Hi, there. I’m Joe, a.k.a. bobwhite, your friendly, neighborhood MCForum Administrator.Remember June 22nd, 2006? Probably not. It wasn’t a historic day in most people’s lives. But it was the eve of the opening of a previously forbidden duo of topics here at the MCForum: politics and religion. On June 23rd, as Geo said, we cried havoc, and let loose the dogs of war. Most folks were optimistic that allowing such discussion would not cause any major problems, and even though I didn’t post in that thread personally, I agreed. Hell,
I’d publicly supported opening religion and politics up for discussion for quite some time, and went to some trouble to pester the then-Admin team about it. I went to great lengths to tell everybody who would listen (and many who didn’t want to hear) that we are all adults, and that adults can calmly discuss political matters with no ill effects.
And so here we are, about two and a half years later. For the past several months, there have been grumblings about this part of the forum. People who supported the idea, or at least didn’t think it would be a problem, have changed their minds. We have lost a few members because of their behavior there. We’ve lost at least one Moderator because of the Contro board (although not due to that moderator's participation).
It’s by far the most active part of the forum. Of course, that’s to be expected, with this being an election year and all that. But along with the expected came some unexpected consequences: it turns out that a number of members of the MCForum are passionate about their political beliefs, to the point that accusations of crossing the lines of acceptable behavior began to surface. After awhile, it got to the point where
we had to post a reminder for everybody to be on their best behavior.
No, I’m not going to name names, because despite what some of you may be thinking,
there were several such people about whom these complaints were made. Some could not control themselves, and were thus banned, temporarily or permanently. Some managed to bring it down a few notches, and are still among us. But even when the complaints began to decrease in number, there were still obvious hard feelings between quite a few people, people who had never really had these issues with each other before.
It has fostered hard feelings, accusations of bigotry, accusations of false accusations of bigotry, outright baiting and flaming, and an overall bad vibe. It has monopolized the time of the Administrators, in terms of regular participation and also moderation. It sets people against each other more often than not, and with no small amount of egg on my face (as I was a huge supporter of this board before it was born), it’s finally gotten to the point where the following is undeniable: having the Contro board be a place for the discussion of politics and religion has done almost nothing positive (and that’s being generous), but it has had a large negative impact.
In the beginning, I personally felt that the Contro board would be a place where the occasional political joke could be told without a threat of getting banned for simply telling a joke. Maybe there’d even be some light political banter. Did we get that or anything close to it?
So it comes back to the question asked by a well-respected Moderator some time ago: Why do we have the Contro board? And the answer: There is no good reason to have it, and many reasons to end it. And that, unfortunately, is what the Administration team feels must be, and will be, done.
We do not make the decision to end the Contro board as it exists now lightly. The idea to do this was suggested months ago, more than once. Each time, we talked it over, and decided that we’d maybe tweak something or other... eventually this led to Michelle being appointed the top Moderator of the Admin board. And she’s done a good job, but at some point, enough is enough. Too much time is spent in that board, too few friends are made there and too many enemies are. As much as I believed allowing political discussion would not affect the relationships between the members of this board, it undeniably has, and in general not for the better.
So, effective December 5th, 2008, the Contro board will cease to exist as it does now. Discussions of religion and politics will not be allowed. The Contro board will change (revert) into a place where we move threads that have been locked due to political/religious discussion.
One question remains: what should we do with the hundreds of topics that have we have amassed on these soon-to-be taboo subjects? There are two options, and a poll will be posted to determine which one we will go with.
Option 1: Leave everything alone, but remove permissions from members so that no more posts can be made. This option leaves everything out for inspection, so that nobody can accuse anybody of things that may not have happened. Then again, this option means that members new and old may be tempted to attempt to rehash some of the arguments or make new accusations based on them, and adding to the fun, this could only happen on the other boards.
Option 2: Hide the old Contro board, start a new one. Instead of deleting the threads entirely, they can be hidden from view, still existing but not visible to any but the Admins (and maybe the Moderators). This option has the advantage of not tempting anyone from digging through the dirt to find reasons to hate somebody, or try to start (or re-start) arguments that should no longer be allowed. But, some may take this as sweeping the problem under the rug.
And that’s why we want your vote on how to deal with the remains of Contro board.
We strongly feel that it should be shut down and will do so, but we don’t want to just delete it all without hearing from the people who, for better or worse, participated in that forum, and should therefore have a vote in what happens to their posts in that board.
Thank you for your time. Discussion is allowed (although this decision is final), and there is a poll open for deciding what will happen to the pages and pages of posts in this board.
