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User32269
Guest
Fair enough. My view is that the new forum could still be the vibrant community you saw the cc political section as, if people register on it, and mould it into the community they want.
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If people chill out and let it go, they will go and there will be a much reduced community stuck in a death slide as traffic reduces.
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User32269
Guest
If the cc "political community" registered, would that not be a politics forum populated with fellow cyclists?
The reason it's struggling for content and members is that only a few took the time to register.
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classic33
Leg End Member
I'm on half a dozen different cycling forums, and I'm struggling to find a similar section on any of them. Most such posts/threads are just removed with no questions asked, or answers given.
Maybe we've been lucky on here.
swansonj
Guru
TMN's point about wanting to discuss politics in a community alongside the other issues we discuss in that community is central.
I have no problem accepting Shaun's statement that complaints about political discussions came from both sides of the political spectrum. I suspect that posts modded/deleted would likewise span the spectrum. But it seems to me interesting that more of the right wing seems to have been happy to go over to PD, register with new names, and attempt to debate politics in isolation with no sense of connection with the people they are debating with; whereas more of the left wing seem to place importance on community, on context, and on relationships.
I don't care the old politics section has gone. However I do care about the new censoring of the rest of the site. TBH having the old section was a good place to send threads when they got silly so those that wanted to be silly could carry on.
Now, anything that has the potential to be silly is also closed down and that's going to cut down on varied and interesting content which is a massive shame.
Now, anything that has the potential to be silly is also closed down and that's going to cut down on varied and interesting content which is a massive shame.
mjr
Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
- Location
- mostly Norfolk, sometimes Somerset
[QUOTE 5052192, member: 45"]The decision that has been made will result in a forum like the CTC one. It will be quiet and occasional. If that's what you want then that's fine. A pub will die if people can't socialise without censorship of issues that don't need to be censored.[/QUOTE]
I've a slightly different view of the CTC forum. It's great for technical posts, but it is quiet and I feel that's largely because there's a few extremists (from various political viewpoints) who were allowed to drown several of its political threads in the Tea Shop with their bile. Even really objectionable stuff wishing harm on others merely because they had a certain "protected characteristic" (as it's known in law) was left there for a while with the mods closing reports saying... let me see... "often it is useful to let the words "brand" the author".
So most people now ignore most of the political content and most of it settles into extreme political stalemates.
The other probable reason for it going quiet is that CTC seem to have intervened to ban certain critics of their latest Chief Exec from the forum. I'm not sure how many and so on, but I feel it has chilled discussion of CTC's actions... which unsurprisingly was one of the few things which united most of the people who used the forum, so it's gotten quieter. There's now a brief grumble each time they only allow approved candidates to stand for election, muck the voting system around, not implement AGM decisions or put the AGM at something like 9am at one end of the country, but it soon quietens down each time now. Even CTC's decision to quit the European Cycling Federation didn't generate many posts.
Other than that, it seems to be becoming mainly a quiet touring and technical forum. Which is fine and useful but not exactly "a fun and friendly cycling community".
IMO the key lesson there is to avoid having a self-perpetuating group of moderators left to their own management except for occasional interventions to ban critics of the sponsors.
I've a slightly different view of the CTC forum. It's great for technical posts, but it is quiet and I feel that's largely because there's a few extremists (from various political viewpoints) who were allowed to drown several of its political threads in the Tea Shop with their bile. Even really objectionable stuff wishing harm on others merely because they had a certain "protected characteristic" (as it's known in law) was left there for a while with the mods closing reports saying... let me see... "often it is useful to let the words "brand" the author".
So most people now ignore most of the political content and most of it settles into extreme political stalemates.The other probable reason for it going quiet is that CTC seem to have intervened to ban certain critics of their latest Chief Exec from the forum. I'm not sure how many and so on, but I feel it has chilled discussion of CTC's actions... which unsurprisingly was one of the few things which united most of the people who used the forum, so it's gotten quieter. There's now a brief grumble each time they only allow approved candidates to stand for election, muck the voting system around, not implement AGM decisions or put the AGM at something like 9am at one end of the country, but it soon quietens down each time now. Even CTC's decision to quit the European Cycling Federation didn't generate many posts.
Other than that, it seems to be becoming mainly a quiet touring and technical forum. Which is fine and useful but not exactly "a fun and friendly cycling community".
IMO the key lesson there is to avoid having a self-perpetuating group of moderators left to their own management except for occasional interventions to ban critics of the sponsors.
mjr
Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
- Location
- mostly Norfolk, sometimes Somerset
[QUOTE 5052286, member: 45"]Not any more. The moderators are the first people who rocked up there. It's already unbalanced. There's no point.[/QUOTE]
Launching PD with questionable content and no rules basically set it on an extreme libertarian path even before there were any moderators IMO.
Launching PD with questionable content and no rules basically set it on an extreme libertarian path even before there were any moderators IMO.
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mjr
Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
- Location
- mostly Norfolk, sometimes Somerset
Or indeed, we may already be members of lively politics forums. Why would we register for another that seems to be launching with early assurances of basically no rules and newbie mods?
Jody
Stubborn git
Whats putting me off CC at the moment is the constant sniping and not the politics or moderation. It feels like a marriage falling apart. Do people come to some compromise and swallow their pride or keep bickering, poking at each other and watch it disintegrate?
The way I use the forum is to look at new posts, if I see something I like I read it, I usually take no notice of what sub forum the post is in, I don't see the posts in the new forum and have no desire to join just a political forum, I sometimes found it interesting to read the views on politics of fellow cyclists, although you could never be sure who actualy turned a pedal, but it was part of a cycling forum so you hope they did, it was like discussing things on a club run that to me was more interesting than discussing them on Question time.
I was on another forum for 5 years that like cycle chat was very active. I left 18 months ago. I revisisted it for the time last week to find there hadn't been a post in over 3 months, why? Because of an argument over a mundane news type thread being closed which turned into a civil war that lead to most of the most active members leaving on mass. Queue the death spiral to where it is now.
Forum communities are fragile things that need time to grow and generally don't like being transplanted.
classic33
Leg End Member
Something similar happened here, and people seemed to enjoy the fact it had happened.
mjr
Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
- Location
- mostly Norfolk, sometimes Somerset
It was still good to have it confirmed by someone who knows more than me about the subject that there was no new money announced in the new announcements of money.
I cycle as much as I do partly because of my illness, so discussing how the budget affected the NHS was basically discussing how it affected me and my cycling and could have been very useful before next week's Healthwatch meeting, so it felt quite nasty to have the thread locked again without warning just after that discussion started, with yet another advert for the politics site.
I'd ask the same, but I feel a few people posting silliness isn't spoiling it as much as the actions of the staff opening/closing/opening/closing discussions and so on. This really isn't helping to stabilise the forum after the recent traumatic change and is mainly serving to highlight just how little value is placed on our contributions. It may generate lots of post and traffic for a short while, but fireworks soon die down to embers once the fuel tires or the flame is snuffed out.
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