I've seen multiple comments from ANet staff over the past several months that there are plans for a separate forum for Political discussions. Why hasn't this been implemented yet? The addition of a new forum can be done in 24 hours if one wanted to.

Non-Aviation needs serious attention as it is a major embrassment to this site.

And don't tell me "If you don't like all of the political threads in Non-Av, then don't read them". Many people including myself look at the thread list, see all of the nonsense going on with all of the political threads and immediately lose interest in further participating or browsing this site.

Would you want to visit a mall that had just 2 good stores and 25 crappy stores? Of course not, you wouldn't waste your time in it. This same concept applies to Non-Av.

So when is this political discussion forum actually going to happen? Or was it just all wishful thinking?

It's on the list for the developers, but those folks have a lot of stuff to work on. It will get done eventually, but no one here can tell you when.

At least, that seems to be the standard answer whenever someone asks about a long-requested feature...

Brick wrote:

I've seen multiple comments from ANet staff over the past several months that there are plans for a separate forum for Political discussions. Why hasn't this been implemented yet? The addition of a new forum can be done in 24 hours if one wanted to.

Non-Aviation needs serious attention as it is a major embrassment to this site.

And don't tell me "If you don't like all of the political threads in Non-Av, then don't read them". Many people including myself look at the thread list, see all of the nonsense going on with all of the political threads and immediately lose interest in further participating or browsing this site.

Would you want to visit a mall that had just 2 good stores and 25 crappy stores? Of course not, you wouldn't waste your time in it. This same concept applies to Non-Av.

So when is this political discussion forum actually going to happen? Or was it just all wishful thinking?

While we have previously talked about a forum just for politics we have not be given a time frame when this will happen. As moderators we are only informed when things affecting our role are fixed. I have no idea how long we will wait for a poltical forum, the only other thing I know about a political forum is that it will need to be signed off by the Head Moderators though I am pretty sure that is just a formality. Unfortunately there is not much we can do as moderators with getting things fixed, new things implemented etc as it is largely out of our control. To put this in perspective last year during an update on the site the IP tracker we use to check users are not using mutiple accounts, check for spammers etc after the update an error had caused all users to use the same IP address of which took 8 months to fix. My point is nothing around here gets fixed quickly so unfortunately we just have to deal with what we have at the moment.

I agree with what you are saying and you will find that the other moderators agree as well. The Non-aviation forum is not what it was once. In the meantime I think two things can be done, first report those threads that are in violation of the rules including those that of low quality and two I would suggest that those who are sick and tired of politics drowning out Non-Aviation, take the forum back to what it was, start those topics you want to talk about, there are other users who would follow suit.

To be honest the political commentary from some users is absolutely pathetic. I agree that it is quite boring to read and well some of these users need to get out a bit more. Personally I hope the poltical forum is up and running soon however I have my doubts. If you have any practical and constructive ideas on how to address this in the meantime, feel free to suggest them

A interim suggestion given this keeps coming up.

The popularity and volume of such threads should be an indicator to moderators and members like Brick alike that plenty of people enjoy engaging in such discussions.

I'm all for a consolidated Trump thread (and other consolidated threads, as appropriate), to reduce the admittedly over-representation of political issues in the forum.

jetero wrote:

A interim suggestion given this keeps coming up.

The popularity and volume of such threads should be an indicator to moderators and members like Brick alike that plenty of people enjoy engaging in such discussions.

I'm all for a consolidated Trump thread (and other consolidated threads, as appropriate), to reduce the admittedly over-representation of political issues in the forum.

We've discussed consolidated threads in the past, but I don't think it makes for a solid long-term solution. I think we best way forward is with a dedicated Non Aviation Politics Forum. I discussed it recently with one of the developers, and apparently it wouldn't be a huge amount of effort to make it happen, so hopefully it'll happen at some point soon.

I personally wish we could keep any unrelated political discussion off this site completely, but obviously that's just my opinion. There are an unfortunate number of users who only post to political subjects (sort of defeats the purpose of this site), and there's a huge amount of trolling that goes on. There's so much in the way of divisive language and personal attacks that seems to bleed into the aviation forums. Some people just can't help themselves but to throw in political statements as a way to support their point of view, when most of us just want to talk about airplanes.

My hope is that a designated Non Av Politics Forum will make it more clear to users that it's the only forum acceptable for political discussion. But as with most things, some people just can't respect boundaries, so it may not matter much anyway. At the very least, it should make the current Non Av Forum a little more enjoyable for users not wanting to engage in political bickering.

I don't like the idea of further diluting the forums down to a trickle of activity in each one.

Having a politics forum will only result in more divisiveness and partisan hackery.

atcsundevil wrote:

jetero wrote:

A interim suggestion given this keeps coming up.

The popularity and volume of such threads should be an indicator to moderators and members like Brick alike that plenty of people enjoy engaging in such discussions.

I'm all for a consolidated Trump thread (and other consolidated threads, as appropriate), to reduce the admittedly over-representation of political issues in the forum.

We've discussed consolidated threads in the past, but I don't think it makes for a solid long-term solution. I think we best way forward is with a dedicated Non Aviation Politics Forum. I discussed it recently with one of the developers, and apparently it wouldn't be a huge amount of effort to make it happen, so hopefully it'll happen at some point soon.

