Board of Directors Election Results - 2025

Jaguar

Bluedude152 wrote: »

Yellowhammer wrote: »

Romanian My Escutcheon wrote: »

Phoenix-D wrote: »

Romanian My Escutcheon wrote: »

Phoenix-D wrote: »

Romanian My Escutcheon wrote: »

Phoenix-D wrote: »

Speed Racer wrote: »

Calica wrote: »

Yellowhammer wrote: »

Calica wrote: »

syndalis wrote: »

I will keep going back to the fact that 600 people or so voted, and most probably saw the drama happening in here and tuned out and went back to playing games, discussing LEGO, or something else. I look at the list of names that have seats and I see people I would recognize if I was a frequent poster in the various active boards in the community.

Hundreds voted for the guy who moderated the most active subforum on the boards for a decade. 1300 people migrated to the new community. Their reasons are probably diverse as to why... anything from name recognition, to liking what D&D was for them, to whatever else. Their reasons are not bad (for the most part, I cannot pretend to know the hearts of everyone and there are probably a few spite voting, sure), and they are not bad people. They are forumers, just like you and me.

The good news (for everyone) is that it does look like all sides of the longrunning argument / cultural divide here at the PAF are part of the five tasked with governing and steering CoRe. They have to put this shit aside and do the messy work for all of us. And honestly, I do trust that when they have to virtually sit across from each other and do the work, they all will.

I feel like the community chose, in aggregate, very well.

Congratulations @tynic @ElJeffe @Raijin Quickfoot @Tef @ahava - you clearly have your work cut out for you, and I will help in any way I can to try and help steer this towards success. I hope all of us do.

Okay.

I keep seeing people allude to this, in the QA threads and elsewhere, always very carefully not naming names or saying anything that actually sheds any light, and I still have no idea what the fuck y'all are talking about.

For the record: I didn't vote for ElJeffe, but that's purely because I could see from the QA threads how strongly people feel about them (can't find explicitly stated pronouns right now; erring on the side of ambiguity). I know about the mod forum thing, but obviously there's history there and a lot of people are assuming everyone knows what it is when that is very much not the case.

(syndalis, I quoted you because of your concise phrasing bolded above, not for any other particular reason )

It's kind of between D&D and SE++, Kind of about moderation, Kind of about difference in political opinion.

I could run down every single aspect of it. but honestly I think it's one of those the more you know the less you understand type of situations.

I'm active in (parts of) D&D and (parts of) SE++ and the biggest difference I see is tone.

Which means I must not be in the right threads to see/grasp the vitriol.

Which probably describes a huge majority of posters on the forums, both those who voted for ElJeffe and those who didn't. Which makes it extra obnoxious when people act like everyone 1) knew the things they're vaguely alluding to and 2) deliberately picked the wrong side.

People have not been vague about it at all. These threads have moved fast so I understand if you missed things but there have been extensive discussions about this

It is difficult to summarize everything but if I was going to boil it down:

-the mod forum thing. This matters more to some people than others; it matters to me! He lied to us and others lied to us on his behalf. I don't know why anyone would trust him with anything at all after that.

-lanz posted a very long and detailed accounting of how, in her view, jeffe targeted her and harassed her for years under the cover of just enforcing the rules. Maybe you believe her, maybe you don't (I do), but the charge being levied against him is in essence that he will find a way to abuse whatever authority he is granted and will launder it under just being an aw shucks just trying to do my best I'm kinda the forum dad shtick

-more generally, many, many people have talked about how they feel dnd has fostered a toxic culture, where bad faith actors and assholes can run roughsgod over people as long as they use the right tone/hold the right opinions/are friends with the right people. There have been at least a half dozen threads hashing this out, I couldn't possibly sum it all up here, but as o[/i]ne example of the kind of toxicity dnd is accused of fostering, look back at when a bunch of dnd regulars argued very hard against a rule about treating others with empathy and dignity and respecting their lived experiences. Jeffe is not solely responsible for this, however, as a very active and very long-running dnd mod, people who assert that dnd is toxic put a significant portion of the blame on him for not doing a better job moderating it.

