Beer Baron said:
iansane said:
It's not what you're saying that's getting downvoted. It's how you're saying it. You tend to start your thought with the foregone conclusion that everyone hates you and that what you're about to say will break the internet. This place is going to be at least a little echo-y since it's rooted in a singular passion that almost all of us have come here for, grassroots motorsports but for the most part the people that will genuinely engage you in conversation are willing to try and look at from you perspective. Obviously that doesn't mean they'll side with you, but they will be appreciative of what you've brought to the table. IF you bring it to the table without the baggage. I like you. I don't know you, but I like what you have to say even if a lot of it I disagree with.
My observations of the actual proclivities and biases of this board, and what actually gets threads locked.
This forum has a strong libertarian (small 'L') bias. Outside of that, it's fairly ideologically diverse. Because it is relatively large, it is more moderate than extremist. With the libertarian thing, I would say it skews slightly liberal of average (for the U.S.) on social issues relating to personal freedoms and self expression (e.g. LGBTQ rights, drug legalization, etc.) and slightly conservative of median in relation to economic/business issues. It is generally in favor of policies that are friendly to small businesses.
I don't have data to back it up, but if you were to plot things on a 2-axis "Liberal/Conservative" graph, there would be a big bulge in the middle that is probably highest *just* left of center (as defined in the U.S.) but with a very short tail towards liberal extremism and a relatively longer tail towards conservative extremism.
I think we see conservative voices and opinions getting into trouble because this forum has more and is more friendly towards conservative opinions.
There are a lot more anarcho-capitalist people here than socialist. There are a lot more people who are pro-gun than anti-gun. You do not have a strong liberal bloc on this forum espousing things like "defund the police". But the vast majority of members almost certainly sit in between the mainstream Democrat and Republican positions.
Because of that longer conservative tail, we get more conservative outliers who say things and raise opinions that upset the apple cart. We get more people who misinterpret disagreement with being polar opposite. We don't see this on the liberal side, because we just don't have any liberals saying things like, "If you're not anti-racist, then you're racist." It's not because conservative people are more prone to being that type of argumentative. Just that a certain portion of any population that holds a strong opinion will be, and we have enough people with strong conservative opinions and hardly any with strong liberal opinions.
What gets threads locked is a couple people arguing past each other to the point that all the moderates voices walk away from the conversation. The quickest way to get a thread locked is to say, "Well YOU want..." or to start making personal attacks.
We see downvotes for bringing up hot political points in expressly non-political threads (e.g. Memes) or for posting in an argumentative manner that uses straw man arguments, false dichotomies, ad hominem attacks, etc. but not for expressing unpopular opinions.
Edit: Note that I am *not* saying the more conservative members of this board are extremists. I don't believe they are. I think they are about as conservative as my aunt is liberal. She is pretty mainstream Democratic. Perhaps a bit left of median for the Democratic party, but not AOC liberal. Very active and and opinionated working for gun control. Not liberal-whacko. But liberal enough to mute on social media leading up to elections and to steer discussions away from certain topics at family gatherings.
This should be a sticky of some kind.
