I don't usually approve of banning things on forums. But I'm growing sick and tired of technical threads (or for that matter non-technical ones of general interest) being derailed by ridiculous political posturing from both sides of the left/right spectrum. For some reason, it seems to happen particularly often in the Slackware forum. Eventually the thread gets closed by a moderator and then the whole thing starts up again in another thread.

What particularly annoys me is that people who happen to approve of a poster's politics are able to give them reputation for it because this is allowed in technical forums. Such points don't actually indicate that this person has done anything helpful; they're merely the equivalent of Facebook "likes".

Curiously most of the religious and anti-religious argument in the permanent Faith & Religion thread is pretty civilised, maybe because only people who are interested in that kind of thing ever read that thread, so it doesn't attract soapbox orators.

I would like to see technical forums kept for technical subjects, so that rep points would reliably indicate an informative answer to a Linux problem. Political arguments should be restricted to the General Forum, or even to a specific permanent thread within it, or else discouraged altogether.

You have the means.
I have blocked all the Slackware (sub-)fora for ages. Likewise general. After that simply put stupid users on your ignore list - doesn't get too excessive in my experience. Makes for a much more acceptable experience.

I wouldn't want to drop the Slackware forum! I'm a Slackware user and there's a lot of useful stuff there. But your suggestion of using the ignore list faculty is a useful one.

I thought there already was a ban on politics outside of General. (It's certainly heavily implied by the rules.)

I don't follow the Slackware forum, though on the occasions when I do poke my head in, it seems very different to the rest of LQ.

If threads are being derailed, that's something for moderators/admin to resolve, through reporting the relevant posts.

If Slackware forum users want to discuss non-technical matters, but don't want to mingle with the rest of LQ (for whatever reasons), perhaps a specific "Slackware - Non-Technical" section would make sense, so it's easier for Slackware users who don't want to see those discussions to avoid them.

I don't think limiting to a single politics thread in General would be beneficial, and would not want political discussion completely banned - seeing other viewpoints is useful. (Recent threads in General haven't suffered from the problems there where a while back.)

Then the rules aren't being enforced very well at the moment.

A lot of what I'm talking about hardly qualifies as political argument. It's political ranting of the worst sort.

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I don't think it happens that much in the Slackware forum. It's a regular occurrence in General though.

There was the Freenode thread recently, but that was locked. And deservedly so. There was some outright childish behavior in that thread.

It is disturbing that an apparently rational and intelligent person can become a blubbering idiot when politics enter the conversation.

Who would have thought that Freenode thread would turn political.....
True but it's impossible to enforce your particular rigid standards on reputation givers. A larger "problem" with the Slackware forum with respect to reputation, if you'd even consider it a problem, is that someone can post about e.g. how much they love Pat and how they have unshakeable faith in Slackware 15.0 being released, and how no one needs dependency resolution - and will also be showered with "likes". I actually don't have any problem with that at all - but that's similar in that non-technical posts get reputation and it's again akin to "faecebook likes" - and it's a bigger factor in skewing reputation than the occasional political blow out.
That will never happen - the "solution" is to just take the reputation system with a few grains of salt. It's been done over and over ad infinitum and the only change I can recall being made was the removal of the negative rep function. Since then, there have been all kinds of requests and suggestions - including for it's removal altogether (which I would welcome, but not push for) and the admin has always maintained that it will remain as it is.
I would prefer the status quo to stricter, overbearing moderation. The Freenode thread was closed.
To summarise - ordinary people talking about politics, usually based on their "news" media of choice (though they'll usually claim otherwise) or some biased media source on the web - as we often see in general.

Non-technical off-topic posts in technical fora are already prohibited at LQ. If you see this behavior please report it so it can be addressed.

--jeremy

Interesting that the Freenode thread was closed … I saw it going off the rails and Unsubscribed. I am conscious that I hold views that I deem it necessary to gag myself on, and I would hope that others might do likewise. However, it has been a stressful time in the Excited States and the political split was never wider than at the 2020 Presidential election.

Unsubscribing from threads that are going South is a better option than the ignore list, imho. That's because some folks can be specialists in a technical area, and you want those insights; but if he's got rabid political views, you may not want those.

The Faith & religion Megathread has gone quiet because it's populated by atheists unwilling to consider or rationally discuss an opposing viewpoint. So when they can't shout someone like me down, because I have some facts on my side, the discussion ceases to be a discussion, and becomes a tirade of insults. I'm not willing to go there, so now you probably just get trolling from Jamieson2000e.

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This is what I did, (on that Freenode thread), I just suggested that a moderator take a look, & low & behold it was locked, so do report threads to the moderators, if they are way off subject, the moderators can't read everything, we need to help by pointing out possible problem threads.

As always, thanks to everyone who gives of their time freely so we can enjoy these forums.

Religion and Political posts are easy for me to ignore. Bless their hearts.

The above saying hazel. Is a way of saying down here on the Mexican border you know the person who thinks that way is touched and knows nothing about anything.

Ban em. Naw. Who else am i gonna put on my ignore list then?

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PS. In real life I have buddies who if I took em serious. I'd be decking a lot of people. So I just grin and bear it.

I don't agree . I come from the old school of " if you don't have something good to say. Keep your mouth shut"

then take a sip of whatever I am drinking. It getting harder and harder to wind me up like a 2 dollar watch lately.

If we repress crazy speech, how will we able to know when someone is crazy?

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This the main reason I do not use the ignore list.

1 members found this post helpful.

+1 on that.

One guy I have in mind would be top of my ignore list, if I had one. Fully 95% of his posts seem to be senseless trolling and nonsense, but he is hot on one particular distro, and has provided me solutions on my 'save my a**' emergency distro setup. Mind you, I use that even less that I have a good live usb going.