I was running monthly politics threads. I don't recall that conversations involved NR specifically, but I do recall that the discussions taking place were so specific they had no general/popular appeal, and conversations were short, muted, and didn't go anywhere.

I was left reading the discussions taking place with the impression that people were looking for things to try to argue about, rather than having anything particularly meaningful they wanted to argue about which they previously couldn't. Given that one of my purposes was to try to arrange a safety valve for a perceived growing political pressure (which eventually exploded in the feminism war that got Eugine Nier banned and which caused most of the more prominent feminist-leaning members to leave), they were failing for my intended purpose, so I stopped creating them.

The debates didn't generally have an issue staying civilized, though, as I recall.