Slashdot Goes Political: Announcing politics.slashdot.org

With the US Presidential Election coming up, we've had a lot of story submissions that we would like to post, but they don't fit very well on the Slashdot main page. To address this, we'll be running special political coverage between now and the election in our new Politics subsection of Slashdot. Please submit stories directly to the section for consideration. As with all sections on Slashdot, there will be stories available within that section that don't get posted to the main page, so please visit the section if you are interested in more coverage. We'll do our best to be fair with story selection. We think we can do a good job since the Slashdot editors represent a diverse spectrum of political ideologies. The discussions are up to you guys. Here's hoping the experiment works!

Funniest. Summary. Ever.

We'll do our best to be fair with story selection. We think we can do a good job since the Slashdot editors represent a diverse spectrum of political ideologies.

LMAO!

Re:Funniest. Summary. Ever.

What's funny to me is that people think we DON'T have a diverse specturm of political ideologies. :-)

Re:Funniest. Summary. Ever.

I think the +5 funny was due to the fact that you think that having a "diverse spectrum of political ideologies" means you will "do a good job".

Re:Funniest. Summary. Ever.

I think what's sad is politically active people who need robotic partisan uniformity. America's huge, diverse population has worked together for hundreds of years by finding compromise acceptable to the majority, even when that majority spanned many ideologies and parties.

Re:Funniest. Summary. Ever.

"with us or against us" evil politics, characterized as best by the guys who don't vote the way I do. :-)

Re:Funniest. Summary. Ever.

In the case you didn't know, 'bipartisanship' in politics means that the other guys will do it your way, too.

Re:Funniest. Summary. Ever.

I used to feel the same way until Bush. If you recall he ran as a "uniter, not a divider" and talked up "bipartisanship" when he first came into office.

He also runs as a Republican, when he is not. Ironic that Kerry speaks about free trade for pharmaceuticals and Bush does not and that Bush wants to increase government intervention with a marriage amendment and Kerry does not. It baffles the mind.

Re:Funniest. Summary. Ever.

In other words, Bush sold his soul to the highest bidder.

Kerry, on the other hand, rents his out as the occasion demands.

Re:Funniest. Summary. Ever.

>I think what's sad is politically active people who need robotic partisan uniformity.

See the South Park episode [pipex.com] on this.

Cartman: I learned somethin' today. This country was founded by some of the smartest thinkers the world has ever seen. And they knew one thing: that a truely great country can go to war, and at the same time, act like it doesn't want to. [a shot of the crowd] You people who are for the war, you need the protesters. Because they make the country look like it's made of sane, caring individuals. And you people who are anti-war, you need these flag-wavers, because, if our whole country was made up of nothing but soft pussy protesters, we'd get taken down in a second. That's why the founding fathers decided we should have both. It's called "having your cake and eating it too."

Randy: He's right. The strength of this country is the ability to do one thing and say another.

Re:Funniest. Summary. Ever.

And in the vi vs. emacs debate, I feel that Republicans are pico users.

Re:Funniest. Summary. Ever.

Between you and jaime, I expect one of you to be dead by the end of October. ;-)

Re:Funniest. Summary. Ever.

uhhm dood, pudge is a conservative man. You should go read his journals. He's a very intelligent Bush supporter. It's funny that you make that comment to pudge of all people.


Slashdot just broke one of the 2 rules of peacekeeping conversation, don't talk about religion or politics. They might as well start up religion.slashdot.org and flame on.

Re:Funniest. Summary. Ever.

He's a very intelligent Bush supporter.

I'd support an intelligent Bush too...

Re:Funniest. Summary. Ever.

He's a very intelligent Bush supporter. ... married to the Easter Bunny, playing poker with Santa on the weekends.

Re:Funniest. Summary. Ever.

I fully expect this section to be a non-stop flamefest that leaves nobody untouched. A knock-down drag-out troll fight, with everyone yelling, minimal dialogue, and 4 billion threads that run something like this:

"Bush Sucks."
"Democrats Suck."
"Non-libertarians Suck."
"America Sucks."
"Europe Sucks."
"My Country Isn't In Europe, You American Idiot."
"I'm Not an American, You Elitist Freak."
"I hate the it.slashdot.org color scheme."
"I predict all of the threads in this section will sound like this:"

*beep*

Infinite Loop.

Re:Funniest. Summary. Ever.

I think the normal moderation system should not apply for the politics section. We don't need to make it all too easy for someone with strong political views and mod points to go through marking Troll on every opinion they disagree with. We get enough of that on the stories that are only semi-political.

