The sad part, Dave, is that he knew it would kill it as well. He simply manipulated the moderator to win a petty victory.

 

I happen to agree with most everything you've said.

 

Bill,

I agree with you and with Dave's (dlq04) post immediately before your post. The only thing I don't exactly understand is what was the petty victory he thought he'd win? What did he think he'd accomplish?

 

I sent you a PM Rob. Let me know if you need more info.

 

With all due respect, the politics thread is NOT a graveyard (unless you are not a member).

There have been instances where someone has "tested the waters" just to see how far one can go without getting a thread moved, and there probably have been instances where a post has been made deliberately to get something moved. The discretion of the mods is critical in each case.

If a post that has "crossed the line" can be caught before it turns a topic into a political wormhole, certainly that post should be deleted and the poster informed.... if however a post takes a topic into a political direction, the topic/thread should certainly moved to politics where it can be explored fully by members.

As I recall, the existence of the politics thread was a concession to Vintage. I thought it was a good idea back then, and I still do today.

 

A grown kids quarrel....in a Vintage Forum.....God,do I dislike this ...

 

No one recalls it better than me since I'm the one who created it after conference with Eric. Never the less, I am no longer a member and many other people have decided not to pay the membership fee over the years. We all have our own reasons, but avoiding the political sub forum is one of my reasons for not being a paid member. PAs2k knows this very very well. If he can get a thread sent to politics, he knows I can't see it.

 

Roy,

Please take a look at some of the threads that have been sent to the Politics subforum. Look at the amount of participation in the thread before it was sent to Politics and then look at the participation in it after it was sent to Politics. I think you'll see a big difference. That's why I called Politics a graveyard, its where threads go to die.

Aside from that, the post in this thread that caused it to be sent to Politics was clearly posted with the intention of sending this thread to Politics and could have quite easily been intercepted by the moderator. Rather than move the thread where nonmembers cannot see it, that post could easily have been deleted. Once guests could no longer see the thread, a good part of the participation in the discussion was lost, and as a matter of fact the thread died. In the 24 hours since that thread has been sent to Politics there are almost no additional posts in it, except for mine protesting the move, Gene's agreeing with me, Jims asking it to get back on topic and Jerry's. From an active discussion, it went to nothing.

Unlike you, I never liked the idea of the Politics subforum, and especially don't like it when a thread can end up there because of the ignorance, arrogance or mal-intent of a single poster.

I think it will be hard, if not impossible, to have enough interesting content in the Vintage forum to keep the forum active if a single, intentional post can get a thread moved to the Politics subforum where nonmembers can't participate, and many members refuse to go.

 

Thanks for giving a little perspective on the origination of the Political Sub-Forum, Roy.

As you are usually a lurker here, I know it takes a "real" topic to bring you out of the woodwork.

 

Looks like the will you vote poll and I can't wait for Wednesday thread are gone too. What happened now???