[jawns]

This is a great idea.

One thing you may need to refine, if the site picks up steam, is how you define the categories. "Left" and "Right" mean different things in different parts of the world. And "Neither" can mean "Neither left nor right," or "between left and right," or "I don't know where I fall." Being able to differentiate between those three things would be helpful.

[mrbodoia]

Thank you!

This is a good suggestion, and something that other commenters have mentioned as well. I was purposefully vague about the category names because I didn't want them to be too strict. The original implementation had "liberal", "conservative", and "independent", but I realized that a) those terms are specifically American, and b) there are a lot of people who are left-wing but not liberal, or right-wing but not conservative. So I tried to back off and make the categories broader, but as you point out that leads to some confusion.

My thinking was that, at least in the US, a large portion of those who are vocal about politics would be content (perhaps even proud) to label themselves as either left-leaning or right-leaning. I figured that third category would be for those who couldn't immediately choose between those two options. So "Neither" can mean "neither left nor right", "between left and right", or "I don't know". I should definitely make this clearer on the signup page though, and I will likely incorporate some quick political orientation questions or something along those lines.

[humanrebar]

Since internationalization is a priority, it's worth noting that 'left' and 'right' don't mean the same thing in Europe and America.

The right in Europe, historically, had a lot to do with conserving a national identity, often including a monarchy of some sort. The American right was more interested in conserving a (classically) liberal Constitution and Bill of Rights.

The rise of Trump has changed American politics some, mostly by providing a focal point for big government nationalism that is fairly new to America.

To put it another way, there are very distinct camps, and very distinct echo chambers, even within the Republican party. Some of the most fervent #nevertrump people are conservatives concerned about abuse of government power.

[andrew-lucker]

Also, OP could add an OCEAN score or similar using broad questions to get a sense of where a user is coming from. As soon as a site gets big enough for abuse, it seems simple voting has always broken down quickly.

[mrbodoia]

This is a good idea. In fact, it might be interesting to include answers to these questions as part of a user's profile. So if you're curious about the particular political stance of a fellow user, you could look at their profile and see their answers to a handful of political index questions.