Feedback Should we limit political posts

[M_N04H]

I just put my first user on “ignore.” I’m typically opposed to doing things like that, but as a veteran, I just can’t abide what I’m convinced is stolen valor. Anyway, it’s amazing how clean and quiet all these threads just got!

Now, who’s ready to talk guns?

I didn't even notice this was a feature here. There are people that are impossible to talk to and are just absolutely not worth the aggravation.

Edit: wow you're right I just did the same thing

 

[ikeo1]

I just put my first user on “ignore.” I’m typically opposed to doing things like that, but as a veteran, I just can’t abide what I’m convinced is stolen valor. Anyway, it’s amazing how clean and quiet all these threads just got!

Now, who’s ready to talk guns?

Glad you found the feature useful. I try to accommodate the spectrum of enthusiasts but sometimes the simple answer is the right one.

Whether or not I agree to your politics is irrelevant to the fact that you are a gun owner and you should have access to the best training and information available.

I’ll do what I can for you and others to bring the best I can to California.

One thing this whole site experience has taught me is to appreciate the simple joys of shooting.

 

[sonofeugene]

Keep it simple…..no politics. Period.

This is a gun forum.

 

[morooster]

Best to keep out people who just come here to start . if you keep it gun related they'll lose interest and leave.

 

[Seeed]

I have never met a liberal, progressive, left leaning democrat, what ever they identify as, that I could have an adult conversation with concerning politics.

"If you run into an ahole in the morning, you ran into an ahole. If you run into aholes all day, you're the ahole."​

 

[sjb323]

That is total F-ing bull! Posting an article is NOT blasting a point of view. I made absolutely no comments about the article or in the post until you turned it into a F-ing referendum on whether the whingers wanted to deal with their cognitive dissonance.

Wow...

This dude is basically going to a vegan convention, preaching about how terrible abortion is, and getting upset that nobody wants to listen to his rhetoric. Lots of lefties in that vegan convention, just like there's a lot of righties in a firearms forum. Most people here aren't going to want to hear the constant Trump bashing. Go ahead and present all the fact based, un-biased left-leaning articles you want, but it always devolves into the same thing, and folks end up even more divided.

 

[treelogger]

Keep it simple…..no politics. Period.

This is a gun forum.

That pretty much means that we it is hard to discuss gun law and gun rights lawsuits, and virtually impossible to discuss gun legislation. We can have a discussion of "what does section PC 12345 mean", or "how is the Doe v. Bonta suit going", but even those factual discussions tend to very quickly devolve into "how evil are the people who passed that PC section" or "was the judge appointed by Trump or Obama". And discussing current legislation is nearly impossible without reflecting on the two parties that are behind everything in the political realm, in particular with gun rights being one of the primary pawns in the chess (or tic-tac-toe?) game that is politics.

Why do I want to discuss gun law, gun legislation, and gun rights lawsuits? Because I think that to improve the situation of gun control in California (and in the US in general), we need to do a few things. First, we need to get the gun community on the same page on what they want, and how to get there in the political system. Then we need to change behaviors in the gun community, to get gun rights out of being a partisan play toy and into the some quieter waters. And we need to cause gun people to apply political pressure (like calling their congressman or assembly person), and to organize. As much as I dump on Calguns, but in the early days (2005 to 2008 or so), one of the functions of that forum was to get people organized into working on politics. As an example, I got volunteered to spend a few weeks spread over a few years in Sacramento, trying to convince lawmakers and political candidates that reacting to the OLL by banning more ARs would be (a) pointless and (b) bad politics. Other people created organizations such as the CGF, from which today's FPC is a spinoff (for better or for worse). Yet other people reformed the CRPA into a functioning organization (instead of an old boys club). Then several bad things happened, and discussing "how shall we get organized" and "how shall we act" became impossible on that forum. So I think we need to have a place to do that.

Wow...

This dude is basically going to a vegan convention, preaching about how terrible abortion is, and getting upset that nobody wants to listen to his rhetoric. Lots of lefties in that vegan convention, just like there's a lot of righties in a firearms forum. Most people here aren't going to want to hear the constant Trump bashing. Go ahead and present all the fact based, un-biased left-leaning articles you want, but it always devolves into the same thing, and folks end up even more divided.

