Posted by 10derHeart on March 27, 2007, at 20:51:30
In reply to Re: Declan's block, posted by greywolf on March 27, 2007, at 19:26:22
> In my opinion, a politics board naturally conflicts with rules designed to enforce needed sensitivity in a community where (1) some people truly need that extra bit of gentleness and (2) some people inevitably don't understand that fact. The recurring controversy of the perceived validity or invalidity of particular blocks says more about the ill-fit of the politics board than it does about the members who have been blocked.
You make a valid point. The thing is, the Politics boards was created at the request of posters who felt frequent distress over the ummm...."spirited" political discussions on Social, back before the last U.S. presidential election.
So, if Dr. Bob were to decide to eliminate the Politics board, I suppose the same sort of threads would begin to appear on Social again, particularly since we are again headed into another election season.
Of course, civility rule violations could and would be handled just as they are with any posts in those threads. But the issue was more that some posters felt entirely unwelcome and uncomfortable on a Social board full of political threads, week after week.....particularly when there didn't seem to be room for certain points of view, and when posters even mildly suggested they might hold those views, ....well, let's just say outright rejection of a poster as a person, due to their possible holding an unpopular political view *can* be clearly expressed even while staying within the civility rules.
A significant amount of stress and hurt was building up over this, IMO. Thus, the creation of the separate board, where at least posters who wish to avoid things can do so by not visiting the board at all, yet not having to stay away from Social, where many have many friends.
I have no good solution and doubt there is one that will make it any better or easier to post about politics on Babble. I don't think I've said this the way I wanted, actually. Dinah explains the problem we had back then far better than I do.
poster:10derHeart
thread:744294
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20070304/msgs/744810.html