Regarding the Future of the Bullion Section

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Maybe you could bar the offenders for three days, a week for starting a political thread.

 

I would ban the politcal threads. I would permit the economic threads. I don't know which button that would be.

I consider anything that mentions Obama, democrats, republicans, Federal Reserve, "global elite," or Congress to be political and basically valueless.

I consider anything that mentions the level of interest rates, the dollar, inflation, and gold supply/demand as bullion, jewelry or a monetary asset to be economic and important to bullion collectors.

I haven't noticed any particularly severe problems with the forum the way it has been run except for the last few days.

 

I haven't been offended by any political comments. Either I missed them, or I agreed with them!!

Please keep things the way they are. I like hearing other people's opinions regarding bullion investment.

By the way, isn't it government interference in the market that is driving bullion investment/sales? If that's true, how can you NOT talk about the impact of politics on bullion investment?? They are inseperable.

 

Peter,

I haven't read the offending posts. However, if people don't like a poster's politics then don't read that person's posts. I think people need to get a little thicker skin.

 

I remember that. But I thought that problem was solved by putting all of the bullion discussion into a forum that the people with pure numismatic interests didn't have to read.

 

Thanks, Peter. Yes, it's a tough judgement call; it's natural the Bullion section is more prone to politics.

All I can say is the moderators do a good job in general and should continue to use best judgment on a case-by-case basis.

The key factor is when a post goes beyond "just the facts" and begins to get personal and disrespectful.

I feel option C) is counter-productive and a bad choice; it is unwise to separate it out, since Bullion is a huge portion of the coin market today.

Perhaps option B) is best; treat Bullion as a bit different than classical numismatics and allow a bit more political input.

 

Bullion is WAY too important to eliminate entirely. I agree with Cloudsweeper - putting it in it's own category is a clean solution for the pure numismatists.

 

Politics is just way too big of a part of the economy to just leave out. There are political comments, some I get offended by, some I don't. With me though, I've taken the approach of, you get offended you move on, and if the post is really obscene, or doesn't belong I will report the post and let the moderator know.
I think the forum is just fine the way it is, and I haven't seen anything that could drive away a lot of core members to the forum, or send this forum down under.

I personally think doing nothing might be the best route, and continue to just do what you are doing.
You have Doug and De Orc as the most active moderators, with Speedy and The Cave Troll being a little less active from what I've seen, and then there is Jody and Zaneman, moderators that you really do rarely see, excluding Zaneman's recent posts. Maybe it is in order to hire another moderator who is here more often if, and if the problem with politics really does become that much of a problem, you could always ban the members who continue to not listen. (But so far, I haven't seen that much that would warrant either of those suggestions)

 

It's all politics as soon as you mention the words value or investment. I notice the only Political threads that bother anybody is those with the audacity to say something truthful instead of mealy mouthed lies repeated ad hominem. Likewise, economics is as political as things come since political ideology drives the economist rather than visa-versa.

Just keep all value and investment request in their own category and move the thread to it when it becomes too real for the pure numismatist who seems to think coins aren't political and always have been.

 

I voted for doing nothing. That said, I am a supporter of freedom of speech.

 

As for being seperated it already is - in a section titled bullion investing. Discussing bullion investing void of governmental economic and fiscal policies and the GENERAL political influences on the formation of such is like - well - Aunt Jemima pancakes without the syrup.

 

The problem is that discussing politics requires no training or ability or knowledge of anything. All it takes is a strong opinion backed by the talking points from your favorite democratic [MSNBC] or republican [FOX] TV station. It has nothing to do with bullion or bullion investing. There are thousands of sites dedicated to that sort of political discussion. There are very few devoted to bullion discussions. Most of the arguments that claim politics is important to bullion are pretty weak in my opinion.

 

Are you saying that the decisions made by the government do not effect the price of silver or gold?
(And right here, by this one question, we could get into a political debate fairly easily)

I really am trying to avoid as much political talk as possible. I think bullion and politics are closely related, but do agree with you to some extent that it could be done without maybe more than it is, as sometimes it isn't as necessary as one would think. Do I think it is important? Yes. Do I think that every post in the bullion section needs to concern the previous or current administration? No.

 

Which is precisely why I didn't vote in the poll.
Maybe start a new poll? With either more options, or less options, being more descriptive.

 

I am not against political discussion but I voted to just crack down on the political discussion if that means keeping the bullion section in CT. People collect bullion coins and bullion bars and , in my opinion, that is no different than collecting Morgans, Peace dollars, or other coins. If you eliminate the bullion section, then you will end up with bullion coin and bar collectors posting on the "Coin Chat" section of CoinTalk. That is what I did when I started a silver art bar thread in the "Coin Chat" subforum of CT but in my case that was before I was aware that there was a bullion section on CT and one could argue that silver art bars are considered numismatics (or semi-numismatic at the very least).