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.