What brought you to this forum?

[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.

[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.

[P/N]

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".

[independent_thinker2002]

Somebody hold me.

[Panther]

Originally Posted by 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".

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.

[independent_thinker2002]

The internet brings me to this forum.

[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]

Originally Posted by Panther

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.