Isn’t it obvious that politics is one of the things professional mariners talk about while hanging out around the scuttlebutt?
If there is a bandwidth issue and the site is up against some bandwidth limit then just say so instead of unilaterally declaring uncomfortable (to whom?) material “noise” and censoring it.
If the intent is to keep a thread on a narrow track, then, as we often see here, simply move the “noise” to a separate thread under a new header.
It takes only one click my Dear
to make your foe DISAPPEAR.
My empirical proof to above theory is below in easy to inderstand pictorial ( rather clumsy & impromptu) presentation
Exhibit 1.
Exhibit 2.
I have already posted some time ago a brief video clip with all the steps advising the hostile , unfriendly elements , how to rescue them from the misery of reading my irritating them content, contrary to their own perception of the world/issues and other crap.
Simple sollution / quick fix to what it seems complicated problem.
It would make incognito ratting & snitching and calling ‘’ MAMA ‘’ to wipe their noses and tend their bruised egos via flagging obsolete and less cumbersome to High Forum Priest responsible for ORDNUNG and sanity.
Yes, I’m aware of the feature, in fact the forum software will send this message to moderators.
This is an automated message from gCaptain Forum to inform you that @xxxxxx has been ignored by 5 users. This could indicate a problem is developing in your community.
ChatGPTs answer to the question “why do some forums not allow political discussions in the section for off-topic discussions?”
Because politics tends to break the purpose of “off-topic” sections rather than fit it. Common reasons include:
- High conflict, low payoff – Political threads often escalate into arguments, personal attacks, or flame wars much faster than other topics.
- Moderation burden – Politics requires heavy, constant moderation to enforce civility and rules.
- Community fragmentation – It can polarize members and damage the sense of community, even among people who agree on the forum’s main topic.
- Topic drift – Political debates quickly dominate and drown out lighter, casual off-topic conversation.
It’s not a question of network bandwidth, but rather one of mental bandwidth. If the volume of drivel relative to insight drops to a certain point, it feels less like looking into a pot of gold and more like contemplating gold dust dispersed in a cesspool. The good stuff is still there, but it gets so buried in shit that I can’t be bothered to filter it out.
To be clear, gCaptain never crossed that threshold for me. The reason I dropped out has more to do with the fact that nowadays I work as an organizational developer in the food processing industry, so I no longer have much to offer on maritime matters. Still, I absolutely understand why boundaries must be set. Effective housekeeping is a big part of the reason why this place thrives where most forums have gone the way of the dodo.
Now about Heiwa, I enjoyed having him around much like I enjoy stopping at a railway crossing to gawk at a good train wreck. Anything but boring, while totally understandable if you don’t want it happening in your backyard.
As for c.captain, I do miss having him around, both for his considerable knowledge and for his total lack of filter acting as a refreshing counterpoint to the modern tendency towards sanitized discourse. Still, if you came into my house and treated my friends like he did to get banned here, you would be going out the door so hard you’d never consider coming back, so I can’t really fault John for his decision.
My shop and office are in an industrial park. On a corner across the street is a bar that is very popular with a wide demographic that includes mariners from the nearby port. Some of the customers are a bit rowdy, some are definitely shady to say the least.
I went in once and decided it wasn’t a “good fit” and haven’t been back in years even though it is just a hundred yard walk from where I am typing this. The regulars at that bar are having a good time and are not bothered by my absence and their presence and activities don’t bother me.
There are a hundred doors nearby where I can walk in and have a conversation, learn something, make a new friend and enjoy the socializing just like the folks at that bar. I just choose not to enter that particular door.
Every thread on this site has a subject header, think of it as a door and just don’t walk into the ones that don’t suit your personal interest or taste. There is no need to vet the conversations in a bar that you choose to enter, if you don’t like the conversation find another or move to a different seat or room at the bar. This place is big enough to hold a thousand conversations, even those that annoy the bouncer.
C.captain was the bouncer, he’d use his pointy stick to drive off people that annoyed him.
There is a Discourse forum for moderators, I’ve found it useful as a general guide.
Here’s the the link Discourse Moderation Guide - Site Management - Discourse Meta
Is that an observation or an admission?
As just about everyone annoyed c.captain the term “bouncer” is kind, IMO. As self-appointed gate keeper merely disagreeing was not enough and his rants were often detrimental to ongoing conversations.
C.Captain never “bounced” anyone, he was not a moderator. No one can be driven off, they can only self-remove.
Annoyance is a personal condition, annoying people can be ignored and since bandwidth is not a factor, being bounced or closing a thread based solely on the fact that one or a few people are annoyed is a policy worth questioning.
It matters if one of the folks you annoy pays the freight here. If you recall @john gave Dunatov (c.captain) a way to rejoin. I can only suppose he didn’t want to spend the effort to do so.
Forum policy wrt political posts is going to be tightened up, more so then in the past. The reaction to this was @ombugge doubled down and started several political threads. Which got him a 24 then a 48 hr ban.
Ombugge pushes and probes around the edges of forum guidelines until he gets some push back.
