patb, I agree with you that these posts are lame and I am also pretty continually baffled as to why people want to get into political debates on this site when there are millions of sites solely devoted to that purpose.
However, it’s just not feasible for me to start tossing people because their posts are unpopular or off topic. There is after all an off topic forum, and that’s there because people have expressed to me that they like to discuss OT stuff sometimes. The amount of action that the OT forum gets is proof to some degree that people like having it.
If there is an off topic forum, I can’t go in and arbitrarily start bouncing people because they are “too” off topic. Those kind of constant interventions are precisely what I am trying to avoid because I just don’t have time to moderate the forum.
Now, I would actually get rid of the entire concept of the OT forum and make a house rule that posts should be topical, but only if a large majority of users wanted it that way. It has to be a large majority because the fact is that if you don’t like the OT stuff, you don’t have to read it. (FWIW I habitually ignore these political flamewar threads and many other OT threads as well).
So to sum up, the real question comes down to whether this is a housing-only forum or not. If you want to start a thread or poll on that debate, be my guest, and I am happy to conform to the will of the piggs. But it’s got to be either one of the two — off topic allowed or off topic prohibited — it’s really not feasible to enforce a middle ground. Thanks for your understanding.
