[Meta] I've gone long periods of time without having political discussions. My interest in such waxes and wanes, much as my interest in writing poetry, my interest in writing prose, my interest in programming games, my interest in having any contact with other people, etc. I wouldn't say my life at any point in any of these cycles is better or worse; if it were better, I doubt my interest would wane, if worse, I doubt it would wax.
As for my reasons for introducing this test, it was introduced in response to another individual calling the rule "Stupid," in rather less polite terms. I decided to create a test to see if the fence was actually useful; I didn't create an article calling for it to be torn down, I asked the mayor to create a space in that public property without that fence, to see if it did indeed serve the purpose it was erected for. I'll "conclude" the test sometime tomorrow, and ask people whether, indeed, they found the discussions here constructive or informative. (I've already learned one thing, which I'll elaborate on tomorrow, in my closing poll and commentary. So personally it has already been both constructive and informative.)
I read this response as two distinct things - a reason for not wanting politics discussed here (politics is an unconstructive and unhappy temptation), and a completely unrelated justification (politics is impossible to discuss rationally, a strawman interpretation of the "Politics is the Mindkiller" sequence which some people here nonetheless seem to hold). This post challenges that justification. Your reason may or may not still apply; I will try to include something in the poll to reflect the possibility that people found the test demonstrated that politics can be discussed here, but would still rather this be a politics-free zone.
My strongest recommendations, depending upon the result of this test and the poll, will nonetheless be, as suggested by DanielLC here: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/dsv/is_politics_the_mindkiller_an_inconclusive_test/73sl a regular and quarantined area for political discussion, subject to a cessation if things turn ugly or particularly unproductive. As I invoked in my introductory post, this is not a true test, because it is a test, and known to be a test. The very act of entering into this test is an acknowledgment that politics are an area of rational vulnerability. That is, my strongest recommendation will be that an area of public property be left without the fence. That will be a longer-term test which will more truly demonstrate whether or not the fence effectively serves the purpose it was created for.
Or is the convention against discussing politics here silly?
I propose a test. I'm going to try to lay down some rules on voting on comments for the test here (not that I can force anybody to abide by them):
1.) Top-level comments should introduce arguments (or ridicule me and/or this test); responses should be responses to those arguments.
2.) Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
3.) Try not to downvote particular comments excessively, if they're legitimate lines of argument. A faulty line of argument provides opportunity for rebuttal, and so for our test has value even then; that is, I want some faulty lines of argument here. If you disagree, please downvote me, instead of the faulty comments, because this post is what you want less of, not those comments. This necessarily implies, for balance, that we not excessively upvote comments. I'd suggest fairly arbitrary limits of 3/-3?
Edit: 4.) A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate. (My apologies about missing this, folks.)
I'm going to try really hard not to get personally involved, except to lay down a leading comment posing an argument against abortion, a position I don't hold, for the record. The core of the argument isn't disingenuous, and I hold that this argument is true, it just doesn't lead to my opposing abortion. I do not hold the moral axiom by which I extend the basic argument to argue against abortion, however; I'm playing the devil's advocate to try to help me from getting sucked into the argument while providing an initial point of discussion.
Which leads me to the next point: If you see a hole in an argument, even if it's an argument for a perspective you agree with, poke through it. The goal is to see whether we can have a constructive political argument here.
The fact that this is a test, and known to be a test, means this isn't a blind study. Uh, try to act as if you're not being tested?
After it's gone on a little while, if this post hasn't been hopelessly downvoted and ridiculed (and thus the premise and test discarded as undesirable to begin with), we can put up a poll to see whether people found the political debates helpful, not helpful, and so on.