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About the Basement (Soap Box) Section

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wraith808:
Hmm. I'm mostly okay with avoiding religion, but "politics" is becoming harder to avoid, because it's starting to cross over into requiring the educational services of techies (which is what you are) or techie-wannabes (me!) to form the coalitions necessary to stop the rabid new Big Brother pushes. Some of the best posts I've yet seen on these topics are here, starting to edge out Slashdot, my prior go-to zone.
-TaoPhoenix (July 21, 2012, 12:08 PM)
--- End quote ---

Just because politics invade our every day lives, it doesn't mean we have to be focused on it all the time.  As mouser said, the tendency has been to keep the focus off of that.  I think that invasion is the reason that 'The Basement' even has to exist- it's becoming harder to keep it out of all of your discussion.  But I also think that it's not an impossible nor unreasonable goal- it's not what many/most come here for, and there are a wide variety of people that without discussion on such topics can be very civil and agreeable- but when you throw that in, the differences become more pronounced.

app103:
A forum I used to frequent has an unmoderated free speech section, where anything goes (as long as it wasn't spam or illegal), where people posted some of the most vile content, images, discussions, and language...and they called it "The Cesspool". It was their version of the Living Room. This was where all the politics, religion, drama, personal attacks, and off topic stuff went (they were an unofficial support forum for a P2P application, set up to keep the "help me" people from annoying everyone in their chat room).

The idea behind the name was that "The Living Room" sounded like a nice place to be and encouraged people to go there, but "The Cesspool" sounded like a rank, vile place you wouldn't want to visit, a place to post all the crap (pun intended) that didn't belong or wasn't suitable on any of the other boards....and it was. You needed to be pretty thick skinned and have a dark, twisted, sick sense of humor to participate in any of the discussions there, very much like their chat room on the P2P network. And in the beginning of the forum's life it was located at the very bottom of the board list to take focus off of it, and carried a warning that mentioned something about naked pictures of one of the chat room members that was intended to make you shudder and stay away. (Years later when the forum lost it's popularity as a support site, which had nothing to do with anything posted in that section,  "The Cesspool" board became it's main focus, an extension of their free speech, anything goes chat room.)

So, picking a name that sounds like somewhere you wouldn't want to visit, and implies "trash", "crap", or any other type of content you probably wouldn't want to read, sounds like a good idea if you want to keep people away. (But we don't have to go so far as making it an unmoderated, free speech, anything goes section, full of vile stuff likely to cause animosity between forum members, like my friend's forum section is.)

cranioscopical:
So, picking a name that sounds like somewhere you wouldn't want to visit
-app103 (July 21, 2012, 06:23 PM)
--- End quote ---
Voluntary Income Tax Contributions.

rgdot:
SpoilerRepublican national convention discussion

tomos:

^ off to the basement with you ;)

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