The edict is actively weaponised to provoke others by saying heinous shit with a veneer of civility. The aim is to manipulate others into breaking "The Edict" so that they get struck down.
Meanwhile the heinous speaker is allowed free reign as they did not break decorum.
Its a ridiculous, loony tunes, childs cartoon version of morality control reminiscent of the movie Demolition Man. "You have been fined one credit for a violation of the verbal morality standard."
No, that's not at all what it's about and it's not how people treat it. If you are seeing hostility behind every polite post, that's about what you are reading into people's posts rather then what they are actually saying. There is not some grand conspiracy behind people talking to each other without screaming invective all the time. That's just people talking like normal.
This isn't a ridiculous, loony tunes, childs cartoon version of morality, it's basic expectations of behaviour you'd see anywhere in your daily life.
Something I've been wanting to bring up... Mod posts need to be different than regular posts. Like, posts by a mod as a mod saying mod stuff should be treated differently when displayed inline on the forums. No reactions allowed to these posts.
Any mod posts in a thread should be visible on every page under a dropdown at the top so that any "don't do this, stop doing this, please why are you all still fucking doing this" type rulings are easily visible.
Yeah, mobile doesn't even distinguish mods from other posters.
In D&D I do appreciate that when mods are using 'mod voice' they typically bold their posts. There have been cases where mods don't do that consistently and it's hard to tell what is just being a suggestion, what is steering the conversation, and what is a stop this shit right now. I've felt that inconsistency on mod voice can have a chilling effect on discussion.
Having official mod posts sticky, not have reactions, and be even more distinguished from an inline comment / response would be a good thing because if you're skimming through a thread on the crapper it can be easy to miss that a mod say to drop X subject two pages back.
I want to get rid of it. It was good for a bunchy of edgy teens and twenty year olds, but we're adults now.
I'd like to keep the spirit if not the actual rule. Sometimes an asshole needs to be called an asshole, but generally speaking that does not create a good environment for discussion. Glorious Edict is far less subjective to enforce than "We are adults, act like it".
I don't know what it could be replaced with and we have recently seen that having such a clear, objective rule has it's own problems.
"Name-calling is not permitted, full stop."
I don't even think we need exceptions for Nazis and fascists - just report them to the mods.
The issue is that some people disagree with the long-standing "Don't be a dick" rule. Not explicitly, of course, everyone thinks that nobody should be a dick. It's just an argument over whether something like "Your views are morally repugnant and I hope you die" counts as being a dick if your cause is sufficiently righteous.
But hey, if we're going to declare that naked hostility and character attacks are hunky dory, may as well nix the Edict and let people get really creative.
This framing is manipulative to the point of being actively malicious, and I find it to be in really poor taste.
If you want to debate the value of the Edict, sure, whatever, but you can do it without inventing a strawman wishing fictional death threats on other posters.
Quibble with the specific language used in my made up example, whatever, but the point stands. Some people want the ability to be actively hostile towards people who they think have sufficiently bad views. You have had entire threads dedicated to arguing in favor of such strategically-directed hostility. I find it hard to take protestations of this point seriously.
I just wanted to focus the discussion, because it's honestly not about the Edict itself, it's about the Don't Be a Dick rule. Arguing about "silly goose" is a distraction.
I do not think you are an advisable judge on this, given this is the same way you interpreted the sole Latino poster in the immigration thread lashing out in frustration as people repeatedly caped for the administration that was still treating people like him as criminals for crossing the border.
I think you have this static mindset that “people just want to cause trouble” and apply it flatly to every interaction when they’re human and break when pushed to their limits in social situations, and largely because of possessing privileges they do not benefit from you do not see how shitty this is and the harm you inflict on others with it.
Categorically you are perhaps one of the worst choices anyone could make right now in how to manage this or any other community, Jeffe.
EDIT: this will probably be taken as “forum beef” but I legitimately think that Jeffe’s role in cultivating the culture within the subforum I’ve most frequented since the purging of the old G&T regulars (and even then I was cross posting between there and D&D) is the source of a great deal of the toxicity and drama that is now present on the boards and goes deeper and more nuanced than just SE++ vs D&D, given the dynamics involved
The edict is actively weaponised to provoke others by saying heinous shit with a veneer of civility. The aim is to manipulate others into breaking "The Edict" so that they get struck down.
Meanwhile the heinous speaker is allowed free reign as they did not break decorum.
Its a ridiculous, loony tunes, childs cartoon version of morality control reminiscent of the movie Demolition Man. "You have been fined one credit for a violation of the verbal morality standard."
This does not feel true to my little slice of lived experiences
I would assume people (who haven't been banned/kicked for being trolls or whatever) are just saying shit because they are the main character and want to say shit, not because some other person is also a main character that they are trying to bait into something
But then I'm also frequently dumbfounded by the tightness with which people grip grievances, so what do I know
The number of actual trolls is dramatically smaller than the number of people that get labeled as trolls because obviously nobody could seriously disagree with my clearly correct position.
Would you say I had a plethora of pinatas?
Legos are cool, MOCs are cool, check me out on Rebrickable!
The edict is actively weaponised to provoke others by saying heinous shit with a veneer of civility. The aim is to manipulate others into breaking "The Edict" so that they get struck down.
Meanwhile the heinous speaker is allowed free reign as they did not break decorum.
Its a ridiculous, loony tunes, childs cartoon version of morality control reminiscent of the movie Demolition Man. "You have been fined one credit for a violation of the verbal morality standard."
No, that's not at all what it's about and it's not how people treat it. If you are seeing hostility behind every polite post, that's about what you are reading into people's posts rather then what they are actually saying. There is not some grand conspiracy behind people talking to each other without screaming invective all the time. That's just people talking like normal.
This isn't a ridiculous, loony tunes, childs cartoon version of morality, it's basic expectations of behaviour you'd see anywhere in your daily life.
It is neither the case that all polite disagreement is weaponization of the rules, nor that people never weaponized them
I know of at least one banned poster who privately admitted to deliberately doing exactly this, and bouncing freely between this and earnest discussion
Mods have cracked down a bit on this kind of thing, but people "civilly" advocating for heinous social ills can come from real ignorance or maliciousness or a mix of the two. It feels really bad to be trolled this way, and it's no surprise that people have become hyper vigilant.
+10
LasbrookIt takes a lot to make a stewWhen it comes to me and youRegistered Userregular
I think something that gets lost in Zon’s idea is the consolidation of forums that aren’t D&D because they’ve felt the need to pull out the knives immediately. There is a lot of redundancy around media and tech threads that could be reduced to help those categories grow with the people we have. I also don’t see any fundamental need for those categories to it be able to turn into talk about toilets or whatever for a page or two. Like he said SE++ threads are largely on topic and even when they aren’t they will return to it, conversations have tangents.
