Splitting of the US Politics forum into Judicial, executive, legislative etc was bad

[Danny]

I find that the old section called US Politics should be brought back. Just because they could be separated doesn't mean they should have. Forums need traffic to survive. Having all the topics together increased traffic. Since the split I don't visit any of the sections anymore where as before I visited US Politics all the time.

I also run a descent sized forum and I will never make a new section unless there is a serious demand for one, let alone split a section with medium traffic into 4 sections containing almost no traffic. It just seems so boring now. All my sections have many posts per day as I like to keep the number of forums to an absolute minimum.

Please consider my opinion.

[Donkey_Left]

I kind of agree with this. It helps people make general threads that aren't specific to any branch, and I think it could keep some spam out of breaking news.

[Crystal]

Collectively the different sections were a forum called US Politics and it was the dumping ground for everything because, afterall, we're discussing US Politics and so there was no way one could be posting in the incorrect forum. Meanwhile as everyone decides to only post in that one forum people complained about their threads getting buried and the issues forums saw almost no traffic. What's the best way to re-route traffic or make it less congested?

Personally, I think it looks ugly and I recently discussed with O'Sullivan Bere the idea of merging them back together since people are hopefully used to posting in the other forums instead of just dumping everything in one spot. Maybe merging it back together and moving it down the list - Grand Central, Current Events, Issues, and then Political Arenas (US Politics and International Politics). It's an idea that is under consideration.

Ugly or not, overall board posting is up since the layout changes. The changes were made mid-November. In October we averaged 6150 posts per week. Last month, February, we averaged 7207 posts per week. New member registration is also up from about 23 per week to 30 per week. Paid subscriptions are up as well - money donated in January and February was double what it was in September and October (I think we are much closer to covering half of our operating costs). Make of the stats what you will, but IMO it's proof that we are moving in the right direction.

[Malvolio]

The "US Politics" forum was a mess and as Crystal alread pointed out it didn't make much sense either, as this whole site is more or less about US politics. Slowing down the partisan bullshit and more focus was the idea. I think it was good to break up the US poltics section.

Personally, I like the reorganization of the Issues-section. I don't think that we really need a "Popular Crime Stories and Trials" forum, but so what. The three "Branches" threads in the Political Arenas-section don't seem too popular. Perhaps we should come up with a little more catchy names for these three forums?

What about these names?

Federal Government
- A forum to discuss politics regarding the President, Vice President, the Cabinet and government agencies

Congress
- A forum to discuss lawmaking and the legislative branch in general

Judiciary
- A forum to discuss court decisions and the judicial system in general

Another idea would be a forum for:

State and Local Politics

... not that I'm very interested in local politics in America, but this topic somehow makes it look more complete.

[Tethys]

Originally Posted by Crystal

In October we averaged 6150 posts per week. Last month, February, we averaged 7207 posts per week.

Sorry, Crystal, could you please clarify these stats? I would have thought there were hundreds of posts posted each week here. Are you referring to new threads posted, as distinct from posts in general?

Tethys

[Tethys]

Originally Posted by Malvolio

Personally, I like the reorganization of the Issues-section. I don't think that we really need a "Popular Crime Stories and Trials" forum, but so what. The three "Branches" threads in the Political Arenas-section don't seem too popular. Perhaps we should come up with a little more catchy names for these three forums?

What about these names?

Federal Government
- A forum to discuss politics regarding the President, Vice President, the Cabinet and government agencies

Congress
- A forum to discuss lawmaking and the legislative branch in general

Judiciary
- A forum to discuss court decisions and the judicial system in general

Another idea would be a forum for:

State and Local Politics

... not that I'm very interested in local politics in America, but this topic somehow makes it look more complete.

I don’t mind the “Popular Crime Stories and Trials" section, though I would have preferred another title, especially the use of a different word than “Popular”.

The US Politics sections as it has been reorganised does reflect the US system of government, but I guess one could cover the same bases with plain language labelling.

I think all of Malvolio’s suggestions are good.

I would like to see the section on Political Parties, Campaigns and Elections retained. This seems to be a popular section.

I have previously suggested and still think that there should be a US Foreign Policy section, due to the global reach of this area of US politics and the amount of discussion it generates.

I would like to see the International Politics sections collapsed into one category. The current regional division is questionable and omits the island states of the Pacific and Indian Ocean. There is only one “active” thread in the Africa forum; many of the threads devoted to “trouble spots” in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, East Asia and other parts of the world end up in the War and Peace forum or Breaking News; the East Asia and Australia forum gets little traffic; it’s still not clear to me if general issues about the US should be posted in the North, Central and South America section or if “North America” in this section refers to Canada. There are no headings in these sub-forums for the United Nations or other international bodies.

In the Issues section, I still don’t follow the idea of grouping “Culture and Media”, while Music is on its own under miscellaneous. I would think media should be in its own issue sub forum, while culture and the arts could be grouped.

I also think it is odd that Homeland Security, Defence and Immigration come under the same area of discussion as Gun Control, Crime, Drug, and Law Enforcement. The first three should come under the US Politics section and the others could be grouped under Law and Order or such other heading in the Issues section.

Well, just a few thoughts anyway.

Tethys

[Tethys]

Crystal, please Ignore my post #5. I just twigged to the fact that my screen reader, JAWS, was not reading the stats correctly. I was getting them as 61 and 72 posts respectively , rather than in the thousands. I reread your post and reviewed the stats with a function that allows me to read a word/figure character by character, and realised the error. Sorry.

Tethys

[Malvolio]

You make some good suggestions, Tethys. I think we should go with less abstract names for the "branches"-sections. To join the International Politics subforums into one forum is probably not a bad idea either. I'm not so sure about a "US Foreign Policy" issues section. I guess topics that fall in here are usually covered by other sections of the forum. But I wouldn't mind to give it a try, esepecially when the "International Politics" subforums would be dissolved.

Media and culture have been apart in the former layout. The problem was, that both forums were not very popular. There are probably more logical ways to group the issues section, but as a result there would be forums with hardly any posts. I think in general the issues sections are OK. But there is always room for improvement, of course. The "Abortion, Civil Rights, Healthcare and other Social Issues" seems to attract a lot of threads and posts. So it would probably make sense to give that one more room first.

[Danny]

Still hoping to get US Politics back. The other sections are dying!!

[Tethys]

Perhaps the sections could be streamlined but, from what I understand, there was a clutter issue when it was in one section.

Perhaps it could be divided into US politics (domestic) and US politics (foreign policy). But the forum is devoted to US politics, so it makes sense to have some division of topics. I was very glad to see International politics consolidated into one section.

Tethys

[muspell]

..depends on what sort of discussion you want to see, I guess. And on how much traffic you have. Or how willing the mods are to trawl the threads. A while back, there was so much traffic it was possibly seen as necessary to split the sections. And, possibly, to discourage there always being a thread going on the latest issue of the day, from Janet Jackson's breast, to Ted Kennedy's ascension to the Kennedy legacy. And very little useful debate of any sort - except once in a while, when the threads evolved a bit, and accidentally touched on an important and interesting angle.

In any case, the result at the moment is probably what is a more sensibly structured set - but which ends up neither being a help for structuring debate (issues tend to fall all over the place between the branches anyway), or for producing interesting discussions (is the topic veering off "the main issue"?). And of course, with fewer members posting, there's not enough traffic in any case to really see if the restructuring would be useful.

So I suppose I can see the thinking behind the sections. But personally, I don't see the point. Perhaps it would be an idea to have sub- forums in a "US Politics section for specialised issues that only (exclusively) concern the specific branches, for instance. There are some such topics, but most are usually more general.