Not that we have to justify this further, but currently the PF does not “make us” any money. As it’s a closed forum and there are no ads on there. The intent is to improve the experience on the site, to eliminate the toxicity, and to prevent our active contributors from leaving the site (because of it).
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Ah, I must have read the post wrong. I thought that the PF was going to be maintained in part because ads were going to introduced for revenue.
From all I’ve read here, support for the PF runs about, what 50%
Not that posters have any veto on decisions……
I didn’t join the PF for a lllloooonnnnngggg time. I then joined fairly recently and left after about 6 weeks.
I didn’t miss it when I didn’t join it, and I don’t miss it now. It became far too easy to click over and see who said what.
For perspective, I think the PF needs to stay. We live in very fractious times and before we had the PF, there was a huge amount of moderating. People were getting very angry, threads were being shut down all the time, there was a huge amount of behind the scenes discussion. Since its creation, the regular forums are much more civilized. Things were absolutely rock bottom, IMO, during the covid era, when the idea of a new PF was first floated, and the impact was very dramatic.
(For you newer CC’ers, yes, there was a PF a LONG time ago, but you didn’t have to join it. It was just there as part of the regular forum and apparently is was quite…something.)
If people think the PF forum spills over into the regular forum, I am not sure I agree. I think what happens more often is that people are reading posts in the PF, and their perspective is now diffeerent about a particular user because of what that person said in the PF.
Example could be something like @frozenpopsicle is usually extremely helpful in the regular forum. But in the PF, frozenpopsicle said things that you find distasteful. Now your view of that person has been altered. So that, to me, is the problem.
It was difficult to find people to moderate the PF. The current moderators do a great job. Given that they are regular CC’ers, are volunteering, and it’s supposed to be lightly moderated, it seemed unfair, IMO, to tell that person that they could only moderate and never comment. Regular moderators are allowed to post, as I am doing now. Very occasionally, a moderator might have to post in an official capacity in a thread they have been participating in. I see no problem with the current PF mods moderating and posting too, given the purpose of the PF.
At the end of the day, people need to take the heat of the PF or get out of the kitchen. I left the kitchen because I was getting too sucked in. That is not the fault of CC or the PF or the PF moderators. I did something about it and didn’t assume it was anyone else’s problem.
In the run up to November, I personally think the PF forum should remain, even if it is a “toxic” place. No one needs to drink the Koolaid if they don’t want to. I would prefer the Koolaid to remain over there than see it creep into the regular forum.
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That assumption is wrong. The purpose of this thread is to hear from users. If our users had no say, this discussion would never have happened.
It is difficult though to take a decision based on the feedback here. The opinions are pretty evenly split from what I gather. Some want the PF to stay and find it beneficial, others don’t. We are however considering all the feedback, appreciate all the suggestions, and are (and have been) working on making things better.
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I read the politics forum sometimes. I am especially interested in serious discussions of policy issues (economic, educational, social, foreign, legal). I don’t have much interest in reading partisan political bickering so I avoid threads about candidates, which seem to devolve into back and forth squabbling pretty quickly with posters being unkind and sarcastic towards each other. Such posts definitely color how I read certain posters’ “tone” in the regular forum, and that is a shame, I think.
I support the idea of a politics forum on CC to because it gives a venue for more intense conversations about educational policy and social policy as they relate to families, children and students. Yes, those discussions always have an ideological bent but at least they are about something beyond complaining about various politicians and insulting their followers. I would love if conversations about politics and elections were contained to one or two threads. And if policy discussions veer into discussions of specific politicians or electoral issues, I would like to see them redirected to this one or two threads. In the other hand as @Lindagaf and others have pointed out, I don’t have to read the threads that annoy me so one solution is in my own hands and requires no changes to the forum at all.
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To be fair, we see that in the non-political parts of these forums as well. Examples:
- Claims that there are only about 100 colleges that are need-blind for admissions.
- Claims that being a URM by itself is a hook at colleges that, at the time, did not consider race/ethnicity in admissions.
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Perhaps have a forum area for specifically education-related politics (e.g. the politics of or against DEI as they affect colleges, college campus protests and political activity, etc.) and a different forum area for all other politics. Containment of similar topics into single threads (like the “race in college admissions” thread) as suggested above would also help.
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My perspective is mostly irrelevant because I’m not in the Politics Forum and I’m never going to join! Because I chose to have my kids attend public schools in a very progressive school district and I have family who have home-schooled their kids for religious reasons (and that reflects some underlying differences among people I care deeply about), there are many potentially extremely toxic differences of opinion in my day-to-day life. I have not seen value in online discussions of volatile topics, and so I stay away from them. In contrast, I have found that when people talk in person, sometimes they come to a version of common ground, not always an easy version and generally an only partially satisfying one. I think I understand the theory of why the Politics Forum was created – to cabin those kinds of potentially toxic discussions – but in my life, I only see online discussions inflaming toxicity, not moderating it.
