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Political & Current Affairs forum - Exclude from View New Content?


RichM

Political & Current Affairs forum - Exclude from View New Content?  

43 members have voted

  1. 1. Political & Current Affairs forum - Should it be excluded from the default "View New Content" activity stream?

    • Yes, it should be excluded from the default "View New Content"activity stream
      28
    • No, I think topics submitted in the Political & Current Affairs forum should be displayed in the default "View New Content" activity stream
      7
    • I don't mind
      6
    • Abstain
      1

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  • Poll closed on 18/08/19 at 11:01

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3 hours ago, Tumshie said:

It's also a community 

 

With the best will in the world I've read many posts almost exactly like this over the last few years, they are more often than not written by people who are more than happy to take a thread off topic when they do it they just don't like it when other people do it, they think they're really funny they just don't think other people are. That just life I'm afraid. I don't think this forum is at it's best in the current affairs section and I'm rather sad that people I once respected have turned out to be less than I though they were, unfortunately that is also just life. I think this forum does have some very serious problems when it comes to diversity, others obviously disagree with me. What you suggest might sound like a solution when you run it through your head as a theory but just how do you see it working in real life. Being grumpy and going off topic is just what people and their pesky personalities do, that's what makes this a forum and not a text book. 

 

It's 90% a grumpy old man forum.  I get the impression that wasn't always the case though.  Older threads 2010 and earlier clearly showed a much wider variety of posters.  What changed?  Well since then facebook groups have become a thing and lots of people have drifted away from this forum to there.  Not everyone likes facebook though - mainly grumpy old men, who labour under the delusion that it's for kids - hence the current situation.  Newsflash - kids don't really use facebook anymore.  It's mainly populated by middle aged and older people.  In my opinion, the political threads provide the perfect opportunity for grumpy old men to flaunt their grumpyoldmenness which further alienates potential new members and contributes to the gradual dwindling of this forum.

 

Can a mod provide any stats on average daily post numbers for the years 2009-2019?  My suspicion is it will have crept up slowly up to about 2013 and then began to drop off.

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Well, I have only been here a few years. I reckon when I first joined, I was a 30% grumpy old man, but have progressed, with coaching. I now consider myself to be a 65% GOM, hoping to achieve 70% GOM status by year end. I don't think I will ever reach 90% GOM status though, so, I will have to remain partially GOMless.

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12 minutes ago, rusty69 said:

Well, I have only been here a few years. I reckon when I first joined, I was a 30% grumpy old man, but have progressed, with coaching. I now consider myself to be a 65% GOM, hoping to achieve 70% GOM status by year end. I don't think I will ever reach 90% GOM status though, so, I will have to remain partially GOMless.

Only 65% gormless are you... oh hang on GOMless, sorry carry on

:)

Edited by tree monkey
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18 minutes ago, doratheexplorer said:

It's 90% a grumpy old man forum.  I get the impression that wasn't always the case though.  Older threads 2010 and earlier clearly showed a much wider variety of posters.  What changed?  Well since then facebook groups have become a thing and lots of people have drifted away from this forum to there.  Not everyone likes facebook though - mainly grumpy old men, who labour under the delusion that it's for kids - hence the current situation.  Newsflash - kids don't really use facebook anymore.  It's mainly populated by middle aged and older people.  In my opinion, the political threads provide the perfect opportunity for grumpy old men to flaunt their grumpyoldmenness which further alienates potential new members and contributes to the gradual dwindling of this forum.

 

Can a mod provide any stats on average daily post numbers for the years 2009-2019?  My suspicion is it will have crept up slowly up to about 2013 and then began to drop off.

The forum was much more active when I first joined and tbh there were many many more arguments and a lot of bickering on a fairly epic scale and there was no politics ban/limit.

I suspect your right about FB but that's a messy place to ask questions and can be a very unpleasant and unforgiving place.

It's almost impossible to ban politics and pointless to boot, the compromise is the political forum such as it is

5 minutes ago, Kudzucraft said:

My questions still stands.  Is this going to be implemented?  