I agree with ombugge’s politics and views on national affairs, this is just not the right place for an endless discussions about politics.
Glad to hear that you agree with my view on politics and national affairs.
And thank you for the “holiday”,it was much needed. 
Yes I’m aware that this is not a political forum, but when politics affects the life and safety of seafarers of all nationalities, incl. US mariners, as it does to a large degree in today’s geopolitical climate, it does become a maritime subject.
I agree that I have deliberately pushed the boundaries of the forum policy, by posting quotes, facts and opinions that upset some forum members. OK I admit that sometime I have posted memes and jokes that was intended to trigger reactions from those same members.
IMHO if everybody agrees on everything it becomes a dull conversation. The same goes for a forum were only non-controversial subjects can be discussed.
Thanks heaven for the Shuttlebutt thread, where it should be allowed to bring up things that interest many, but may not please everybody.
PS: The list of threads and posts I have not opened is becoming longer by the day. If I’m not interested in a subject I just don’t bother.
I couldn’t agree more. Absolutely agree that we should welcome controversial topics.
What is discouraged here is specifically topics about politics.
This is just one book of several but this book discusses the fact that political arguments actually have the effect on people of each side digging even deeper into their positions.
Good book, read it a few months ago.
Arguing politics on a maritime forum might be a fun way to annoy people but very unlikely to persuade anyone.
QUOTE:
Flexibility is a cardinal virtue in physical fitness, and according to political psychologist and neuroscientist Leor Zmigrod, it can be a cardinal virtue in our mental health, too. How she came to that conclusion and how common rigid thinking can be are themes explored in her new book, The Ideological Brain.
“I think that from all the research that I’ve done,” she tells interviewer David Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast, “I feel that what rigid thinking does is it numbs people to the complexity of their own experience, and it simplifies their thinking. It makes them less free, less authentic, less expansive in their imagination.” And while she acknowledges there are times being unbending may be seen as an asset, “rigid thinking is rarely good for you at an individual level.”
In this podcast, she details some of the work – both with social science experimentation and with brain imaging – that determines if people are flexible in their thinking, what are the real-life benefits of being flexible, if they can change, and how an ideological brain, i.e. a less flexible brain, affects politics and other realms of decision-making.
“When you teach or when you try to impart flexible thinking, you’re focusing on how people are thinking, not what they’re thinking,” Zmigrod explains. “So it’s not like you can have a curriculum of ‘like here is what you need to think in order to think flexibly,’ but it’s about teaching how to think in that balanced way that is receptive to evidence, that is receptive to change, but also isn’t so persuadable that any new authority can come and take hold of your thoughts.”
Zmigrod was a Gates Scholar at Cambridge University and won a winning a Junior Research Fellowship at Churchill College there. She has since held visiting fellowships at Stanford and Harvard universities, and both the Berlin and Paris Institutes for Advanced Study. Amond many honors the young scholar received are the ESCAN 2020 Young Investigator Award by the European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, the Glushko Dissertation Prize in Cognitive Science by the Cognitive Science Society, . the 2020 Women of the Future Science Award and the 2022 Women in Cognitive Science Emerging Leader Award, and the 2022 Distinguished Junior Scholar Award in Political Psychology by the American Political Science Association.
To download an MP3 of this podcast, right-click this link and save. The transcript of the conversation appears below.
END QUOTE
Leor Zmigrod on the Ideological Brain - Social Science Space
Downlodable podcast available in above link or from my drive below:
It was probably a mistake to include that book in my post, that particular book is not important there are others.
Don’t really need a book at all, just do a search using three terms: facts change minds, many results, here’s the first:
'Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds
I wouldn’t want to belong to a tribe that doesn’t accept facts. Facing reality is one of the keys to survival.
Facing reality is the key to survival of the individual. Manipulating reality is the key to survival of the tribe… hence the entire F^@&¡n@ modus operandi of religion and politics.
Sure, the m.o. of manipulation through religion etc might create cohesion within a tribe, but how long can it last when faced with adverse conditions? Crop failure, loss of potable water - manipulated tribes can last hundreds of years, but calamity, or even loss of integrity will always end them.
My post was in the Shuttlebutt thread, which is described as; “Scuttlebutt and Off-topic. Non-maritime talk plus jokes, rumors and innuendo belong here.”
It was about the insult to the thousands of soldiers from Norway and other NATO nations that answered the call from USA after the 9/11 attack.
More specifically it was about two of our sons that did more than their fair share during the years they served with ISAF.
Did they and the thousands of others that went to war on behalf of USA, deserve to be berated by a draft dodging, deranged and demented “President” that can’t string a coherent sentence together?
FYI: They were both in Kosovo. The eldest were also in Bosnia and with UNIFIL in Lebanon. After his 20 years with the Norwegian Arm he spent a year in South Sudan as Security Manager for The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) https://www.nrc.no/
He is now Security Officer in the Norwegian Air Force, serving in Northern Norway and preparing for a stint in Iraq.
PS: My “offending” post has received 11 likes and a “Nice Topic” star.
