Even though I have decided personally to not participate in any future political threads(and it's a chance to maybe start posting again in technical forums instead of just browsing them), I wlll say this : The standard of "civil debate" that some people seem to hold is completely unattainable and hasn't really existed anywhere in history. If anyone thinks gatherings and debates in the Ancient Athenian Demos, or the Roman Senate, or the more modern Congresses and Parliaments are more "civil" than the threads here, they're terribly wrong. What appears as "terrible opinions" and "shit flinging" is what has always happened where common people gather to discuss current public affairs that affect them. 

Now, I just say this in general because it's getting a bit boring to have constantly held in front of your face some imaginary standard of "civil debate" that has not ever existed anywhere in the real world and nobody even knows what it looks like. I think we generally have as civil debates as could be had here - nobody threatened anybody with violence, or doxxing, or heavy name-calling. I'm not sure what people expect - some automatons that exchange graphs and charts when talking about toddler jails? We *are* talking about things that affect people in real-life in those threads, we're not exchanging ideas that float in the aether or about how to win in Civ5.

Peronally I would keep that in mind(as in, the fact that we're dealing with human beings with emotions here), if I was to continue to allow political threads to exist . Of course it goes without saying that moderation is still important, and I was the first to admit that in that thread I could have handled it better - I probably deserved at least a warning. As I said, I've made my mind not to participate in any future political threads. In any case, marking threads as "political" (which is done now) and having downvotes disabled and not appearing on the content feed sounds like a reasonable idea to me. I admit it does seem very strange even to me to log onto Gamedev.net and see in the front page constant posts about political stuff.

16 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

Do mods want to chime in on why the thread was shut down so we can get some clarity? I was under the impression that my thread was shut down when some users started posted for the sake of being inflammatory and were not engaging in good-faith. 

This isn't the first time we've had a thread on politics, or even specifically on Trump. We've done these sorts of threads before in the past, and had a fairly even representation of viewpoints. Rarely have these threads been shut down.

IMO "inflammatory" and not "in good-faith. " are highly arbitrary.   This is the standard line when someone wants something shut down.  Just about any opposing opinion can be labeled with these phrases.  Years ago I was once banned from a C++ discussion group because I didn't like the current iteration of the standard library, while the moderator did.  I wasn't insulting or threatening in any way. The mod said my arguments were "not in good faith". Of course in my view they were.

It seems to me like some are advocating allowing political discussion until it gets on their nerves.  I even noticed this site was described as a "dictatorship".  I suppose it is, as are most of these kinds of sites. However it's a dictatorship in a country with no border control.  People can choose not to come and people can choose to leave. 

Again, I really don't think this site is best served by allowing political discussions in these forums. I doubt gamedev will lose many folks who are actually interested in game development because they can't engage in the Trump war here.  The reverse may not be true.

29 minutes ago, Gnollrunner said:

IMO "inflammatory" and not "in good-faith. " are highly arbitrary.

IMO it seems fairly obvious that "I'm just here to say things and refuse to answer questions from my opponents" is "inflammatory" behaviour and "not in"good faith" regardless of topic. That particular topic wasn't locked when conservative commenters started to gain the "upper hand", it was locked when an apparently conservative-aligned commenter effectively started trolling by refusing to engage with criticism and outright admitting to ignoring all questions of his position. Perhaps you can understand why that might piss people off.

"Inflammatory" and "not in good faith" are not characteristics of positions, they are characteristics of ways of engaging with a topic and a community. Just because some clueless people in other communities abuse the terms doesn't mean this community does.

It's been nearly 20 years since I stumbled across this site, which I mention to give some historical context to what I'm saying, and during that time I've taken part in and seen some great political debates on this site where those on both the left and the right debated with a degree of honesty and clarity so much so that, even if you disagreed with what was said, you would find yourself voting up people on the other side because of the quality of their arguments. That's not to say it was perfect, humans after all, but it felt like you could engage and yes, get voted down, but have a debate over something. And, as a matter of note, I always felt the site was more left leaning than anything else - maybe it was biased by the European contingent, but it certainly felt like those on the left out numbered those on the right - but even so, aside from some bad apples everyone seemed to largely get along.

The problem is, the world at large has changed, people have become more entrenched in their view points and due to certain world events of the last two years those who have had to keep their viewpoints under wraps to varying degrees now feel more impowered. With that has a come a break down in debates and everything feels more divided than before and so you get the problem highlighted on the other page of someone finding this site, seeing a thread which could be seen as bashing their point of view and they either pile on and gain nothing or think '#*@! that' and walk away. 

But you can't remove politics... it is part of us, it is part of the world, and people saying 'stop talking about it' are as bad as those who tell actors/musicians etc on twitter etc to 'stick to <whatever they do> and stop talking about politics' - avoiding solves nothing. 

That said, not everyone want so get involved and it being visible to the world isn't a great thing either so, taking a leaf out of another site I tend to visit, I wonder if it would be possible to create a section of the forum which doesn't show up on the front page and, more importantly, you have to opt in to see the content of (via a control panel option if possible, I don't know the site software well enough to know what might be possible). That way those who are interested in discussing things like politics, religion and the like can go somewhere just off the main section of the site and everyone else is free to live in their little bubble outside of it.

It could have it's own rules etc with the big flashing neon rule being that "this segment is a privilege, not a right; you will be removed from it if you are deemed to break the rules" which would allow the control of people in there so those who argue in bad faith (or just troll) can be kicked out. Maybe it turns in to a left wing echo chamber over time, but if that's the case so be it.

23 minutes ago, Oberon_Command said:

IMO it seems fairly obvious that "I'm just here to say things and refuse to answer questions from my opponents" is "inflammatory" behaviour and "not in"good faith" regardless of topic.

