The main reason we finally decided to add the forum in the first place so it was all in one area and isn't being posted elsewhere on the site. For the most part, it's worked as intended, we no longer see most of those shit threads outside that particular section. I do agree they pretty much always devolve into inane arguments and shitposts, but it's better than the alternative of it being elsewhere.
I'd much rather have a section dedicated to these shit threads than having them pop up in GOT or USN and the like as they had beforehand. If you don't like them, then just don't go there, simple as that. I haven't been in that section basically since it's been added, and thus I have no issues with these types of threads so long as they stay there.
The problem is with political discourse often something humans like to engage in. The eagerness to engage and give your opinion is something that social media algorithms have long since exploited and is why everything is so politically charged today.
I miss the era of GBATemp (and the internet as a whole), where your political identity and conversations were not a part of the forum. It simply did not exist here. This was a gaming and modding community and conversation was limited to that realm.
If politics really are a containment board, the staff needs to consider omitting those boards from the front page feed -- so it doesn't show up amongst the other "recently posted in" threads. I don't think I've gone a single visit to the site in the past years where there isn't some political thread lingering there.
I kind of wish the staff would actually ban some of the obviously harmful members, like those spreading White Nationalist/Neo-Nazi conspiracies and talking points. I really hate how often it seems like staff either ignore these members or even say something dismissive towards those reporting them. I am not sorry to say this, but members posting anti-LGBT+, borderline racist, and sexist comments are creating a hostile environment, the staff needs to actually deal with them.
It's all virtuous intent up until people begin gaming the system and labeling anyone they don't like the flavor of the month villainous "oppressive" demographic to get rid of them. Or, as the age old image that has somehow become
more relevant since it was created:
To be entirely frank, this is the fundamental flaw of putting politics into a community that is not politically focused. It just serves to divide an otherwise unified community.
Genuinely, I'm not all that concerned of the political belief of a person contributing to video game modding discussion or development as long as they keep it to themselves and stop plastering it all over the community/discussion.
It is not important to me whether the 60 FPS mod for Donkey Kong Country is made by a neo-confederate Nazi white supremacist nationalist or an open-border anarcho-Marxist LGBTQ+ transgender ally black panther as long as they keep that ideology off the mod patch and off the community (barring elected "containment boards", of course).
As long as the 60FPS mod doesn't give Donkey Kong a swastika-armband or gay pride flag, we're good.
