Hi Folks,
We're taking a break with the Political Forum. Maybe (likely?) permanently. But we'll see.
What we know for now though is we're closing the forum.
I thought we could have a forum where the benefits of political discussion could outweigh the negatives of the toxicity, condescension, vitriol, and snark.
We could not. And I was wrong.
Although we gave it a decent try.
I used to think we could use the Political Forum as a harmless place to siphon off political bickering from the Free For All Forum. Over the last few months, we've realized it's not harmless and we're actually contributing to the toxicity and division in hosting the forum.
My guess is most people will blame "the other" side for this. Interestingly, that's a good part of what killed the forum.
And to be clear, we all did this. Myself included. I know a few people liked to fan their conspiracy theory that one segment of people wanted to "get the forum shut down". I can say without hesitation that theory had nothing to do with why it's closing.
We simply proved we were unable to be cool enough to each other to have a forum that aligned with our Footballguys business of creating a positive community.
Please hear this: Keep all political talk out of the Free For All Forum. Posting anything there that anyone feels might be remotely political will result in a suspension. We tolerated the Political Forum for a while. We LOVE the Free For All forum.
And if people try to ruin it by bringing the same type of behavior and content we had here to the FFA, there won't be much patience.
Is this the right thing? Like everything else we do, the answer to that question is "I don't know." But it's what we feel is the right thing.
Again, please do NOT bring up this topic in the Free For All forum. We created a thread HERE for folks to talk about it as they discuss where next to go for this kind of talk, The thread will be open for the next few days.
But please keep it civil.
Best to you and I hope folks can be more cool in other places than we've been here.
We're taking a break with the Political Forum. Maybe (likely?) permanently. But we'll see.
What we know for now though is we're closing the forum.
I thought we could have a forum where the benefits of political discussion could outweigh the negatives of the toxicity, condescension, vitriol, and snark.
We could not. And I was wrong.
Although we gave it a decent try.
I used to think we could use the Political Forum as a harmless place to siphon off political bickering from the Free For All Forum. Over the last few months, we've realized it's not harmless and we're actually contributing to the toxicity and division in hosting the forum.
My guess is most people will blame "the other" side for this. Interestingly, that's a good part of what killed the forum.
And to be clear, we all did this. Myself included. I know a few people liked to fan their conspiracy theory that one segment of people wanted to "get the forum shut down". I can say without hesitation that theory had nothing to do with why it's closing.
We simply proved we were unable to be cool enough to each other to have a forum that aligned with our Footballguys business of creating a positive community.
Please hear this: Keep all political talk out of the Free For All Forum. Posting anything there that anyone feels might be remotely political will result in a suspension. We tolerated the Political Forum for a while. We LOVE the Free For All forum.
And if people try to ruin it by bringing the same type of behavior and content we had here to the FFA, there won't be much patience.
Is this the right thing? Like everything else we do, the answer to that question is "I don't know." But it's what we feel is the right thing.
Again, please do NOT bring up this topic in the Free For All forum. We created a thread HERE for folks to talk about it as they discuss where next to go for this kind of talk, The thread will be open for the next few days.
But please keep it civil.
Best to you and I hope folks can be more cool in other places than we've been here.
