Quick update to the forum guidelines. Going explicitly “no politics”, and "no “pr0n”. Apologies to everyone who posts their OnlyFans clips, we’re not doing that any more.
Kidding aside this is mostly a formality since we don’t really attract this type of conversation anyway. But things are generally smooth sailing here when we avoid these topics and we’d like to keep it that way. We have enough heated discussions on CAGED VS. THREE NOTES PER STRING as it is.
Thank you!
Honestly, I’ve always been impressed how little politics end up here. Solid change, though, just in case. 
Why, what happens elsewhere? Do other forums permit/encourage political discussion, or do they discourage it but attract it anyway?
I really need to get better at speed reading. The initial thing I came away with is that we aren’t allowed to talk about CAGED anymore.
Most of the other forums I’ve been regulars at have an off topic section, and the two I’ve actually helped run have had a “Politics & Current Events” sub-forum. It has its pros and cons, of course, but I kind of like - given the very specialized nature of this place - that this one is JUST about guitar technique, and when we go “off topic” its about music or songwriting. It’s a nice change.
For an off-topic subforum on a (presumably) music forum this sounds like it would rapidly consume 98%+ of the moderation effort and become not worth the effort.
Not to be “that guy”, but could the changelog at the bottom be updated to reflect the most recent changes? I hate how redundant that sounds, but if I said “update the changelog”, some might take that as “welp, delete it, now it’s updated” lol.
Yeah this forum is tame (in a good way). I would say that there’s only one topic that seems to come up every month or so, and the thread gets deleted before I find out what happened / who got banned.
This has to be deep sarcasm.
This place is an oasis. The community is so solid here that trolls wouldn’t fit in, and wouldn’t be tolerated.
Done!
No, I was trying to understand why a forum would be problematic as far as unwanted discussion types (politics, et al). Meaning, if the forum forbids it, do people keep showing up and trying to initiate these types of conversations anyway? Or does the forum allow it, and things constantly spiral out of control requiring moderation?
Just for my own knowledge, since forum moderation can be a massive time suck, particularly when moderation isn’t experienced and decisive.
Luckily, there’s already a theory for this:
The off topic sections that I’ve seen get ugly don’t start beef up front, but like that wiki I posted, start to drift in that direction.
Other forums I’ve been part of, although not for a long time, were total chaos in off topic sections, and that would spill over to other sections. Tbh though, I think it was more the individuals rather than the topics.
Maybe not that exactly, but seriously check out Reddit and 4chan. It’ll make you proud of this forum, I guarantee it. I think most trolls wouldn’t get past Discobot, the registration process makes it clear that people who thrive on insulting strangers are better off going away. We’re just here to improve our speedpicking, amen.
Who wants to waste their time with political B.S. arguments? Troy doesn’t have the TIME to waste monitoring that crap. NO ONE ever changes someone else’s mind or opinions about that non sense. This is a music based forum. We come here to learn and share info related to that. We all need to thank Troy for starting this insightful Forum…IMHO…
Yes. Not necessarily playing forums but other music related ones certainly.
They often aren’t moderated or only moderated lightly, and sometimes the moderators themselves are strongly politically aligned and encourage it, particularly stances and topics that will cause the very stirs most people try to avoid.
I think people have enough respect for you and what you’ve built here not to drag their baggage with them into the door. It’s refreshing and one of the reasons I keep coming here. It’s all about guitar, and tangential things related to guitar.
My main experience with a forum that tends to get derailed with political arguments is that political posting is against the rules, yet there are persistent rule-breakers who the mods choose not to ban. And the classic formula there is not starting an overtly political topic, but making replies in bad faith that shoehorn political partisanship into an otherwise legitimate post.
It REALLY depends on the level of maturity of the participants. The two forums in question have generally had a group of regulars who know each other fairly well, which helps with mutual respect when confronted with differing opinions, and we’ve also very clearly disclosed that the forums have a very low threshold with respect for tolerance and respect of others, and if that’s breached you’re gone. In practice, trolls always got run off pretty quickly by members across a wide range of the political specturm, so it wasn’t as much work as you might think.
Butt, that doesn’t mean a blanket prohibition on politics here doesn’t make a LOT of sense. We’ve avoided politics pretty well over the years, so no need to change that now.
Not really sure, but VI Control (for media composers) can be a real dumpsterfire at times.