About this section

[Darat]

Welcome to the new "Social Issues & Current Events" section. This section used to be part of the old "Politics, Current Events & Social Issues" section.

It had been suggested quite a few times that we look at splitting the "Politics, Current Events & Social Issues" so we've taken the plunge and decided to trial this split.

What this section should now primarily be about is discussing social issues (and current events) using the tools of critical thinking and skepticism. some example from recent threads would include discussions about the social implications of issues such as abortions, universal health care, gay marriage, patriotism and wrongful arrests or convictions as well as the discussion of current events like disasters.

Of course many subjects could be both a political and social or political and a current event however that's true for many of the other sections of the Forum so we don't expect to be able to create a black and white clear distinction between the two split sections.

We are going to leave the majority of the old "Politics, Current events & Social Issues" in the new "Politics" section but will start to move some of the more recent threads that are now more suitable for this section here.

[Thanz]

I think that my thread that just got moved here on homophobia in Brazilian soccer is a good example of a thread that should be in this forum. But I have a quick question: where is it more appropriate to put some of the oft debated topics like gun control or abortion? Does it depend on the impetus for the thread - for example, if a new law was passed on gun ownership it is "politics" but if an example is posted from the news on a little old lady shooting an intruder, it goes here?

[Darat]

I'd agree with your examples - another one I would use is to consider "global warming". We've had discussion about that in both the old "Politics..." section and in "Science..." and both were appropriate for each section because sometimes there can be many facets to the same issue.

[Cain]

Let us be clear: since this is a trial run members can help dissolve this forum by boycotting it, correct?

[David Swidler]

Ooh, that's an idea for a new feature: "Ignore" entire subfora.

[rjh01]

It is not a new feature, you can ignore sub forums now. Just do not go into them. Also you can set new posts to ignore certain sub forums.

I expect the number of posts made in this sub forum + the politics sub forum to be more than the old sub forum. Something to look out for in the statistics (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=80204).