You can agree with those assessments or not but that is the long and short of it

The bit here about having empathy and respecting lived experiences is kind of funny, because you're not doing that *at all* in this post. Specifically, you're ignoring why some of us had concerns about that rule to pretend we're all toxic assholes. Here's a quote of one of the posts talking about the *actual* concern a lot of us had:

The issue is how quickly people are dismissive of "minorities who don't agree with my political opinions"

We had a Jewish poster show up and talk about, for like the 10th time, how uncomfortable certain actions on this forum are making them. They were told by another poster that they don't represent the majority of views of their minority and that their feelings of discomfort are incorrect. Their issues have been discussed and settled! No use doing it any further. They were condescended to, it flagrantly broke the spirit of rule 5, but a significant chunk of the people defending rule 5 agreed with the post dismissing that minority poster's views immediately because they did not fall within an anarcho-socialist political view. We've had a trans poster do the same thing -- they were just ignored for having a political opinion that is inconvenient for the discussion being had. We've had a poster say that "preserving the culture of D&D" is all about protecting cishet white middle aged men, while someone who just said they are not a cishet white middle aged man spoke up to say that they actually really like the culture of D&D as it is.

I....don't know how to square this one. It really really looks like we're picking and choosing which minorities "count" based on how much their political opinion jives with a leftist perspective and it directly goes against listening to the lived experiences of a ton of underprivileged people.

If someone is being openly transphobic, racist, whatever, yeah man ban the hell out of them regardless of their status as a minority group or not. But there's been a lot of dismissing the views of underprivileged people who aren't doing that (exclusively when their views do not conveniently fit a leftist political framework but are still left of center) and it's weird seeing so many people be comfortable with that while openly advocating for a rule that specifically prohibits that.

So are you just going to keep talking past Lanz' documented history of being abused and harassed by Jeffe while you cherry pick examples that support your completely disingenuous argument?

Because seriously, it's cited right there in the post Speed made that you're chastising him for while conveniently talking past the available evidence that Jeffe engaged in abusive behavior against a community member he disliked, among all of the other patently disqualifying actions he took.

Then again, I can see how tacitly acknowledging that you're defending a known harasser and abuser would be devastating to your attempt to grasp at straws to disregard the credible record of his victim.

Here's that famous SE empathy and respect folks! If a post misrepresents you and *also* mentions ElJeffe, you aren't allowed to respond the part of it that misrepresents you.

You know, the weird thing is you could actually respond to both points being made.

Unless you actually don't want to disavow abuses of power and targeted campaigns of harassment that caused significant emotional harm to another member of the community because you think it's more important to defend an abuser.

That would be pretty fucked up, though I guess based on some of the aforementioned grasping at straws that has gone on, there are members of this community who don't think serial abuse is a problem if a guy they like is the one doing it.

Also: SE empathy and respect? I thought we all voted to tear those boundaries down in the interest of creating a more harmonious community. When you say things like that, it makes me think maybe you aren't taking that whole "blank slate" request super seriously. I'm very surprised by that. Completely.

I'm responding to a thread that makes D&D out to be The problem in the community and you're surprised I'm talking about SE people. Well, "surprised", considering you're mostly just talking to the post you made up in your head.

Nobody said D&D is the problem. People were (justifiably upset, IMO) that Jeffe got votes at all in spite of his documented history of abuse and malfeasance as a moderator and supposed community leader.

It's rich you're accusing me of talking to a post I made up when you're the one who immediately leapt to "See, see, it's the SE++ people being mean to D&D again!!!" in a complete void of any statement to that effect.

I would recommend examining that instinct. Though probably after you actually interrogate why it's so important to you to keep going to bat for Jeffe when he can't even defend himself or answer basic questions about his conduct.

Jaguar wrote: »

Honestly didn't realize the rot in DnD was bad enough to elect Jeffe to the board, much less second ballot

I wish y'all luck in improving Core, but man I would not want to be wasting spoons dealing with the apparently hundreds of assholes over there

Your example is a person who has posted 9 times since 2003?