First, putting another gun person on ignore does no good. You may not hear their opinions any longer. But you lose knowledge of what really happens in the population of gun people at large, and you eventually move into an echo chamber of only hearing from people of your own (or more radical) opinions. And once isolated and radicalized, you will be less well equipped to participate in civic and civil discourse. Which we need to do if we want to help gun rights.

Second, "this dude" represents a rather large group. If you go talk to people at the range, or on (non-echo-chamber-) online places, you quickly find that roughly 1/3 (somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2) of all gun people in California are democrats or liberals or progressives. Yes, there are "a lot of righties" in the echo chambers. And left-leaning gun people quickly learn that keeping quiet about their political opinions causes less trouble, making the echo chambers even louder. But it is true that a reasonably large fraction of gun people do think that Trump is the worst thing to happen to this country, just like a significantly larger fraction of gun people think that Biden or Obama were the worst thing. That is neither "Trump bashing" nor the opposite: we are in a free country, and one of the freedoms is to have our own political opinions, including ones you don't agree with.

Hearing differing opinions should not make us feel more divided. Anyone who thinks it does needs to rethink how they want to participate in society to be effective at furthering their views.

 

[Brandon Breeze]

Haven't looked, so forgive me, but if there isn't a specific politics section, maybe set one up and let folks who want to talk about that go there? I come to firearms forums to talk about pews, not politics.

 

[Wolkenflieger]

Hearing differing opinions should not make us feel more divided. Anyone who thinks it does needs to rethink how they want to participate in society to be effective at furthering their views.

This is all well and good for rational people who can interrogate ideas in a stoic and productive manner, and among those who value evidence over ideology. Sadly, not everyone is like this.

Have you ever tried to argue with someone who doesn't care about evidence, but only seeks to further an ideological narrative? How about if this person is raging while you're trying to have a civil conversation? How about if this person is obviously dishonest in their argumentation?

There's a point where conversation is pointless and it's more prudent to ignore the noise, presuming that one has limited time and energy to engage with dishonest and ideologically-deranged interlocutors. We have entire forums (such as Reddit) for those who want to wade in an ocean of derangement, and that's assuming any reasonable opinion isn't quickly shut down by blatantly biased moderation.

Finally, you talk about the fact that a certain user represents a good number of people. While this is true, this is not the place to contend with the political ravings of someone who brings the fight to you when you're in a relaxed brain state and trying to learn about a Glock or CZ TS2 or how to apply for an FFL03/COE. That constant onslaught is the very thing many (like me) seek to escape in a gun-focused forum. Arguing is time/energy-consuming and a specific state of mind, a type of combat—and it's not conducive to camaraderie, group cohesion, relaxation, and the nuanced mental state needed to read, learn, and teach.

 

[ikeo1]

Haven't looked, so forgive me, but if there isn't a specific politics section, maybe set one up and let folks who want to talk about that go there? I come to firearms forums to talk about pews, not politics.

I just put one in a few hours ago to clean up the main feed. Users have the option to join in if you want.

Hearing differing opinions should not make us feel more divided. Anyone who thinks it does needs to rethink how they want to participate in society to be effective at furthering their views.

This is how i thought it would go. If you have to be passive aggressive just because the guy isn't listening to you or vice versa, don't waste the time or space. I've given this a good amount of time to observe how the new settings did and it didn't do as well as I hoped. I'm trying to spend less time here while I get busier with other things.

 

[Robdog1]

Strawman, Slippery slope fallacy.

I suggest you look up what those are because I assume it’s been a long time since your last high school English class. Either way, you’re incorrect, but bless your heart, you gave it your best try.

 

[1911-CV]

I just put one in a few hours ago to clean up the main feed. Users have the option to join in if you want.


This is how i thought it would go. If you have to be passive aggressive just because the guy isn't listening to you or vice versa, don't waste the time or space. I've given this a good amount of time to observe how the new settings did and it didn't do as well as I hoped. I'm trying to spend less time here while I get busier with other things.

Can posts from the Politics section not show up in the "Latest Posts" box either at all, or only if you have signed up for that section?

Thank you so much

 

[Devil]

Should we go back to limiting to 2A politics?

This goes for everyone, if you don’t like Democrats keep it to yourself. If you don’t like Trump, same thing.

Some people’s disdain for political parties can be a bit much.

You have the ignore feature to block users posts and/or you can opt out of current events in your preferences… you are given multiple options to choose from

View attachment 73045

You really have no choice gents you have to allow it. Not because of 1A or whatever but because the other two choices are an illusion.