I will also chime in saying the glorious edict no longer serves a purpose, back in the 2000’s when SE++ was a bunch of 20 year old edgy assholes? Absolutely. But it’s been 20 years and we’re all older and have hopefully changed. Even without it slurs are still going to be banned.
I’m also of the opinion that we need to figure out the cultural issues before any significant amounts of money get involved because exploding that grenade after we’ve become financially involved is just going to amplify things.
I want to get rid of it. It was good for a bunchy of edgy teens and twenty year olds, but we're adults now.
I'd like to keep the spirit if not the actual rule. Sometimes an asshole needs to be called an asshole, but generally speaking that does not create a good environment for discussion. Glorious Edict is far less subjective to enforce than "We are adults, act like it".
I don't know what it could be replaced with and we have recently seen that having such a clear, objective rule has it's own problems.
"Name-calling is not permitted, full stop."
I don't even think we need exceptions for Nazis and fascists - just report them to the mods.
The issue is that some people disagree with the long-standing "Don't be a dick" rule. Not explicitly, of course, everyone thinks that nobody should be a dick. It's just an argument over whether something like "Your views are morally repugnant and I hope you die" counts as being a dick if your cause is sufficiently righteous.
But hey, if we're going to declare that naked hostility and character attacks are hunky dory, may as well nix the Edict and let people get really creative.
This framing is manipulative to the point of being actively malicious, and I find it to be in really poor taste.
If you want to debate the value of the Edict, sure, whatever, but you can do it without inventing a strawman wishing fictional death threats on other posters.
Quibble with the specific language used in my made up example, whatever, but the point stands. Some people want the ability to be actively hostile towards people who they think have sufficiently bad views. You have had entire threads dedicated to arguing in favor of such strategically-directed hostility. I find it hard to take protestations of this point seriously.
I just wanted to focus the discussion, because it's honestly not about the Edict itself, it's about the Don't Be a Dick rule. Arguing about "silly goose" is a distraction.
I've had several infractions over the years from basically losing my cool, having my emotional disregulation bullshit from my ADHD trigger, and me basically posting "fuck off" or "fuck you" to someone who is 100% being a dick, with whomever is goading me on getting by without nary and infraction.
The problem with the combination of "don't be a dick" and the glorious edict is one gets confused for the other. That being a dick isn't an objective thing. Telling someone who's being overly hostile or aggressive or condescending to fuck off isn't being a dick, it's having an emotional response.
I'm all for having lines, but I think maybe the lines should be redrawn, made clearer, reimagined to better suit managing to moderate this number of people. We need to find clearer and less subjective rules that accomplish what the old rules were aiming for, but for a group of 30-50 year olds instead of 12-30 year olds.
Losing your cool and being a dick are things that can both be true about the same action. Having an emotional response and being a dick are things that can both be true about the same action. "This is why I lost my cool" is not the same as "therefore I shouldn't be held responsible for it".
Frankly, rules for a group of 30-50 year olds should not need to include "you can't just tell people to fuck off" because that's just assumed and not because it doesn't apply anymore.
There's lines.
And the problem with these two rules is one is very easy to enforce and very clear when broken, and the other is completely subjective and in the eye of the beholder.
I'm not arguing against my infractions, I broke the edict. I'm arguing that the don't be a dick rule isn't being enforced in those situations. I'm arguing that the rules as they are haven't been enforced equally and that those rules need to be tweaked in order to make the goals of the rules achievable.
No I don't.
+5
surfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
The edict is actively weaponised to provoke others by saying heinous shit with a veneer of civility. The aim is to manipulate others into breaking "The Edict" so that they get struck down.
Meanwhile the heinous speaker is allowed free reign as they did not break decorum.
Its a ridiculous, loony tunes, childs cartoon version of morality control reminiscent of the movie Demolition Man. "You have been fined one credit for a violation of the verbal morality standard."
No, that's not at all what it's about and it's not how people treat it. If you are seeing hostility behind every polite post, that's about what you are reading into people's posts rather then what they are actually saying. There is not some grand conspiracy behind people talking to each other without screaming invective all the time. That's just people talking like normal.
This isn't a ridiculous, loony tunes, childs cartoon version of morality, it's basic expectations of behaviour you'd see anywhere in your daily life.
It is neither the case that all polite disagreement is weaponization of the rules, nor that people never weaponized them
I know of at least one banned poster who privately admitted to deliberately doing exactly this, and bouncing freely between this and earnest discussion
Mods have cracked down a bit on this kind of thing, but people "civilly" advocating for heinous social ills can come from real ignorance or maliciousness or a mix of the two. It feels really bad to be trolled this way, and it's no surprise that people have become hyper vigilant.
Okay but the fact that the poster in question is banned counts for something, right
I guess I might as well put my two cents in on the Edict now that I’ve engaged in this argument somewhat.
I think it no longer serves a purpose. If anything, it just exists at this point to be manipulated and abused by bad actors. Here’s why:
First, Tube implemented the Edict in an age of the forums where people were more likely than not to greet you by referring to you using homophobic or racial slurs. As a community, we have moved past this. Good job us, the Edict is no longer necessary to keep us from posting cringe.
Second, generally speaking, I don’t think the Edict is actually necessary for the mods to ding somebody for engaging in outright name calling. Ideally, you’re not going out of your way to call another user an asshole. If you did, under ideal circumstances, we would trust the mod staff to be able to empirically judge if that necessitates an infraction in the context of the discussion and use of the word. Plus, as it turns out, if I call someone a silly goose in the heat of the moment, they can probably guess what bad words I didn’t use.
Third, as Morninglord said already, the Edict is prone to being abused by bad actors to say heinous shit with a veneer of civility. I have a couple of specific examples, but the short version is that if someone posts racist, transphobic, or homophobic dog whistles, and I get baited into calling them a dick, then I get infracted for getting upset, but the person posting bigoted material can get away free if they did it in a “respectable manner.”
A specific example:
A couple months back during a discussion in D&D, someone posted a joke that boiled down to mocking victims of sexual abuse in prison. I reported that post, believing it to be in extremely poor taste and not something that was in keeping with the rules. A mod responded to my report saying “They didn’t address this at anyone specific, and it’s not an Edict violation, so we’re not acting on your report.” In essence, it was just codified in the rules that so long as you don’t direct jokes about sexual assault at a specific poster, you can’t be punished for it because it’s technically not an Edict violation. But if I had been so upset by this post that I had called that person anything other than “silly goose,” I absolutely would’ve gotten dinged for it.
I get moderation requires nuance. I get that the Edict served a valuable function at one point. And I get that people are going to post and say things I do not like.
But if moderation policy is to react more harshly to name calling than actively harmful posts which manage to stay under radar due to some veneer of respectability, and the Edict is the justification for that? Then the rule no longer serves a valuable purpose. Get rid of it.
