This would be a problem with an obvious solution if Discussion was structured anything like a normal forum.
Main is one thing. The “community blog” structure works there. But Discussion in reality functions like a forum and it suffers from the lack of basic, common forum-features like sticky threads, posts bumping based on activity, and the ability to create sub-fora.
If politics had its own sub-forum, people could choose to enter it or not, simple as that. Nothing fancy about it—political discussion available, but cordoned off behind one more click. Same feature could help organize the subject matter more effectively in other areas too. No need to slice it too fine. Say you have a main area for all the general rationality and logic stuff, as well as site-business things like a welcome thread and site-related posts like this one. Then you have a few—two or three, no more than five—sub-fora split into “Science”, “Politics”, “AI” etc.
Now one could argue that the creation of a politics section of any sort would attract a different type of member and that could impact the discourse in other areas. Not saying that’s not a possibility but heck, LW attracts a fair few cranks anyway.
Mind, I don’t know how possible any of these changes are—I’m only arguing their desirability.
This would be a problem with an obvious solution if Discussion was structured anything like a normal forum.
Main is one thing. The “community blog” structure works there. But Discussion in reality functions like a forum and it suffers from the lack of basic, common forum-features like sticky threads, posts bumping based on activity, and the ability to create sub-fora.
If politics had its own sub-forum, people could choose to enter it or not, simple as that. Nothing fancy about it—political discussion available, but cordoned off behind one more click. Same feature could help organize the subject matter more effectively in other areas too. No need to slice it too fine. Say you have a main area for all the general rationality and logic stuff, as well as site-business things like a welcome thread and site-related posts like this one. Then you have a few—two or three, no more than five—sub-fora split into “Science”, “Politics”, “AI” etc.
Now one could argue that the creation of a politics section of any sort would attract a different type of member and that could impact the discourse in other areas. Not saying that’s not a possibility but heck, LW attracts a fair few cranks anyway.
Mind, I don’t know how possible any of these changes are—I’m only arguing their desirability.
Yeah, I agree that it would be really great if Discussion had subreddits.