 

I think it has but you have to actively do something to stop the political forum from appearing.

@RichM

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It's not my forum and I don't expect anyone to change their behaviour. This was a call for feedback and I gave it. My own personal opinion that I know is not shared by everyone.

For me I prefer to talk about canals and boating on here and do my socialising elsewhere. For me I find the GOM and the fact that consistently more than half of posts in any given thread have nothing to do with the topic, make canalworld.net a tedious place to be at times.

Obviously others don't think so, otherwise it wouldn't be like this. That's fine and good for you, you have the forum you want. I'll throw my 2c in anyway just in case I'm not the only one who feels that way.

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31 minutes ago, doratheexplorer said:

It's 90% a grumpy old man forum.  I get the impression that wasn't always the case though.  Older threads 2010 and earlier clearly showed a much wider variety of posters.  What changed?  Well since then facebook groups have become a thing and lots of people have drifted away from this forum to there.  Not everyone likes facebook though - mainly grumpy old men, who labour under the delusion that it's for kids - hence the current situation.  Newsflash - kids don't really use facebook anymore.  It's mainly populated by middle aged and older people.  In my opinion, the political threads provide the perfect opportunity for grumpy old men to flaunt their grumpyoldmenness which further alienates potential new members and contributes to the gradual dwindling of this forum.

 

Can a mod provide any stats on average daily post numbers for the years 2009-2019?  My suspicion is it will have crept up slowly up to about 2013 and then began to drop off.

This grumpy old man is not delusional about FB being for kids. I have many friends - even older than me - and real, not facebook "friends" either - some who use FB and some who wouldn't touch it with a bargepole, me included! ? In my grumpy view it's  puerile, and lacking in privacy despite its privacy settings. It is sad that so many these days seem to run their whole lives on the pages of Face Book, Twitter and other social media sites. 

 

With regard to this forum, I do think that there has been a change in content over recent years and I am not sure it is for the better. There is more punditry now with what seems to me the need to respond to every topic, even when not knowledgeable about the subject, and what seems to to be an almost obsessive desire to post as much as possible to boost the post count.

quality not quantity should be the watchword! 

 

Enjoy the weekend's debates at Westminster?

 

Howard?

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I demand a pole and a detailed on topic discussion on the pros and cons of h̶i̶t̶c̶h̶h̶i̶k̶e̶r̶s̶ staying on topic. I furthermore demand a comfy chair to sit in whilst discussing this topic and whether all topics should remain on topic for the duration of that topic, even if, and not excluding the fact ,that that topic may, or may not have been discussed a thousand times before. Finally, I demand people use the forum search function to answer ALL questions they may have on a topic,so we can ALL bugger off and do something else instead.

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2 hours ago, tree monkey said:

And monkeys

 

Indeed, monkeys, goats, bogles, dogs, cats, ghosts and muppets, plus any other entities, living for otherwise, that I may have forgotten.

 

What with that little lot how can some people say there is not enough diversity on the forum? ?

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31 minutes ago, howardang said:

This grumpy old man is not delusional about FB being for kids. I have many friends - even older than me - and real, not facebook "friends" either - some who use FB and some who wouldn't touch it with a bargepole, me included! ? In my grumpy view it's  puerile, and lacking in privacy despite its privacy settings. It is sad that so many these days seem to run their whole lives on the pages of Face Book, Twitter and other social media sites. 

 

With regard to this forum, I do think that there has been a change in content over recent years and I am not sure it is for the better. There is more punditry now with what seems to me the need to respond to every topic, even when not knowledgeable about the subject, and what seems to to be an almost obsessive desire to post as much as possible to boost the post count.

quality not quantity should be the watchword! 

 

Enjoy the weekend's debates at Westminster?

 

Howard?

I use FB and it can be useful, particularly as i have friends and family who live a fair distance away.