[IMG][/img]
+11
SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
The edict is actively weaponised to provoke others by saying heinous shit with a veneer of civility. The aim is to manipulate others into breaking "The Edict" so that they get struck down.
Meanwhile the heinous speaker is allowed free reign as they did not break decorum.
Its a ridiculous, loony tunes, childs cartoon version of morality control reminiscent of the movie Demolition Man. "You have been fined one credit for a violation of the verbal morality standard."
No, that's not at all what it's about and it's not how people treat it. If you are seeing hostility behind every polite post, that's about what you are reading into people's posts rather then what they are actually saying. There is not some grand conspiracy behind people talking to each other without screaming invective all the time. That's just people talking like normal.
This isn't a ridiculous, loony tunes, childs cartoon version of morality, it's basic expectations of behaviour you'd see anywhere in your daily life.
It is neither the case that all polite disagreement is weaponization of the rules, nor that people never weaponized them
I know of at least one banned poster who privately admitted to deliberately doing exactly this, and bouncing freely between this and earnest discussion
Mods have cracked down a bit on this kind of thing, but people "civilly" advocating for heinous social ills can come from real ignorance or maliciousness or a mix of the two. It feels really bad to be trolled this way, and it's no surprise that people have become hyper vigilant.
SKFM got banned for being incapable of not main character'ing himself, which we -- apparently -- don't do anymore
I think the problem is that you need to either follow the spirit of the law, don't be a dick, and have trust in the mods to apply it evenly and fairly, or follow the letter of the law, no insults except silly goose. This is not a solved social problem and is one that pretty much every country on earth still struggles with almost daily. The former allows for more abuse of power, while the latter allows requires an ever growing list of rules and edge cases. Personally i lean more towards the former and hope that we can vote out any mods who abuse their station.
Something I've been wanting to bring up... Mod posts need to be different than regular posts. Like, posts by a mod as a mod saying mod stuff should be treated differently when displayed inline on the forums. No reactions allowed to these posts.
Any mod posts in a thread should be visible on every page under a dropdown at the top so that any "don't do this, stop doing this, please why are you all still fucking doing this" type rulings are easily visible.
I've always appreciated it when mods made their MOD VOICE excessively clear in posts (through whatever method they chose), and having some way to keep an easily-found running tally of mod actions in a thread, as was suggested earlier, is a great idea.
I think the Glorious Edict is great. I know there are many harmfully restrictive Social Constructs in the real world but it's also true that fake politeness can go a long way towards real politeness and having certain standards, however arbitrary, of social decorum do a lot to calm the tone down. I don't think we should underestimate how much it can defuse unnecessary hostility to be forced to use a goofy insult instead of what you want to say.
As far as SE and D&D go, I am an D&D user, not because I have any problem with SE "culture" (I don't know anything about it!) but because I would rather catch up on a few well-considered, on-topic posts in a thread I'm following than have to read through pages of stream-of-consciousness. I only just started dipping into chat and while I do enjoy it, I had to train myself to just pick up from the last page instead of trying to catch up. It's a different style of conversation. I don't know if that means its worth keeping SE and D&D separate or not. I just feel like right now D&D threads move at a good pace, with a good amount of thoughtfulness and staying on topic while not being overly strict about it. If that stayed the same after a merge, that'd be fine.
Unfortunately when I do see SE folks posting in these "crossover" threads, I get the impression that they would consider me a bad person for what I said above about the Glorious Edict. So while I don't want to offer an opinion on the "culture" stuff without having an understanding of SE culture, I would want to make sure that if there really is a big userbase of people who hate the idea of decorum, that they have their own space and we have ours.
So I see the arguments for merging and for keeping things as they are, I guess.
As someone from the South
Oh no.
No no no; it never has. No. Absolutely not.
It’s pretty much a tool for stifling any kind of social dissent by the dominant social group, because they set the standards for what is the “polite behavior”
This is an almost inescapable facet of human behavior in societies with fundamental power differentials and social hierarchies, whether those hierarchies are formalized or not.
I specifically clarified that I realize this is not how it works in the real world but it can work in forums.
I think it's a mistake to discard the idea of politeness itself as an inherently toxic thing just because it is used in toxic cultures.
There are also polite cultures that aren't horrible cesspits of bigotry underneath.
It absolutely cannot and does not. People are people, and as much as we came up in a generation that liked to think that there was some great, fundamental meatspace/digital divide, people just behave like people no matter what the medium for their social interaction is.
Politeness itself can be fine, desirable even. Enforced politeness must immediately beg the questions “Who is defining politeness and just what, pray tell, is their idea of being polite?”
I think talking about the Edict is mostly missing the forest for the trees here. To very broadly summarize the subforums here, the lack of an explicit "Edict" rule wouldn't impact the perception that D&D uses "don't be a dick" to enforce civility and not a broader spectrum of dickish beliefs, and the Edict literally is not maintained as a rule in SE++ and there is already a very wide latitude given to call people out for their behavior even if the callout is uncivil and the person being called out isn't actually in the thread. The Edict itself is not actually the issue except that it presents a bright line between the two styles.
I ate an engineer
+11
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
Gotta thank this thread for helping me process my feelings about the forum shutting down.
The Edict exists yes because at the time people would throw out terrible fucking shit at each other. It forced people to stop and think before typing. It isn't about just using "goose" as the only insult it is to force to you stop and think before you type in my mind. I have had more than a few times I want to scream "Your a fucking idiot who should go crawl into a gutter you piece of shit." But I can't. I have to stop, calm down and write something different. And that is good for discourse. It means I can't just let my temper or rage fully take over at that time. It stops people from short handing insults instead of discussions. It is basically forcing a "Don't be a dick" rule more harshly again this should be our foundation.
The arguments over the two cultures the last year have been very much split on the idea of "modding and polite discourse" and "bullying works." And I think the best part of PA and why I have been here for almost 16+ years is that we do have long form discussions. I know I am showing my D&D preference here. But even when I started in the MMO forum it was that way. Disagreements can get heated but at least most of us try not to scream insults to each others faces.
And I think part of the disagreement, and if forums are to be consolidated this must be figured out beforehand, is that one forum looks for a light moderator touch and the other looks to enforce on topicness and focus on discussion beyond feelings. And that doesn't always agree with some.
If we keep the current structure I do think we need to get back to the old rule of, "Don't shit on the other sub-forums." Tube would get at least in [chat] aggressive when people started this. Same with bringing shit from an on topic thread into chat to shit on it.
It is that type of action that needs to be strictly told to fuck off from the forum itself. Either we as a community try to build the community and say no to "those people over there should fuck off and die" or the cleavage that has been created will just get wider.
