I just want to say I love what you are trying to do here
@The Human Q-Tip. I come from a liberal state and, like most people, I tend to associate closely with people that agree with me politically. This forum's thread on politics was a rare means by which I could get out of my echo chamber and see some interesting viewpoints from the other side from posters I respect based on their posts on other areas of this website. I know there are plenty of other political forums out there, but posters on such sites are inevitably categorized by political association. On the old politics thread, it was actually possible to identify with a poster with a differing viewpoint because we got the chance to see them as more than just a Republican or a Democrat based on their posts in other threads. Therefore, if this new proposed forum can manage to maintain the same spirit as the old one absent the snark and trolling that made it unreadable and cluttered at times, it would truly be a valuable endeavor that I would love to participate in.
One of the suggestions I saw earlier in this thread that I particularly liked - I think by
@David. - is the notion that this new forum might be better off without the like and disagree system. I don't know if that is possible, but I think likes and disagrees are far more useful when the vast majority of posters are still rooting for the same outcome (like the Cavs winning). Having likes in a political discussion just creates an almost tribal system and actually harms discussion. Indeed the very concept of a disagree button is antithetical to the stated goal of discussing why we disagree.