Re:Funniest. Summary. Ever.

Yeah, but weren't the swift boat guys outted as complete liars, and didn't Bush himself say we should be proud of Kerry? I'm tending to side with Bush on this one.

Re:Funniest. Summary. Ever.

I have no doubt you have a diverse political spectrum - for an American. I doubt you have a very diverse spectrum in general, though.

There are more commonalities between a republican and a democrat than there are differences.

-Adam

I doubt that

People on the internet, and Slashdot in particular, tend to lean more towards the European mainstream than the American mainstream.

Except, of course, on civil liberties issues, where Europe's left-fascism makes the police-state folk in the US Justice Department envious: the UK's got CCTVs everywhere, issues "antisocial behavior orders" prohibiting people from (in one instance) making sarcastic comments to their neighbors; France bans movies that criticize its bloody colonial wars [imdb.com], and so on.

Re:Funniest. Summary. Ever.

people think we DON'T have a diverse specturm of political ideologies

Nonsense! Slashdot has both kinds of political ideologies, Green AND Libertarian.

Re:Funniest. Summary. Ever.

I am a Goldwater Conservative, not a neoconservative. I definitely side more with paleoconservatives than neoconservatives on domestic policy, but neoconservatives on modern foreign policy (my isolationist views changed, as with many people, following 9/11). We have an editor I'd term a libertarian, and he seems to identify more with them than the other parties. He's a bona fide disciple of Adam Smith.

Re:Funniest. Summary. Ever.

No...we think you have a diverse spectrum of left wing political ideologies.

Re:Funniest. Summary. Ever.

Yes, and I am saying it is funny to think that, since I am an official of the Republican party in Washington state, a precinct committee officer [wa.gov].

Malda-Bates 2004!

It had to be said.

Rob's platform:

• Suspected terrorists will have Rob's in-box forwarded to them until they turn themselves in for questioning. Even if people could stand the flood of messages, their ISPs would turn them in just to get them off the system.
• Hmm...the people with the 10 highest karma scores (I know the numbers are hidden, but they're still available internally) get cabinet positions.

Politics on Slashdot? Never!

Every discussion has some sort of political slant to it. You are somehow labeled as "right" or "left" depending on the whim of the moderators or random members of the community. People routinely claim you are some sort of radical communist [slashdot.org] just because you don't support the paying-off of public servants to create laws that benefit only the corporations. Obviously this is just one small example but it certainly reflects a good bit of what I experience here... We might really want to think about how the normal Slashdot moderation system is handled on this side of the site.

If anything Karma changes should be eliminated due to politically motivated moderation in this section. Some serious damage could occur to someone's account that is diametrically opposed to the rest of the Slashdot mentality.

I have been scouring books, articles, and random conversation for some intelligent and fair discussion about the state of politics today. I doubt that I will find too much "intelligent discussion" and I know we won't find any fairness here on Slashdot but we can always have hope ;-)

Re:Politics on Slashdot? Never!

My Karma was trashed because of politics. A few years ago I said something to draw someone's ire and I was karma bombed. My karma was reduced to the point where I couldn't post anymore.

Since then, I've been unable to get mod points.

LK

Re:Politics on Slashdot? Never!

It's called 'bitchslapping', and the term came from 'bitchslap.pl' (which you can find in the slashcode CVS attic).

It:
1) Pushes you down to -10 karma
2) Removes your 'eligible for moderation' bit
3) Sets your default post score at -1.

Editors can execute the script on people they consider 'abusers', though it's been used in the past to keep the readers quiet about massive editor abuse (see: the post of death, where anyone who responded was moderated to -1, and anyone who moderated them back up was bitchslapped).

By the way: 12 minutes of your time should change your mind [kerryoniraq.com].

Re:Politics on Slashdot? Never!

Serious damage and Slashdot karma just don't belong in the same sentence...

Re:Politics on Slashdot? Never!

Mod Parent +one-zillion "There's still hope for humanity"

It boggles my mind that there are people that base so much of their self-worth on a hidden int on a faraway server.

Re:Politics on Slashdot? Never!

You are somehow labeled as "right" or "left" depending on the whim of the moderators or random members of the community.

Really old, but I happened to be thinking of it earlier today - the Political Compass [politicalcompass.org]. Apparently I'm way off to the left, and down a bit.

Maybe all posters in this new section should take said test so that posters with conflicting views may safely ignore viewpoints that they disagree with. After all, there's a place for partisan publishing [guardian.co.uk] (scroll down a bit...) ;-)

I'd like to think...