Also I didn't post that in this thread, it wasn't part of this conversation. To have to grab a quote from a different thread with a different topic feels like a disingenuous attack to me. Though if Yellowhammer/Jokerman had bothered they could have quoted my post in this thread that maligned the voting outcome and its repercussions as well

As Knight said, "Alas"

-Tal

Woah how did you do that to your avatar jaguar

Yellowhammer

Jaguar wrote: »

Bluedude152 wrote: »

Yellowhammer wrote: »

Romanian My Escutcheon wrote: »

Phoenix-D wrote: »

Romanian My Escutcheon wrote: »

Phoenix-D wrote: »

Romanian My Escutcheon wrote: »

Phoenix-D wrote: »

Speed Racer wrote: »

Calica wrote: »

Yellowhammer wrote: »

Calica wrote: »

syndalis wrote: »

I will keep going back to the fact that 600 people or so voted, and most probably saw the drama happening in here and tuned out and went back to playing games, discussing LEGO, or something else. I look at the list of names that have seats and I see people I would recognize if I was a frequent poster in the various active boards in the community.

Hundreds voted for the guy who moderated the most active subforum on the boards for a decade. 1300 people migrated to the new community. Their reasons are probably diverse as to why... anything from name recognition, to liking what D&D was for them, to whatever else. Their reasons are not bad (for the most part, I cannot pretend to know the hearts of everyone and there are probably a few spite voting, sure), and they are not bad people. They are forumers, just like you and me.

The good news (for everyone) is that it does look like all sides of the longrunning argument / cultural divide here at the PAF are part of the five tasked with governing and steering CoRe. They have to put this shit aside and do the messy work for all of us. And honestly, I do trust that when they have to virtually sit across from each other and do the work, they all will.

I feel like the community chose, in aggregate, very well.

Congratulations @tynic @ElJeffe @Raijin Quickfoot @Tef @ahava - you clearly have your work cut out for you, and I will help in any way I can to try and help steer this towards success. I hope all of us do.

Okay.

I keep seeing people allude to this, in the QA threads and elsewhere, always very carefully not naming names or saying anything that actually sheds any light, and I still have no idea what the fuck y'all are talking about.

For the record: I didn't vote for ElJeffe, but that's purely because I could see from the QA threads how strongly people feel about them (can't find explicitly stated pronouns right now; erring on the side of ambiguity). I know about the mod forum thing, but obviously there's history there and a lot of people are assuming everyone knows what it is when that is very much not the case.

(syndalis, I quoted you because of your concise phrasing bolded above, not for any other particular reason )

It's kind of between D&D and SE++, Kind of about moderation, Kind of about difference in political opinion.

I could run down every single aspect of it. but honestly I think it's one of those the more you know the less you understand type of situations.

I'm active in (parts of) D&D and (parts of) SE++ and the biggest difference I see is tone.

Which means I must not be in the right threads to see/grasp the vitriol.

Which probably describes a huge majority of posters on the forums, both those who voted for ElJeffe and those who didn't. Which makes it extra obnoxious when people act like everyone 1) knew the things they're vaguely alluding to and 2) deliberately picked the wrong side.

People have not been vague about it at all. These threads have moved fast so I understand if you missed things but there have been extensive discussions about this

It is difficult to summarize everything but if I was going to boil it down:

-the mod forum thing. This matters more to some people than others; it matters to me! He lied to us and others lied to us on his behalf. I don't know why anyone would trust him with anything at all after that.

-lanz posted a very long and detailed accounting of how, in her view, jeffe targeted her and harassed her for years under the cover of just enforcing the rules. Maybe you believe her, maybe you don't (I do), but the charge being levied against him is in essence that he will find a way to abuse whatever authority he is granted and will launder it under just being an aw shucks just trying to do my best I'm kinda the forum dad shtick

-more generally, many, many people have talked about how they feel dnd has fostered a toxic culture, where bad faith actors and assholes can run roughsgod over people as long as they use the right tone/hold the right opinions/are friends with the right people. There have been at least a half dozen threads hashing this out, I couldn't possibly sum it all up here, but as o[/i]ne example of the kind of toxicity dnd is accused of fostering, look back at when a bunch of dnd regulars argued very hard against a rule about treating others with empathy and dignity and respecting their lived experiences. Jeffe is not solely responsible for this, however, as a very active and very long-running dnd mod, people who assert that dnd is toxic put a significant portion of the blame on him for not doing a better job moderating it.

