# Political (and other contentious topics) moderation strategies

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/political-and-other-contentious-topics-moderation-strategies/168405>\
**Category:** Community Building\
**Created:** [October 27, 2020, 3:52pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/political-and-other-contentious-topics-moderation-strategies/168405 "2020-10-27T15:52:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 1

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**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/codinghorror/32/110067_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)\
**Post date:** [October 27, 2020, 3:52pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/political-and-other-contentious-topics-moderation-strategies/168405/1 "2020-10-27T15:52:18Z")

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I thought this was a great article examining the challenges Nextdoor faces moderating their “local neighbors only” platform

> **[The messy politics of Nextdoor](https://www.vox.com/recode/21526163/nextdoor-politics-misinformation-voting-election-2020)**
>
> Want to see how polarized America is? Look no further than Nextdoor.

Lots of thoughtful advice here applicable to many platforms. It’s a problem I see many Discourse instances facing as well.

We’ve long observed that there are basically two types of discussions: the easy(ish) ones, and the hard ones. The latter tend to be of the traditional “avoid discussing these topics at thanksgiving dinner with your extended family” type. The moderation strategy for the tougher discussions are so much more challenging and _almost_ require a completely different set of tools, or at least tools you basically never need to use outside those areas.

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