Space Policy Section Change

[deadman1204]

A lot of space policy threads devolve into political battles and a couple people responding to everything over and over again.
This pretty much makes that section of the forum like a trip to the dump.
It also kills what could be interesting and productive discussions.

What if there was a post limit to each thread. Like an account can only post once every 3-5 days. That would stop the back and forth which basically kills a thread.

[the_other_Doug]

A lot of space policy threads devolve into political battles and a couple people responding to everything over and over again.
This pretty much makes that section of the forum like a trip to the dump.
It also kills what could be interesting and productive discussions.

What if there was a post limit to each thread. Like an account can only post once every 3-5 days. That would stop the back and forth which basically kills a thread.

To be honest, I don't come here to talk politics, so I totally avoid the political threads.  Even when I have been an L2 member (I'm not currently, but I have been in the past) I nearly always left the policy discussions alone because they always seemed to devolve into political arguments, not discussions about the merits of various space policies.

Threads are closed down all the time when they get to the point you describe, of a couple of people who aren't about to convince each other of their own points of view firing volley after volley, only to find that no one else is posting to, or even reading, the thread anymore.  So I don't think such a throttling of posting would be useful.  You couldn't automate it, anyway, so a moderator would have to decide who and when to invoke it, regardless.  Makes no sense, when it's more effective to just properly moderate the threads in the first place and close them down when they find the dead end you describe.

I guess I'd just encourage people who believe there is a valid policy discussion to be had, to appeal to the mods to close down stalled or politicized threads, stating exactly why, and then if you still want to discuss the merits of a given set of policies, go start your own thread to specifically discuss that sans the political content.  With those who got the old thread closed down having been warned once that they weren't discussing the merits of the policy.  Or, alternately, have the mod who shuts down the thread restart a new one, with instructions as to the type of discussion that got previous thread on this topic closed down.  I've seen that happen frequently here, too.

Beyond that, there is always the concept that you have your very own off-switch on the media you consume.  In other words, you can ignore users, you can ignore politicized discussions, you can mark entire topics as "read", or just ignore them. if they don't interest you or if reading them will anger or annoy you.  I mean, I know I can usually figure out if a thread is gonna be either a hotbed of unwanted political debate, or a chew-toy between a couple of people who are only interested in perpetuating their own arguments, primarily between the two of them.  I mark those as read without reading them, enjoy the threads I do read, and keep my blood pressure at manageable levels that way.

Usually.  YMMV. 

[yg1968]

I don't think that they are any worse than other threads. Other threads tend to become engineering debate threads or SpaceX vs non-SpaceX proponents, SLS vs non-SLS proponents. That is just the nature of a Forum, it is a place for discussions.  The only difference is that because posting in the space policy thread is restricted to L2 members, you have less people debating in these threads, so it is indeed more often the same people that are debating a particular point than elsewhere.

In any event, I think that you will see less back and forth debate once that the NASA administator is confirmed. The HLS selection is another big event that is a source of debate or tension that should also resolve itself fairly soon.