Retrospective elections must be posted in Chat

The Wandering Poet

Doctor Imperialism said:
Why do you think that the Writer's Forum deserves to be cluttered more than B&M? There are good writers there that are frustrated by the two dozen political timelines that are crowding out their work; these polls don't need to be added to the mix.
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Surely timelines should be in Post and Pre-1900 (or ASB depending on the TL of course)...:confused:

That's where the people who are interested in history (and thus alt-history) are...
 

Color-Copycat

The Wandering Poet said:
Surely timelines should be in Post and Pre-1900 (or ASB depending on the TL of course)...:confused:

That's where the people who are interested in history (and thus alt-history) are...
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The more implausible/wish-fulfilling political timelines tend to be posted in the Writer's Forum because the plausibility police don't regularly patrol that neighborhood.
 
Jasen777

Jasen777

Donor
Color-Copycat said:
The more implausible/wish-fulfilling political timelines tend to be posted in the Writer's Forum because the plausibility police don't regularly patrol that neighborhood.
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They are there because "current politics" is not allowed in the AH forums. This was ruled to include political timelines with recent pods. Implausible or not I'd imagine most writers of such would rather have them in the post 1900 forum for greater feedback.

Putting them in the Writers Forum always struck me as odd, but I don't know what the alternative would be that forum administration would allow...
 
Alternate History Geek

Alternate History Geek

Ian the Admin said:
When polls were removed in Chat, the retrospective elections threads were "grandfathered" in here because there were a few very popular, long-running threads on the subject.

However, Books and Media is now overflowing with spammy retrospective election threads. They seem to involve someone posting any old election, and a handful of short responses. It's becoming all about the polls, rather than about discussion. I originally allowed the retrospective elections in here because they were mainly about discussion, but did need a poll as well.

This is definitely off topic for Books and Media and is getting out of hand.

From now on any new retrospective election threads go in Chat.

This means you will NOT be able to use this site's poll function, although you can create a poll on external web sites and link to it. You will also have to follow Chat's standard of having some sort of content in the original post. You can't just list the options of a historical election and say nothing about it. Simplistically posting polls will be considered off topic.
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WHY?? WHY??

We need more admins. We need some different admins.
 

Color-Copycat

He's the one footing the bill for the site. Until AH.com starts getting publicly traded on the NYSE, I don't think ownership rights are up for grabs.;)
 

Ian the Admin

Administrator
Donor
Abhakhazia said:
I noticed they were getting kind of spammy, but still damn it. I mean, isn't pol chat about CURRENT political events?
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No, chat is about any topic which does not fall under the other topics and is likely to be controversial. It's definitely not specific to current events. If people are seriously debating past elections, they're making the same sort of political arguments and value judgments that should go in Chat.

Talking about who you would vote for in a real world election, and why, is political. It doesn't matter that it isn't current day politics. It's politics and value judgment that is not on-topic anywhere on this site except Chat.


And as for why there are no polls in Chat, what happened with the retrospective elections in Books and Media is a classic example. People spammed, spammed spammed retrospective election threads that generated no actual discussion, because all they cared about was getting people to vote on the poll.

If people have to post a link to an external polling site, I think they'll only bother to do that for important threads that they think will get a lot of responses.

I already noticed that polls practically disappeared from Chat as soon as I required people to post a link to an external polling site. It takes a small amount of effort to do that, but very few people think a poll is worth that small amount of effort.
 

Nerdlinger

Ian the Admin said:
No, chat is about any topic which does not fall under the other topics and is likely to be controversial. It's definitely not specific to current events. If people are seriously debating past elections, they're making the same sort of political arguments and value judgments that should go in Chat.

Talking about who you would vote for in a real world election, and why, is political. It doesn't matter that it isn't current day politics. It's politics and value judgment that is not on-topic anywhere on this site except Chat.


And as for why there are no polls in Chat, what happened with the retrospective elections in Books and Media is a classic example. People spammed, spammed spammed retrospective election threads that generated no actual discussion, because all they cared about was getting people to vote on the poll.

If people have to post a link to an external polling site, I think they'll only bother to do that for important threads that they think will get a lot of responses.

I already noticed that polls practically disappeared from Chat as soon as I required people to post a link to an external polling site. It takes a small amount of effort to do that, but very few people think a poll is worth that small amount of effort.
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Polls disappeared from Chat as soon as you banned polls from Chat. :confused:
 
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