First off: we're not getting rid of political discussion threads. A lot of people in this community find real value in them, and politics has always been part of the mix on MetaFilter to some degree. In this weird and difficult period in history especially I can't see that changing.That said, there are practical difficulties withdiscussion of in particular US politics is going. The current megathread approach, with a new huge catch-all thread starting every few days and several hundred comments every day, week after week, is unsustainable. As a moderation team we're exhausted by keeping up with them; as a source of information about what's going on, they're very noisy and difficult to keep up with and have left lots of potential readers and commenters feeling excluded.This is something the mod team met about last weekend, specifically to discuss in detail. It's an untenable situation, that we need to take action on at this point. We ended up talking about some of this a fair amount in this recent MetaTalk thread , but we'd planned already during our meeting to make this sort of MetaTalk post this week to lay out the situation in detail.This is a big, complicated issue, because there's lots of pieces of community dynamics in play. There are a bunch of both cultural and mechanical approaches to parts of the problem. We can't tackle it all at once, but we need to start somewhere and see how it goes.And so what we're aiming for right now is this: reining in the pace and content of these catch-all threads. We want them to be slower, more information dense, less chatty, and to consequently be fewer and farther between. That's going to require a lot of help from the community, and a lot of extra moderation effort in the short term to reset people's expectations.---What that means in specific terms:These include:- live-blogging and other real-time, contextless riffing on day-to-day stuff (White House press conferences in particular, but also other random "someone is talking on camera" events)- linking in "look what THIS asshole said" stuff, whether that asshole is some rando on the internet or the current head of the US government- writing up fake "what if they said/did THIS dumb or outrageous thing" quotes and scenarios- rehashing arguments that have been had a bunch of times in previous threads over last months/years- literally reiterating/duplicating comments from previous threads- posting links to articles or events that have been covered upthread or in previous discussions- linking in at-best-tangentially-related US or world news- generalized repetitive "x is bad" griping—x being bad can be true without needing endless restatement, specific new "this thing is bad and here's why" comments are more useful and interesting- generalized doomsaying or venting—discussing how and why specific things are worrying can make sense, but "we're all gonna die/we're fucked/it's hopeless" stuff is just wearying- letting the stress of the current situation translate into heated comments toward other MeFites in general- generally filling time during slow periods in political news with idle chatter; better to go somewhere other than the catch-all thread and participate in something elseThat's not an exhaustive list, but those are some of the major things we've seen cause these threads to balloon in size day after day. Working with us and with each other on these points would be huge for how readable, useful, and manageable these discussions are.None of those should need to be absolutes—truly exceptional cases will continue to come up, and in measured doses most of this stuff is okay—but need toa significant improvement on the mix of this stuff. So as a mod team we'll be pushing hard to enforce these expectations with active deletion of comments and mod notes redirecting folks' behavior.On the flipside, some of the stuff we definitely see as valuable in those threads:- links to small- or medium-sizeddevelopments about the admin, the US government, and related matters (big/complicated stuff may be better off with its own dedicated post)- thoughtful discussion of substantially new, non-hypothetical situations or developments- short, self-terminating explorations of some specific non-trivial wrinkle in the current situation (vs cyclical, endless back-and-forth)- links to good external resources on a given topic (details on law/regulation, history of x, someone's daily/weekly roundup of events, and so on)- links to specific past discussions of a recurring topic in place of taking that topic up again- concise digests of live events like press conferences (two or three summary comments is useful and helpful for catching up the way 50 or 100 spit takes aren't)Again, that's not an exhaustive list, and lots of stuff not on it is still a welcome part of the mix in the threads *in constrained measures*. But those things, done thoughtfully, all tend to create a thread that's both reasonably paced and dense with useful/referenceable information.One issue with the current state of the catch-all threads is that a fairly small group of people are responsible for a large share of the comments. Which as a one-off thing in this or that thread isn't inherently a problem—everybody gets passionate about a topic sometimes—but as an ongoing pattern from thread to thread it becomes stifling to other voices and create a sense that these aren't so much inclusive MetaFilter community discussions as they are US Politics Regulars discussions.So if you're a heavy participant in these threads on a regular basis, there's a good chance we'll be reaching out to you directly to ask you to tweak or re-examine one or another aspect of how you engage with those threads. Generally that's not an issue of bad behavior, just one of double-checking some commenting habits and being more aware of the share of oxygen you're using up in a group discussion