July 28, 2008

Curious George: Intelligent heterogeneous political forum? Is there a forum (in the Interwebs sense, with threaded messages) about politics featuring an intelligent user base, made up of people with varying ideologies?

I find I'm not getting the level of actual political discussion I'd like to have, but of course so much of the "discussion" online is yammering idiocy, name-calling, and Godwin's law. Where can I find – aside from here of course – a decent town square online?

posted by scartol 15 years ago
  • Go fuck yourself, you Nazi cocksucker.
  • Serious post: I don't believe that such a thing could possibly exist online. You are Kevin Costner searching for Dry Land, Coronado pursuing a dream of Hidalgo, the Man of La Mancha looking for... all that... crazy shit he was looking for.
  • As for Monkeyfilter...Fes is gone, f8xmulder is like a comet that appears every 16 months or so, which probably leaves me as the least lefty regular monkey...which is pretty sad because I voted for the goddamn NDP in the last election.
  • The forums at hard-men Trot site Red Action used to be great if you cared about UK working class politics - open to all and very civil considering that included the fascists etc they'd be giving a kicking if they met in the flesh. Sadly closed now but the archives are still up if you care to Google, though I suspect it's not what you had in mind.
  • Such a thing would have to be very heavily moderated, so you'd either have to have very dedicated volunteers or a payroll budget. And the mods would be under constant accusations of censarship for trying to keep it civil. /is pessimist
  • I'm giving it a try at PoliticsForum. They have a ban on one-line posts, so we'll see. My Carlinesque realist pessimism often comes into conflict with my Gandhian faith in humans.
  • Good luck. Don't know of anything, mainly because I'm all meh about trying to discuss anything anymore. Seems like every conversation is so drastically polarized within minutes. One thing I find is a terrible amount of cognitive dissonance about people's political beliefs. I'm sure I have some, also, although I really try to make sure everything fits together. Is it because the world is so complex? Because it's hard to stand a reasonable middle ground without straddling the fence? Because people are too lazy to think things through? MonkeyFilter: yammering idiocy, name-calling, and Godwin's law MonkeyFilter: My Carlinesque realist pessimism often comes into conflict with my Gandhian faith in humans. I like that, scartol. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. Hitler. And kittens.
  • Monkeyfilter: Hitler. And kittens.
  • Metafilter.
  • Oh, sorry, not threaded.
  • As soon as I stop laughing at the very idea of discussing politics srsly, I will post my reply that there is no such place in which to do it. I mean, look what the bastards did to Socrates.
  • A small price for Socrates to pay for the example he set, eh? BH: I think many people are afraid to be caught in a contradiction, or forced to re-examine their assumptions. Especially in the US (where I live), there's a nearly absolute refusal to get past the most surface-level dissection on why people believe the things they do. This makes meaningful discussion about most things – especially politics – very difficult. A professor I had in college once put the importance of dialogue thusly: "You and I have a conversation. We may not change each others' minds. But if it's a true dialogue, we can exchange information and possibly plant seeds for reconsideration – which usually happens after the discussion is over." I think that's a great way to look at it.
  • Beautiful, how the brain-dead filtering system here at work blocks art sites ('nudity'), tech forums ('discussion'), and language translation sites ('proxy/anonymizer') but that supremacist site is wide open. Damn.
  • Arbeit macht frei.
  • Das ArbeitInternechtfilter macht frei.
  • Schultz! I'll put you in ze koolah!
  • "My Carlinesque realist pessimism often comes into conflict with my Gandhian faith in humans" My money's on Carlin in this cage match. He's got (had) a slight weight advantage and a longer reach. Gandhi could use hair pulling with immunity, but Carlin's street fighting moves will find no protection worn under that dhoti. Also, Gandhi's dedication to a principle of non-violence isn't going to help - eh?
  • What is Devoter up to these days? Has it developed a strong leaning one way or the other?