Yahoo closed their news based discussion boards yesterday. Now instead of a discussion board you get the following message:
To Yahoo! News readers:
Yahoo! News is working on new ways for readers to comment on the news and participate in a discussion around it. While we work on our new community features, the message boards that were linked from individual news articles have been taken offline.
As they were set up, the Yahoo! News message boards allowed a small number of vocal users to dominate the discussion. In addition, related discussions from similar news articles were not easily linked.
Over the next few months, we plan to offer new discussion forums based on topics in the news and incorporating the latest features to foster a better discussion for all of our readers.
Neil Budde
General Manager
Yahoo! News
The Message is vague enough so that you don't know what their plans are. But, several months ago they made changes to the sports discussion boards and the results were very disappointing.
I am a Laker fan and used to spend alot of time in the Laker discussion boards. While I was a semi regular, I spent enough time on those boards to know who the regulars were and how they felt. There were many entertaining and informative discussion on those boards. Yes there were trolls, but they were usually easy to ignore and sometimes part of the fun. Yahoo closed down the sports discussion boards without warning and with no idea what their plans were. After several months, I managed to discover their "new " sports discussion boards. Several of the "regulars" from the old discussion boards had managed to find the new boards too, but the new format did not lend itself to the free wheeling discussions that we had in the past. I soon grew bored with the "new" discussion board and quit visiting.
My introduction to online political discussions came via Yahoo message boards. I found Daily Kos, Juan Cole and several other progressive websites via links from fellow Yahoo posters. I wasted many hours in online political discussions on Yahoo message boards. Yes sometimes these degenerated into flame wars , but again sometimes that was part of the fun.
There is an old saying
"Never argue with a fool - people might not know the difference "
. I confess I spent many hours on Yahoo message boards arguing with fools. I had a folder that I kept text files with facts and links that I would use to counter the arguments of the other side. I doubt that I converted anyone, but I always made a good progressive argument. I was called a "lib" terrorist lover, paid DNC poster and every other name on the message boards. I had strategys I would use to keep "Bushbots" from taking over the discussions and would challenge the cut and paste talking points from Bushbot regulars. I used the term Bushbot or neocon to describe pro bush posters, I didn't like the word "con" because I don't believe Bush or his neocon buddies represent true conservatives.
The difference between posting on Yahoo and Daily Kos is that here you are usually "preaching to the choir" . There may be differences of opinions on issues, but usually its only a matter of degrees of difference and not a totally different way of looking at issues. Kos discussions are more civil and the message writers and diarists are more educated and better informed that the typical Yahoo poster. But I still enjoyed the spirited and sometimes violent disagreements that would happen on Yahoo message boards. Sometimes, I respect the person who feels passionately about an issue more than the person who agrees with me.
If the changes Yahoo makes to the political discussion boards is anything like the ones they made to the sports discussion boards, I am afraid they will trade free wheeling and passionate debate (and a large dose of trolling) for civilty and "fairness". It will be totally boring and actually discourage political discourse. The problem with KOS and sites like its evil twin redstate, is that usually only like minded people join them. The entire way they are set up encourages "group think" and the further polarization of political idealogues. I recognize there was very little "political discourse" on Yahoo, It was mostly alot of opinion shouting, but I did actually read some good conservative posts and tried to understand or comprehend their points of view at times. I am going to miss the Yahoo discussion boards.