Political discussion forums

[Melody]

A poster at an American discussion forum where I participate is asking if there are any equivalent British forums that concentrate on political topics.

 

Does anyone know of a forum I could recommend to her?

[A frog]

The Guardian at some point was trying to move discussions away from comments under articles and towards more general forums, articles otherwise still provide ground for discussion, if rarely fruitful ones, but someone genuinely trying to engage in discussion can usually find other people who will.

[Colman]

Could you give us some more hints as to what you're looking for?

[trog]

Not a forum as such, but the BBC News website has Have Your Say (HYS). It's pretty rubbish though - comments are posted very quickly and it seems as though you can only display 10 comments at a time. BBC forums have always used rubbish software but this is even worse than the message boards.

 

 

[alison]

But at least the comments still exist ...

[Melody]

8 hours ago, Colman said:

Could you give us some more hints as to what you're looking for?

I'm looking for a British equivalent to this forum:

 

http://politicalhotwire.com/forum.php

[Melody]

7 hours ago, trog said:

Not a forum as such, but the BBC News website has Have Your Say (HYS). It's pretty rubbish though - comments are posted very quickly and it seems as though you can only display 10 comments at a time. BBC forums have always used rubbish software but this is even worse than the message boards.

 

 

I used to post at the BBC discussion forum section years and years ago, but they gradually dismantled it over the years. The science forum turned into a place to discuss a couple of the BBC science programmes and I think the religious forum disappeared altogether.

[xanthe]

It depends how politically savvy your friend wants people to be - the dreaded Mumsnet is reasonable if you want the semi-informed Joe Public comments and lots of hysteria, otherwise most people are in fairly specialist forums. The Grauniad comments section is fine if they tick your boxes politically but otherwise it's a form of masochism.

 

I work in politics, run a political consultancy and worked full-time on one of the referendum campaign teams so spend a lot of time on political sites (balletco is my much-needed escape). I tend to read Guido Fawkes for news and gossip - but the comments sections are horrendous and not for the faint of heart; Political Betting is excellent - run by a LibDem, but posters from all parties and pretty broad in terms of comment, but you need to be a serious political geek to get the most from it and many posters there know each other in real life so conversations can be hard to follow I imagine if you're not part of the Westminster bubble; ConHome has interesting articles and the comments section is so/so and very Tory slant; Vote 2012 is good for upcoming elections but is very much aimed at psephology fans and can be slow moving. The individual parties have lots of blogs and member-only forums.

 

If you have an idea of what direction their politics goes in (left/right/centerist/free-market/libertarian etc) then I can probably suggest some suitable places.