Poll-driven groupthink, just like I'm unfortunately seeing here.
I did a very, very rough analysis last night of what I considered to be highly partisan posts. Out of 40, about 5 were off topic chatter about coffee, tea, the weather, etc. By my count, 17 were highly partisan. Polite, mind you, but highly partisan. The rest were OK.
And the poster roster is narrowing substantially, a lot of the same folks talking to each other, repeating their mostly identical views to each other. This dynamic is terribly uninteresting to me.
I'm not complaining. Except for banning Nadine, who is a very bright and very polite though sometimes tart exponent of a conservative viewpoint, I think your moderation is on the whole pretty good.
This seems to be the natural history of these boards, and yours appears to be fitting the pattern.
You might wish to make it official, like LB did in PfP, say that this is a place for liberals, though other viewpoints will be grudgingly tolerated. And if a conservative poster does a good job of puncturing the prevalent viewpoint, ban the poster. This is what has de facto taken place. |
