I have a proposition

Here’s my proposition: The next person to complain about politics while not posting in the politics forum or just unchecking the politics forum be banned for 1 week. 

Excellent idea. Maybe those categories could be put in a page that you have to click on to access instead of having the posts show up on the home page or recent posts page.

The main purpose of this site is obviously to get together to discuss Utah athletics. IMHO we should want to encourage more people to come here and post. I don’t see the benefit of berating those who would prefer to not have to wade through political bickering. I’d hate to see poster after poster disappear like has been happening on UFN for several years.

Agree 100%.  Those three categories are the exact reason that I stopped going to Utefans and started coming here. 

Brilliant. I just joined to support this plan. I come to this site to get a quick survey of the Ute News of the day, and the last two days have had some fairly good Ute news related to recruiting, but I’ve had to go to twitter to get it because of all the kvetching. Unfortunately, there’s a ugly online contingent that thinks Ute forums are 4chan. Tony, please put them in the corner?

Good idea. Keep it off the front page. Religion and politics is low hanging fruit for trolls who seem to have migrated over here.

Yep. Put ’em in the basement or the attic or the storm cellar. Those who want to go there can do so to there heart’s content.

Salty Utes already did that. 🙂

uofuboard.com

I’m not opposed to this concept. I thought we were all a great bunch of Ute fans, getting along well until recently.  The bitching and attacking back and forth has bummed me out.  I’ve honestly never seen anyone arguing online about politics change their mind or beliefs, ever.  And now tonight a user has just DM’d me asking to have their account deactivated.

To pull off this idea there are a lot of logistical things that would have to happen.  I’d have to force a category setting for every new user in order to make the default home page not show politics or the byu category or whatever.  That’s doable, and will take time and eat up db space. Not the end of the world.  On 2nd thought, I could have a “default” setting like I do now, and they would have to turn on those categories.  Maybe it wouldn’t be that hard.  I’d have to dig deeper into the code.

One catch, is that only the home page will be affected.  The recent-posts page and any sub forum page will not see those changes.  Nor does the capability to turn off categories in those areas under the forum menu (not the home page) exist, and I’m not sure I could make that happen very easily.

Honestly I could see creating a whole 2nd forum or even site for that stuff which would completely separate it from the Ute discussions.  That’s a whole other…. something.

More thoughts… if a user is a “guest” I could make the home page query only Ute related. Then if the user is logged in the default would be all categories until they make a change.  That wouldn’t be terribly difficult, if you like brain surgery and stuff.

I’m tempted to cut Xmission a check so all the mean spirited political bickering would migrate back there. This site had such a good positive vibe and it fell off the precipice in the last couple days. Maybe an all out ban on politics and religion would be the answer. Hell, I dunno. Sports messages boards are supposed to be fun and kind of an escape from life’s tougher issues. I’ve surfed dozens of pro and college message boards and I’ve never seen any who have as much political bickering as Ute boards. I’ve never seen any remotely close.