I personally wish we could keep any unrelated political discussion off this site completely, but obviously that's just my opinion. There are an unfortunate number of users who only post to political subjects (sort of defeats the purpose of this site), and there's a huge amount of trolling that goes on. There's so much in the way of divisive language and personal attacks that seems to bleed into the aviation forums. Some people just can't help themselves but to throw in political statements as a way to support their point of view, when most of us just want to talk about airplanes.

My hope is that a designated Non Av Politics Forum will make it more clear to users that it's the only forum acceptable for political discussion. But as with most things, some people just can't respect boundaries, so it may not matter much anyway. At the very least, it should make the current Non Av Forum a little more enjoyable for users not wanting to engage in political bickering.

Maybe the forum software might (but probably won't) allow a hidden politics sub forum which isn't linked except from one small place, everything political goes in there, hidden away and nobody else has to see the garbage posts that go in there.

atcsundevil wrote:

Some people just can't help themselves but to throw in political statements as a way to support their point of view, when most of us just want to talk about airplanes.

Excepting of course, as you should know every plane has four dimensions, the fourth one being politics. Planes have always been political and always will be.

Brick wrote:

I've seen multiple comments from ANet staff over the past several months that there are plans for a separate forum for Political discussions. Why hasn't this been implemented yet? The addition of a new forum can be done in 24 hours if one wanted to.

Non-Aviation needs serious attention as it is a major embrassment to this site.

And don't tell me "If you don't like all of the political threads in Non-Av, then don't read them". Many people including myself look at the thread list, see all of the nonsense going on with all of the political threads and immediately lose interest in further participating or browsing this site.

So when is this political discussion forum actually going to happen? Or was it just all wishful thinking?

How about a suggestion of making the Non Av forum membership only visible for access after users have signed in? This is how the Site Related forum used to work on the old site. It was the only forum that required membership for read access and hidden from public view. Now it is visible to the public. Don’t see a problem in that, but Non Av doesn’t need to be at the very least in the public sphere - regarding a reflection on the site as a whole, which is aviation of course.

cpd wrote:

atcsundevil wrote:

We've discussed consolidated threads in the past, but I don't think it makes for a solid long-term solution. I think we best way forward is with a dedicated Non Aviation Politics Forum. I discussed it recently with one of the developers, and apparently it wouldn't be a huge amount of effort to make it happen, so hopefully it'll happen at some point soon.

I personally wish we could keep any unrelated political discussion off this site completely, but obviously that's just my opinion. There are an unfortunate number of users who only post to political subjects (sort of defeats the purpose of this site), and there's a huge amount of trolling that goes on. There's so much in the way of divisive language and personal attacks that seems to bleed into the aviation forums. Some people just can't help themselves but to throw in political statements as a way to support their point of view, when most of us just want to talk about airplanes.

Maybe the forum software might (but probably won't) allow a hidden politics sub forum which isn't linked except from one small place, everything political goes in there, hidden away and nobody else has to see the garbage posts that go in there.

atcsundevil wrote:

Some people just can't help themselves but to throw in political statements as a way to support their point of view, when most of us just want to talk about airplanes.

Excepting of course, as you should know every plane has four dimensions, the fourth one being politics. Planes have always been political and always will be.

Yes, that is right.

The politics in civil aviation discussion is now getting maddening. One guy made about 5 posts in a row that were all political in a discussion where a moderator had already gave a warning about not making political posts in that topic. The problem posts got removed thankfully, but that user should have known better.

The mods can only do so much, they are not ever-present and cannot look at everything all the time - so it's up to users to do the right thing. It's like this site is being overran by the spam gangs for each American political party, along with the ones for Russia.

atcsundevil wrote:

We've discussed consolidated threads in the past, but I don't think it makes for a solid long-term solution.

it also pretty much would kill those discussions, hard to follow a thread if tons of threads are in one...

I think we best way forward is with a dedicated Non Aviation Politics Forum. I discussed it recently with one of the developers, and apparently it wouldn't be a huge amount of effort to make it happen, so hopefully it'll happen at some point soon.

Wow, you must have an enormous amounts of changes from phpBB to make that difficult.

I personally wish we could keep any unrelated political discussion off this site completely, but obviously that's just my opinion.

Doesn´t work unless you have lots of mods being very strict on implementing the policy. You just get derailed threads in other Forums and lots of user-complains why a) was moderated and b) wasn´t.
On the German forum of the same name non-aviation discussions are not allowed, and being a mod there reigning in those is pretty much all you do. Unless you charge for the account, there is no way to prevent people from having multible accounts or just sign up for a new one after being banned. There we had people illiterately banned dozens of times, each time they "hid" a little longer before they betrayed themselves by using the same phrases/arguments and making the same typos, derailing lots of threads in the process.

There's so much in the way of divisive language and personal attacks that seems to bleed into the aviation forums.

Zero tolerance for personal attacks is possible and i have the feeling the mods react quite swiftly when they become aware of such. Drawing the line however ain´t easy.

There are an unfortunate number of users who only post to political subjects (sort of defeats the purpose of this site),

I don´t see that correlation. I for one read the aviation part a lot, but i don´t often see a reason to post in those, since i think all that has to be said has been said, and the people doing the saying are usually more knowledgeable than me. No need to weigh in on fuel burn after Zeke has posted the numbers he ran, or on aerodynamics after Ferpe has had his say. Aviation is also usually the part where facts aren´t really disputed much, there is no epic discussion about the wing surface area of a particular type or how much power the engines have.

best regards
Thomas