Political threads should be dropped since this is a gaming forum.

I personally can't stand many of the political conversations on this site, but I don't want to see the sub-forum go. It's an important outlet for some of our members.

I do think it would be great to onboard a mod or two who is deeply interested in politics and is willing to monitor threads very closely. I'd also like mods to really lean on rule #3 for political threads. That means no "deceptive hooks" and thread creators should "engage the thread." A substantive, clear OP can start a controversial thread on the right foot, and an attentive host can manage a civil conversation. I do think political threads have become a refuge of sorts for trolls, and these suggestions might curb that bad behavior.

Also, as @morenoingrato wrote, it would be outstanding if political threads about entertainment media were labeled as such. I've mentioned this on Discord, but I've been increasingly turned off from movie discussion because it feels like 50% of movie threads are intended to advance a political argument.

Finally, thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this discussion.

Political board should remain. It draws a lot of traffic and can have good discussions. Of course there will always be toxic discussions, but that is kind of the nature of debate. Overall I think it does more good for the site then bad, since people don’t have to click on the threads if they aren’t interested.

That being said, might I suggest have one official election thread to keep all the election stuff in one place. We always get overwhelmed with election threads when the us presidential elections happen. I made one for the last one, but ended up having it closed when I got busy and couldn’t keep up with it. I’d be happy to make another if you would like. I feel a bit more comfortable doing so with the ability to replace me now if I’m not keeping up on it.

Like a few have already mentioned, if the political forum seems to be that big of an issue, I would for now, stop it from trending on the front page altogether. Hot topics, latest topics, doesn't matter. That way users who want to get into political discussion have to 'go out of their way' to get there specifically, so there aren't exactly a lot of excuses if someone isn't happy with what's being said in that forum, aside from those who are new to that forum. It should at least stop any users from being annoyed or triggered who see it on the front page and don't have the option to remove it from what's trending. If users did have that option, that may be something to look into, but it doesn't solve the question of, are existing and non users being brought in because of it, being turned off because of it, or do most not care because they came here for gaming related information and discussion? This can be a slippery slope however when it comes to all the non gaming related forums if people have issues with them, now or in the future, especially since politics these days seem to be slowly leeching into everything else regardless, even gaming to a degree.

I wouldn't just drop it at this point without trying a few solutions where it still exists, and I wouldn't heavily moderate it beyond what's being done now, because you will end up with the same type of push back social media is getting right now in terms of censorship. That would totally go against politics in general, and political discussion in a political thread, within reason of course. A political forum is all about free speech and if that's not something you can handle, then you should stay out of it. Everything has it's upsides and downsides. Trying to make slight changes so everybody can still enjoy their experience as much as possible makes sense, but creating 'safe spaces' is not a good idea in general. While that may fix the problem here and now, it will almost certainly raise new issues in the future because of it. I wouldn't be surprised to see a rise in politically based topics, as minor as they may be, leeching into the other forums much more often and quickly if there wasn't a specific political forum to post them in, and I would have to assume most would agree that would be worse than what exists now. Stricter moderation could of course fix that, but how many users will be pushed away from the site because of it?

If you will not tolerate being burned, messing with fire in any manner is a bad idea, so you stay away from it. You don't ban fire from existence though, because it certainly has it's uses.

Keep it. If certain members are engaged in obvious toxic behavior to other members, reprimand them as you would were it any other thread.

Much like religion, there's always people that refuse to engage in civilized discourse when disagreements happen. Don't punish a community for the "sins" of a few.

Not too long ago, I had a post in a non-politics thread that wasn't very polite. The mod informed me of this as did a non-mod user. I editing the comment to show I had a change of heart and even apologized via message to the non-mod user who I felt I had unjustly wronger. Everything I just detailed should be expected from any decent user.

But that's just my opinion.

I say keep it

Political threads aren't the problem.

The toxicity allowed in and started by certain users' political threads by the mod team has been the problem.

It's easy enough to ignore so I don't mind it. That said, from my (limited) experience with politics discussion here, discussion there is usually fairly fruitless and painful to read (mostly because of the toxic tone that is common in political discussion in general).

Getting rid of it wouldn't solve anything as you'd still get political talk related to games and movies in those boards. And those creating political threads just to get a reaction of out people would still do it but in other parts of the forum.

I would say yes, but honestly I wouldn't be too upset considering I'm already on a political forum (don't ask lol) and it isn't the main purpose of this site anyway.