Short summary: Politics discussions remained civilized on Less Wrong, but ultimately I saw no evidence there was any net benefit, apart from the enjoyment individual participants gained from engaging in the discussions.
As for my opinion of your attempt? The existence of censorship, limiting membership and topics, will eventually result in a population which believes there is greater consensus on their shared beliefs than actually exists, and who will be amazingly ignorant about basic political positions outside the sphere of discussion permitted. Those in control will think it is amazingly rational, because they will have controlled decisions about censorship, membership limitation, and topic limitation, thus directing the local opinions to coincide with their own. But they’ll be just as ignorant as the broader membership.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/dsv/is_politics_the_mindkiller_an_inconclusive_test/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/dwa/politics_discussion_thread_august_2012/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/frv/politics_discussion_thread_december_2012/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/g6n/politics_discussion_thread_january_2013/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/gli/politics_discussion_thread_february_2013/
Short summary: Politics discussions remained civilized on Less Wrong, but ultimately I saw no evidence there was any net benefit, apart from the enjoyment individual participants gained from engaging in the discussions.
That said I think politics are an important area of discussion—http://lesswrong.com/lw/gr4/why_politics_are_important_to_less_wrong/ . I just don’t think Less Wrong is actually rational enough to have a serious political discussion.
As for my opinion of your attempt? The existence of censorship, limiting membership and topics, will eventually result in a population which believes there is greater consensus on their shared beliefs than actually exists, and who will be amazingly ignorant about basic political positions outside the sphere of discussion permitted. Those in control will think it is amazingly rational, because they will have controlled decisions about censorship, membership limitation, and topic limitation, thus directing the local opinions to coincide with their own. But they’ll be just as ignorant as the broader membership.