Ill bet a fella could go to a camp out, with no one there who doesnt ride, & the campfire chat would be about things motorcycle related some & about stuff NOT Motorcycle related.. People talk about different things with the folks they know,, its really kinda normal..

Also it is kinda normal for long threads here to move from item to item as the conversation goes along, heck we can't even keep on topic when we are having an oil war fer goodness sakes.   Conversations are like that in the real world.   Why should the Cafe be any different?

Maybe cuz someone got it in their head its "Sposed" to be this One Thing,, & life just dont work like that.

Yes the cafe rules are definitely getting interpreted differently by different folks, and I'd say the general interpretation is pretty loose.  A thread on "national sales tax" or "enough is enough" are about as political as topics get.  But nobody complained, so we assume nobody has a problem with it.  

Anyone who sees something they find offensive and is on the wrong side of forum-decorum should send a PM to complain.  Don't be like Charon and just take off, citing politics as the reason but leaving no opportunity to correct the problem.

As for me I know I am one of the religious and political free thinkers.
However I try to keep my stuff at the tall table.,sometimes it gets away from me by someone answering in the cafe,then I try to steer them north,I have almost completly lost interest in politics,as we speak I have changed from a democrat to a indipendant.
And trying to get you guys more in tune with the rest of the world by asking you to support any health plan.that is also going to stop,it's like flogging a dead horse.
And one more thing every time I post motorcycling related posts they fall to the bottom real fast.unlike Sales Tax that I didn't post but it's still there. Look at the number of members who have posted in the tall table,then look at the others.

Yes, but in this case folks may be reading the same words in the rules and getting different results from it, which is why we asked the question.

Plus you guys had already started talking about it, so as Verslagen pointed out -- go ahead and talk it out.

It really isn't an "us vs them" thing, it's a "we gotta fix it together" thing.

One thing that has come up so far is some people are upset at getting their threads hijacked by folks talking politics and religion in a thread that had nothing to do with such stuff -- thread got derailed and abandoned and such.

This is a valid complaint -- so complain honestly if you have a beef about it happening to you (pick whichever moderator you feel most comfortable with and PM them).

Please don't make moderators have to second guess if you feel over-run -- they will make mistakes both ways if they have to second guess you.  

Hint: a moderator's telepathy isn't any better than yours is.

As someone mentioned up-post, winter is here, and for those of us in the north-country that means that the bike is sitting covered in the garage with the battery on trickle charge in the basement.

Now for those of you who live in sunny and warm climes, you can ride and presumable talk "motorcycles" all year long. For those of us here in the snow belt, we need to chat about other matters in the wintertime because lets face it, the riding season is months away and the bikes are so cold your tongue would stick to them.

To keep us here day after day in the long winter season we need to be able to exchange ideas. Controversial ideas. It's FUN.

For us to exchange ideas that we deem interesting, we must venture into the taboo subjects of politics, religion, and other controversial areas where we can get the juices flowing, and marvel at the jaw dropping attitudes, beliefs, political and religious views, and opinions of others here at SS.com.

We exchange jabs and sometimes get downright nasty and "pissed" at each other...but at the end of the day we are all brothers and sisters united by this wonderful bike.

The job of the mods should be to move any threads they deem as too controversial for the cafe over to the tall table and let it go at that. NOT to delete the thread unless it's so outrageous it is obvious that should go e.g. the deranged remarks of some nut that we were plagued with on the site some months ago. Everyone at that time united to rid the site of this outrages troll.

Talk just motorcycles day after day and a whole lot of us will just lose interest, drift away to other sites, and say "see you in the spring".

...just my two cents...

"So what you mean is you can only talk motorcycle while you are able to ride. Your interest in the sport is so narrow that unless it's about you, nobody else has a right to voice interest. Rather then moving your personal blathers about politics or beliefs to the appropriate forum during YOUR off season you must highjack threads from this forum and try to promote anger because "it's FUN".  

???...are you drunk tonight?