And, relatedly, some people see pointless debate where others see incremental movement via discussion.
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Just an observation. Several times last year I lamented to myself that there were no discussions about politics. I remembered the old thread fondly, but fully understand why it was closed and prohibited. It would be so informative to have a civil exchange of ideas, but the civil part doesn’t seem to last long.
I guess the covid threads were a platform for some of the opinionating (probably not a word, but maybe it should be). I didn’t follow them really closely after a while, but when I did, I managed to swallow my distaste for some of the comments and separate wheat and chaff.
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This thread is an example of the range of things people come here for.
Some prefer light topics only, some thrive on hearty discussion. Some both! And to be vibrant, both light and hearty are needed.
One of the most golden rules that needs to be here but many - maybe most,including myself - need to learn to just walk away from a thread that upsets you, you can’t relate to, you’re offended by. Walk away!!!
There are now threads that I just have to leave alone. The same can apply to people. Block,baby.
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I was going to say the same thing. There is no cause to continue to follow I line of reasoning that you find uncomfortable or offensive. Just quit following the thread. Social media often makes it easy to be prejudice against someone based on limited dialogue. Our opinions on topics are usually far more nuanced that what can be said in a tweet or even a forum. This forum however, can allow us to present our ideas more completely than a tweet or a facebook post. So long as someone is making their point I enjoy the dialogue if it devolves into name calling it’s time to move on to a different subject for me.
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I like a variety, and some bickering or whatever doesn’t bother me. If I get tired of it, I just scroll quickly or ignore the thread.
I do like the randomness of starting a thread on one thing and letting it meander, as long as it’s OK with the OP, for example. If the OP wants to talk about a trip to CA, and someone jumps in and “changes” the topic to Europe right away, the OP should be able to suggest starting a new thread on that, or someone else can volunteer. But if we’re talking about train rides, and the OP gets what they need, and others want to continue talking about train rides elsewhere or something related, have at it. I don’t care if it’s searchable later.
I do think that if politics is allowed it should be in a sub-forum.
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So here’s the bottom line: there are clearly different points of view on what should be allowed, or not. I hope the Powers That Be choose whatever options will encourage and facilitate discussion.
As I said upthread, this is the lifeblood of CC. You want that parent to stick around to chat because that parent is also an informal expert on pre-med issues, or prep school, or musical theater, or athletic recruiting. They are your reservoir of accumulated wisdom, and that is THE thing that makes CC valuable.
I view discouraging discussion as an existential threat to CC. Less interesting discussion =a slow, and then accelerating death.
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I was going to post something similar. This is a college admissions website and the traffic on the site goes up and down depending on college admissions cycles. The past few weeks there have been a ton of “School A vs School B” threads and the “accumulated wisdom” was called into action to help indecisive students and parents. I feel that the website had an energy that it hasn’t had in a long time.
As this admissions cycle dies down, TPTB need something to keep the “accumulated wisdom” engaged and coming back so that they are available to help during the next admissions cycle. The cafe and non-college related threads serve this purpose but while those discussions can keep people visiting this website, as we saw above, it can also drive people away.
Personally, I choose to leave CC during lulls in college admission cycles. I rarely post in the cafe because I don’t the enjoy the argumentative debates or personal attacks (which are often worse in PM than on the threads) but, obviously, others do. To each is own.
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There is a thread on retirement planning that I post in that often deals with investment choices. I have a couple of times been reprimanded for political comments, but political decisions are big drivers of particular investments and intelligent speculation about what each party will do and its impact on specific asset classes is appropriate in that context. So, I was a little surprised when the posts were disappeared. I don’t post as frequently in that thread. Although I wouldn’t attribute it solely to the reprimands, I find that I check less frequently and post less frequently on CC.
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Finally someone gives an example. The posts complaining about overmoderation without examples are, to me, akin to the posts from the kid complaining that their teacher hates them/is unfair/cannot teach.
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The other thing that has happened to me personally is that I have inadvertently posted on a thread other than the one I thought or meant to.
I remember posting on the wedding thread about travel. It was in response to a post about traveling to a wedding. I felt I was scolded by a moderator and told to stay on topic.
It was a honest mistake and I really did not appreciate it. Maybe I was being too sensitive.
But I rarely look or post on the wedding thread since then.
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I found the admonition to stay on topic in a thread titled “Miscellaneous Ramblings” to be beyond ironic.
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Point noted. But instead of dragging us down, you could mention (and maybe REmention) that it would be helpful to have examples.
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Miscellaneous Rumblings was originally started to be fluffy, lighthearted fare, not weighty discussions. Not that weighty discussions cannot be infused, but that particular example happened to be one that had already been discussed in another thread and with such rancor that an admin, not a mod, shut it down.
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For a very recent example, though not in the Cafe, I had notification that there were 6 new posts in the “Only 3 safeties” thread and went to read them only to find that you deleted them because you deemed them not on topic, even though the OP for that thread said they enjoyed reading what others wrote that were off topic. They felt they were learning a lot.
Why did you feel your thoughts meant more than the OP’s?
If you want honesty, most of the time I disagree with someone who has deleted posts, admonished folks to stay on track unnecessarily or closed threads, it’s been you doing it. And yes, times like this make me wonder if I’d be better on The Chronicle of the Horse board (esp since we have a pony farm). I’ve never been on that one before and only have time for one message board (quit a homeschooling board when I became more active on this one).
It’s really, really frustrating how much you want to control things that are not really out of line, and especially in this specific case when the OP said in a post that they liked and were learning from the off topic posts.
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@CC_Mike may find it helpful to have examples. 
In general, I don’t. And I look to see what the OP wrote in the initial post. So if the OP asks that the discussion not discuss XYZ, I will post a note if the discussion devolves.
In this particular example, the OP was posting a help-me-decide and I felt that he was losing focus on that main, and very important, question. It would perhaps by better to provide links to the OP to the previous times the Caltech questions were brought up rather than rehashing there.
I will also point out that several members flagged the posts on question, so it was not simply a case where I decided to insert myself.
I appreciate your reply, but if several members agree with you even when the OP said they were fine with it when it was first brought up during the thread…
I will go see what The Chronicle of the Horse is all about to see if it’s a better fit for me. Different strokes for different folks. If I end up returning to school to teach and questions come up about colleges I know where I can find info. If I don’t, I don’t really need info any longer with my med school lad graduating in a month.
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I can provide an example. My comment on the passing of RBG was deleted and I was suspended for a while. I have reread it repeatedly, and to this day can’t figure out why you were upset by the statement, something along the lines that had she retired earlier the concern regarding the court’s future composition would be unnecessary.
More remarkably, I never got notice of a suspension or warning, just couldn’t login next time I tried. Perhaps it was too late by then. In any event, it has definitely affected my participation in the cafe
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You have asked for examples. Here’s the response to a first time poster, one who generates the message"X is a new poster, let’s welcome them to our community!" Your response was not welcoming at all!
Now the specifics are less important than the critical, and overriding, principle: you want to ENCOURAGE discussion, not shut it down!
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Yes, I could have handled that better in hindsight. I hope to do better in the future.
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