Sensitive topic forum (politics) password protect or option to ignore?

So, we have a politics forum that gets pretty heated. This topic would cover any forum that has some sensitive areas that all might not want to see though.

What, in your opinion, is the best way to go about having these forums, while at the same time, not putting the topics in the eyes of people who don't want to see the content?

Password protect?
Forum ignore feature?

In a perfect world, we would like for members to just not go into the areas they don't like, but when most seem to browse via the "new posts" page, it's hard for them to avoid it.

Make access to that forum a "free upgrade" that they can opt in to.

Oldsmoboi said:

Make access to that forum a "free upgrade" that they can opt in to.

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This is what I do for my politics forums

Oldsmoboi said:

Make access to that forum a "free upgrade" that they can opt in to.

Click to expand...

Joeychgo said:

This is what I do for my politics forums

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This is also what we had here on TAZ when there was a political section, it was based on usergroup promotion via an user field.

When was this?

Politics were a no no when I ran boards. It makes people say things they may regret later on. It creates tension, and not the good kind. These days, as a user, I don't care. Don't make it difficult to access the forum, even if it's a simple, publicly accessible password.

Your best bet is placing access requirements that are easy achieved. 30 days of membership plus 100-200 posts. With this method, new members acclimate to the fish tank and people can't register multiple accounts and astroturf their opinions for their real accounts.

I think the option to ignore the forum works fine. Yes you could have an upgrade to access it or a password, but from my own experience that might be overthinking things here.

Give people the option to ignore it if they want, and for the most part everything should be fine. No one will be offended the section exists in the first place.

I ended up creating a separate today's posts view for those who didn't want to look at the content in there. It's more of an "opt out" approach vs. the "opt in" approach described above

We chose not to have one. No matter how private you try to keep it, there is no separation for the personality and nature. The perception of the other member will always be skewed.

'No politics here.'
We do however set a private member-only section requiring a minimum postcount + account age to access. It greatly limits access and ensures anyone banned cannot easily access it back before being found and disrupt discussions, and its reasonably limited audience comforts users in discussing topics they may not be comfortable discussing in the open, not limited to political opinions, sexuality and and general pilosophy.

For a free-for-all exchange I'd normally recommend users discuss these topics directly among themselves, like in some offsite chatroom or skype. Password-protecting a section for just this kind of discussion doesnt make sense. It may be overkill doing it for political discussion sections when admins might not even have been passprotecting their admin sections...

MikeTF said:

What, in your opinion, is the best way to go about having these forums, while at the same time, not putting the topics in the eyes of people who don't want to see the content?

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I make it "Opt In" -- meaning they have to join that forum to see the contents.

I ultimately made it where anybody can access it, but it doesn't show up on "new posts". I also removed almost all of the rules that apply to the rest of the community and advised my moderators to never moderate it and leave it up to me because I want them focusing on more productive areas of the forum.

So far, this has worked out quite well as the typical troll is too lazy to go looking for the forum on a daily basis to see if there are any new posts in there.

We have a current affairs forum that obviously has a lot of politics (and sometimes religion) in it.

Yes, it can get heated sometimes, but thats what we have moderators for.

When people cross the line (break forum rules) we slap them, simple.
They soon learn and tbh, we dont get that much trouble in them these days.