context.I want to emphasize that this is mostly a practical/need issue; I appreciate how much thought and passion folks have put into these discussions, both the more regular participants and the folks commenting here and there or around the edges. Community participation on the site is a good and valued thing, and in a logistically different universe we might be able to accommodate it without any changes. But we are limited to the resources we actually have, and so we do need to push for some change as far as how this participation and energy gets used on the site, just to keep our actual situation manageable.While we don't want to see amore individual politics posts on the front page, there are some things that have ended up as major subthreads in the megathreads that would probably work better as their own discussions, both so that that individual discussion can be more focused and detailed and so that the catch-all thread doesn't become difficult to use to follow everything else. And with the US Politics widget available as a per-person filter, we can manage a little more leeway on this without overwhelming users who really need a break from it.So for things that are really significant or meaty, we'd like folks to consider framing up a new solid post on the situation rather than digging in on it in the catch-all. We will aim to prompt folks about that directly when we see it, but it's also okay to reach out via the contact form if you want a mod opinion.Note that this is gonna be a pretty case-by-case thing, so the mod team may decide that a given post isn't a great idea after all, just like with any other posting decision. That's not a rebuke, just part of the process of figuring out a new balance on this. Or in some cases something may merit a new stand-alone post...in a couple days when there's more to actually work with. Again, when in doubt feel free to reach out to the mods.People have been spending a lot of time and energy in the political megathreads. I believe that reflects a mix of (a) actual usefulness/need, which is fine, and (b) sheer habit or a sense of "that's where everybody is", which isn't great either individually or for the site as a whole.So as a broader aspirational thing, I'm going to ask that people try to redirect some of the energy and attention that they habitually put into these megathreads to all the other stuff on the site. While there are exceptions in this as in all things (and that's okay if you're one of them), most folks did not come to MetaFilter originally or solely for megathread political discussion, and I’d like you all to remember and return some attention to the things you did come here for and help that stuff blossom. I would like these huge political threads to have less dominating of a footprint on the site's daily activity. I want that as a mod for reasons stated above but also as a member and participant who loves the broad potential of this site to be a good, valuable place on the web well beyond its function as a water cooler specifically for the awfulness that is the prevailing political climate.I know that all MetaFilter participation/energy isn't fungible. I don't believe that "just care about other stuff instead" is a universally workable approach to the state of things, and I'm not asking that. But I think it's very easy to end up falling into a glum or obsessive habit of thinking of the site too much as where-the-megathread-is, rather than thinking of the megathread as one thing on a large site full of other valuable and interesting stuff.On the mod side, we're going to actively facilitate some of this alternate-ways-to-spend-your-energy stuff as best we can, by fostering or organizing fun or community-centric stuff on the site. We're doing another Best Post contest to finish out the year, we're aiming to do more work on FanFare to make it easier to find and participate in discussions there, we're looking at doubling down on the sidebar and "check out this fun thread" stuff, etc. To the extent that megathreads have become a sort of default hangout on the site for a lot of folks, we'd like to (and would like your help to) make it more obvious that there's a lot of other options on MetaFilter for that as well.---So, that's where we're starting. There are other issues with the site to talk about, and there are other things we can do to try and improve the health and balance of MeFi and its community, including some mechanical pony-request stuff that we'll continue to make progress on. But this is our immediate focus and where a lot of moderation energy is going to be dedicated in the very near future. We'll see how it goes and will follow up soon.Now that you’ve read through all of this, I’ll reiterate that we've ended up talking about a fair amount of this stuff in the last week, in this recent metatalk thread , and so it may be worth your time if this general situation is news to you to give that a read or at least skim for the [staff] comments before responding in here with any variation on the idea that not-changing-things is a workable option. Weto make some changes on this stuff, for reasons outlined above and in many of the comments in that previous thread.And to an extent we've seen a bit of improvement already in the current catch-all discussions over the last week! I think partly as a result of us nudging a bit more and partly from folks just taking that recent discussion to heart. I want to thank y'all for that; it gives me hope that we can get to where we need to with this with your help.All of this is effective basically immediately, though as far as the catch-all threads go it will be easiest to highlight this and press the issue on thread contents when the next one starts. We'd ask folks in any current threads to start heeding this stuff in any case, however.Thanks, everybody, for your cooperation on this.