We are currently in the process of doing a reorg' of the categories to make them easier to use and to introduce tagging into posts. Tagging is awesome because we can have a hierarchy of tags and it makes things just as organized but works well if a tag/category is light or heavy traffic.
As that happens some categories will be removed/changed/added. you'll notice some of the categories have changed to level1, we've a new science & engineering category (We'll probably need tag suggestions as we go along. Not right now, but after we make those changes if anyone notices anything is missing).
One important note, General politics has never really been what this place is about, and causes a lot of upset, there are plenty of places people can discus politics, so we are removing the politics section and wont be allowing political discussion unless its relevant discussion relating to the "themes" of the community (tech, science, engineering, arts) (e.g. policy related topics) which for the moment can discussed in "policy & tech." Pure Politics is just not worth it in terms of the energy it takes to deal with vs the positive conversations it generates. I will stress that "Policy & Tech" as it relates to tech will continue to be fine.
You'll see more changes over the coming weeks, some minor, some more noticeable as we try to make the forums a much nicer place to use.
Thanks everyone. I am sure that these changes will be for the better and will make it easier to participate.
For any moderator that reads this I want you to archive my campaign thread, It's over. There is no more point in discussing something that is now past the point of our control.
what was the idea? The politics section has always has taken a disproportionate amount of energy for mods and admins alike for the benefit that it has. I am hoping that the tradeoff of available energy from everyone will propel other parts of the site further, farther.
you can pm me if you don't want to post. :) We generally want to encourage politics. Beesyndicate, for example, is not going anywhere because holy crap thats awesome interesting stuff and is kinda sorta tech somehow I think.
No. We just felt that removing the politics sub-category specifically was the way to go since topics frequently lead to issues. The only real change per se is that if you'd like to discuss politics, the content should be related to tech policy.