I'm bundling a few comments together, since I feel they're related:

8 hours ago, fleabay said:

Take the damn politics somewhere else along with any other off-topic nonsense.

I don't know why the mods/admins here think that it is a good idea to have political discourse here. It's not like there are not hundreds of sites just for such purpose.

6 hours ago, Makusik Fedakusik said:

All what you need to know about political discussion in the internet:

Politics is something many people misunderstand.  Sadly in many sub-groups --- ESPECIALLY among people under age 30 or so -- politics is a trendy thing to hate upon.  Among younger people it is hard to go wrong by decrying that politics are bad and politicians are evil. That demographic happens to fit a large part of our users.

Politics is simply the exercise of power. That can be government politics where governmental power is used to do things, or office politics where corporate power is used to do things. 

In governmental politics there is often partisanship, where different sides have created firmly entrenched positions. In US politics the partisanship is currently at highly toxic levels, which makes it even easier for people to misunderstand what politics really is.  If all you see are two sides that are actively working to sabotage each other it is easy to lose perspective on the nature of politics.

3 hours ago, Unknown33 said:

I think what's interesting is when a Trump bashing thread lasts for several pages but a similar question about the future of liberalism is closed immediately, followed by serious discussion about only allowing certain people to participate in political discussion.

We actually discussed in a discord chat minutes after you started the thread. Whether intentionally or accidentally, your thread had a major difference that was presented as a minor wording change. There is an enormous difference between the post that was closed and the earlier post that was left open with the warning on top.The earlier post was about a specific person in office, and a specific set of policies.  Your post was about the abstract concept "liberalism".  In debate the two are radically different, and your topic appeared to have been skillfully crafted to mask that difference.

In the earlier topic, a specific person with specific events and policies CAN be civilly discussed and debated. Shortly after posting a warning was placed on it as a reminder to keep the discussion based on concrete events and concrete examples. Several times in the discussion people needed to be reminded of this. The discussion included many different viewpoints from different groups. Some were more liberal, some more conservative, some independent of the US political parties, but as long as they referred to concrete examples, the topic was allowed to continue.

In the topic of "liberalism" there is no specific policy or event to discuss. It is an abstract philosophy defined in relative terms. If there was a specific policy or event it would have been different, but the post was clearly a troll designed to mimic the earlier pattern.  While reification and analogues are sometimes appropriate in discussion, they're a fallacy in this context. Said differently, sometimes you can use examples of an abstract idea to discuss the idea, but in some cases such examples are logically invalid. 

Since many different sides (including both of the US political parties) were fairly well represented in the previous discussion, it is unfair to say the site rejected a criticism of "liberalism".  People using the site run the full breadth of the political spectrum. What we reject is the blatant trolling.

10 hours ago, khawk said:

Many communities outright ban Politics in forums. I believe that is the lazy way out and refuse to do that here.

I agree that discussion of politics in the Lounge is a good thing for the site. Overall our community has mature and civil behavior.  Programmers tend to be highly intelligent and it shows clearly in the discussions here. Sometimes the discussions veer into the realm of the abstract, but overall people are able to remain civil. People on the site are generally good about acknowledging the diverse range of backgrounds and beliefs and experiences. We may not agree about solutions, but we can hold discussions and remain in disagreement.

I've seen in most of the political debates over the years the people involved all agree that something should be done, or that some action should be taken (or not taken) even when the people involved never reached a consensus on what actions it should be. For some examples from past posts: everyone agrees we want to see less violence but many people disagree on the methods of reducing violence; everyone agrees discrimination is harmful but people disagree about specific effects and about actions needed to address it. Those have included topics on racial discrimination, gender discrimination, age discrimination, religious discrimination, and nationality discussions. We've had discussion about nudity and violence in games where people expressed their viewpoints about what their effects were and what (if anything) should change regarding policy. The discussions remain civil far longer than they would in communities like Reddit, and often reach a natural conclusion without moderation.

While each of those may not seem like politics at first glance, each one refers to making changes to policy or taking action as a group.  That is all politics means, it is all about the power to take action in that way.

Any time there is a group of people, politics becomes an emergent factor of the group. Having political discussions is a great thing in The Lounge, and it contributes to the vibrancy of our community.  I think overall our community is better for them.