Fudds chased people out of the Calguns social forums for about 10-15 years if you didn’t absolutely agree with them. There was always little room for debate in that crowd. Occasionally racist, but nothing huge. It was like the mirror of Reddit on the left. Two peas in a pod.

Culture is a top down thing and requires a ton of energy to build. So ask yourselves administrators… do you have the time to A) invest in policing political content to ensure it doesn’t show up or B) Reinforce a mature culture of healthy political discourse?

If it’s no then 1A wins out from a resource perspective. Just put a dedicated forum for it and task a a few unpaid moderators to police it.

 

[Wolkenflieger]

I suggest you look up what those are because I assume it’s been a long time since your last high school English class. Either way, you’re incorrect, but bless your heart, you gave it your best try.

This is always the response from people who don't understand logical fallacies. They just accuse you of not understanding them or they accuse you of the same. Look them up and see if you can work out why I wrote that, or don't. I will make ONE attempt to explain your logical fallacies.

You wrote;

"Why bother to have forums at all then? Riddle me that. And while we’re at it, let’s get rid of the California politics too, because they go hand in hand. If you ban one, then you have to ban the other, it’s only fair."

Even after I explain it you still may not admit the fallacy, in which case I can only conclude that you're not being honest.

When a forum prohibits specific speech such as political debate/argumentation, that doesn't mean all forums shouldn't exist per your textbook slippery slope fallacy.

Likewise, we shouldn't ban guns because a small minority of all gun-users use them for crime, including murder. Much of the attacks against the 2A are strawman fallacies, and slippery slope fallacies.

Another slippery slope; If you make people take off their shoes in your house, why not make them take off their pants and shirts too? Do you see how dishonest this is?

"I’ve ignored my share of people here, and I’m sure they’ve ignored me, but that shouldn’t mean we do away with discussions just because you don’t like the direction they go or because someone likes someone you don’t."

Now you see, you've changed the argument to be "doing away with discussions" because someone (in your mind) "doesn't like" the direction they're going. It's not merely like or dislike which trivializes the issue so you can knock it down. That's the strawman you've erected with a caricature of the argument. That's why it's called a straw man—caricaturize the argument in a dishonest way and then knock it down.

Do you let people smoke around you and your family or pets? If not, is that because you merely 'don't like it' or because of more pressing reasons? If you're the smoker this might be lost on you. Trivializing the issue to whether someone "likes it or not" is a dishonest strawman. People are very justified for not liking that which kills nearly half a million people a year.

The idea to prohibit political arguments is not just to reduce costly server bandwidth but because it sows discord and division. These arguments can be had all over the Internet for free, on much bigger sites. Do you think it makes sense for a handful of individuals to pay for people to argue in a way that sows discord and consumes copious bandwidth? I don't. Take it to Reddit.

This division is similar to what has happened between us. I didn't think about you one way or another before we had this disagreement, but now I think if you as the strawmanning slippery-slope fallacy guy who is hostile to logic. This is why political debates are bad for the forum. You might be the second one on my ignore list based on your response. I expect dishonest obstinance, but I hope to be wrong.

This is my one and only attempt to explain the fallacies, but Google can reveal more.

 

[46knuck]

Glad you set up a "politics section" an area I will never go to for blah blah blah to preach his inaccurate, illogical and self serving thoughts.

Now just eliminate it from the What's new banner, some people use the subject line as click bait with their ridiculous taunts.

 

[.dC0m]

I haven't gone through the past posts, but out of curiosity - when does this poll end/action will be enacted as a result of the poll?

 

[SLORNR]

Politics will destroy a gun forum through slow rot. Those who argue/name call on the political section will continue to argue name call each other outside of the political space on the regular gun topics.

This e doesn’t stay in just the political posts. Never does, Calguns was a prime example of this. Post that happened in the OT section bleed out into regular posts because people couldn’t let e go.

So much truth. People will literally kill one another over political beliefs. Politics ruin every board on the net.

 

[ikeo1]

I haven't gone through the past posts, but out of curiosity - when does this poll end/action will be enacted as a result of the poll?

Action already implemented and addressed the main concern people had. The constant political headlines on the main page was.

The poll will stay open so I can see if the stats change. If any more ideas come in, we’ll also take a look.

 

[Randomdudewithguns]

I love that i can ignore a member and that it also removes their non-political yet political posts they start from the what's new header