I do think part of this is making moderation consistent across all sub forums. Even if it hurts the feelings across the communities. Especially for basic important things like "don't be a dick", "don't use racist, misogynistic, transphobic, homophobic, antisemitic, slurs," and "don't spend your time shitting on other parts of the forum because you disagree with them."
I do think the limited timeline it is best to transport as much of the major structure over as possible. While taking the niche subforums and shifting them possibly into different forums where they fit okay.
I want to get rid of it. It was good for a bunchy of edgy teens and twenty year olds, but we're adults now.
I'd like to keep the spirit if not the actual rule. Sometimes an asshole needs to be called an asshole, but generally speaking that does not create a good environment for discussion. Glorious Edict is far less subjective to enforce than "We are adults, act like it".
I don't know what it could be replaced with and we have recently seen that having such a clear, objective rule has it's own problems.
"Name-calling is not permitted, full stop."
I don't even think we need exceptions for Nazis and fascists - just report them to the mods.
The issue is that some people disagree with the long-standing "Don't be a dick" rule. Not explicitly, of course, everyone thinks that nobody should be a dick. It's just an argument over whether something like "Your views are morally repugnant and I hope you die" counts as being a dick if your cause is sufficiently righteous.
But hey, if we're going to declare that naked hostility and character attacks are hunky dory, may as well nix the Edict and let people get really creative.
This framing is manipulative to the point of being actively malicious, and I find it to be in really poor taste.
If you want to debate the value of the Edict, sure, whatever, but you can do it without inventing a strawman wishing fictional death threats on other posters.
Quibble with the specific language used in my made up example, whatever, but the point stands. Some people want the ability to be actively hostile towards people who they think have sufficiently bad views. You have had entire threads dedicated to arguing in favor of such strategically-directed hostility. I find it hard to take protestations of this point seriously.
I just wanted to focus the discussion, because it's honestly not about the Edict itself, it's about the Don't Be a Dick rule. Arguing about "silly goose" is a distraction.
I've had several infractions over the years from basically losing my cool, having my emotional disregulation bullshit from my ADHD trigger, and me basically posting "fuck off" or "fuck you" to someone who is 100% being a dick, with whomever is goading me on getting by without nary and infraction.
The problem with the combination of "don't be a dick" and the glorious edict is one gets confused for the other. That being a dick isn't an objective thing. Telling someone who's being overly hostile or aggressive or condescending to fuck off isn't being a dick, it's having an emotional response.
I'm all for having lines, but I think maybe the lines should be redrawn, made clearer, reimagined to better suit managing to moderate this number of people. We need to find clearer and less subjective rules that accomplish what the old rules were aiming for, but for a group of 30-50 year olds instead of 12-30 year olds.
Losing your cool and being a dick are things that can both be true about the same action. Having an emotional response and being a dick are things that can both be true about the same action. "This is why I lost my cool" is not the same as "therefore I shouldn't be held responsible for it".
Frankly, rules for a group of 30-50 year olds should not need to include "you can't just tell people to fuck off" because that's just assumed and not because it doesn't apply anymore.
Weirdly enough, when everyone in the election thread told the white whine to fuck off and then the mod thread kicked them this morning, it seemed like good community action and good mod response.
Sometimes nazis need to fuck off and it's actually good to say it.
I will admit though, I think a lot of the specific complaints about the forums are kind of rearranging deck chairs on the titanic, though. Things like the Edict existing but being unenforced, or mods arbitrarily having or not having a title after resignation, or the ban appeal system being broken as-written but easily navigable with an alt that you'd technically get banned for having (hello, Milskidasith, the account the mods never deleted years ago!), or the rules thread in general being completely out of sync with what the rules are, etc. are all mostly just symptoms of the forums not being managed and gradually splitting into 2.5 almost entirely distinct communities with the majority of the overlap being threads nobody is happy to be participating in. Fixing any of those issues is not going to materially change either the cultural inertia of the subforums or the rule enforcement that keeps pushing them along those paths.
For all the talk about weaponising politeness and getting away with bad shit that way we should probably make some space in the conversation for talking about solutions to posters just being openly, needlessly hostile and getting away with that.
The fact that the edict is ignored in SE++ isn’t, in my opinion, a great thing, and it’s certainly not ignored by posters there purely to call out bad behaviour.
Something I've been wanting to bring up... Mod posts need to be different than regular posts. Like, posts by a mod as a mod saying mod stuff should be treated differently when displayed inline on the forums. No reactions allowed to these posts.
Any mod posts in a thread should be visible on every page under a dropdown at the top so that any "don't do this, stop doing this, please why are you all still fucking doing this" type rulings are easily visible.
Absolutely! resetera does exactly this with the threadmarks features on Xenforo
I think talking about the Edict is mostly missing the forest for the trees here. To very broadly summarize the subforums here, the lack of an explicit "Edict" rule wouldn't impact the perception that D&D uses "don't be a dick" to enforce civility and not a broader spectrum of dickish beliefs, and the Edict literally is not maintained as a rule in SE++ and there is already a very wide latitude given to call people out for their behavior even if the callout is uncivil and the person being called out isn't actually in the thread. The Edict itself is not actually the issue except that it presents a bright line between the two styles.
Which is what I find so confusing. If you don’t like the posters, the topics, and the way people interact in a separate part of the forum - take control of your life and stop going to a place you don’t like with people you don’t like
It’s a website. You have to choose to do this!
In general there are different topics in different forums. Until today there wasn't political threads in SE so if I wanted to talk about them it's got to be done in D&D. That's also where the Lego thread is. But the magic thread is in SE and the sports threads move slower over there so it's easier to pop in when I'm just watching a game sporadically and not following the whole nba season. Both forums have stuff. Plus there's no chat thread in SE when the workday is really slow.
The edict is actively weaponised to provoke others by saying heinous shit with a veneer of civility. The aim is to manipulate others into breaking "The Edict" so that they get struck down.
Meanwhile the heinous speaker is allowed free reign as they did not break decorum.
Its a ridiculous, loony tunes, childs cartoon version of morality control reminiscent of the movie Demolition Man. "You have been fined one credit for a violation of the verbal morality standard."
No, that's not at all what it's about and it's not how people treat it. If you are seeing hostility behind every polite post, that's about what you are reading into people's posts rather then what they are actually saying. There is not some grand conspiracy behind people talking to each other without screaming invective all the time. That's just people talking like normal.
This isn't a ridiculous, loony tunes, childs cartoon version of morality, it's basic expectations of behaviour you'd see anywhere in your daily life.
It is neither the case that all polite disagreement is weaponization of the rules, nor that people never weaponized them
I know of at least one banned poster who privately admitted to deliberately doing exactly this, and bouncing freely between this and earnest discussion
Mods have cracked down a bit on this kind of thing, but people "civilly" advocating for heinous social ills can come from real ignorance or maliciousness or a mix of the two. It feels really bad to be trolled this way, and it's no surprise that people have become hyper vigilant.
