It feels like the balance of power has shifted quite a bit around here over the last several months. Has it become a more left dominated board? Are we balanced in the center? Or is the right still running the show? I think we have a good balance right now. My opinion is that Wordforge is now pretty balanced in the center of left and right.
It's closer to balanced, but that seems to have led to some folks on the right complaining that everything is completely unbalanced and thus shitty now.
A pretty good balance now: Some good posters on the left, some good posters on the right, some fairly useless posters on the left, some fairly useless posters on the right, and a few who are pretty hard to classify. If only the topics were more varied I might post more and lurk less; I'm just not all that interested in guns. (Never owned one, almost never shot one, not interested in having one...) But having done abortion, health-care, religion, and a host of other subjects pretty much to death over the years, I suppose the time has come to fight about guns for a year or two...
I think the board has definitely shifted a bit more toward the center. Of course, there are plenty of posters on the left, in the center, on the right, and all over, that are decent people anyway, so it doesn't really matter as long as there's something to talk about. I have seen slightly less shrill screaming from more extreme ideologues on both sides, and I can only see that as a good thing.
First post in and already a partisan jab. Thing is there are no winners when everything is viewed through partisan lenses. But okay I'll play! Right now I'd say Wordforge doesn't have strong representatives for either political party. We've random couplings of political poo-flingers but nothing substantial. Yet if I had describe Wordforge as more donkey or more elephant... It's really tough to say with any accuracy, I know members more by issue than political affiliation. But okay my answer is "Too soon."
Like Anync said, post about a variety of topics, not just guns and we'll see. But it's good to have folks like gul back...and hell, even Aurora who was one of the shrillest partisan hacks this side of Liet has become...well, to put it bluntly, sane. Or at least as sane as one can be to post here for ten years. Hopefully, we'll see more good posters come back and stay back (waves to Uncle Albert).
I've got to say, I like the hard left turn Wordforge has taken. There really need to be places on the Internet where liberals feel safe to post. Now if the moderators would just get down to banning posters that threaten the Left Mindset we'd truly be making progress.
The board used to be more centered and libertarian. Now it has shifted far to the left, a lot of posters are gone, and there is very little interesting discussion.
If your definition of "interesting discussion" is "me and my buddies shouting down anyone who disagrees with us so we can spend more time sucking each other's cocks," maybe.
Heh, a common criticism used against Them! Oh and I'm not talking this Them! I kinda doubt giant mutant ants are even capable of fellatio. Accusations of wanting an echo chamber are obviously valid. Some members do want to be surrounded by like minded posters. Some even actively seek to drive those they disagree with from the board.
I don't think anybody loses, so long as you have that particular avatar to distract us from your inane posting.
Black Dove seems to be a big fan of my threads, at least. He's posted in nearly all of them, I believe.
I'm not really seeing one side or the other being more in the lead. I think part of the perception is who starts the threads as well. If you get gluts of one side or the other it can look like one side is "winning".
It doesn't seem that much different to me, whenever you visit after a not being here for a while you can pretty much guarantee:- 1. There's be numerous spam threads on the front page of the Red Room 2. There'll be a battle de jour where poster X has it in for poster Y Some posters seem to have adopted their roles of left/right to the detriment of their individuality, which is the only observation I'd make on the whole.
My opinion after having been gone for nearly four years, is that not only Wordforge, but also some members, had become decidedly more liberal. As goes the country, so goes the Forge!
You really have a major chip on your shoulder 24/7, don't you? It seems that, in a thread about "left and right," those who are in the middle are "hard to classify" by definition, doesn't it? Is that sort of logic really so hard for you? You might be in the center politically, but you really are very high on the "want to be as nasty as possible" scale, as usual.
The right has always been the majority on this board, but overall, the left has been slowly and patiently shifting public opinion their way for decades now. Consequently, most of the right here has also gradually moved left. I guess I might simply notice it more acutely since I've moved much farther right than when I initially migrated here.
Actually, I think there are more posters who tend to moderate their stands, without actually "changing sides," than those who become more extreme or those who actively change sides. When I first joined TBBS, back about 1932 or so (it seems like it, anyway...), I thought I was very conservative. When I read the posts of people like Dayton, Enterpriser, and a bunch of others, I realized I wasn't even close to the right end of the scale. This was back when I was still voting Republican as "the lesser of two evils," but I already favored much easier immigration, legalization of marijuana, legalization of gay marriage, and especially non-interventionism internationally by the American military, all stances that weren't exactly "conservative." Over the years, my opinions have changed somewhat, so I'm even closer to the center now than I was back then, though I would probably still classify myself as more conservative than liberal overall. And I've seen a lot of other posters do the same thing, sometimes from the other side. I guess that, despite all the arguing, we do listen to each other, just a little bit, sometimes...
Define "right". Is Volpone right, because he has a hard in for the gays and Obama? Am I "right" because I want a smaller goverment, but care not foe social issues? Or is our socialist gun nut Ancalagon "right" inspite of his mass transit fetish?
Less Shouting down, more discussion now. I can dig it. We've lost some posters, but we've gained some as well. Although, it's not a terribly long list of posters that joined after I did.
