I don't know what you guys are discussing internally. But if you start with "Because much of this is typical nonsense from you, I'll only address what's important..." then you come off as extremely dismissive and a little vindictive.

In which case you should have no problem with actually discussing Rol's issues without just dismissing them as nonsense.

Alright since people want to complain that Rol's points aren't being respected but don't want to repost the supposed valid points, I did it for you. As far as I can tell, they are as follows:

1. The problem goes deeper than the Politics board, getting rid of the board won't solve it as it'll go elsewhere, the reputation system is more work for mods than simply upping the strictness of moderation.

Problem with the first point is that it has already been discussed to death. A lot of people want to keep the politics board, we get it. People would post politics outside of the Politics board if there was no Politics board. Of course they would, they already do. We get it. The mods need to do more. We get it, that's the point of the thread.

2.His second point tries to define the scale of the problem, and suggestions to deal with it. Essentially, he says titles, article quotes, and the user's original post content all twist news articles to support an inflammatory agenda. Solution? Lock such threads and moderate their authors. The history of users provides clues as to who is likely to post such threads, so keep an eye on those users especially, show low tolerance, high suspicion towards them.

Valid points here, but pretty self-evident. Still, it's good to define the problem, so there it is.

3. The third point doesn't seem to have anything new to add. It's just him saying that the mod team needs to do more, and accusing this thread of being time wasting. He thinks there should be more, heavier moderation. Don't we all. He believes this is essentially the only solution and that mods are avoiding it for some reason, cites examples of times where the community thought there should be heavier moderation, cites examples of himself breaking the rules and being moderated for it. Not sure what this adds to the discussion.

4. This is less a point and more an empty threat to try to get the mods to act on this more quickly. Definitely adds nothing to the discussion.

Summary: He thinks Politics is toxic, specifically in that people bait people with inflammatory twists on news events, and that it's usually the same users every time, and that mods should just lock such threads and moderate their authors. He thinks any further discussion is a waste of time and that there is community consensus on this.

Did I miss anything? Feel free to spell out what I missed. I feel like most of what he said has already been discussed, so I don't see what was so awful to have dismissed.

Quite simple its not that it has been dismissed, but the WAY it has been

Otherwise a fine tldr

Since nobody really responded to my original post. I just wanted to reiterate that I think the us elections needs one central thread to contain everything related to it in. All trump and other threads should be locked and pushed into one thread.

Definitely agree. I'm still on team Burn It Down, but if we're keeping it, every major election, US or otherwise, needs its own thread, run by someone without a toxic history. I'd add that we might benefit from having a thread for the major political parties of the US, and a thread for news surrounding the current US president. Perhaps similar threads for other countries as well, if there's enough demand. We do this for the major console manufacturers, and it works alright there.

I'm not saying that every post having to do with Democrats or the left needs to be in one thread, or vice versa for Republicans and the right, I'm just saying we might benefit from having a thread for each major party to contain some of the sprawl of political topics. Like when primary season comes around, rather than have a different thread for Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, California, and Super Tuesday results, the main Democratic Party thread could just update with news, and people could comment on it. Rather than a different thread for every one of the soon to be multiple dozen candidates in the Dem primary (or in 2016 it was the Republican primary that had this problem) you could just have the Democratic party thread update with news of the latest announcement/rally/etc. Like the Nintendo thread updates with news. Major news for Nintendo gets its own thread, and major political news would as well. But a lot of stuff could be condensed, which would be easier to maintain.

It would also create a space, not quite a safe space or anything, but a sort of home turf where it's understood that a particular group hangs out and it would be bad form to do obviously provocative things there. Like if you go into the official Playstation Nation thread and start shitting all over Sony, it'll be more likely to be frowned upon as deliberate provoking of Sony fans, than it would if you were to say, create a dedicated thread on the Sony board with criticism of the PS4. Similarly, if there were a Democratic Party thread and a Republican Party thread, then when Trump fans go into the Democratic thread or Bernie fans go into the Republican thread, it'll be easier to call them out for trolling if they go there to provoke people. Threads related to specific news events, like the recent shooting, or to game related politics like "Such and Such Developer Makes a Historically White Character Black!" or "Such and Such Country Outlaws Lootboxes!" would still have their own threads, and still work like they do now. Similarly, there's an official Legend of Zelda thread, and while major news like a game release gets its own topic, but a lot of simple discussion between Zelda fans happens in the official thread, as well as small updates and interviews with little tidbits and the like. In Politics, there are tons of threads talking about the latest outrage from Trump, and while some news around him warrants separate threads, like a Supreme Court nominee or the emergency declaration, his latest rally or tweet or his less consequential policy announcements don't all need their own threads and could go into a larger Trump discussion. Inevitably we'd probably need this for every American president because so much attention is drawn to them. To be clear, the Trump one would not be some partisan space, just the spot where smaller stuff around him goes, and would allow for criticism of him, as we wouldn't want it to just be VGChartz's The_Donald, and we wouldn't want the next president to be immune to criticism either.

