A funny kind of tea shop?

[Tangled Metal]

The tea shop should be a place where anything can be discussed but without personal insults being throw.
I choose to look at a thread, nobody makes me. It's no problem if I don't like a thread, I just don't look at it.

The Brexit thread was massive, understandable as it dragged on and on and people had, still have, very entrenched views.

I prefer the 'lighter' topics in the tea shop but there should be a place for everything.

With the heat generated on some contentious issues I think you'd be chucked out of a real tea shop.

A sub forum for politics or entrenched POVs perhaps??? There lot of politics threads at times which swamp the new threads search at times. Perhaps big enough for its own ghetto like helmets.

Mind you I've finally learnt to leave things when they get entrenched and not so pleasant IMO. So this idea doesn't really bother me so much now. I used to want them to be ghettoized.

[Tangled Metal]

Oh dear, votes for either choice are almost equal, could end in a draw
I cannae see who is ahead, it is either Oxford or Cranebridge

The op should have specified that a two thirds majority is needed for it to carry!!! This could easily descend into a br***t type of thread without that. It's also not legally binding and requires the support of devolved nations.

[Cyril Haearn]

Oh dear, votes for either choice are almost equal, could end in a draw
I cannae see who is ahead, it is either Oxford or Cranebridge

The op should have specified that a two thirds majority is needed for it to carry!!! This could easily descend into a br***t type of thread without that. It's also not legally binding and requires the support of devolved nations.

Plus 'don't know', some might have chosen that

[Freddie]

I'd presumed everyone thinking 'don't know' would be in favour of no in some sense, purely because it is the current arrangement.

[thirdcrank]

I blame Shimano for this, or at least the company's decision to diversify into fishing tackle. Unfortunately, users of fishing reels end up on here instead.

[ANTONISH]

To my mind the difficulty with Tea Shop discussions is that some posters don’t behave like they were in that environment. Some seem unable to act in the civil way one would expect in a tea shop and unable to accept opinions divergent from their own; for discussion you do need to be able to compare and contrast views and to accept additional information. The only answer that I can see to matters is harsher moderation - which I would welcome - and, as would happen in a real teashop, being ‘asked’ to leave. It’s all a shame really, the mod’s should be but rarely troubled by our actions. However people who should know better act in ways that wouldn’t end happily in real life, and all because they can’t abide opinions other than their own and feel the right to impose their views on others.

+1

[al_yrpal]

To my mind the difficulty with Tea Shop discussions is that some posters don’t behave like they were in that environment. Some seem unable to act in the civil way one would expect in a tea shop and unable to accept opinions divergent from their own; for discussion you do need to be able to compare and contrast views and to accept additional information. The only answer that I can see to matters is harsher moderation - which I would welcome - and, as would happen in a real teashop, being ‘asked’ to leave. It’s all a shame really, the mod’s should be but rarely troubled by our actions. However people who should know better act in ways that wouldn’t end happily in real life, and all because they can’t abide opinions other than their own and feel the right to impose their views on others.

+1

+ Another. The seemingly endless rants get rather tedious too

Al

[kwackers]

+ Another. The seemingly endless rants get rather tedious too

Al

And yet there you are...

I find the logic of complaining about something yet participating at best bizarre and at worst...

[Cyril Haearn]

Carlton:
Harsher moderation? What, even more moderation, and locking threads?
No!

I do not really understand how moderation works, do they remove interesting bits, obscenities, insults?Just don't know what I don't know

What is actually moderated, deleted, and why?

What I mean is: no to harsher moderation, I think. Just don't know what is moderated!

If I were a moderator I might issue warnings to those who break the rules, in the hope of saving myself work, and of not 'having' to lock the threads

[Ben@Forest]

We've had this discussion before. I think the problem is a lighthearted discussion about favourite train journeys can descend into a slanging match between two people about BR management and the unions before returning to some lovely scones someone had on the Welsh Highland Railway once, which will lead onto accusations of racist behaviour by Anne Robinson....

[Cyril Haearn]

Right again Ben, what can be done about the accursed thread drift?

[matt_twam_asi]

To my mind the difficulty with Tea Shop discussions is that some posters don’t behave like they were in that environment. Some seem unable to act in the civil way one would expect in a tea shop and unable to accept opinions divergent from their own; for discussion you do need to be able to compare and contrast views and to accept additional information.

Yes, I've thought for a while that the Tea Shop is spectacularly misnamed. It's not the tea shop, it's the Saloon Bar at the Red Lion.

Whenever I open a tea shop thread sooner or later I usually find a few bloviating older men talking past each other, consuming all other threads of conversation until it's just a slanging match between deeply entrenched sides with no respect and little compassion. I don't mind them doing it; it just baffles me why they bother. I'd love to know what positive value they get out of it.

[pedals2slowly]

Right again Ben, what can be done about the accursed thread drift?

Better moderation?

[Audax67]

Right again Ben, what can be done about the accursed thread drift?

Better moderation?

Forget about it. I used to belong to a forum where the moderators would better be described as whippers-in, after those fox-hunting bods whose job is to drive errant hounds back into the pack. It got so bloody miserable that most of us buggered off and set up a separate forum.

Anyway, we could always have an opt-in sub-forum called Politics and Other Big Issues where we could even <gasp> swear!

[Audax67]

BTW, and in direct reference to the thread title, don't forget that the coffee-houses of the 18th/19th century were where much governmental policy was shaped. They not infrequently had brothels upstairs, too.