Moderators - Can we move snickers, etc. to a "Shiny Object of the Day" forum? [View All]

[arendt]

READERS: Please feel free to chime in. Indicate your support or opposition. The more comments,
the more seriously the moderators will take this proposal.

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I, and others, have noticed how the General Discussion board page views are dominated by the
manufactured media nonsense topics of the day. The Snickers commercial, Prince's penis, Joe
Biden and "clean, articulate...", etc. ad nauseam.

Yes, there are posts about Iraq or Iran or Libby. But, look at the page view numbers. The fluff
gets a disproportionate number of views, and one line comments.

And, unfortunately, the GD boards are the only ones with very large viewership. So, the flood of fluff
in GD/GD-P is sort of a Denial of Service attack on serious content. Same as in the corporate
media. It really gripes me to see the same distractions/wedge issues as in the corporate media
being re-fought on a supposedly intelligent board like DU.

Several people suggested that we should move this worthless distraction / scripted fluff to a
separate forum:

See posts in thread:

........ http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=134761&mesg_id=134761

that mention: the psuedo-event forum, the shiny object of the day forum, the worthless fluff forum, etc.

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There are two ways to do this:

1. People who want serious topics are a minority, so give them there own forum(s). Call them
General Discussion - Serious or something.

The moderators of this forum would have to eject frivolous topics when requested, and if warranted.

This approach, however, might merely ghettoize people who want to have serious discussions while the
fluff gets all the page views.

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2. (favored proposal) We create a "Shiny Object of the Day" forum (SOOTD).

Moderators of General Discussion and General Discussion - Politics, when requested and if warranted,
would move posts from GD and GD-P to SOOTD. This is the same procedure as you have today in
LBN.

Just as with LBN, you are making an editorial judgement of WHERE to post. You are not censoring.
But you are EDUCATING people about the incessant barrage of Worthless Media Distraction (WMD)
and how it is hijacking the limited time of DU members.

I simply do not have time to wade through nineteen threads about Snickers Bars or 200 threads about
the way-premature, horse race issues of Campaign 2008.

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So, please tell me what you think. Can we make some high visibility space for those of us who want
to have a serious discussion? Or is this board just going to become some version of People Magazine
crossed with dueling chefs?

Thank you for your consideration of this proposal.

arendt