As for elections having their own threads, I meant the general elections. So a thread for the midterms, the presidential general, off-year elections, etc. where results could be centralized and the discussions of the consequences could all go. Elections related to a particular party, like the primaries, could go in that party's thread. The rest of the stuff I mention here I'm not completely sold on, but I really think it would be a great benefit for each election to have one thread about them, and for it to be run by somebody without a history of trolling. There have been times I wanted to discuss an election but I saw the thread author and left immediately.

Hope that makes more sense.

My original post was more specific, I was just reiterating the point.  Not saying all political stuff should be locked and pushed to one thread, just anything to do with the upcoming us presidential election.  The forum gets flooded with tons of threads every four years, stuff about debates and who is running and what this person stands for and blah blah blah.  I just think anything related to the presidential election should go to one thread, we don’t need a million different threads to discuss essentially the same thing.

TL;DR, Rol's points here, for those that are interested but don't want to read it all:

-After an initial burst of activity to clean it up, Politics should be moderatable by one person, 15 minutes a day to read through all new posts and take actions when necessary, save for when major events like an election happen when more mod presence may be necessary.

-Create another moderator thread just for Politics, at least until mod team feels that the board is back where it needs to be and the second moderator thread isn't needed. Point of the second thread would be to discuss the nuances of how strict moderation would be for general politics, elections, religion, racism, sexism, etc. Ethusiastic community participation in this thread should be encouraged. This will allow the mod team to identify problems more quickly and adapt to them.

-Pointing out willful ignorance and accusing people of trolling should be allowed, called out for what they are, so as to denounce them and promote intellectual discussion and prevent endless back and forths between trolls trying to derail conversations and people having serious discussions.

-While being wrong shouldn't be grounds for moderation, one strategy of trolls is to act deliberately obtuse, forcing multiple people to repeat the same explanations and facts repeatedly while they play dumb, pretend not to understand something that's been explained multiple times from multiple perspectives by multiple people, keep making the same argument from ignorance after it's already been explained, etc. This trolling strategy derails conversations and should be moderated. Not knowing something or misunderstanding isn't a problem, but reacting to having your mistakes pointed out by doubling down on your ignorance is.

-The user o_O.Q should be permabanned, on the grounds that he has no actual stance and just opportunistically tries to get a rise out of people. This would show the seriousness of this effort to clean up Politics. (Again this is a TL;DR, not an endorsement, not trying to start anything here, these are Rol's words)

-Most of the problem lies in a few people that drive the toxicity, so heavy moderation of troublemakers at the political extremes will put pacifists who strive to be reasonable and respectful in the driver's seat of the discussions and reduce how much moderation is necessary. Moderate users who resort to condescension, mockery, and finger-pointing.

-Only allow users with a good record of making quality posts and driving quality discussion to run major political threads like those around major elections. (He doesn't say this, but it sounds like he agrees with gergroy that major topics deserve a dedicated thread). Major threads should receive the bulk of moderator attention. Moderators should be active participants in the threads, call out bad behavior when full moderation isn't warranted, etc.

-Rol anticipates cries that freedom of speech is being attacked. His counter to that is that by being to tolerant of nastiness, the nasty people are driving away more tolerant ones and thus ultimately win.

I think I did Rol's point of view justice here. If I misunderstood anything or you feel I misrepresented you Rol, just say so. I mostly did this because it cuts the word count by around 60%.

45% are against the freedom of expression...Lol, I am joking, I have ofcourse voted NO.
It is a big NO, there is nothing more stupid on the net than people with a completly different life debating on politic. ALL this world is deformed and pure manipulation. Everyone see it from the subjective angle which fits to his existance.