The number of people being polite merely as a tactic to rile people up is miniscule. The vast majority of people are just talking to you. The people being trolls can be banned. And the glorious edict doesn't cause the first or interfere with the second.
If you are seeing a sea of malicious trolls behind almost every polite post you read on the forums, you are projecting real hard.
EDIT: Basically, the rules are not the problem here
I think we've got a technical problem and a social problem. Trying to solve them both in one big bang by moving to a new site while also changing the social structure is going to cause more dropoff than tackling each individually would. That's too much change to the community all at once
The technical problem has a definite deadline and has a lot of work involved so the work on that should go on unimpeded. The social aspect is going to cause issues further down the road, and the proposed solution can be done at any time via any forum software
I'd suggest that the social problem is something that we can start tackling at any time, even right now. We've got this new subforum here where we'll be talking for the next few months, in an ideal world we make some progress working together
I very much don't think we should move to a new forum with the current subforum structure and then fix it in post later I think that just prolongs the same issues we have now and probably ends up making some kind of a exodus when that culture changes
This opinion is noted, but at the same time, with a vastly reduced timeline, we may not have a choice. What I can say is that I'm all for having this conversation, either now or after the new forums have been established, as it should definitely happen. But at the moment, we may, simply out of practical necessity, have to port over what we can when we can as quickly as possible. If we have to do that without making changes, then I will pledge that, at least for myself personally, that we don't give into inertia and just let things continue the way that they have, and that we should have a community-wide discussion of what we want the forums to be in the new place.
We don't have a choice with regard to this exodus. Sometimes all you can do is pack up and move over without getting all the things that you want right away. It is good that this conversation is happening, but I just want to be realistic about this process. I will say that without the specter of the larger PA organization over us, I feel more empowered with regard to changing things. There's a lot of cultural and institutional inertia that is wrapped up in the whole history of these forums.
My suggestion is just to keep the current forums intact along the lines of what we have now and delete all the PA-specific stuff. So D&D, SE++, G&T, H&A, Tech subforum, MMO if the MMO guys don't want to be in the regular games forum. IMO we can consolidate all the arts forums into a single 'Creative Projects' board (call it the Bike Shed!). Also keep a webcomics subforum. I don't post in the tabletop games forum or the comics forum, but it's fine to keep those if people want. Nobody should feel like the new forum is being made without them in mind.
HOWEVER
I think the biggest thing to get done at this stage of the game is to survey the community and find out what people's interest is in retaining a) their posts (this is being discussed in the other thread), b) the particular forums they post in (as has been brought up, do D&D and or SE++ people want to keep their space or are they cool with losing it), and c) finding out what level of financial support people are willing and able to contribute. It's really important to me that the new forums are inclusive, so just because I don't post in a particular subforum doesn't mean that we should discard it, as we found out in the HQ thead when @dennis brought up the desire to keep the PA comics specific board.
On this track I also think we should sticky the a news post in every forum that still sees traffic, just to help make sure nobody is missing anything.
I will admit though, I think a lot of the specific complaints about the forums are kind of rearranging deck chairs on the titanic, though. Things like the Edict existing but being unenforced, or mods arbitrarily having or not having a title after resignation, or the ban appeal system being broken as-written but easily navigable with an alt that you'd technically get banned for having (hello, Milskidasith, the account the mods never deleted years ago!), or the rules thread in general being completely out of sync with what the rules are, etc. are all mostly just symptoms of the forums not being managed and gradually splitting into 2.5 almost entirely distinct communities with the majority of the overlap being threads nobody is happy to be participating in. Fixing any of those issues is not going to materially change either the cultural inertia of the subforums or the rule enforcement that keeps pushing them along those paths.
On the other hand, while I think the root causes and issues aren't necessarily being addressed, I'm glad that there's dialogue and that people see this as a place worth preserving, for the most part. I think it's going to take a while for the cultural inertia to change (inherent in the word "inertia"), but I think change is possible. It's probably not going to happen from a forum restructure as we move to a new building, but I think we can continue to talk about it.
The edict is actively weaponised to provoke others by saying heinous shit with a veneer of civility. The aim is to manipulate others into breaking "The Edict" so that they get struck down.
Meanwhile the heinous speaker is allowed free reign as they did not break decorum.
Its a ridiculous, loony tunes, childs cartoon version of morality control reminiscent of the movie Demolition Man. "You have been fined one credit for a violation of the verbal morality standard."
No, that's not at all what it's about and it's not how people treat it. If you are seeing hostility behind every polite post, that's about what you are reading into people's posts rather then what they are actually saying. There is not some grand conspiracy behind people talking to each other without screaming invective all the time. That's just people talking like normal.
This isn't a ridiculous, loony tunes, childs cartoon version of morality, it's basic expectations of behaviour you'd see anywhere in your daily life.
Calling people who disagree with your framing "ridiculous, loony tunes, childish cartoons" is in fact not a polite way to converse
The edict is actively weaponised to provoke others by saying heinous shit with a veneer of civility. The aim is to manipulate others into breaking "The Edict" so that they get struck down.
Meanwhile the heinous speaker is allowed free reign as they did not break decorum.
Its a ridiculous, loony tunes, childs cartoon version of morality control reminiscent of the movie Demolition Man. "You have been fined one credit for a violation of the verbal morality standard."
No, that's not at all what it's about and it's not how people treat it. If you are seeing hostility behind every polite post, that's about what you are reading into people's posts rather then what they are actually saying. There is not some grand conspiracy behind people talking to each other without screaming invective all the time. That's just people talking like normal.
This isn't a ridiculous, loony tunes, childs cartoon version of morality, it's basic expectations of behaviour you'd see anywhere in your daily life.
Calling people who disagree with your framing "ridiculous, loony tunes, childish cartoons" is in fact not a polite way to converse
The edict is actively weaponised to provoke others by saying heinous shit with a veneer of civility. The aim is to manipulate others into breaking "The Edict" so that they get struck down.
Meanwhile the heinous speaker is allowed free reign as they did not break decorum.
Its a ridiculous, loony tunes, childs cartoon version of morality control reminiscent of the movie Demolition Man. "You have been fined one credit for a violation of the verbal morality standard."
No, that's not at all what it's about and it's not how people treat it. If you are seeing hostility behind every polite post, that's about what you are reading into people's posts rather then what they are actually saying. There is not some grand conspiracy behind people talking to each other without screaming invective all the time. That's just people talking like normal.
This isn't a ridiculous, loony tunes, childs cartoon version of morality, it's basic expectations of behaviour you'd see anywhere in your daily life.
Calling people who disagree with your framing "ridiculous, loony tunes, childish cartoons" is in fact not a polite way to converse
Try reading that last sentence again?
