How to Ignore A Category
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For those not interested in attempting to forge a new path to civil discourse in an effort to mend our fractured American politics, there is a way to ignore a category entirely.
Simply go to the category, in this case https://kubuckets.com/category/18/politics-and-world-affairs, click on watching (all categories are watched by default) and changed it to ignoring.
Thereafter, you will not be notified that a new post has been added to that category, and it will not show up in your recent posts list. You can always turn it back on by going back to it and watching again.
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This post is for you @wrwlumpy. I’d be thrilled if you’d join us in this category, but I definitely get and respect your aversion to discussing politics, and hope that this gives a wide enough berth to be able to steer clear for those who do not wish to participate.
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Awesome feature. I totally understand @wrwlumpy 's perspective.
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I am very political. I used to be a speech writer for a great man who won his election for congress and died on the evening of his victory in a plane crash on way to a victory celebration in KC with his family. The polarization of today’s political world has only caused me to remove myself, in this wonderful venue, from losing friends that I care about. I’m getting old, but I still try to keep an eye and ear open for another idea that is different than mine, where I am able to see the other side. My one open thought that I will share is that I don’t think anyone should be perceived as a bad person simply because they are poor. I have a minor in Russian History, and I love the Russian people, but not the Russian government. I believe that people should be able to love who they love. I also believe in God. But on this site, where I have cried with @rockchalkintexas, laughed my ass off with @jaybate while I learned Naval history and came to respect HEM, though I disagree with almost everything he says, I draw the line at politics.You are all my people, but the civil discourse I have seen when anyone offers their slant on personal politics, has only ended in name calling and learning that some of people that I love to share Jayhawk basketball with, out of no where, hop on a soapbox of hate. Having said all this, I will remove myself from this topic because I would rather hear opinions on KU basketball and cheer and argue with each of you. Even the “Fire Bill Self” crazies that throw themselves into the topic after a painful, but rare loss, make be smile with their audacity and I hope they stay on line while I try to rip them a new one for their stupidity. Rock Chalk. Aprox, I hope your Quixote approach to changing all of this works. You will always be my hero for creating this perfect KU Basketball site. Thank you for the advice, and I will click ignore.
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@wrwlumpy Rock Chalk my friend. Though I believe it would be fascinating to hear more of your thoughts on politics, I respect the decision to ignore, and it makes perfect sense. RIP Jerry Litton.
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@approxinfinity lumps a guy that has class and I could listen to all day! He has some good stories to share.
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@approxinfinity I agree with @wrwlumpy & as countless others, am very politically opinionated. Do we not have a private message feature to use for issues that should not be part of a civil mainstream chat site about sports? Is there really any way possible to “attempt to forge a new path to civil discourse in an effort to mend our fractured American politics?” Politics? Really? However unfortunately it may effect not only those I consider friends as well as those who wish to think otherwise, it may be far less spiteful & much more adult to just ignore the entire gamut. There could very likely be an influx of people who only wish to be part of the “do not touch” topic feature you have developed. I would not consider that an improvement in the quality of our board. But that’s only one mans opinion. This really has nothing at all to do with being PC & those who know me will agree. IMO there are just some things that are better left unspoken.
I also expect that inevitably some of the rhetoric surely will morph into espn type commenting in a sports blog, & frankly many are not interested in a message board of that nature. Many thanks to @approxinfinity for creating the forum we have enjoyed for these past few years. Its been nice while it remained relatively free of the hatred & spite that are always a part of such emotional topics as will transpire & the trolls that may multiply. Remember the short lived dark side/light side topics that got a fair amount of traffic that users weren’t happy with? Just something to chew on while you ponder … Again thanks.
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@globaljaybird I get where you are coming from and appreciate your honesty and forthrightedness. My memory is a bit hazy about it, did we handle the dark / light side rift with separate categories? I can’t recall, and I’m not sure of the capacity of the ignore feature back then either. It is possible that with separate ignorable categories it might have worked better. But also, the nature of that was a bit different because we were deliberately dividing optimists from realists and encouraging both viewpoints with no rails guiding etiquette, whereas here we are providing guidelines for behavior (collaboration and openmindedness) and focus specifically on discovery. Could it not work well? Sure. But I very much welcome analyzing the state of this Union, not by practicing rhetoric, which we are all capable of and which we know leads to gridlock, by taking a more academic approach.
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@approxinfinity I think it is a nice idea, but since you have already always asked for people to act appropriately toward others, I do not see how a special topic will work any differently. Almost all the people on the board who have gotten totally lathered up in the past have also at times pledged to be only civil (including me). I guess you may be hopelessly optimistic that this board has some special group of people who can get along without rancor while discussing contentious issues–we may all be Jayhawk fans, but I fear that commonality is for sports only. Other divides exist, as they do throughout the country. Unfortunately our fandom does not grant any special attribute of open-mindedness. How often have you seen a comment that says, in a topic where people are highly opinionated, “I hadn’t thought of that”?
My bigger concern is, who enforces the pledge, and how? I think it will be safer to avoid this one. I will just have to hope people leave political comments out of the bb topics. Too often, there are comments like “Spoken like a liberal (or a dittohead)…” or asides about political correctness or Trump. Racism, for example, is a topic that transcends sports and politics–how do we deal with the UM protests and its effects on the sports programs, or Colin K and coverage of Colin K in the media, without implicating politics?
Still, I realize the world needs hopeless optimists like Columbus to try to guide us all to new vistas and to prove not all paths fall off the edge. Good luck with this one. I will take a look to see how it is going, but I am really going to try to avoid getting involved in all political commentary in all topics. I hope everyone else avoids the temptation in the other topics, too.
Thank you @approxinfinity for working so hard!
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@mayjay I hear you, and I grant that this is either brave or foolish or maybe both. There are other options if it gets hopelessly contentious. We could make the topic private and have a separate group that is invited, for instance, but I’d at least like to try to have a few threads with the guard rails in place and try our damnedest to be kind, friendly, academic and selective in our topics and approach, and then see where we fall. Eyes wide open.
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@approxinfinity I think this is a place where we could actually have a civil discussion and people could really converse on some great topics. The reason is both the anonymity and the personal affection we all have with each other. We have both. So nobody can go into these discussions as a troll.
If a political discussion without petty crap can happen anywhere, it is on this site with this group of people.
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Y’all enjoy your new playground. Only wish there was a way an individual could remove the category itself from the list. For now I’ll use the “ignore” option.
