". . . is this what everybody wants this board to be? Partisan political talking points, on every topic, interminably, with both sides determined to get the last word? The same back-and-forth one finds on the most destructive social media sites?

I'm asking because I don't know what the old atheist board was like. I thought there were other boards on the old TMF platform dedicated to partisan politics. I was looking forward to monitoring this one because atheists share a distinctive view of the universe. There is no sign of that in the endless partisan back-and-forth that seems to have taken over the board in its early days. Whatever the culture of the old board, we have a chance to create a productive one here if it's not derailed at the jump."

The atheist board at the old TMF site could be very political at times. Very, very political.

However, it never really was a problem because the board was generally populated with very rational, data driven, analytical people. Remember, it is the atheist board so it is populated with people who are generally educated, open minded, and independent thinkers. Tribalism and ideology are generally the realm of religion, not atheism. As a result, most posters wouldn't mindlessly bleat the latest spin given to them from the usual propaganda sites cloaked as "news" (though there were a few). This meant that the political conversations were generally some of the highest quality political conversations found anywhere. I am willing to bet that almost all of the more prolific posters had their political views changed at least slightly from conversations they had on that board. Again, that might be a result of the type of person who generally populated that board (educated, open minded, independent thinkers looking to learn something new) as opposed to tribalists just looking to score points for their tribe.

That said, there were many posts there that were nothing more than copy and pasted political talking points, but not enough to drown out the quality. It is like that anywhere. On a Berkshire board you get posters whose sole contribution is to do a drive by "Buffett doesn't understand tech." or such and never choose to understand the nuances behind that or such. They are there to score points, not learn or interact with other posters. The presence of mindless drive by political propaganda doesn't have to drive out the quality conversations. The key is to have a lot of posters who are open minded and looking to learn from interacting with others. Posters who are looking to have their views challenged. Posters who are looking to understand views different than their own. There were quite a few on the TMF atheist board, so the conversation quality was generally high. I don't know how many of those posters have made it over to here so I do not know if the political conversations will be the same. I am hopeful that since this is an atheist board, it will attract the same type of people, but that is yet to be determined.

My suggestion would be to let the political conversations happen for now. If there are enough open minded, independent thinkers looking to learn then the political conversation will not be bad and it will be fine. If there are not enough such posters, it won't matter.