... that as long as people are writing posts that inform and explain their viewpoint, they won't be modded down, even by people who disagree. A one sentence-post espousing an unpopular viewpoint, yes, is basically a troll or flamebait. A paragraph or so explaining why the author has that viewpoint and some of the facts/reasoning behind it shouldn't be. These are the kinds of posts that make for stimulating discussion that enriches us all, even if you don't agree.

It's possible I'm just a rosy-glassed optimist, but I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope.

Re:I'd like to think...

It's possible I'm just a rosy-glassed optimist, but I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope.

Obviously thinly veiled references to the rosary, cross, and christian 'hope', you sneaky troll.

Oh, wait, this isn't the religion section is it?

Politics?

Well that's essentially the same thing. Flame on!

-Adam

Re:Politics on Slashdot? Never!

I would hope that moderators are fair enough to send comments up or down depending on their quality, not whether their point of view is agreeable. Even if someone says something we completely disagree with, as long as they say it well and bring facts to the table, it is worth hearing.

My guess is that there will be many otherwise-unremarkable posts which will be moderated up simply because they express a popular point of view forcefully, and, as always, meta-moderators are encouraged to mark lame upmods as Unfair. If a post isn't any more Insightful than average, but gets moderated that way, then rigorous meta-moderation [slashdot.org] will help the system, next time around, give mod points to someone else who deserves them more.

Well finally!

That's an interesting point about Karma, but I'm not sure how a slashdot article would work without it. The whole system depends on good comments getting modded up and stupid ones down. Perhaps we need some sort of dummy moderation message that doesn't affect score, but does allow people to register their agreement/disagreement with the opinions of the statement. Of course that might necessitate reconsideration of the existing Troll, Overrated, Underrated, and Flamebait tags.

I've been asking for this section for a while. News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters doesn't just mean tech stuff. For sure people have been trying to talk politics on many an occasion. Here's hoping this section incorporates significant current events as well. For instance, even slashdot covered the trade center bombings, but at the time they happened politics was a minor concern - disseminating news of the event being the primary one.

While they're at it, they should make a general "Entertainment" section as well to let all you fanboys rant and rave about your favorite series (yay Farscape) without having to subject everyone to things few people care about (boo Firefly). Only the really big shows need to make the front page, but that doesn't mean there aren't other things people want to cover.

Can anyone think of any other sections that should be added? I feel like I'm forgetting one that I thought of before...

Re:Politics on Slashdot? Never!

Look at Slashdot's "Hall of Fame"

4183 Strike on Iraq by CmdrTaco
3314 Saddam Hussein Arrested by CmdrTaco
3265 Fahrenheit 9/11 Discussion by CmdrTaco
3212 What's Keeping You On Windows? by Cliff
3042 An Unbiased Analysis of Gun Crime vs. Gun Control? by Cliff
2764 Windows 2000 & Windows NT 4 Source Code Leaks by CmdrTaco
2722 Pledge of Allegiance Ruled Unconstitutional by michael
2574 Major Strike on Iraq Underway by CmdrTaco
2549 US Starts Attacking Afghanistan by CmdrTaco
2465 U.S. Attack -- More Updates by Hemos

2 of those aren't 'political'

I'm not exactly big on politics, but it looks like a large amount of readers are.

Re:Politics on Slashdot? Never!

3314 Saddam Hussein Arrested by CmdrTaco

Just how CmdrTaco managed to arrest Saddam Hussein I shall never know. :)

Re:Politics on Slashdot? Never!

If Slashdot wants to develop some political enlightenment and sophistication they need to realize politics isn't like a turn signal, left and right. Its more like a wheel with spokes in every direction.

If someone trashes the Republicans believe it or not it doesn't necessarily mean they are a Democrat/liberal and vice versa. There are plenty of true conservatives that despise what the Republican party has turned in to and Liberals who despise the Democrats. I imagine you can chalk this up, in the U.S. at least, to a two party system which has tried to con everyone in to thinking there are only two parties and two ways to look at things and if you don't agree with one of those two, in all their current corruption, you are basically adrift in an empty ocean.

Joe Trippi, Dean's campaign manager was on Charlie Rose on PBS recently. One thing he said I like. In 2008 there is at least a chance people are going to unite on the Internet and back an independent candidate with $300-400 million dollars coming in hundred dollar checks from millions of people and bitch slap the two major parties, a slapping they've come to gloriously deserve, especially after the pathetic candidates they've fielded in the last two presidential elections. The hope is there will be an independent candidate who will actually talk about issues, from a fresh perspective, not regurgatating the entrenched party platforms, and put an end to the campaign of the "six second sound bites of mutual assured destruction".

