Senate The Senate is splitting off

And "serious" topics were locked, moved from the JCC, and re-opened in the Senate.

 

Yeah, that's all I care about. Jello already assured me that it won't happen this time, so I'm going to hold him and JTS to it.

 

That's because we'll actually be redirecting all the serious threads to the RPF. My traffic's been a bit slow lately and, well...

 

Don't know why, but this is making me laugh hysterically.

 

I've been going back and forth about whether to post this or not, but I'm going to go ahead and do it. I recall a time when Boba threatened to ban somebody for trolling, because he was posting pictures of Robocop in an Ep 7 thread... yeah, I'm actually quite okay with not having a mod like that in the Community forum. So, yay split.

 

Lucky for me I have shin guards. Can we play on your lawn?

 

Fair enough.

 

there are like 5 people that post in the senate, and none of them post there exclusively.

stop being stupid

 

still don't really have a clear idea what these posting guideline differences are, and how they so radically differ to what is already in place within the jcc.

is there any real difference between, say, http://boards.theforce.net/threads/the-future-of-the-republican-party.29410682/page-266#post-50879312]the[/url] future of the republican party (Senate) and http://boards.theforce.net/threads/the-u-s-politics-thread.50007263/page-64]the[/url] U.S. politics thread (jcc)? a brief glance at the last page of the http://boards.theforce.net/threads/re-homosexuality-same-sex-marriage-legalization-outside-us.22965104/page-337]homosexuality[/url] thread, again a Senate thread, sees a fairly standard discussion with multiple one or two sentence posts. none of these famed, encyclopedia style discussions that apparently the Senate is known for.

 

All I can say is thanks Lowbacca_1977 for all of your hard work over the years, I hope you will stick around as a regular in the Senate and congratulations to DarthBoba! Unfortunately I don't have the time these days to dedicate to posting in Senate threads on a regular basis but I'll always be around.

 

The difference is not necessarily the level of discussion, epic. It's, as Jello says, the frame of mind with which you enter the discussion. If there's no detraction from the topic, you go into that place expecting no detraction from the topic.That's really all it is; in the Senate, you gotta stick to the topic and offer some valuable thoughts of your own. It's really two different worlds. In the JCC, you can just hang out. You can be serious, but you don't have to, Relaxed. The Senate is not like that. It's like going to work. Or llike studying.
The encyclopedia style discussions? We don't have them now. Rogue sent his book back to the library...but I'd like it back, sure.

 

The point of the Senate guidelines was never to foster a certain style of posting for its own sake. Even according to the latest iteration of the rules, they were only structured to "provide a forum for in-depth and focused discussion." Almost every paragraph is geared towards getting users to "get others to invest their time in the discussion." This can be achieved without the cumbersome rule set that is currently in effect, and has been. People don't and haven't craved the Senate's guidelines.

But if the Senate guidelines are not enforced with any consistency by moderators, were most often broken by Senate regulars, and no longer serve their original purpose, why should they exist at all? Everything seems to have been predicated on maintaining the Senate rules, with no consideration of why that should be a priority at all.

 

I would certainly like to hear from someone who does have those answers, then. Especially since they thought the issue was important enough that they advised the rest of the MS that the two forums needed to be split.

Regardless of any move, though, I am not appealing as a regular Senate user for the elimination of Senate-specific forum rules in favor of the rules set forth in the Community forum.

 

Out of curiosity, assuming that the Senate doesn't boom and activity in fact dwindles to nearly nothing, what then?

For the heck of it, I went back to the old thread to see the opinions and voicing on merging then vs. now. I will agree with Jabba-wocky in that this is the second time decisions have essentially been made without giving users adequate time to provide their feedback. I saw the topic in Comms a few days ago, but there definitely seems to be a leap from talking about moving some forums out to this announcement. Even while much of the discussion about the original merger was already decided by the powers that be, there was still a lot of discussion on the particulars. Whereas here, it's just happening and deal with it.

The reason the Senate was suggested for merging in the first place was to help its activity. I would argue that this goal was accomplished and the Senate was infused with a mix of Old and New blood. Certainly not every discussion was on point, but the moderators were there to set it back on track. I don't see how exiling the Senate to another forum will help it. It did well once, but even before the merge it was incredibly slow. We canned SFF and moved Amp and Arena and Census because of that. It seems like Senate is a relic in some ways of the past. Not that the discussions aren't relevant or spirited, but that the structure of the Senate is outdated and has not suitably adapted with the rest of this board if it needs to be moved to its own section. If the rules are the sticking point, then perhaps the rules need to be re-evaluated.

Also, found this post by KW from the old discussion:

Obviously when he wrote that, no one was expecting a second wind for this site in the form of the sequel trilogy. But as has been pointed out before, the JCC is not what it once was and Senate has survived thus far in this mixed forum. Amph and Census and Arena as well. I didn't get the sense that the regular Senate posters were frustrated enough that they wanted to split off. Knightwriter, wocky, Mr44, Kimball etc. all post as they always have. They've just had some additional users to discuss with.

I personally feel this move is a mistake. A lot of the activity these threads received came from this merge. While some users may visit Senate, it will be far less frequent then those who posted because they saw a Senate tagged topic they were interested in on the front page of JCC community.

 

Guys, I'd like to congratulate you on your best April Fool's joke in years. Good job!

 

And that was awful, but there's no reason for that to happen now.

It's been made abundantly clear that the main difference is the ruleset and the moderation, and the desire of the topic being treated like a debate topic, like Watto explained above: that's the line where we draw the distinction between Comm and Senate, not the topic being the Middle East instead of Goatse.

No thread is going to be redirected just because of the discussion topic.

 

so can a senate mod explain what's to be expected in the senate threads now? Like, how they will differ from the current senate threads we have? that would help me understand the impetus behind this

 

Yeah, what exactly is going on that's wrong in the current senate threads? Are we expected follow rules of debate or something? Point, counter-point, cross examination, rebuttal phases, etc?

 

Fixed.

Apologies about the fairly consequential typo earlier. But I echo Penn's sentiments. If no one can outline how exactly the new Senate threads are supposed to be different, we should dispose of their rule set altogether.

 

There hasn't been a particularly major boost in activity here. It's up a bit, not much. Maybe that will change when the films have arrived, but I doubt it. Message boards are dinosaurs, comparatively speaking, and aren't really the kind of force on the web that they once were.

 

Which is a shame, really. Some subreddits where the moderators actually care are great, but places for fandom other than that? Facebook? Twitter? Blog comments? Blech.