I think 'no politics' rules are stupid (Pinside is far from the only place with such a rule), and people who get upset by those debates or can't handle them, should just stay out. One of the reasons the world is in such a mess is that the common man rarely discusses politics - people should be exposed to raw dialogue between those who are governed rather than what the TV feeds them. On a forum I run we allow people to have political arguments if they like, it's never been an issue.

Particularly liked the part about lost karma. Very funny.

Generally speaking so do I, which is why I don't click on those topics, in the off topic section.

Thing is, most people don't go to political forums. Since they're only exposed to what media rubs in their noses (true or false) they can have a .. somewhat naive view on the world at times. For this reason, in my opinion political threads in off topic from time to time are somewhat interesting and valuable.

And yes it's a pretty busy forum, not as constantly active as Pinside is now, but there's a good 8000+ members and the door is as wide open as you can get. We get visitors from the US, UK Russia, Germany, China, Japan and everywhere inbetween. Mostly seems to police itself, but it's been around in various forms since the late 90s. Maybe we just got lucky, or maybe it's a side effect of a community that has had that much time to settle and mature - there's a critical mass of people who know how to behave.

Still laughing about someone thinking the karma loss mattered. It's really just a post counter.

It was in the off topic section though.

I dunno, I mostly come to Pinside for the Predator thread.

That's very nearly a good idea for a t-shirt.