Indonesia cancels visas of Israeli worlds team

[MaryClare]

I am curious as to the rationale behind deleting posts. For this being a dying form of interaction for fans that many of us enjoy you would think we could handle talking about the political components of the situation at hand even if we do not agree. I for one did not see anything that would be detrimental to the board, not more so than deleting peoples posts anyway.

Is there anyway to bring Off Topic back? Instead of deleting you could reassign threads to Off Topic.

Definitely no off topic forum!!

 

[makam]

If they can't/won't/don't cancel, I think the Israeli athletes should be able to submit a video competition. Stick the camera where the judge would be and let them have 1 viewing. Score it and submit. If one of the Israelis medals, put their flag on the podium step on a pole and present the medal to the flag. Or else put an asterisk next to every medal to indicate it wasn't a fully attended (according to the rules and any previous FIG actions) Worlds.

 

[Denn]

I am curious as to the rationale behind deleting posts. For this being a dying form of interaction for fans that many of us enjoy you would think we could handle talking about the political components of the situation at hand even if we do not agree. I for one did not see anything that would be detrimental to the board, not more so than deleting peoples posts anyway.

Is there anyway to bring Off Topic back? Instead of deleting you could reassign threads to Off Topic.

Our forum's purpose is to be a place to discuss gymnastics and things related to gymnastics because the internet already has thousands of places to discuss political and humanitarian issues. To be fair, threads like this are always challenging: when is a specific comment "on topic" vs. "off topic"? There's gray area, and we usually try to be generous with as well as set a line or two in advance so that it avoids getting hairy.

That has happened in this thread, and both Robin and Robin, as moderators, already pointed to concerns about what's on-topic vs. what's outside of what we do here. The deletion of posts by RedBirdie was consistent with what was said earlier, and it was intended to prevent additional talk about the conflict itself so that this thread could focus on the participation of the Israeli athletes and Indonesia and FIG's approaches.

I understand that you may an Off Topic forum, but that's not in the cards for us here. There are many here who don't want it, and they're basing it on years of experience at various forums, gymnastics and otherwise. This thread may not have been detrimental to you, but it has already caused some people stress even with the limits we've tried to observe.

We have a goal and we're trying to stick to it.

Thanks everyone.

 

[IratePanda]

Personally, I feel safe here, as an American Jew with complex views on multiple issues. Kudos all around.

 

[MaryClare]

Our forum's purpose is to be a place to discuss gymnastics and things related to gymnastics because the internet already has thousands of places to discuss political and humanitarian issues. To be fair, threads like this are always challenging: when is a specific comment "on topic" vs. "off topic"? There's gray area, and we usually try to be generous with as well as set a line or two in advance so that it avoids getting hairy.

That has happened in this thread, and both Robin and Robin, as moderators, already pointed to concerns about what's on-topic vs. what's outside of what we do here. The deletion of posts by RedBirdie was consistent with what was said earlier, and it was intended to prevent additional talk about the conflict itself so that this thread could focus on the participation of the Israeli athletes and Indonesia and FIG's approaches.

I understand that you may an Off Topic forum, but that's not in the cards for us here. There are many here who don't want it, and they're basing it on years of experience at various forums, gymnastics and otherwise. This thread may not have been detrimental to you, but it has already caused some people stress even with the limits we've tried to observe.

We have a goal and we're trying to stick to it.

Thanks everyone.

Very well said Denn.

It continues to baffle me that people wish to discuss politics on a gymnastics message, although perhaps that is cultural. Politics is not a normal conversation here, either in person or online.