And this is where I disagree.  I certainly don't find it inflammatory.  As for being in good faith, if it is written as sarcasm to make a point, it might be.  It really depends on the context,  which is missing in your quotation.

23 minutes ago, Oberon_Command said:

That particular topic wasn't locked when conservative commenters started to gain the "upper hand", it was locked when an apparently conservative-aligned commenter effectively started trolling by refusing to engage with criticism and outright admitting to ignoring all questions of his position. Perhaps you can understand why that might piss people off.

I don't believe I said "upper hand". Where you quoting me? It's interesting that you would use those words however.... In any case, it's seams to me this is just your characterization of his rhetoric. I would imagine most people on the right would beg to differ.  Show me a threat or a real insult and I might agree with you. 

30 minutes ago, Gnollrunner said:

And this is where I disagree.  I certainly don't find it inflammatory.

So you don't find it inflammatory when someone comes into a thread, posts an opinion, then refuses to engage with the posters in the thread and what's more, actually gloats about how worked up that refusal to engage makes the other posters?

Fascinating.

30 minutes ago, Gnollrunner said:

I don't believe I said "upper hand". Where you quoting me?

Not exactly, but you said, "I could not help but notice the Trump thread got shut down when the more pro-Trumpish side started to gain a foothold. And then we had another pro-conservative thread that was quickly shut down (yes I know there were reasons given for both these things, wink wink)." Perhaps I misinterpreted you, but I took "started to gain a foothold" to mean "was becoming the loudest voices/voices driving the direction of the thread", because that's what I saw happening.

30 minutes ago, Gnollrunner said:

Show me a threat or a real insult and I might agree with you. 

A post need not be threatening or insulting to be unproductive. In my book, coming into a thread and engaging with the thread in a way that provokes strong negative responses is unproductive. Posting an opinion and then outright refusing to engage with critique of that opinion is unproductive. Looks like the mods agree with me.

2 minutes ago, Oberon_Command said:

A post need not be threatening or insulting to be unproductive. In my book, coming into a thread and engaging with the thread in a way that provokes strong negative responses is unproductive. Looks like the mods agree with me.

I think you are just proving my point.  Someone arbitrarily decides something is "unproductive" and that's all it takes. Sorry, but to me that's a cop out. It's an excuse for censoring an unpopular opinion, and it's exactly why political discussions should not be taking place here; It is not an unbiased forum for such discussions.

21 minutes ago, Gnollrunner said:

I think you are just proving my point.  Someone arbitrarily decides something is "unproductive" and that's all it takes. Sorry, but to me that's a cop out. It's an excuse for censoring an unpopular opinion, and it's exactly why political discussions should not be taking place here; It is not an unbiased forum for such discussions.

That you think it's in any way about the opinion shows you aren't understanding what I am (and the mods are) saying. It's not about the opinion, its about the behaviour of the poster and their approach to talking to other posters. Not what opinion is being expressed, but how it is being expressed, and how one responds to others' critique of oneself.

It is unproductive to post opinions for the sake of eliciting emotional reactions. If you can't see that fundamental aspect of how online discussions are conducted, then I'm not sure what else I can say to you on this topic, other than you should probably stay out of the political threads since I'm not confident that you understand what a productive discussion looks like. You seem entirely on board with the idea of not discussing politics, anyway.

8 hours ago, JTippetts said:

My argument was purely about perception. I didn't read the thread in question, because in my experience such things are always the equivalent of monkeys slinging feces, and nobody in the history of ever has been hit by primate shit and thought, "you know what? Maybe I'm wrong about my opinions." But if I were a newbie, and I saw the unread content listing just absolutely dominated by crap slinging from people whose leftist dogma I typically find quite repugnant, like it has been since that thread was started, why would I be willing to give the site a second chance?

With all due respect if you didn't read the thread in question how do you know it was a bunch of screaming chimps throwing dung from the side of the aisle you don't agree with?  I understand the title of the thread wasn't the most flattering to one particular politician but in all fairness it wasn't outright bashing all forms of conservatism and there was even about a page worth of posts where some participants sincerely eulogized a recently deceased Republican senator from Arizona.  While I can see it from your point of view regarding the headline of the thread as well as it being on the front page several times over I do have to disagree about the content.  That being said, I think the filter idea is a good one, I would rather see a bunch of game related stuff on the home page, if anything because lots of people here work in the games industry or are trying to, and the 3 things you don't discuss at work are politics, money and religion.  If we want to make the conscious decision to exit work mode and go into genuine human interaction mode I don't see why the site shouldn't offer that as an option either.  It would be nice for the lounge to be a place where people can openly discuss things and not become like a break room at work where the most contentious issue allowed is "how about them Seahawks?".   

21 minutes ago, Gnollrunner said:

I think you are just proving my point.  Someone arbitrarily decides something is "unproductive" and that's all it takes. Sorry, but to me that's a cop out. It's an excuse for censoring an unpopular opinion, and it's exactly why political discussions should not be taking place here; It is not an unbiased forum for such discussions.

The same can happen in technical discussions just fine.

1) We have a thread about singletons.(note : random example!)
2) Person A comes and claims "singletons are great"

3) Person B posts links about all the problems singletons can cause.
4) Person A responds with "You actually took the time to find links just to prove me wrong? You probably don't have much of a life!"

Would you say that claiming that person A argues in bad faith is "arbitrary" and there's just no way to distinguish between them? Had he received a warning, or a downvote, would that be because the moderator punished him for his positive opinion on singletons?

Granted, of course, it's harder in political "open-ended" threads.