Also the quoted post it was referencing
+2
GustavFriend of GoatsSomewhere in the OzarksRegistered Userregular
Ultimately, there isn't a magic rule or forum configuration that'll make you all like each other.
I will admit though, I think a lot of the specific complaints about the forums are kind of rearranging deck chairs on the titanic, though. Things like the Edict existing but being unenforced, or mods arbitrarily having or not having a title after resignation, or the ban appeal system being broken as-written but easily navigable with an alt that you'd technically get banned for having (hello, Milskidasith, the account the mods never deleted years ago!), or the rules thread in general being completely out of sync with what the rules are, etc. are all mostly just symptoms of the forums not being managed and gradually splitting into 2.5 almost entirely distinct communities with the majority of the overlap being threads nobody is happy to be participating in. Fixing any of those issues is not going to materially change either the cultural inertia of the subforums or the rule enforcement that keeps pushing them along those paths.
On the other hand, while I think the root causes and issues aren't necessarily being addressed, I'm glad that there's dialogue and that people see this as a place worth preserving, for the most part. I think it's going to take a while for the cultural inertia to change (inherent in the word "inertia"), but I think change is possible. It's probably not going to happen from a forum restructure as we move to a new building, but I think we can continue to talk about it.
Unfortunately, I'm pretty pessimistic; given the degree to which this thread is re-litigating the cultural divides that exist and the degree to which I think the forums are mostly separate communities that mostly separate people see value in preserving for mostly separate status quos, the best plausible outcome I can see mostly involves acknowledging that separation and making sure the new forum works for it. I do not see enough overlap that you can make one group happy about the entire forums without effectively destroying the other.
So I was going to try and come in here as someone who posts in both SE++ and D&D and give my perspective on things. I was even going to make a Daywalker joke and try to be funny. But, quite frankly, after catching up on this thread I'm just so tired at this moment and I'm genuinely reaching the point where I'm questioning if I'm going to bother to make the transition to the new forum or just throw some money at you guys and wish you luck.
We can't even get on the same page on what is happening, so the idea that we could ever reconcile the two different interpretations of reality without doing that is... I'm going to say hard to swollow.
As for the Glorious Edict, it's not like if we got rid of it we couldn't bring it back. Shut it down for awhile and see how things go. If the forum goes to shit, bring it back.
I think talking about the Edict is mostly missing the forest for the trees here. To very broadly summarize the subforums here, the lack of an explicit "Edict" rule wouldn't impact the perception that D&D uses "don't be a dick" to enforce civility and not a broader spectrum of dickish beliefs, and the Edict literally is not maintained as a rule in SE++ and there is already a very wide latitude given to call people out for their behavior even if the callout is uncivil and the person being called out isn't actually in the thread. The Edict itself is not actually the issue except that it presents a bright line between the two styles.
Which is what I find so confusing. If you don’t like the posters, the topics, and the way people interact in a separate part of the forum - take control of your life and stop going to a place you don’t like with people you don’t like
It’s a website. You have to choose to do this!
In general there are different topics in different forums. Until today there wasn't political threads in SE so if I wanted to talk about them it's got to be done in D&D. That's also where the Lego thread is. But the magic thread is in SE and the sports threads move slower over there so it's easier to pop in when I'm just watching a game sporadically and not following the whole nba season. Both forums have stuff. Plus there's no chat thread in SE when the workday is really slow.
I think [chat] in D&D continues to be one of the better ideas. Its a thread that allows for your community to build the off topic relationship. Discussions move quickly. But it is about having a release valve that isn't tinged in politics/current/events/tribalization.
Its the local pub.
My understanding is SE++ is a forum that is suppose to function this way as well. But at the same time my interaction there is the 40k thread. And that stays pretty on topic. So I can't discuss fully.
But a chat like environment I think is good to humanize folks. We aren't just our political opinions or sports team choices.
+4
Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
Most of the voices in the chorus claiming irreconcilable differences are coming from one side, here. Just an observation.
I will admit though, I think a lot of the specific complaints about the forums are kind of rearranging deck chairs on the titanic, though. Things like the Edict existing but being unenforced, or mods arbitrarily having or not having a title after resignation, or the ban appeal system being broken as-written but easily navigable with an alt that you'd technically get banned for having (hello, Milskidasith, the account the mods never deleted years ago!), or the rules thread in general being completely out of sync with what the rules are, etc. are all mostly just symptoms of the forums not being managed and gradually splitting into 2.5 almost entirely distinct communities with the majority of the overlap being threads nobody is happy to be participating in. Fixing any of those issues is not going to materially change either the cultural inertia of the subforums or the rule enforcement that keeps pushing them along those paths.
On the other hand, while I think the root causes and issues aren't necessarily being addressed, I'm glad that there's dialogue and that people see this as a place worth preserving, for the most part. I think it's going to take a while for the cultural inertia to change (inherent in the word "inertia"), but I think change is possible. It's probably not going to happen from a forum restructure as we move to a new building, but I think we can continue to talk about it.
Unfortunately, I'm pretty pessimistic; given the degree to which this thread is re-litigating the cultural divides that exist and the degree to which I think the forums are mostly separate communities that mostly separate people see value in preserving for mostly separate status quos, the best plausible outcome I can see mostly involves acknowledging that separation and making sure the new forum works for it. I do not see enough overlap that you can make one group happy about the entire forums without effectively destroying the other.
I said it before, but the distinction between different subforums long predates any beef or drama people think about now. And not in terms of older beef and drama, but in terms of style and approach to foruming. There's not a solution that is going to actually please even most of both communities that isn't just maintaining a lot of the current structure. And maybe tightening up the mod rules/enforcement around things like cross-subforum sniping.
shryke on
0
SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
Ultimately, there isn't a magic rule or forum configuration that'll make you all like each other.
I don't have the expectation that we all love each other and kumbaya around the camp fire. I just hope we get to a place where we ignore someone we don't like like the 30 to 40 year Old adults we supposedly we are
Even though I may not interact with it, may I suggest that we view G&T as the pure heart of the forums that needs to be preserved? And the rest of us are a glorious gaggle of misfits riding shotgun on this noble cause?
Mission focus. Shelve the personal attacks, at least in this subforum.
Ultimately, there isn't a magic rule or forum configuration that'll make you all like each other.
Completely true. The aim here is to see if we can improve what we have. Obviously the rules have been somewhat effective over the years. However there's also been friction with the way they've been enforced over the years. Some legitimate, some not, but the friction is there.
We should examine what the friction points are, why they exist, and if there's any way to smooth them out. Anyone in this discussion should be coming at it with an open mind and the attitude that this place can be improved upon. This is not about making it so people I don't like get punished, it's about making sure me and the people I don't like can continue to coexist on a forum with people we all like.
