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HylianSwordsman on 12 March 2019
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SpokenTruth said:
HylianSwordsman said:

You mean you've never visited the forum index page? The one that just lists all the boards? You can't filter that. If you can, just make it so you can't then. It doesn't display topics, and everyone checks it out at some point and would notice a board they hadn't been to and check it out. To me, opt-in would require the least work for the most effective outcome of allowing people who want it to look for it while never bothering anyone else. And how is it a detriment to the currently existing members? Like I said, it's one or two clicks, and in return, they get more members of the site, members who will eventually discover the politics board and decide for themselves if they want to hang out there.

Wait...what are you talking about Opting-In of?  Do you just mean Hot Topics?  I'm talking about the board itself. 

I'm talking about opting into having the board appearing in Hot Topics and the front page, such that guests don't see politics topics pop up and users don't either unless they opt in or navigate to the board itself. If you have to manually navigate to the board when you feel like talking about politics, it's no big deal, as that is a form of opting in already, but the system we have now has politics popping up in the Hot Topics, which draws a lot more attention from the community to inflammatory thread titles. We're only humans, we see attention grabbing titles on the internet and we click. I mean I've learned not to when I'm not in the mood, but when the Hot Topics page is like 50% politics and it's the same handful of people arguing back and forth, it's hard not to feel like there's nothing else to talk about. More attention ends up paid to these pointless political discussions instead of actual gaming content like the site is intended for. Opting-in to having the board appear in Hot Topics and front page would make it easy for fans of political discussion to have the topics show up for quick access, while those who haven't opted in don't have to worry about it or think about it and aren't slapped in the face on the daily by the political opinions of certain members of the community. Thus new members don't get a bad impression of us and have more time to get to know us and grow attached to the place, and longtime members sensitive to the controversy don't start to feel no longer welcome. We'd all get along better this way. Anything is better than what we currently do though.

By opting out, do you mean something other than Hot Topics? How would you opt-out of a board entirely? Just make it so it doesn't appear on the site at all? That would need an opt-out, yeah, but that seems unnecessary, when simply having an auto-filter for the Hot Topics, and I guess Latest Topics, so that Politics only appears if you set it to because you want it to, would solve most of the controversy and drama. There'd still be politically active folks who'd enter the board on their own and then be upset by the presence of opinions they don't like, and a few of those types have been cool people that were fun to talk games with, but only a full ban of political discussion anywhere on the site would solve that, by forcing some sort of off-site solution like Discord to accommodate different schools of thought on how moderation should work, and some people might not even be happy with that. Those people would just have to go to a political reddit or something.