extensive experience and knowledge of Eastern Europe. But, for some strange reason, I completely hate this place. I think the primary reason is that no matter however twatish a person can be - and they can be exceedingly so on there - everything is dealt with by the moderators, one of whom, is I have to say, throroughly unprofessional, hot-headed and lets his own personal bias take him over at frequent intervals. Just about every GD mod and admin I have ever known and/or worked with puts him to absolute shame. A favourite end post to a closed thread usually went like this, as I recall; "This thread is being closed for X reason, and you're all completely wrong anyway and The Bush administration is right". Or equivalent.

There is no room for baser expression. Now, one might be lead into thinking this a good thing. But when all a person has to offer is the most trollish, idiotic crap ever known to man, they simply deserve flaming. It's as simple as that. They can post said crap and never once be ticked off by the mods. It's a sad fact that the rules do not neccesarily negate aginst crap opinions and idiocy. It's up to posters to put these people in order so that eventually they will likely bugger off or simply get the message and refine the ****e that they post.

I have to say, I have had my fill of that particularly forum. Aside from the fact that it was vastly populated by Americans and Continetal Europeans and there were very few Brits on there to discuss British politics with, so about every second thread revolved around American foreign policy or some other such topical item of unrelenting boredom, and those Brits that were there were, to be charitable, slightly stupid. There was one Thatcherite bloke who was very intelligent and vaguely sesnible once you slapped him across the face with a wet flannel, but that was it. Most of the rest of The British posters where either so extreme and/or stupid you were almost always lead into thoughts about hanging yourself after about five minutes of debate, including from one particular woman who was in her thirties, had the most god awfully simple opinions ever, could apparently could hardly spell almost anything right, and yet seemingly had a superiority complex.

There were thousands of other annoyances, such as one genlteman who I can only describe as a Fascist version of Yahwe. He was well spoken, rational, in so far 'rational' can be used to describe any fascist, and the most obviously supressed homosexual you were ever likely to meet.

All these people simply would not have been tolerated on GD. They would have either been banned or flamed to death after a small amount of time. Yet here they thrived, and made any reasonable person who wanted to use the board suffer a living hell.

I think much depends on how a board 'evolves' - Either an ethos evolves whereby people somehow consent to not be twats, such as in The EU case, or they consent to try and keep the debate as intelligent as possible by ridding the board of unseirables. Neither of these principles are active on The CivFanatics board,

So what can we learn from this decidely shaky anaylsis, built on nothing more than my own short little expereience? I'm not terribly sure. The crudest observation is that, contrary to popular opinion, GD is not the worst, not even near. If anyone wants to offer any more stunning observations that I can in my present greasy-haired, half-dressed, hungover state, then feel free.

Last edited by Marilyn Manson; 27 Apr 2003 at 14:54.
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Unread 27 Apr 2003, 12:36   #2
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i have always though this forum had some good debates going on, i mean, if it is a serious conversation going on, the troll get ignored, although i must admit, i am only a moeber of about 3 forums, and this is the only one i post on with any regularity :/
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Unread 27 Apr 2003, 13:45   #3
GavGull
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I think we should credit the board as it is today on the "evolution" of the board, and that the board was allowed to "evolve" in the first place. I think you more or less said this though.

After all, even when GD was primarily about Planetarion there was never any great moderation from FS. It would be a hell of a lot different if the forums had been moderated by FS officials, but this forum has always been about the players and I suppose now ex-players. Spinner may have at times screwed things up, but I think he should be congratulated for his tolerance of criticism (even if this tolerance may stem from apathy). Remember the goings on between Nodrog and him in r3?

Another item is that we presumably did not come here to talk about our political/philosophical beliefs, rather the discussion is/was "a good way to pass the ticks"*. I wouldn't like to say how this has influenced the manner of discussion, but I think it would have played some role in its formation.

yay for us etc :e_chick:


*Sunday8pm misquote lol
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Unread 27 Apr 2003, 14:52   #4
acropolis
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I agree.

I have to add that what we're 'missing' lately is old-fashioned hatred - there aren't any two posters that can be counted on to rip into each other every time they show up.

Not naming names, but most have been deleted.

Obviously in some ways that makes for better debate, but I'd also like to see some venting just to liven things up now and then.

Good job overall tho etc
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Unread 27 Apr 2003, 17:23   #5
JonnyBGood
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Re: Something of a dissertation on the subject of debate

Quote:
Originally posted by Marilyn Manson
What of non-partisan forums that are specifically orientated towards politics? Well, I find these exceedingly thin on the ground, and their quality seems to be variable. I don't know why. I would think these places would be best of all. However, they seem to contain very little life in them - even if you can find them, as they are decidedly thin on the ground as far as I can tell.
Just on one point, forums which are orientated solely or mostly towards politics seem to have variable quality because of the lack of community spirit. Places with little to no community will often not get the best debates as the members will usually not care too much about the particular forums per se. 'Lack of a drive for a better world' or some other such crap I just made up.
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Unread 27 Apr 2003, 17:54   #6
Dante Hicks
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Re: Something of a dissertation on the subject of debate

Quote:
Originally posted by Marilyn Manson
I just wanted to try to go some way towards debunking the idea that The PA Forums are a bad place for debating issues. They aren't. We do ourselves down constantly over this.
Of the various forums I have used for debate, this is one of the best. The others I have tried are :

Louis Proyect's Marxist Mailing List - an excellent mailing list, but far too narrow in scope. Ocassionally someone would come on who objected to Marxism and be flamed by half-a-dozen PhD types and then be promptly banned. Far too many bitter old men with axes to grind too...

Usenet (various) - too many trolls/spammers/random idiots. Boards without an established community are generally crap for debating. There's no continuity in posters (and therefore, it's impossible to appeal to shared ideals) and ocassionally people would just come along and derail the debate with pointless trolls. If you Google Groups my former e-mail address you'll find an entire new thread to denounce me.

Slashdot - similar to Usenet, but slightly better. It seems to anonymous, despite most users having established identities. I read Slashdot every day for almost a year and the only posters I can remember (aside from the admins) were Klerck, Profane Mother****er and Ralph ****** Hater Nader (i.e. all gimmicks). Also, no general forum means there's no real freedom for debate.

Yahoo Groups "Evolutionary Psychoology" & "Daniel-Dennett" lists. Both with high quality posters (even a few famous types on the former) but I don't want to need to read a dozen new books to keep up with each thread.

But I think the main thing is cultural affinity. It's hard to debate with people who don't "get" your references. Here if someone does a bizarre Buffy metaphor on the evils of communism I'll at least know what the hell they're talking about.

Plus, the bigger idiots are banned.
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Unread 27 Apr 2003, 19:28   #7
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Re: Re: Something of a dissertation on the subject of debate

The Anti-State.com forums are pretty decent, there tends to be healthy debates in spite of everyone having a similar political stance.
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