The board is boring now

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CharmCityTiger said:
I used to come here multiple times a day and would post fairly frequently but now I seldom do. I appreciate what you are trying to do superiffic but for a lot of us it's just easier to not give a shit about current events anymore.
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Right now, that’s a lot of it. I engage, here and elsewhere, with way less politics than prior to the election. The zone is so flooded with S right now, that it’s too emotionally draining to read it all. Late January, that will probably change, but I know I’m more selective about what to engage with.
 
SnoopRob said:
While it is a bit of a chicken/egg problem, trolls and the responses to them are the driver of the problem.

You're correct that there's little else to talk about, but that's because this board has allowed the trolls to suck up all the oxygen.

I elected to make extensive use of the ignore function on here and on most threads I see a lot of threads with only about half as many posts as there should be and likely 80% of the posts I do see on active threads are replies to "You are ignoring content by this member. Show ignored content".

Yes, there would almost certainly be less posts overall if folks ignored the trolls, but the level of the discussion would be much, much better.

Troll posts are essentially the junk food of the message board world. And posters here have to make a choice, do you want to fill up on soda, Cheetos, and cookies or do you want to eat a healthy, nutritious meal? The problem this board has is that it, on the whole, chooses junk food about 90% of the time.
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Choose the ignore function for the trolls.
 
I think it’s fine. I think it’s better than the IC ZZL right now. I think now is a good time to start and participate in non-political threads. And more political threads will surface pretty soon.
 
ZZLPHeels said:
The problem with the political aspect of the board is that 90% of the posters are of the same mindset politically, so there isn’t much to discuss. “I agree with you” doesn’t generate a good back and forth. We need some non-troll conservative posters. If there is such a thing.
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That same thing was said about the old IC board, but it's not true in the sense that we actually have a good number of non-Trump conservatives who now vote Democratic and far-left types who disagree with the more mainstream liberals and centrists here frequently. There are very few Trumper posters who are not trolls for the most part, and there were plenty of trolls on the old ZZLP too. So based on years and years of reading the old ZZL and ZZLP I don't agree that there "isn't much to discuss" here. As I said, I think most of the recent decline in posting is due to the usual holiday lull - the old ZZLP had holiday lulls as well - and people being exhausted and depressed following the election. I still think everything will pick up as soon as Trump is inaugurated later this month.
 
SnoopRob said:
Part of it is where we're at in the political cycle. The period between elections and the installation of the newly-elected officials is generally a down period for political engagement. (Also, some of it may be folks are just depressed by the impending Trump 2.0 administration and aren't as interested in discussing politics.)

You're correct that part of it is a troll problem. When folks are predominantly responding to trolls rather than ignoring them, then the conversations become troll-level discussions.

And, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this kind of thing tends to happen to breakaway boards. The initial excitement about a new board turns to a bit of staleness which leads to reduced posting. It also doesn't help that you don't get new quality posters to help the board continue to be fresh.
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Also a goodly amount of us have pretty much tuned out politics in the face of what is coming and the fact that a majority of Americans want it.
 
nycfan said:
Happy to turn it over to you guys and be on my way at this point.
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NO NO NO !!!!!!!!!!!

There is no problem with this board whatsoever. Some here take offense from posts by ill informed Trump/MAGA/GQPers but those posters provide us with insight regarding what is percolating in the right wing fever swamp. I believe they do us a service that allows us to not visit Fox News, Breitbart, Newsmax, OAN, Stormfront, 4chan/8chan et al to get the Trump/MAGA/GQP perspective

nycfan, keep doing what you are doing :)
 
Yosef said:
It is comical that every differing opinion is labeled a troll on here.
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It is comical that you think that your antics on this board aren’t accepted simply because of a difference of opinions. You’re here to start arguments. It’s literally your only reason for being on this board.

I try not to ignore people for as long as I can, but once you’ve proven yourself to be a worthless member of this community with nothing positive or constructive to add, I have to draw the line.

So I’m going to do my part in cleaning up the conversations around here by ensuring I don’t have to have any more with you.

Just know that you truly earned this Superignore.
 
There's a perfect example of the problem right now on the "Should lies be protected as free speech?" thread.

It could be a good, if possibly somewhat slow, thread except that 2-3 of the same trolls arrived and now nearly all of the effort of the thread goes into interactions with those trolls and their bait. There's very little room for any decent discussion left because the trolls are taking up the majority of the discussion space due to the main portion of posters engaging with them instead of ignoring them.
 
ZZLPHeels said:
The problem with the political aspect of the board is that 90% of the posters are of the same mindset politically, so there isn’t much to discuss. “I agree with you” doesn’t generate a good back and forth. We need some non-troll conservative posters. If there is such a thing.
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"We need some non-troll conservative posters. If there is such a thing."

I agree with this completely. I'd like to hear more from the MAGA/Conservative folks and it might help spur substantive discussion.
 
Bobfripp said:
"We need some non-troll conservative posters. If there is such a thing."

I agree with this completely. I'd like to hear more from the MAGA/Conservative folks and it might help spur substantive discussion.
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That’s not just an issue here, though. I don’t hear Pubs talking real, substantive policy in any forum. Maybe it happens at the think tanks, but I don’t hear it anywhere else, and that includes from Pub legislators in DC.
 
SnoopRob said:
There's a perfect example of the problem right now on the "Should lies be protected as free speech?" thread.

It could be a good, if possibly somewhat slow, thread except that 2-3 of the same trolls arrived and now nearly all of the effort of the thread goes into interactions with those trolls and their bait. There's very little room for any decent discussion left because the trolls are taking up the majority of the discussion space due to the main portion of posters engaging with them instead of ignoring them.
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Including responses by the guy who started this thread.
 
y'all have a terrible combination of the stupidest fucking conservatives and the worst fucking liberals. I don't have a dog in this fight - only a foggy fondness for the old zzl before it became clear Ben was an emerging christofascist and I fled in one of the exoduses. The software is tight, I'll give you that. But honestly I suspect binging Everybody Loves Raymond would be more entertaining than really engaging here.
 
McAdooSmackinYou said:
y'all have a terrible combination of the stupidest fucking conservatives and the worst fucking liberals. I don't have a dog in this fight - only a foggy fondness for the old zzl before it became clear Ben was an emerging christofascist and I fled in one of the exoduses. The software is tight, I'll give you that. But honestly I suspect binging Everybody Loves Raymond would be more entertaining than really engaging here.
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So where would you suggest people interact?
 
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