3 hours ago, frob said:

Overall our community has mature and civil behavior.  Programmers tend to be highly intelligent and it shows clearly in the discussions here. Sometimes the discussions veer into the realm of the abstract, but overall people are able to remain civil.

But what benefit are political discussions, in the context of casual internet forums not dedicated to political discussion?

Do they improve the participant's critical or rational thinking?

Are practical and clever solutions to problems invented?

Do people leave the discussion happier than when they joined it?

No.

The political discussions themselves are what are leading to increased toxicity in political culture.

21 minutes ago, Nypyren said:

But what benefit are political discussions, in the context of casual internet forums not dedicated to political discussion?

Doesnt this apply to everything in the Lounge section?  Most forums have some section dedicated to off-topic discussion, and typically that's there in order to further the community-building of the site.   Of course you could say you only want to allow "non-controversial" topics... which I guess is fine, but then who determines what those are?  I dont know.  My general feeling is that people should be allowed to discuss whatever they want, with as few limits as are needed.  Shutting down all off-topic discussion seems like a very drastic step.

21 minutes ago, Nypyren said:

The political discussions themselves are what are leading to increased toxicity in political culture.

I cant disagree with this enough.  This is a sort of "kill the messenger" argument.   

Political discussions are not what have created a toxic political culture in the U.S. (not sure about other parts of the world).  We have had more and more toxicity in politics since the 80's and Newt Gingrich in Congress.  More recently, we have networks like Fox News and right-wing talk radio who specialize in demonizing anyone who doesnt agree with them, turning their viewers/listeners against the media, against the establishment, against institutions of higher learning, and even against science and rational thought.  

And today, we have a President that takes every opportunity to try to de-legitimize the media and calls anything he doesnt like "fake news", guaranteeing that any time someone even points out the facts of what he does or says, his supporters will ignore it and just cry bias.  We have a guy who's such a pathological liar and created such a culture of lies, that his own supporters can no longer tell what's true and what's not... nor do they seem to care.  THIS is what's causing toxicity in our political culture... the rejection of facts for "alternative facts", the rejection of the free press and freedom of speech, and the promotion of a culture of lying and corruption.   But, it's pretty hard to even point that out when people start to cry about how just discussing such things is the problem.  Burying your head in the sand will not make the problems go away. 

2 hours ago, JTippetts said:

As a conservative, if I were just coming to the site now as a fresh youngster looking to learn a new hobby, and I clicked the unread content button, only to see an entire page of either posts in a Trump bashing thread, or upvotes/down votes in the same thread, as I saw a number of times before that thread was closed, I would leave and probably not return regardless of the actual character of the discussion in that thread.

If you did that then you'd be confusing a thread about Trump with a thread about conservatives.   I havent seen anyone attack any conservative principles, and in fact people here are perfectly willing to discuss such things.  But Trump is a specific person with specific words and actions that are being discussed.  And what you might call "Trump-bashing" I might call "pointing out facts".  Is it bashing Trump to point out how he constantly lies, how he's constantly trying to undermine the rule of law, or how his own friends and allies call him incompetent and an idiot, who's so mentally unstable that they have to hide things from him for the sake of the country?

Sure, I can see your point about a conservative seeing such a thread and thinking that.  But, that person should look in the thread and make up their minds based on the facts and not their assumptions.   And if they equate pointing out facts about Trump to bashing conservatism, that seems like their problem, and not a cause for shutting down certain threads.

5 hours ago, 0r0d said:

 My general feeling is that people should be allowed to discuss whatever they want, with as few limits as are needed.  Shutting down all off-topic discussion seems like a very drastic step.

Drastic step maybe. But this is what just happened.  I could not help but notice the Trump thread got shut down when the more pro-Trumpish side started to gain a foothold.  And then we had another pro-conservative thread that was quickly shut down (yes I know there were reasons given for both these things, wink wink). I say this as someone who dislike's Trump myself. I dislike his policies and given my family history, I have even more personal reasons to dislike him.

However what I dislike  even more is when moderation is not even handed (which it rarely is).  It would be nice to say just ignore the treads that upset you. I think this would be easier to do if those threads were left on their own and only moderated when spamming, threats or insults are involved.  However it does really start to bug me when moderation tends to push one point of view, by closing threads, banning etc... In my view if that's going to be done it's better to just disallow political threads altogether. 

I seriously think there is no need for this kind of garbage here.  There are plenty of places where people can go bash each other over Trump to their hearts desire.