The first challenge is to find a candidate with the right mix of charisma, judgement and brains. One who can form a common sense platform, on issues that matter, that will appeal to enough people to get elected and not pander to the inflammatory issues that dominate the debate between the two parties.

The second challenge is to get this candidate on the ballot in the face of the two parties unconstitutional onslaught on third party candidates like Nader.

The third challenge is to get this candidate enough credibility in the polls that he/she can't be dismissed as an also run and pushed in to obscurity as the media and the two parties are want to do.

I would vote for John McCain were it not for his recent grovelling at the feet of the Bush administration, people who savaged him in 2000, and his irrational level of support for the invasion of Iraq. I would vote for Dean were it not for his grovelling at the feet of Gore and Kerry along with his penchant for saying dumb things. I'd vote for Nader if he has a chance of getting elected just to see him shake up Washington and big business and see how long it would be before someone in the establishment assassinated him. Wouldn't vote for Perot.

questions that matter.

any chance for /. interviews with the candidates for the issues that concern us nerds? I mean, this new sub section would hopefully give /. a little more clout.

Mike

Oh God...

So does this mean all comments will be automatically moderated to -1 Troll? =)

OK, but . . .

Can we please ban the editorials from /. editors to any political stories?

Non-US Elections

I'm guessing from the logo of the section that this will be a 'No', but will there be coverage of Non-US elections as well?

Re:Non-US Elections

I'm guessing from the logo of the section that this will be a 'No', but will there be coverage of Non-US elections as well?

Ack, I hadn't even noticed the logo there, nothing against Americans but as a Canadian I have to say that I already see quite enough of your flag :) I have nothing against patriotism or anything but after a point the sheer quantity of stars and stripes I see around tends to get a little annoying.
Now I can see the reasoning behind US-centric stories for the next few months, what with the election and all, but there is certainly a lot else going on in the world, even a story already in the new section on The Australian Prime Minister [slashdot.org]. Also note all the stuff currently going on in the EU relating to patents and IP, China with it's massive population and strict media control, not to mention countless other events going on all over this planet. While the majority of the IP's that hit the front page might be from the US I'm sure anyone who reads the comments can attest to a strongly international presence that shows up. I feel that using a clearly pro-American logo not only incites the "I'm not an American" trolls (seriously do they want to make this a trollfest?) but also causes the perception that the politics being discussed are isolated from the rest of the world and people outside the US can neither affect nor are being affected by it, a perception which is extremely dangerous. Politics is a truly international affair, as a Canadian I can say that I'm much more scared by who might win the US election then by any of the candidates in my own, as well American's should be greatly interested by events all over the Middle East as well as what happens in the EU and China for a variety of reasons. I'm not sure what a good logo would be but clearly an American flag is highly improper for a wide variety of reasons.

Re:Non-US Elections

Non-US countries have elections?
Well, yeah, but not exactly like the ones you USAmericans have. In most other countries, those who get more votes, actually win the election...

Really?

We think we can do a good job since the Slashdot editors represent a diverse spectrum of political ideologies.

Perhaps some examples are in order.

Re:Really?

just read pudge's journal [slashdot.org] and jamie's responses to his posts. and then the ensuing wars of words as they both explain how completely and wrong the other's arguments are.

colors

At least they did a better job with the colors/logo than the nasty IT section... ;)

New Moderation Proposals

+1 Democrat

-1 Republican

-1 Commie Bastard

+1 Capitalist Pig

(Change + with - as seen fit)

Re:New Moderation Proposals

Take a page from Jib Jab:

-1 Right Wing Nutjob
-1 Liberal Weenie

-Adam

Re:New Moderation Proposals

-1 Hippie
-2 Uses the term "dubbya" as if it gives his point weight
-3 Refers to "you Americans"
-4 Uses statistics without citing source
-5 Thinks college is "The Real World"

Great...

How do I mod an entire section as flamebait?

And I can see all the foriegners complaining that this is too U.S. centric :)

such nice colors

Lets have politics and IT exchanged in the grand scheme of color schemes.

Not having to see the IT color scheme again in my life won't bother me one iota.

Section Colors

Why didn't the "IT" section get the "Politics" nicer colors?

