What brought you to this forum?

[MC.no.spin]

Just curious, seems like a lot of new people lately. Multiple choice to address various possibilities.

 

[Tashah]

Good Poll MC. I have Stuck it to the top of the Polls forum. :2wave:

 

[Trinity]

I was moderating another forum for some 2.5 yrs when I left it, never to return.

So was googling. I knew I wanted to join a new watering hole and liked politics, so googled 'debate politics'... this site was the 1st hit with 'Results 1 - 10 of about 9,670,000 for debate politics. (0.22 seconds)'

That's how I landed up here. I did looked at this site for half a day b4 deciding to join, having a 'feel' that I will like it here

To me, such decisions r pretty 'destiny-inclined', don't knock it, things happen for a reason

The major draw of this place was actually the music thread here that I devote a lot of time to btw : http://www.debatepolitics.com/music...ou-listening-right-now-88.html#post1057633974

 

[MC.no.spin]

Good Poll MC. I have Stuck it to the top of the Polls forum. :2wave:

Well, thank you, Miss DP.

:kissy:

 

[CaptainCourtesy]

Hey, can we old-timers vote, too?

 

[MC.no.spin]

Hey, can we old-timers vote, too?

Yes, I was just noting that interest for this poll will span just new posters. I suggest anyone (and everyone) vote and tabulators like myself can seperate out recent posters to see any trends and commonalities.

 

[CaptainCourtesy]

Yes, I was just noting that interest for this poll will span just new posters. I suggest anyone (and everyone) vote and tabulators like myself can seperate out recent posters to see any trends and commonalities.

Cool,

I've only belonged to one other board...a computer builder's message board. They had an "Off-Topic" sub-forum that was very tightly moderated. They did not allow ANY controversial topics to be discussed. I kept getting warned because I kept bringing up controversial topics. Eventually, they developed a "sister" site, so those of us who wanted to discuss politics, or other similar topics, could. The site sucked, big time. Little activity, less intelligence. So, I Yahoo!ed (I can't stand Google) "debating politics" and I found several sites that were interesting. Debate Politics was, by far the best. I "lurked" without registering for about 3 months and, then lurked after registering for another 2 months before I made my first post. I think the two biggest drawing points to DP were the interesting people/threads and the fairness and balance. Also, the activity level here is awesome...always someone or something to talk about.

 

[Frolicking Dinosaurs]

I came here because someone here asked me to join. - it is one of three political forums I visit and my favorite because of the balance of posters both in posting and in moderation.

 

[Tashah]

Way back when, I joined MSN and got involved in chatrooms. The room I liked the best (Friends4Eva) was owned by some Brits who ran an open, friendly, and mostly civil room. After about 6 months they made me a Brown Hammer, which is a Moderator. About a year later, I was made a Gold Hammer (Room Owner). Friends4Eva eventually became the largest (membership wise) private group at MSN with a main chatroom, a trivia chatroom, and it’s own website which I managed. We averaged between 5,000 - 10,000 chat visitors per day. I learned a lot there... how to manage a large Internet venture, how to program and run ircx scripts and bots, and how to interact with people from all around the globe.

At around the same time, I joined my first political message board. This board was part of a newspaper website in the UK (Independent or Guardian, can't remember which). It was mostly British and around 90% leftist so as an American and Israeli conservative, I got my ass kicked non-stop. But it toughened me up to the point where I knew I could hold my own on virtually any debate topic with virtually anyone. Got tired of all the gruff and started to look elsewhere.

Found Debate Politics through Google, watched it for a few weeks, and then climbed aboard. My first DP debate opponent was Simon W. Moon who is intelligent, witty, charming, and formidable. Voila! I loved this place! The rest, as they say, is history. DP is definitely the best political board on the web.

 

[Thorgasm]

I used to go to Yahoo chat rooms and that was a complete exercise in futility. I yahooed "debate politics" and found this place. I checked it out and a couple others. This place was the best, by far.

 

[Panther]

I checked a number of reasons.

I moderate at a large (non-political) site with ~650K members, and my first impression of this site was that it well moderated without being restrictive. When you moderate for so long, it is very difficult to visit a forum regularly that is poorly moderated because you spend all your time instinctively heading for the edit or delete button only to be disappointed that you are suddenly powerless.

There are plenty of sites out there that are either completely one-sided, or attract mostly the hit & run posters of topics, those that just respond with an insult (with no reason or discussion), or posters that respond with the same message in spam-like fashion regardless of the topic of the thread.

