Moderator Musings: It Must be an Election Year
by Intrepid
ATS Weekly, Edition 033, May 25, 2006
In 2004 ATS experienced a drastic change that continues to affect the board. There was a fracturing of the membership along party lines. Dem's vs
Rep's, liberals vs conservatives. It was not a fun time on ATS to see the petty bickering spoil the discussions on the Board. Things calmed down
since then but there has been an upturn lately in party rhetoric. Slurs are being used in discussions, well "discussion" may not be the right word
as Merriam Webster defines that as, "1 : consideration of a question in open and usually informal debate". These "discussions" are often NOT open
or informal, they are adversarial where the only intent is to BEAT the opposing ideology into submission. One Look dictionary defines "discussion as,
"noun: an exchange of views on some topic". There is NO "exchange" of views in certain political threads, an "exchange" would mean that there
are a sharing of information, not battle lines.
What are these more recent slurs? Things like, "typical liberal logic" or "Neocon meanderings", etc. Words like "sheeple" and "lemmings",
etc. Certainly not huge insults but the manner in which they are served up you can feel the venom in the words. This does nothing for a person's
point of view as attacks like this detract from the users argument. It also brings the board down to a level that ATS has always strived to be above.
After all ATS is a "discussion" board, we need to raise ourselves back to a level where there IS a sharing of points of view, not to be just a
rhetoric board.
We are coming up to another election, let's put "discussion" back into our "discussion board". Who knows, maybe by this sharing a person may
learn something rather than believing what they've continually held as truth. Searching for MORE, always in the act of Denying Ignorance.
Intrepid
ATS Moderator
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