I'm surprised that the bar in this section aren't:
Red-FadingTo-White-FadingTo-Blue

american flag

why an american flag for the /. graphic? there *are* countries outside america that practice politics. typical shortsightedness.

Re:american flag

hy an american flag for the /. graphic? there *are* countries outside america that practice politics. typical shortsightedness.

As a service to the editors, I fired up gimp, took the graphic and mixed every flag from every country together - what better way to promote a non-centrist discussion?

Unfourtunately, I got this [slashdot.org].

That's only going to cause wars.

Can you fix the filtering first?

I suspect lots of people wont want to see the politics stuff. But the category selection stuff doesn't seem to work at the moment (there's bugreps in the slashdot bug tracker).

Pleasey weasey?

Disable Flamebait?

How the heck are we going to mod this section? It sounds like EVERY comment is going to be flamebait. Then we'll have the usual problem with Non-US people griping about how unfair it is that it only covers US politics (I'm assuming here) as well as put in their two bits ON US politics. It's going to be messy!

Yeah, moderation will work here

Lets just skip the moderation function in this area. Mods here already let their political view influence their moderation of "tech" subjects, let alone an overtly political thread.

I don't care if /. puts up a political forum I just won't go there as the population here is already too narrow politically to be a fair discussion.

And about time

I do have to say that in the last few weeks while meta-moderating I've been annoyed at the number of posts that were obviously moderated "off-topic" or "flamebait" just because the moderator didn't agree with the political slant.

I'll also second the post that suggested that this forum should look at politics everywhere, not just the US. There is a lot to be learned by looking at the ways that other jurisdictions handle things like Digital rights, wiretapping, and freedom of speech.

That said, I expect that I'll choose not to subscribe to the politics forum, and I doubt very much that political baiting will disappear from other parts of our beloved slashdot.

All stories?

As with all sections on Slashdot, there will be stories available within that section that don't get posted to the main page

For real /. geeks, would it be possible to turn on a flag to get everything on the home page? Every time I metamoderate I wonder "How come this story doesn't ring a bell?". Now I understand why.

Clicking on each and every section to watch for missing stories is a bit lame, no?

Feel ready to own one or many Tux Stickers [ptaff.ca]?

Re:All stories?

Visit your homepage preferences [slashdot.org] and uncheck all the section boxes. This will 'unhide' these sections from your main page.

-Adam

Little observation

Why only politics based on the US elections? Isn't it better to have permanent world/global politics section?
I'm thinking here of many political themes which are quite represented on /. through this many years.

Bias Test

I guess we'll see if /. can manage to be "fair and balanced", considering the rather significant slant in its readership.

Good!

Anything that can be done to excise politcal diatribes from technical discussions is fine by me.

It had gotten to the point where I avoided even looking at some Slashdot topics I suspected might lend themselves to degrading into political rants. That sorely broke my heart.

I'm glad you guys are helping out. I know that there are no promises but I'm happy that, at least, my chances of reading about Bill Clinton's use of cigars while learning about a new ReiserFS enhancement or George Bush's "lies, lies, lies" while hearing feedback about a Linux roll-out somewhere are reduced.

You can make that political forum lean as far left or as far right as you like because there's no damn way I'm going to even take a peek.

--Richard

PS: Yeah, I know that technology is
intertwined with politics but you
know what I mean. Less is better and
you just do what you can.

Whew just in time...

Right after a 11 point swing since the RNC.

Let's look at the news stories so far...

Hackers Take Aim at Republicans [slashdot.org]

Bikes Against Bush Creator Busted [slashdot.org]

I think it's a good idea to have this channel, but I would really like to see both parties represented. With the occasional third and fourth party representation, cause the hippies and the anarchists should have a voice too.

I have a concern with the flag

why is it that American politics always has to do with patriotism? In my observation patriotism shouldn't have anything to do with politics. It's demagogy at best and we see it way too much in American politics.

Shouldn't slashdot be better than that? If one party decides to use (overuse) the American flag then the slashdot logo will look like it talks only about that party.

PS: In my observation most parties who use the patriotism argument are the ones which care least about the people. In France for example the one party who claimed the French flag as a symbol for it's own party is the most racist and biggoted party.

Invite the Candidates

Why have the candidates not been asked for a slashdot style interview? Someone high up on the slashdot chain should invite both the candidates to do an email interview like what has been done in the past with interesting people. I am sure with the millions of hit that are here they might be interested.

