Just seeing if we hide the crazy

[Utah]

When it comes to politics, we are all a little wacko.

[Utah]

So, this shows up on the front page. 

Since we are all in suggestion making moods, I’d recommend that the politcs forum not show up on the main page. That way, if you want politics banter, you can go in the politics forum and banter. 

But, when someone comes on here that may be a little more sheltered, or close minded, or not able to handle a different point of view, they don’t see our crazy on the main feed. 

They can feel safe in their world and we can all talk Utes together in harmony. 

[AZswayze]

What about being able to hide it from the first page. Is there a way to ignore the category?

[pancakes]

I actually agree, mainly because this is a Utah athletics fan site. If politics is on the front page, it will get overrun with politics and resemble a sports fan site less and less.

[Tony (admin)]

I’ve toyed with just deleting the category.

[AdamTheUte]

I don’t think we should delete the entire category.  I don’t mind having it.  

[AZswayze]

What will us loons do in the offseason though? Seriously, I think you run the risk of having far less traffic during that time without it. This site format doesn’t seem to be as conducive to cliques and Reddit style comedians, so I wouldn’t worry too much about turning people off, but a lack of posting is a real concern imo. This is all contingent on being able to ignore it though. Then again there were plenty of people at ufn who complained, but for some reason refused to uncheck the category.

[Utah]

I agree, keep it. 

It seems like most of the complaints about UFN were people getting way too offended by those nasty liberals over on UFN. 

I like the political talk, I learn a lot from it. BUT, if others have such a huge issue about it that they would stop posting on UFN and then go out of their way to trash UFN every chance they get over it….maybe hiding it is more in line. 

[Daedalus]

People have complained about the extent of political discussion on uf.n but neglect to acknowledge that a) it’s a presidental election year and fairly important to everyone, and b) most of the discussion happened in the off season or midweek when the sports news slows down.  Ute fans are a community and sometimes a community likes to discuss things that are happening to them, whether related to the major topic or not.

While it’s somewhat derivative, I think a checklist of forums in the profile to “subscribe” to would probably be the solution.

[AZswayze]

And some of the stuff you just can’t prevent. There is a particular poster who shoehorns Mormon bashing into posts in various categories all the time. I know that kind of stuff irritates people, and I get that, but that could happen on any site. On the other hand, some people just need to understand some things if they are going to jump into political discussions, especially on a Utahcentric message board. Political discussions are often heated, and truly civil discourse almost never happens no matter where you have a discussion. Salt Lake adds a unique element with the division between the prominent religion and everybody else. If you are going to dip into politics you need to check your feelings at the door or it’s gonna be a bad time for you.

[UTE98]

@admin Tony, any way I can unsubscribe to politics? And religion?

I searched around the settings and didn’t see the option, I spent about 10 minutes looking.

I’m not interested in either of these topics!!!! On a sports board. If I wanted to know about Politics I’d follow twitter accounts of the experts aka celebrities. On both the left and right, I’m an equal opportunity hater. Funny since I got a degree in Poli Sci, BUT I focused on International Relations, not domestic. Which is a good thing for my sanity.

[Utah]

lol. I’m just glad Ute98 knows who the real experts are. 

[UTE98]

@utah guess I should have clarified, self proclaimed experts. I don’t care which side of the aisle you are on, when Dennis Miller and Al Franken are part of the discussion… or the experts, we’re in trouble.

Just cause you have a forum or the mic doesn’t mean you have to yell into it.

But don’t worry, I was trained to hate Jane Fonda as well. I don’t mind activism for causes, okay maybe I don’t like that either. I’m just a grumpy old man, now get off my lawn.

[Tony (admin)]

Nope. Not currently a function of the site. You could just bookmark the categories you want to follow as a solutuon.

[Minnesota Ute]

IF you don’t like politics, ignore it “manually”, it’s not a big deal. If political discussion makes you mad, then I might suggest you are afraid of others ideas.

But I think it is really short sighted to want to delete the category or squash the discussion. This site brings a lot of people together with different job histories, families, geographies, etc. So a political discussion here can often be much more productive and informative than just finding your preference for an echo chamber out on the web, or walking into a lion’s den of the opposition.

The biggest problem with UFN in that respect was that sometimes more recently it felt like a liberal stronghold. And that comes from a guy that is libertarian, and thinks both parties are misguided. 🙂

[Anonymous]

I am fine with political post as long as it doesn’t become like Utefans ended up. No respect shown at all. It shows how much it is needed when the last post before this one was 6 months ago.