So I was going to try and come in here as someone who posts in both SE++ and D&D and give my perspective on things. I was even going to make a Daywalker joke and try to be funny. But, quite frankly, after catching up on this thread I'm just so tired at this moment and I'm genuinely reaching the point where I'm questioning if I'm going to bother to make the transition to the new forum or just throw some money at you guys and wish you luck.
We can't even get on the same page on what is happening, so the idea that we could ever reconcile the two different interpretations of reality without doing that is... I'm going to say hard to swollow.
As for the Glorious Edict, it's not like if we got rid of it we couldn't bring it back. Shut it down for awhile and see how things go. If the forum goes to shit, bring it back.
I get that. It is very tiresome to see the same vague childlike name calling happen over and over again. If the divide is as large and irreconcilable as some of these people make it out to be, why are some of us completely clueless to it? Why doesn't anyone have receipts? Can someone please name actual names and post actual comments/threads so we can what is actually going on instead of what you are perceiving? I can't even tell which side which people are on because i can't even figure out what the issue actually is.
Posts
No, that's not at all what it's about and it's not how people treat it. If you are seeing hostility behind every polite post, that's about what you are reading into people's posts rather then what they are actually saying. There is not some grand conspiracy behind people talking to each other without screaming invective all the time. That's just people talking like normal.
This isn't a ridiculous, loony tunes, childs cartoon version of morality, it's basic expectations of behaviour you'd see anywhere in your daily life.
Yeah, mobile doesn't even distinguish mods from other posters.
In D&D I do appreciate that when mods are using 'mod voice' they typically bold their posts. There have been cases where mods don't do that consistently and it's hard to tell what is just being a suggestion, what is steering the conversation, and what is a stop this shit right now. I've felt that inconsistency on mod voice can have a chilling effect on discussion.
Having official mod posts sticky, not have reactions, and be even more distinguished from an inline comment / response would be a good thing because if you're skimming through a thread on the crapper it can be easy to miss that a mod say to drop X subject two pages back.
I do not think you are an advisable judge on this, given this is the same way you interpreted the sole Latino poster in the immigration thread lashing out in frustration as people repeatedly caped for the administration that was still treating people like him as criminals for crossing the border.
I think you have this static mindset that “people just want to cause trouble” and apply it flatly to every interaction when they’re human and break when pushed to their limits in social situations, and largely because of possessing privileges they do not benefit from you do not see how shitty this is and the harm you inflict on others with it.
Categorically you are perhaps one of the worst choices anyone could make right now in how to manage this or any other community, Jeffe.
EDIT: this will probably be taken as “forum beef” but I legitimately think that Jeffe’s role in cultivating the culture within the subforum I’ve most frequented since the purging of the old G&T regulars (and even then I was cross posting between there and D&D) is the source of a great deal of the toxicity and drama that is now present on the boards and goes deeper and more nuanced than just SE++ vs D&D, given the dynamics involved
The number of actual trolls is dramatically smaller than the number of people that get labeled as trolls because obviously nobody could seriously disagree with my clearly correct position.
Legos are cool, MOCs are cool, check me out on Rebrickable!
It is neither the case that all polite disagreement is weaponization of the rules, nor that people never weaponized them
I know of at least one banned poster who privately admitted to deliberately doing exactly this, and bouncing freely between this and earnest discussion
Mods have cracked down a bit on this kind of thing, but people "civilly" advocating for heinous social ills can come from real ignorance or maliciousness or a mix of the two. It feels really bad to be trolled this way, and it's no surprise that people have become hyper vigilant.
I will also chime in saying the glorious edict no longer serves a purpose, back in the 2000’s when SE++ was a bunch of 20 year old edgy assholes? Absolutely. But it’s been 20 years and we’re all older and have hopefully changed. Even without it slurs are still going to be banned.
I’m also of the opinion that we need to figure out the cultural issues before any significant amounts of money get involved because exploding that grenade after we’ve become financially involved is just going to amplify things.
Steam
There's lines.
And the problem with these two rules is one is very easy to enforce and very clear when broken, and the other is completely subjective and in the eye of the beholder.
I'm not arguing against my infractions, I broke the edict. I'm arguing that the don't be a dick rule isn't being enforced in those situations. I'm arguing that the rules as they are haven't been enforced equally and that those rules need to be tweaked in order to make the goals of the rules achievable.
I think it no longer serves a purpose. If anything, it just exists at this point to be manipulated and abused by bad actors. Here’s why:
First, Tube implemented the Edict in an age of the forums where people were more likely than not to greet you by referring to you using homophobic or racial slurs. As a community, we have moved past this. Good job us, the Edict is no longer necessary to keep us from posting cringe.
Second, generally speaking, I don’t think the Edict is actually necessary for the mods to ding somebody for engaging in outright name calling. Ideally, you’re not going out of your way to call another user an asshole. If you did, under ideal circumstances, we would trust the mod staff to be able to empirically judge if that necessitates an infraction in the context of the discussion and use of the word. Plus, as it turns out, if I call someone a silly goose in the heat of the moment, they can probably guess what bad words I didn’t use.
Third, as Morninglord said already, the Edict is prone to being abused by bad actors to say heinous shit with a veneer of civility. I have a couple of specific examples, but the short version is that if someone posts racist, transphobic, or homophobic dog whistles, and I get baited into calling them a dick, then I get infracted for getting upset, but the person posting bigoted material can get away free if they did it in a “respectable manner.”
A specific example:
A couple months back during a discussion in D&D, someone posted a joke that boiled down to mocking victims of sexual abuse in prison. I reported that post, believing it to be in extremely poor taste and not something that was in keeping with the rules. A mod responded to my report saying “They didn’t address this at anyone specific, and it’s not an Edict violation, so we’re not acting on your report.” In essence, it was just codified in the rules that so long as you don’t direct jokes about sexual assault at a specific poster, you can’t be punished for it because it’s technically not an Edict violation. But if I had been so upset by this post that I had called that person anything other than “silly goose,” I absolutely would’ve gotten dinged for it.
I get moderation requires nuance. I get that the Edict served a valuable function at one point. And I get that people are going to post and say things I do not like.
But if moderation policy is to react more harshly to name calling than actively harmful posts which manage to stay under radar due to some veneer of respectability, and the Edict is the justification for that? Then the rule no longer serves a valuable purpose. Get rid of it.
SKFM got banned for being incapable of not main character'ing himself, which we -- apparently -- don't do anymore
If you've got the time, you've got an audience
PSN:Furlion
I've always appreciated it when mods made their MOD VOICE excessively clear in posts (through whatever method they chose), and having some way to keep an easily-found running tally of mod actions in a thread, as was suggested earlier, is a great idea.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
It absolutely cannot and does not. People are people, and as much as we came up in a generation that liked to think that there was some great, fundamental meatspace/digital divide, people just behave like people no matter what the medium for their social interaction is.