I picked my pollitical party

The Pirate Party of the USA. We are like the Democratic or Republican party, only we don't lie about our motives. If we invade another country, it will be over the loot and plundering. We won't lie about WMDs, etc. Yeah it is all about the oil, after that pipeline is build, booty for all with cheaper oil! Make Saddam walk the plank into a shark infested water. :)

US Blah Blah

Well for all you complainers about American Politics being the focus you need to remind yourself that in many countries (apprently not yours) that those countries in fact do have political parties and plently of drama that the rest of the world might be interested in. Yeah the US is huge and the rest of the world does tend to watch our politics with more interest than their own but you never know maybe some of us would like to know what's going on politically with the EU and copyright law, the UN's insaine attempts to tax international flights and space accesss, and will Tony Blair sleep with Shania Twain after a change encounter on the deck of the ISS station! Politics is sooo good to follow but like a soap opera you have to hang around for a while till things make sense. Case in point, what's gonna happen in Cuba when Castro dies? What are the political ramafications with the botched Russia indicdent? How close are we to the return of the USSR?

Can't wait for the new category to start rolling out news!

dual moderation

In the technical community, political views are too biased for uniform fair moderation. People without deep introspection are usually completely unaware of the degree of their own biases. The only fair scoring I've seen is from debate coaches, who have direct experience of both losing and winning arguments on both sides of any hot issue. Whereas the it would be an easy bet that the typical slashdot poster/moderator would lose a debate round against any competant high school debate team if they drew the side opposite their own natural bias in a scored tournament, given a complete lack of skill at recognizing good arguments on the other side of an issue.

So, I propose a dual moderation system (maybe quad moderation for libertarians?) where moderators first state how much they typically agree with a left/right point-of-view before scoring postings. Meta-moderation should keep the system from being gamed too often. Readers should then be able to filter out moderators with a given degree of opposite bias to their own (or not if they want to see the strongest balancing arguments). This will prevent infinite back-and-forth scoring from making moderation as useless as a chaotic oscillator (useless except for generating pseudo-random numbers that is).

Politics makes more than strange bedfellows.

It makes otherwise intelligent people complete closed minded idiots.

It's a well established fact that people seek out information which confirms their current opinion and actively screen out information which challenges it. Look at a programmer struggling with a bug or a user with a user interface and you can see it. Politics takes this natural human cognitive strategy and infuses it with emotion, value judgements and ego identification. This means that while in most situations people will eventually begin to take new information into account, in politics this practically never happens. The more we are confronted with truths that challenge our political positions, the more strongly we warp our sense of reality to suit our predjudices.

Any reasonable person from another planet would immediately come to some obvious conclusions:

On the economy, Bush got smacked down by an overdue correction in the business cycle and 9/11. His tax cuts probably gave the economy a short term stimulus. However, the long term effects of his policies are debatable.

Kerry has a realtively normal legislative career. He sometimes votes for one version of a bill and against another one, or for a particular thing by itself but against it when it's lumped with a bunch of other things he doesn't like. However, his career as a legislator is rather undistinguished.

Mr. Impartial Observer would also label Michael Moore a propagandist, and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth a bunch of vile political hatchetmen.

External validation feels good, but it is not intellectually honest. If the moderation system could be tweaked to encourage people to reevaluate their positions and look at the truth, it would be a great acccomplishment.

Re:Slashdot is not for politics

Ahh! But there are things in politics that relate to nerdy things and technology. For instance, all of the voting machines in California. Nerdy, yet political in some aspects.

Re:Slashdot is not for politics

Because politics does MATTER, you twit. How do you think things like the PATRIOT act got through? I believe that had more "geeks" to use the term liberally, gotten out and voiced their opinions that things like the PATRIOT act or new wire-tapping laws were BAD (or at least had some negative and poorly thought out sections), things may have ended up for the better.

Just because politics can be boring doesn't mean they don't matter. Get off your swivel-chair and go register then excersize your right to VOTE. Maybe if all of the US slashdot readers did the same, we wouldn't have HALF the legal problems we do now and our country wouldn't be so bass-ackwards.

Re:Slashdot is not for politics

Why is it that slashdot is getting involved in politics? shouldn't slashdot be focusing on matters of tech, stuff thats important to nerds? STUFF THAT MATTERS? who cares about politics? lets discuss the latest thing that could be made into a beowulf cluster or debate on what would happen if we were in soviet russia or even ways of making PROFIT!

Slashdot has become much more political in since 9/11, especially in the last year. I'm glad that there will be a politics section for me to post in, and maybe it will keep some of the political flamewarriors out of the techie topics.