No politics forum?
I think ilp would be even better if it had a specific politics forum, where is philosophy more relevant than in current affairs? I would also like to debate political ideology and models as well as whats in the news etc.
If I am being dumb and haven’t noticed it as a sub forum or something please excuse.
The Social Sciences forum houses political discussions. More general discussions (e.g. Socialism vs. Capitalism) go in the main forum, and what’s-in-the-news (e.g. The Democrats Are Ruining America) goes in the Current Events subforum. ‘Social Sciences’ is somewhat misleading, but the description reads “The Social Sciences forum is for discussions of politics, economics, sociology, law, business and any other topic that falls under the social science remit.”
All the forums are Politics forums. Unfortunately.
Oh ok, I thought it better all in one place, but maybe not eh.
Faust’s point is a good one, most discussion is or becomes political. But that aside, I think it makes sense to have two ostensibly political forums. Political theory and political fact are two very different disciplines, and though they have the subject matter in common, in a philosophical sense they are more similar to other things than they are to each other. Political theory goes better with sociology, because it attempts some kind of atemporal truth about society and human interaction. On the other hand, what Obama did today is more similar to an earthquake occuring somewhere, because they are both fleeting; that’s not to say that they don’t involve philosophical considerations, it’s just that they are questions that ask for philosophical considerations on the fly, they are more likely to eschew ideals in favor of what’s possible in a given context, and they require more reaction and less reflection (though the reaction might refer to reflections).
In short, people are still talking about communism, but not about Lewinsky. Is that a reasonable distinction?
A couple other consideration are that we don’t want to stray too far from how the forums are currently used, and we don’t want too many forums. Changing the purpose of a forum is hard because we either need to move the topics around (which we ended up doing with the Current Events forum, but those topics tend to die and be forgotten quickly) or we leave a bunch of topics in the wrong forum. And creating too many new forums gets cluttery (and it’s already verging on cluttery).
We talked not too long ago in staff about how best to break down the forums, and a Politics forum was something that came up, but ultimately we just ended up separating out the news bites from the social science, to create a place for news and a place for all sorts of theoretical social discussion.
Personally I would have gone with the two kinds of politics, at the moment on the main page you have social sciences and psychology, I would have gone for…
Philosophy
Politics
Political theory
Science
psychology
art
Religion
Mundane babble/chat
Feedback
Looks simpler to me? And more straight forwards. You don’t come onto these forums and immediately think about debating current issues [which are pretty big!] ~ maybe that’s a good thing, but isn’t it our job to offer up new societal models [etc] for people to consider? And to challenge current thinking?
I understand it is difficult to change, although I have made forums before [using different software though] and it is just a change of text in a box.
What about economics, law, and social policy? Or writing? You definitely want a place for politics, but having a just-politics forum (even moreso for two) gets too constrained. Suddenly you’ve got:
-Philosophy
-Politics
-Political theory
-Economics
-Law
-Social Policy
-Science
-Psychology
-Visual Art
-Writing
-Religion
-Mundane babble/chat
-Hall of Questions (which catches the one-liner questions that are innocent but almost content-free, as well as and homework requests and other more fleshed out questions)
-Rant (which serves the valuable function of being a fire in a bucket)
-Feedback
My suggestion a while back (only addressing the ‘Philosophy Forums’) was:
-General Philosophy
-Society
-Science
-Mind
-Religion
-Essay and Theses
Others preferred to keep Psychology and change Social Science to Politics/Economics. I liked Society because it’s broader and it keeps things the way they are (I also thought I had a sort of coherent naming structure). That discussion ended up with leaving things exactly as they are and creating the Current Events sub-folder.
It’s an interesting decision, because everyone sees philosophy with an emphasis on different things, and with a different way of parsing the many disciplines that are subsumed by a broad definition of philosophy. I really thought my idea was gold, but it turned out everyone had their own understanding of how it should all break down.
Hmm ok…
Threads relating to these would go in the respective politics, political theory or psychology forums. I have seen this on other forums and it works well. Maybe sociology should have its own forum?
if we add this we still have les forums than current!
One liners can go in other sections mainly in mundane babble.
Questions of this nature are usually in the main philosophy forum, but can also go in the psychology one or even science.
Society is broader yes, perhaps too broad ~ it’s a bit like having an ‘ideas’ forum instead of most of the others. I feel it is better to be straight to the point?
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