You can agree with those assessments or not but that is the long and short of it

The bit here about having empathy and respecting lived experiences is kind of funny, because you're not doing that *at all* in this post. Specifically, you're ignoring why some of us had concerns about that rule to pretend we're all toxic assholes. Here's a quote of one of the posts talking about the *actual* concern a lot of us had:

The issue is how quickly people are dismissive of "minorities who don't agree with my political opinions"

We had a Jewish poster show up and talk about, for like the 10th time, how uncomfortable certain actions on this forum are making them. They were told by another poster that they don't represent the majority of views of their minority and that their feelings of discomfort are incorrect. Their issues have been discussed and settled! No use doing it any further. They were condescended to, it flagrantly broke the spirit of rule 5, but a significant chunk of the people defending rule 5 agreed with the post dismissing that minority poster's views immediately because they did not fall within an anarcho-socialist political view. We've had a trans poster do the same thing -- they were just ignored for having a political opinion that is inconvenient for the discussion being had. We've had a poster say that "preserving the culture of D&D" is all about protecting cishet white middle aged men, while someone who just said they are not a cishet white middle aged man spoke up to say that they actually really like the culture of D&D as it is.

I....don't know how to square this one. It really really looks like we're picking and choosing which minorities "count" based on how much their political opinion jives with a leftist perspective and it directly goes against listening to the lived experiences of a ton of underprivileged people.

If someone is being openly transphobic, racist, whatever, yeah man ban the hell out of them regardless of their status as a minority group or not. But there's been a lot of dismissing the views of underprivileged people who aren't doing that (exclusively when their views do not conveniently fit a leftist political framework but are still left of center) and it's weird seeing so many people be comfortable with that while openly advocating for a rule that specifically prohibits that.

So are you just going to keep talking past Lanz' documented history of being abused and harassed by Jeffe while you cherry pick examples that support your completely disingenuous argument?

Because seriously, it's cited right there in the post Speed made that you're chastising him for while conveniently talking past the available evidence that Jeffe engaged in abusive behavior against a community member he disliked, among all of the other patently disqualifying actions he took.

Then again, I can see how tacitly acknowledging that you're defending a known harasser and abuser would be devastating to your attempt to grasp at straws to disregard the credible record of his victim.

Here's that famous SE empathy and respect folks! If a post misrepresents you and *also* mentions ElJeffe, you aren't allowed to respond the part of it that misrepresents you.

You know, the weird thing is you could actually respond to both points being made.

Unless you actually don't want to disavow abuses of power and targeted campaigns of harassment that caused significant emotional harm to another member of the community because you think it's more important to defend an abuser.

That would be pretty fucked up, though I guess based on some of the aforementioned grasping at straws that has gone on, there are members of this community who don't think serial abuse is a problem if a guy they like is the one doing it.

Also: SE empathy and respect? I thought we all voted to tear those boundaries down in the interest of creating a more harmonious community. When you say things like that, it makes me think maybe you aren't taking that whole "blank slate" request super seriously. I'm very surprised by that. Completely.

I'm responding to a thread that makes D&D out to be The problem in the community and you're surprised I'm talking about SE people. Well, "surprised", considering you're mostly just talking to the post you made up in your head.

Nobody said D&D is the problem. People were (justifiably upset, IMO) that Jeffe got votes at all in spite of his documented history of abuse and malfeasance as a moderator and supposed community leader.

It's rich you're accusing me of talking to a post I made up when you're the one who immediately leapt to "See, see, it's the SE++ people being mean to D&D again!!!" in a complete void of any statement to that effect.

I would recommend examining that instinct. Though probably after you actually interrogate why it's so important to you to keep going to bat for Jeffe when he can't even defend himself or answer basic questions about his conduct.

Jaguar wrote: »

Honestly didn't realize the rot in DnD was bad enough to elect Jeffe to the board, much less second ballot

I wish y'all luck in improving Core, but man I would not want to be wasting spoons dealing with the apparently hundreds of assholes over there

Your example is a person who has posted 9 times since 2003?

