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Originally Posted by Dahoss

This is just my opinion, but who cares about people posting about politics if they aren't talking about racing also?

When this board was going great it's because there were great discussions on racing. People actually had opinions on races both before and after the races and shared them.

I'm not sure why that doesn't happen anymore, but I just don't think people stopped talking racing because they couldn't argue the same political stance over and over again anymore.

Hoss the 2 posters I mentioned by name are extremely knowledgeable horseplayers and while I'm not sure if IC actually bets, he knows more about horseracing than anyone I know. Both posters also frequented both rooms.

I have it on good authority that he no longer even lurks here.

To Nicole's point below, I could not even be certain what percentage of folks that frequented the Poly room were avid players, because the Paddock was so full of vitriol toward anyone that dared voice an dissenting opinion that most just avoided the conflict entirely. So I'm not prepared to assume nor draw the conclusion that just because they came here for the Poly room meant they were not horseplayers thus added no value to the horseracing discussions.
Additionally, there were plenty of folks that went to both rooms and offered lucid, knowledgeable opinions on both topics, but without one, they no longer post in the other. How is it that 7 weeks out, the most attended thread in the Paddock is a frigging Tony Black retirement thread? In years past the Derby Trail target thread would have been 10 pages deep at this point. Cause / Effect would dictate that the lack of the Poly room is affecting not only overall attendance here, but quality horesracing discussion.

Originally Posted by GenuineRisk

Purely my opinion, but I didn't think the Paddock was any more polite than the Politics Room was. In fact, many times I thought people were much nastier to each other in the Paddock. The Politics Room had actually been pretty civil the last few days of its existence, compared to before. It seemed a weird time to end it.

As someone who doesn't have the time to aggressively follow racing the way many of the more knowledgable posters here do, much as I enjoy reading threads in the Paddock, I was (and am) reluctant to share an opinion in the Paddock because of how nasty some posters could be in tearing apart someone else's opinion. Making other people feel stupid is not a good way to encourage participation, especially for novices like myself. On the bright side, there's not much of that going on now. On the not-bright side, there's not much of anything else going on there now.

I also think Riot did a lot for keeping traffic moving in both rooms. She was extremely prolific, extremely opinionated and extremely polarizing and you could almost always count on a thread she posted in making for some very entertaining reading. Because people who didn't like her just couldn't stop themselves from replying to her posts. And hilarity would ensue.

I really miss the Politics Room because it was one of the few places I know on the web where liberals and conservatives would regularly argue things on a more-or-less even footing. Probably because what brought us here was a common love of something else.

It's a bummer, but, as Danzig said in a thread a few weeks ago, the lack of DT activity means I've been much more productive at work lately, so there's always a pony somewhere.

Could not have said this any better - Thanks!