Politeness itself can be fine, desirable even. Enforced politeness must immediately beg the questions “Who is defining politeness and just what, pray tell, is their idea of being polite?”
Because that’s where the abuse happens
The arguments over the two cultures the last year have been very much split on the idea of "modding and polite discourse" and "bullying works." And I think the best part of PA and why I have been here for almost 16+ years is that we do have long form discussions. I know I am showing my D&D preference here. But even when I started in the MMO forum it was that way. Disagreements can get heated but at least most of us try not to scream insults to each others faces.
And I think part of the disagreement, and if forums are to be consolidated this must be figured out beforehand, is that one forum looks for a light moderator touch and the other looks to enforce on topicness and focus on discussion beyond feelings. And that doesn't always agree with some.
If we keep the current structure I do think we need to get back to the old rule of, "Don't shit on the other sub-forums." Tube would get at least in [chat] aggressive when people started this. Same with bringing shit from an on topic thread into chat to shit on it.
It is that type of action that needs to be strictly told to fuck off from the forum itself. Either we as a community try to build the community and say no to "those people over there should fuck off and die" or the cleavage that has been created will just get wider.
I do think part of this is making moderation consistent across all sub forums. Even if it hurts the feelings across the communities. Especially for basic important things like "don't be a dick", "don't use racist, misogynistic, transphobic, homophobic, antisemitic, slurs," and "don't spend your time shitting on other parts of the forum because you disagree with them."
I do think the limited timeline it is best to transport as much of the major structure over as possible. While taking the niche subforums and shifting them possibly into different forums where they fit okay.
Weirdly enough, when everyone in the election thread told the white whine to fuck off and then the mod thread kicked them this morning, it seemed like good community action and good mod response.
Sometimes nazis need to fuck off and it's actually good to say it.
The fact that the edict is ignored in SE++ isn’t, in my opinion, a great thing, and it’s certainly not ignored by posters there purely to call out bad behaviour.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Yeah, I like this feature.
MHWilds ID: JF9LL8L3
In general there are different topics in different forums. Until today there wasn't political threads in SE so if I wanted to talk about them it's got to be done in D&D. That's also where the Lego thread is. But the magic thread is in SE and the sports threads move slower over there so it's easier to pop in when I'm just watching a game sporadically and not following the whole nba season. Both forums have stuff. Plus there's no chat thread in SE when the workday is really slow.
{Bluesky Account }{Writing and Story Blog}
The number of people being polite merely as a tactic to rile people up is miniscule. The vast majority of people are just talking to you. The people being trolls can be banned. And the glorious edict doesn't cause the first or interfere with the second.
If you are seeing a sea of malicious trolls behind almost every polite post you read on the forums, you are projecting real hard.
EDIT: Basically, the rules are not the problem here
My suggestion is just to keep the current forums intact along the lines of what we have now and delete all the PA-specific stuff. So D&D, SE++, G&T, H&A, Tech subforum, MMO if the MMO guys don't want to be in the regular games forum. IMO we can consolidate all the arts forums into a single 'Creative Projects' board (call it the Bike Shed!). Also keep a webcomics subforum. I don't post in the tabletop games forum or the comics forum, but it's fine to keep those if people want. Nobody should feel like the new forum is being made without them in mind.
HOWEVER
I think the biggest thing to get done at this stage of the game is to survey the community and find out what people's interest is in retaining a) their posts (this is being discussed in the other thread), b) the particular forums they post in (as has been brought up, do D&D and or SE++ people want to keep their space or are they cool with losing it), and c) finding out what level of financial support people are willing and able to contribute. It's really important to me that the new forums are inclusive, so just because I don't post in a particular subforum doesn't mean that we should discard it, as we found out in the HQ thead when @dennis brought up the desire to keep the PA comics specific board.
On this track I also think we should sticky the a news post in every forum that still sees traffic, just to help make sure nobody is missing anything.
MHWilds ID: JF9LL8L3
Calling people who disagree with your framing "ridiculous, loony tunes, childish cartoons" is in fact not a polite way to converse
Try reading that last sentence again?
Also the quoted post it was referencing
Unfortunately, I'm pretty pessimistic; given the degree to which this thread is re-litigating the cultural divides that exist and the degree to which I think the forums are mostly separate communities that mostly separate people see value in preserving for mostly separate status quos, the best plausible outcome I can see mostly involves acknowledging that separation and making sure the new forum works for it. I do not see enough overlap that you can make one group happy about the entire forums without effectively destroying the other.
We can't even get on the same page on what is happening, so the idea that we could ever reconcile the two different interpretations of reality without doing that is... I'm going to say hard to swollow.
As for the Glorious Edict, it's not like if we got rid of it we couldn't bring it back. Shut it down for awhile and see how things go. If the forum goes to shit, bring it back.
I think [chat] in D&D continues to be one of the better ideas. Its a thread that allows for your community to build the off topic relationship. Discussions move quickly. But it is about having a release valve that isn't tinged in politics/current/events/tribalization.
Its the local pub.
My understanding is SE++ is a forum that is suppose to function this way as well. But at the same time my interaction there is the 40k thread. And that stays pretty on topic. So I can't discuss fully.
But a chat like environment I think is good to humanize folks. We aren't just our political opinions or sports team choices.
I said it before, but the distinction between different subforums long predates any beef or drama people think about now. And not in terms of older beef and drama, but in terms of style and approach to foruming. There's not a solution that is going to actually please even most of both communities that isn't just maintaining a lot of the current structure. And maybe tightening up the mod rules/enforcement around things like cross-subforum sniping.
No shit, one side doesn't want to get abused anymore
I'm not sure you're making the point you think you are
I don't have the expectation that we all love each other and kumbaya around the camp fire. I just hope we get to a place where we ignore someone we don't like like the 30 to 40 year Old adults we supposedly we are
Please help my sick dog
Mission focus. Shelve the personal attacks, at least in this subforum.
Completely true. The aim here is to see if we can improve what we have. Obviously the rules have been somewhat effective over the years. However there's also been friction with the way they've been enforced over the years. Some legitimate, some not, but the friction is there.
We should examine what the friction points are, why they exist, and if there's any way to smooth them out. Anyone in this discussion should be coming at it with an open mind and the attitude that this place can be improved upon. This is not about making it so people I don't like get punished, it's about making sure me and the people I don't like can continue to coexist on a forum with people we all like.
I get that. It is very tiresome to see the same vague childlike name calling happen over and over again. If the divide is as large and irreconcilable as some of these people make it out to be, why are some of us completely clueless to it? Why doesn't anyone have receipts? Can someone please name actual names and post actual comments/threads so we can what is actually going on instead of what you are perceiving? I can't even tell which side which people are on because i can't even figure out what the issue actually is.
PSN:Furlion