Also I didn't post that in this thread, it wasn't part of this conversation. To have to grab a quote from a different thread with a different topic feels like a disingenuous attack to me. Though if Yellowhammer/Jokerman had bothered they could have quoted my post in this thread that maligned the voting outcome and its repercussions as well

As Knight said, "Alas"

I don't think it's disingenuous; you did say it, and it was about the situation. I don't think you'd want to take it back.

Just because you didn't say it here in this specific thread doesn't mean that people aren't saying that D&D is the problem, which was the claim.

Jaguar

"DnD" is shorthand for "People who voted for Jeffe" in both my posts

cB557

Jaguar wrote: »

"DnD" is shorthand for "People who voted for Jeffe" in both my posts

That is the quiet part said out loud, yes.

-Tal

Is it a missing stair if lots of people are pointing at it and going "ALERT! ALERT!"

Jaguar

-Tal wrote: »

Woah how did you do that to your avatar jaguar

I would guess this is the product of my original AV being uploaded to phbb, the image file being lost, and Vanilla attempting to grab the broken image during the transition. Some kind of broken image ouroboros effect

Phyphor

-Tal wrote: »

Woah how did you do that to your avatar jaguar

If you got in at the right time before it was locked to admin only your avatar can be an offsite url (like mine is). Broken urls show like that

-Tal

lol thats cool. love weird old forum jank unironically

Houk

cB557 wrote: »

Jaguar wrote: »

"DnD" is shorthand for "People who voted for Jeffe" in both my posts

That is the quiet part said out loud, yes.

I didn't realize it was quiet at all, I thought (or at least would have hoped) that it was pretty clear when folks talked about D&D they were talking about what they felt were the worst parts of it, which principally includes Jeffe

but I also feel like it's pretty pedantic and pointless that when someone uses the phrase "nobody did/said [blank]" as a pretty obvious shorthand for "this is not a commonly held belief or salient part of the discussion" to go and find a single point of data to go "um actually this one person over here did say it soo GOTCHA" so I dunno

Yellowhammer

We're arguing about shorthand on a dying webforum, I think we're through the looking glass with regards to pointless pedantry.

Houk

ok

arthurinscales

i don't really know the long and sordid history of D&D vs SE++ but is nobody going to discuss Anzekay's post and elJeffe's behavior during this whole thing

the incident with abusing retired mod privileges happened in early March! that's not some 'ancient history,' it was a month ago!

and then elJeffe being an absolute dickwad during the voting process with his non-apology going "oh, i've done a bad thing, oopsie, please don't discuss my fuckup though" and then disappearing into the ether waiting for this to blow over

why defend him, anyway? if he thought he could, he'd be in here defending his own behavior. he isn't, though, so he can rely on the biased experience of others (to whom he's always been nice) to defend him so that he never has to confront his own mistakes

elJeffe is absolutely going to use his position as a board member to influence and gain access to moderating decisions, as it appears he has always tried to do, and this in and of itself should have disqualified him from running as a board member

fortunately there are other board members to see through his bullshit, but elJeffe absolutely does not need to be there

Jaguar

Yellowhammer wrote: »

We're arguing about shorthand on a dying webforum, I think we're through the looking glass with regards to pointless pedantry.

I, too, think your posts here don't matter!

Magell

Yellowhammer wrote: »

We're arguing about shorthand on a dying webforum, I think we're through the looking glass with regards to pointless pedantry.

Except the dying forum is tied a brand new, very alive forum related to this topic. It is annoying so many people don't understand hyperbole as a way to speak.

Yellowhammer

Magell wrote: »

Yellowhammer wrote: »

We're arguing about shorthand on a dying webforum, I think we're through the looking glass with regards to pointless pedantry.

Except the dying forum is tied a brand new, very alive forum related to this topic. It is annoying so many people don't understand hyperbole as a way to speak.

I think people understand hyperbole perfectly fine. I think people also understand is that this is not a good time for hyperbole or sarcasm, and that it's valid to be upset but we should be careful with how we choose to express it.

Anzekay

This thread has just become an inferno, and it’s going to take some time to go through it and the reports it has generated.

I’ve locked it for the time being because frankly I think anything good that can come from this thread right now is greatly dwarfed by the negatives.