MsPerky

I was having a chat with my dad today...he's been in Rotary for many, many years. One of the tenets of Rotary is that you leave your politics and religion at the door when you go to meetings and you pick them back up on the way out. He thinks our allowing those kinds of threads will be divisive to the membership. I didn't agree with him, but it was interesting to hear his opinions in view of this thread. It does make me wonder a bit if some of our members may have been turned off by these subjects but aren't saying so and just not posting as much. Hard to know...

ralper

The problem is that there is a very fine line dividing serious talk and serious talk gone too far. Unfortunately, there is no "right" right place to draw the line. I think, as we've discussed before, we should allow all discussion so long as it remains civil. This is an adult forum and that is the point.

Until management produces an "ignore" this thread function, I think the members of Vintage will simply have to follow Dave's (dlq04) suggestion that they use will power to avoid the threads that they don't care to read.

Interestingly, I think that probably as many people don't like threads like the "Weather" threads as don't like the political threads. I also think many like the weather and many like the politics. Again, it's a smorgasbord. Pick what you like and enjoy. Ignore the ones you don't.

Or in the immortal words of Grouch Marx, "These are the jokes, pick the ones you like and laugh".

dlq04

[QUOTE]Originally posted by ralper

Legal Bill

[QUOTE]Originally posted by dlq04

Zippy

Deb,
I truly agree with your father, his views are quite sage at this point, IMHO. I am one who will not start a political or religious thread, but I do find that my better judgement goes out the window when I start reading these posts and like Bill, I become quite aggitated.
But unlike Bill I usually let my convictions overpower my better judgement.

I know that this is an "adult" forum that should be open to all thoughts, but conversely many of the vocal political and religious contributors are not even "vintage" people.

Yes, I know I can avoid them, but like Bill, it becomes an obsession for me, like looking at a train wreck, it's ugly but you just keep doing it. That brings me to my first comment on what should be allowed on our forum.

Politics and religion should be moved off to a more general forum, I like your father, think that they are devisive and provide little if any good basis for real discussion.

Last, I think that your fear is also correct, a divided group is one that will lose membership and probably already has.

Religion and politics is best left to houses of worship and voting booths, or perhaps one of the less mature forums on this board.
Politics and religion were banned from S2Ki once, perhaps we need to look at that rule again.

Perhaps it's not censorship that we are looking at but a awy to maintain our membership.

tomcatt

I peruse a cooking forum (Taunton's Fine Cooking) and while it is also an adult forum where everyone treats each other with dignity and respect, it seems that the threads that discuss politics and religion have become very divisive. While nearly any topic can inspire heated debate (talk to someone who builds scale model airplanes about certain German WWII aircraft colors) it seems that religion and politics are always the two that break friendships, and cause people to no longer participate in forums.

I don't think that is happening here, and I think that with good moderation these discussions can be kept from getting out of control (and I also think that Rob and Deb have been doing a marvellous job of that). Personally I just skip over the threads I don't want to get in to, unless I am suffering a perverse streak and feel a need to watch a train wreck. While I haven't posted much the past few months, I have always tried to allow for the fact that written communication like this can easily be misinterpreted, and usually a healthy sprinkling of emoticons can help explain one's true meaning.