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Grab some – as in, a KFC tub-sized mound of – popcorn
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My sense was that because CC posters did a good job elsewhere in the forum in terms of presenting respectful, well-informed responses, the PF was created in the hopes that there could be an online location for respectful, well-informed responses about political topics as well.
But on heated topics (which I think is primarily about politicians), many posters seem to have more of an immediate gut reaction response without as much effort to moderate one’s tone as there might be in other parts of the forum. That’s when I tend to see more of the tit for tat type exchanges that I think form a lot of the negative aspects that people are referencing in the PF. I suspect that putting some of those threads on slow mode is very beneficial for improved civility (thanks, mods!).
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This is my opinion as well. It’s easy enough to opt out for a break or to avoid certain hot-button threads. The reality is that it’s unlikely that anyone’s minds are going to be changed by what anyone posts, so I don’t understand the degree of harshness in some of the responses. (Hint: you can always use the “save draft for later” feature and type whatever you feel, just to air it out, and then take a deep breath and come back later to edit it to something more palatable before hitting “Reply”).
IMO, students should not be allowed into the PF. As compmom said, they come to CC for college-related support - is there a need for them to be in the PF?
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Is there any way that moderators can “track” how often a member’s posts are flagged? It would be nice to have a function where the moderators can suspend someone’s account after a certain number of flagged posts. (it would require manual review to make sure they were flagged for violations, not, e.g. posting an off-topic response that is then moved). There are certain members on here who seem intent on personal attacks and it would be nice if the mods had the ability and clear protocols for removing “abusive” members.
I too dipped my toe in the politics forum and recently left. It is a pretty toxic place.
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@CollegeNerd67, the PF is free for anyone interested to join and participate. This may not be your intention, but I find your last remark dismissive. Some students can vote, so they are active participants in the political process. They provide a really valuable viewpoint on all sorts of political discussions (mostly impacting them directly).
Would I recommend a student to freely express their view on political issues, yes. Would I recommend them to engage in a political discussion on CC, most likely no. That’s the problem we are trying to fix here, not in any way eliminate student voices from the discussion.
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There are posters who flag others just for having a different opinion. Some posters flag a lot.
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Agreed, so it would require a quick manual review by the Mods, but there are, for sure, instances where people should be suspended. Even excessively flagging other people for invalid reasons should be a basis for suspension.
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It was not my intention. I was just addressing the concern over students witnessing bad behavior among adults in the PF.
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Thanks for clarifying! I wanted to point it out cause it came out that way. Glad we had it sorted out.
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I like the PF. I mostly read, occasionally like a post and more rarely post. I have learned a lot from a handful of posters. It has also colored my opinion of certain posters, regardless of where else I “see” them on CC. I probably visit it about once a week (compared to daily visits to other forums on CC). When threads get particularly heated, I usually stop following them. On certain topics, once all that can or should be said has been posted, I move on…even if the thread continues.
The forum, like all of CC, does lean left and it can be hard to avoid the pile-on when a right-leaning poster chimes in. That said, I’ve also seen some super snarky, unkind posts lobbed to the left leaning posters.
As far as what should be done with it? IMHO, we’re adults. If we don’t want to read or post there, we can just not visit it, or…lacking that kind of willpower…then just leave the forum.
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Just one more thought. I think it would be a lot easier to just say “no politics” than to attempt to monitor the PF, especially bullying. What I may consider bullying from my political perspective just may be “truth” to someone else. You start down that rabbit hole and it’s a mess. I’m thinking about terms like cults, gaslighting, hate speech, fake news, etc.
If I’m a devout Muslim or evangelical Christian and I think same sex marriage is wrong is it bullying if someone tells me that I’m a horrible person to believe that? What if I think that my transgender daughter should be able to play volleyball on the women’s team? Is it bullying if someone tells me that’s wrong?
I think leaving moderators with the task of deciding these issues is a giant ask and one that probably would reflect their own beliefs, I know that I would have an impossible time separating what I would call hate speech and what someone else may just consider an opinion.
I belong to another forum where politics just aren’t allowed. Period. And political posts are deleted quickly and it creates a space where we can actually discuss the forum’s stated topic.
Just my thoughts, I’m not on the PF and don’t plan to be so it really doesn’t affect me but I can’t help but see it as a minefield.
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@Izzy74, totally! That’s why we say the forum is “lightly moderated” and we do not police thought or intent. We have no plans of changing this because, to your point, it’s just not doable.
There can however be an issue when one user or more develop a pattern of bullying others, not simply by being heated in a discussion, but by feeding a toxicity no one should be subjected to. This is another action item for me based on the feedback received here. To put in place processes to make sure we cut that down. This is a friendly and welcoming community and there’s no reason the same shouldn’t apply to the PF.
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