This site was the only one that I found where members actually discuss a topic and you can get into a debate deeper than just spouting the party talking points back and forth. There are still rabid "party line" participants, but they generally stay on topic and don't stifle the discussion.

And members here throw around much more intelligent insults. :2razz:

[EDIT] Forgot to add - Palin got me pumped about politics again. Was always a political junkie but the fiscal actions of the GOP under GWB left me feeling that I was a man without a party. Even fiscally conservative friends would blindly support the GOP even when they acted like DEMs. The Palin selection gives me hope that McCain is going to govern using common sense more than the typical party politics that have made both parties more similar than different.

 

[RedAkston]

It's nice to see that even though we may disagree politically quite often, that we all agree that DP is the best. I actually ran my own political debate site, but it was tough to get traffic on it with so many sites out there, so I gave up. So i gave up and joined three other sites before finding this one. This site is definitely the best moderated and most evenly balanced site I've run across. I don't even post on another politics forum, there's plenty to keep one occupied right here.

 

[Southern Belle]

I used to be a member of some teenaged/young adult video game message boards and I participated in their politics discussions. I just simply outgrew their kinds of debates and I wanted real discussion, because theirs was immature. Okay for them, but I just wanted more.

DP is perfect, very fair, and well moderated, but at the same time allows pretty much anything to be said. (My other boards were extremely limited and censored of course) When I first got here, it was like Wow, they're actually talking about THAT? O_O lol.

It's a great place.

 

[1069]

Before this, I was part of an extremely insular liberal internet women's community, and frankly I just got bored with it.
I wanted to be able to argue with people, without being told i was being "triggering" and making the community feel 'unsafe".

 

[Thorgasm]

Somebody hold me. :lol:

 

[Panther]

Before this, I was part of an extremely insular liberal internet women's community, and frankly I just got bored with it.
I wanted to be able to argue with people, without being told i was being "triggering" and making the community feel 'unsafe".

Never understood wanting to only hear and discuss things with like-minded people. That's why I also don't get the appeal of Limbaugh.

 

[Thorgasm]

The internet brings me to this forum. :mrgreen:

 

[Jerry]

One day Rush Limbaugh mentioned DemocraticUnderground in a piece where he was slamming some leftist response to something someone on the right did. I was board and decided to check it out. I signed up, started debating folks, and was banned not a half hour into my adventure.

Folks at DU kept calling me a "freeper". Having no idea what a "freeper" was, I goggled it, and found DebatePolitics right under the link to FreeRepublic.com.

I had a reservation about even looking here, as I visited this site long ago when you had to declare your political lean and were then largely only allowed to post in like-minded forums. I was pleasantly surprised with the change, so I immediately signed up and jumped in head long.

 

[Jerry]

Never understood wanting to only hear and discuss things with like-minded people. That's why I also don't get the appeal of Limbaugh.

The appeal of Rush is understood with the discovery that a very large portion of his audience site on the left. Democrats and liberals listen to Rush to be entertained if not challenged at the same time.

 

[American]

I came here for the great sex. :rock:kissy:

 

[Panther]

I came here for the great sex. :rock:kissy:

Link please?

 

[Ethereal]

I used to post regularly at the Black Flag Cafe, which is a webiste owned and operated by Robert Young Pelton. He is a journalist/novelist/adventurer. He writes the series World's Most Dangerous Places and you may remember he was the man who interviewed John Walk Lindh (the American Taliban) on CNN.

Their debate forum was, I'd say, just as well run as this one but less restrictive in terms of enforcing politeness. You've never seen a flame war until you've been at the BFC. It was a good forum with some extremely intelligent people but I just felt like switching to a debate forum that was purely politics as opposed to an amalgam of politics and travel, the latter being the primary reason for the BFC.

I cut my teeth in the BFC and it left me well prepared to venture into DP. I like both sites equally well and find them to be equally diverse and intersting but I've been posting exclusively at DP for the past three years. I debated at the BFC for about three years, so in all I've been debating politics online for about six years, since I was eighteen.

 

[DeeJayH]

refered by someone i knew on another lighter site, my first message board, that i ended up getting banned from for going up against the Admin
guy told me this was a good site, but a whole nother level than what we had been doing, and that i would be getting my ass kicked for a good while
no better way to learn, so I signed up
now i just need to stop coming here when drinking :3oops: *tips hat to TOT*

 

[jamesrage]

What brought me here to this forum was a recommendation from another poster(Missouri Mule).

 

[American]

Link please?

That's confidential.