How are you handling the war threads?

[Mark Hewitt]

I guess pretty much everyone running a forum will have some kind of chit chat forum. And you can bet that people in there are going to be wanting to talk about the war, this forum is no exception!

I'm just interested as to how everyone is handling the debate?

In our forum we didn't really have a policy on it until we found that the forum was being clogged up with many threads all talking about the same topic. There were many people of the opinion that their particular thoughts on the subject warranted a new thread, rather than posting in one of the existing ones. Which resulted in about 10 or 12 threads all with the same people discussing the same topic!

We decided to merge them all into one thread called "Iraq War" which currently has 825 replies. Most of them reasonable many of them discussions of World War 2, as always seems to happen in these cases!

There is also another thread which is wishing good luck to the troops, and thats all.

[xscript]

Well I remain ignorant in the whole topic, before I share my biased comments.

[Chen]

I remember SitePointForums and some other forums I visit adding a dedicated forum to this subject, below the normal chit chat forum.

[xscript]

^ thats actually smart... I was thinking of adding one with its on style, banner etc really get it on the mood, Of Course i would never post since you guys know my opinions on the matter, But hey its all for the users rite?

[Semperfidelis]

Yeah a seperate 'War Chatter' style sub forum of your general chatter seems to be a winning idea around the place.
Heavily moderated, but with very little actual moderator input also seems to help - the last thing you need is a moderator getting a public flaming war over such a serious topic.

[Mark Hewitt]

We did receive a request for a forum to be created for the war threads. However we decided to go with the single thread idea.

The problem with a seperate forum is many fold. Firstly since the sub forum appears at the top of your chit chat forum, you are suggesting that this is a topic which is more important than any others (this is a matter of opinion of course). But the main problem is, how long does it go on for? Like many of these international situations the end is not clearly defined, you are likely to get several people annoyed just by your decision of the time to scrap the forum.

[Kier]

On one of my boards we regularly create a temporary sub-forum for discussion of a popular topic, then when new threads in that forum die off we move all those threads into the parent forum and delete the temporary one. People get used to the idea if you do it reasonably frequently so they don't get annoyed.

[IDN]

Post this in your threads, no i don't own the forum or even visit it, just a forum i saw published

If you have to post about war, take it here

http://www.iraqvsusa.com - Keep it off these forums

[filburt1]

Post this in your threads, no i don't own the forum or even visit it, just a forum i saw published

If you have to post about war, take it here

http://www.iraqvsusa.com - Keep it off these forums

I don't allow any political or religious debates at WDF. It makes everybody a lot friendlier to each other. Also the community is more of a professional support site than a chat site so it hasn't come up, either.

[marcjd]

It is rather simple for me since my site is a political discussion forum. Hey, all of you could send them my way.

U.S. Politics Online

-Marc

[Tolitz]

*shrug* ... I allow one topic about it to continue ... no big deal really ... tech support sites like ours are mostly one-sided anyway (yeah, lotsa "liberal commies" abound, as some of our republican members would put it)... the topic has been mostly intellectual so far so there's not much heavy moderation going on ... yet ...

I allow it so that people can vent about their feelings about the war, thus preventing them from going someplace else to discuss it... war topics are only as good as the members who discuss it, and the moderators who monitor it...

[Dave#]

3000 posts in a week

http://www.cpfc.org/forums/index.php?s=

[Michael2]

I'm already sick of hearing about it so what I've done is create a "War Discussion" subforum with only three threads - one for the war, one against the war, and one to debate the war. No new threads can be started and any war-related posts outside of those three threads gets deleted.

Just started this a few days ago and so far it's worked out pretty well.

[Joe]

I created a "Political Discussions" forum Sept 12th, 01. Last month, i made it opt in, you can only post if you ask for access. This way, most of my members do not need to read (os most dont want to read) these types of threads. My PD forum, has upwards of 300 posts a DAY ...

[Tolitz]

I'm already sick of hearing about it

Yeah, I agree ... right now I'm very thankful of cable TV since all normal channels just seem to want to cover the war ... everyone's hyping the possible "Shock and Awe" attack like it was the superbowl ...

One topic about it is enough for me...