The question of political / conspiracy theory content

It certainly is a tightrope. In an effort to not be like 'that other place', the pendulum wants to swing in the totally opposite direction and be all inclusive and communal but that can lead to lack of focus and chaos.....like polls on how to do a poll.

Music groups, for example, tend to work better as benevolent dictatorships. Trying to cater to everyone's wants and needs rarely if ever works.

I am concerned that there are too many choices on the second poll. The only one I would object to is #2 and that is distinctly different from the others. But if votes against #2 are split over the other choices, #2 might get the most votes when the majority of voters would consider that their last choice.

Is it possible to make the poll so that voters can choose as many choices as they want? Or can we agree that for #2 to win it must have more votes than all the other choices.

What makes #2 so different?

What makes #2 so different?

The way I understand it there would only be two threads, one for all political topcs, and one for all conspiracy topics. I don't like having multiple topics in the same thread.

[Laird]

Thanks, Jim, for moving your post here.

I am concerned that there are too many choices on the second poll. The only one I would object to is #2 and that is distinctly different from the others. But if votes against #2 are split over the other choices, #2 might get the most votes when the majority of voters would consider that their last choice.

My guess is that #2 isn't going to garner too many votes. I could be wrong of course. But... it was an option proposed in this thread, so I suppose we have to make it available. I think you're right though (by implication) that the final three choices are effectively variations on a single option. I wonder whether we might initially sum their votes as a "single" option, and, if that "single" option wins, then choose whichever of the three has the most votes. Is that something that folks here would be comfortable with? Or should we stick to a strict "Most popular of the five options" accounting?

Is it possible to make the poll so that voters can choose as many choices as they want? Or can we agree that for #2 to win it must have more votes than all the other choices combined?

We can make it a multi-select survey, but I don't think that's the right approach. Nor do I think that for #2 to win it must have more votes than all the other choices combined - so long as we take the final three as a single block as canvassed above: but, again, we would need to get general agreement on that.

Also, I don't have a strong preference. I  chose #1 but if other people prefer #5 (to keep political threads out of their recent posts lists) then I really don't mind going with #5.

So, actually I'm not sure a poll is really the best way to decide the question. If #2 wins, or if someone strongly wants #5 I think we should not necessarily let the poll be the final arbiter.

Interesting. Before the polling started, I had broached the idea of a compromise on what was essentially #5, which, I think, makes some members more comfortable with allowing these type of discussions when they otherwise would not be.

Was I right at that point to have pushed for that compromise (in the absence of disagreement), and should we not have gone down the polling path? I trod that path because Malf made what seemed to be a reasonable suggestion that we might poll the membership to see whether political/CT posting was even supported in the first place (not to blame you, Malf - anybody could have objected at any point to the polling option!).

[Laird]

With that kind of transparency you are taking it more to an experimental level. I would find that interesting because it would expose even more psychology than is currently visible. Not just among the "founders" but in the public discussion of such internal talks.

Of course that then becomes a different kind of democracy, as the public voices are bound to alter the minds and decisions of some of those folks on the inner council.

That would certainly be a unique and interesting aspect to the forum if you all should chose to do that. And it would no doubt drive much content creation, at least among certain posters. I think you may run the risk of having the forum be "about the forum" or in other words the subject of the forum becomes the subject of the forum. Meta, if you will. 

I think if that kind of thing were segregated to subforum and if the updated posts didn't appear "New Posts" or "Today's Posts" then it wouldn't draw too much attention away from the "real" subject of the forum. In other words, folks would have to specifically go to that subforum to see any new posts.

That's actually a good idea. The "founders' decisions" forum could be an opt-in forum as for option #5 of the current poll on where to host political/CT discussions. Very experimental, but it has always been my dream to explore direct online democracy. I wouldn't want to force it on those who didn't want it though.

Imo, you guys that started this here forum should've just had a poll on whether or not folks wanted to talk politics and/or CT.
If people do want, then just go quietly and create the place within the forum however you want without then asking everybody where they want it, what color do they want it to be, should there be separate men's & women's toilets or unisex, what kind of wine to serve with fish.....

I have Jim Smiths alert but can't see either my own post or his?

Chuck's post #300 is the last one visible.

Can we have a rule that CT proponents can't simply exclaim the sparse evidence is enough to draw conclusions, and when confronted can't just say their critics are simply unwilling to see the truth for <insert particular accusation of bias>?

Let's not repeat the embarrassing, if not libelous, folly where someone on Skeptiko kept telling us to just use Google Image Search as a means of uncovering proof people had committed terrible crimes

Can we have a rule that CT proponents can't simply exclaim the sparse evidence is enough to draw conclusions, and when confronted can't just say their critics are simply unwilling to see the truth for <insert particular accusation of bias>?

Would you include '9/11' as typical for the type of thing you've seen this applied to elsewhere? 

If so I think it's a difficult one to resolve. 9/11 is more or less the only CT that I'm really interested in. I've watched loads and loads of videos over the years, and I'm really uncomfortable with many aspects of what happened. Not simply the buildings falling down, but more the human aspect. The subtle change in law that occurred in the months preceding it, the contradictory evidence to the official line that we can see from the firemen videos, the insider trading, the unusual work that was done on the lifts in the towers in the preceding months, exactly where the 'plane' hit the pentagon, the lack of photographic evidence, the ease with which it arrived at its target which is supposedly one of the most heavily defended buildings in the world, the denial of the enquiry to look at some obvious things like building seven which wasn't even mentioned in the final report etc etc

There are just too many unanswered questions. For me, the innocent victims of that day and many innocent victims of subsequent wars deserve proper answers to proper questions. As hard as that may be for some to stomach. I really feel that to quash proper questions being asked would be very wrong. The questions that I'm asking are far from fantasy. They are the type of questions that I would want asked if I or any of my loved ones were a victim.

Can we have a rule that CT proponents can't simply exclaim the sparse evidence is enough to draw conclusions

In a perfect world maybe. We run into the age old conundrum, "and who are you to decide".

Granted, some CT's are obviously idiotic and would be recognized as such by... as law would state...any sane, reasonable, rational person. Then there are the CT's that just have enough perceived dot connections for enough to climb on board.

Personally I'm not for having politics and CT's here. It's not that I want to be censoring any topic or being a killjoy for people who enjoy 'debating' such things.  It's because they are so utterly pointless and infuriatingly frustrating at best. No one is going to change anyone else's mind. 
CT proponents post their material (mostly from the ct and partisan political blogosphere) while the non-CT side, taking into account of where the material usually comes from and/or citing counter material, tells the CT people that they're nuts.   Same goes for politics.