Plus there are some very civilised and specialised groups that I find very useful,  trees and fungi in my case, oddly I find the narrowboat groups full of grumpy sods and hardly bother with them anymore

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9 hours ago, ivan&alice said:

Personally I think that FAR too much time is devoted to "what should we do about the non boat stuff". It is a canal forum. There should be one and one only non boat forum (someone recommended it be called "the bilge" which I thought was apt).

A bit late in the thread but that means you would remove all reference to pets and wildlife as they aren't strictly boaty.  People away from boats have pets and watch wildlife.

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24 minutes ago, tree monkey said:

I use FB and it can be useful, particularly as i have friends and family who live a fair distance away.

Plus there are some very civilised and specialised groups that I find very useful,  trees and fungi in my case, oddly I find the narrowboat groups full of grumpy sods and hardly bother with them anymore

Each to his own I suppose? Like you I need to contact many people including friends and family both locally and around the world from time to time,but I find I can manage perfectly adequately with email and text messaging, and there are more web sites covering every subject than you can shake a stick at for morecspecialised interest and discussion. This has worked very well for many years so I don't feel the need to sign up for anything else.

 

Howard

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I never really understood why the current affairs stuff couldn't go on in the pub, which is where it really belongs. I assume it was because it got so badtempered and abusive it got kicked out (just like a real pub), and parked somewhere it was easier to be ignored by most of us. There again, I mostly ignore the pub too. 

I don't mind threads going offtopic, it's what conversations do. If they stop being interesting, I don't have to read them. 

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1 hour ago, tree monkey said:

The forum was much more active when I first joined and tbh there were many many more arguments and a lot of bickering on a fairly epic scale and there was no politics ban/limit.

I suspect your right about FB but that's a messy place to ask questions and can be a very unpleasant and unforgiving place.

It's almost impossible to ban politics and pointless to boot, the compromise is the political forum such as it is

I have been a member of the forum since day one, and tree monkey is correct, by the time he joined four years later, it was a very active place, with much of the argueing centering around mechanical and electrical issues. There was some unpleasantness but it was jumped on very quickly and miscreants seemed to behave, at least for a while, after a moderator had intervened. The problems seemed to start not long after Daniel took over, and although he had also been a member from the early days, some peple took his youth as an opportunity to push the boundaries, with some unfortunate success. Unpleasantness soon morphed into rudeness and hostility, with one of the consequences being that many of the previously active female members ceased posting. Many of the regular, and helpful, members have reduced their levels of contribution making the forum a shadow of it's former self with what appears to be far less activity than in the past. At one time Alan Fincher and I vied for the highest total number of posts, but like him, I post far less frequently than in the past, one day I will not post at all, which will no doubt please some people!

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37 minutes ago, David Schweizer said:

I have been a member of the forum since day one, and tree monkey is correct, by the time he joined four years later, it was a very active place, with much of the argueing centering around mechanical and electrical issues. There was some unpleasantness but it was jumped on very quickly and miscreants seemed to behave, at least for a while, after a moderator had intervened. The problems seemed to start not long after Daniel took over, and although he had also been a member from the early days, some peple took his youth as an opportunity to push the boundaries, with some unfortunate success. Unpleasantness soon morphed into rudeness and hostility, with one of the consequences being that many of the previously active female members ceased posting. Many of the regular, and helpful, members have reduced their levels of contribution making the forum a shadow of it's former self with what appears to be far less activity than in the past. At one time Alan Fincher and I vied for the highest total number of posts, but like him, I post far less frequently than in the past, one day I will not post at all, which will no doubt please some people!

Not me

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Just now, tree monkey said:

I can be nice sometimes, I have even been nice to you recently 

Errrrm, I don't remember that.You threatened me with your lightsaber earlier, then you wanted to have a duel iirc. And, to top it all off, you called me GORMLESS.

 

Ok, so you may have a point on that last bit.

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Just now, rusty69 said:

Errrrm, I don't remember that.You threatened me with your lightsaber earlier, then you wanted to have a duel iirc. And, to top it all off, you called me GORMLESS.

 

Ok, so you may have a point on that last bit.

I said you made me laugh, that's nice 

;)

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  • 3 weeks later...

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