minor incidentpublicly subsidized!privately profitable!Registered User, Transition Teamregular
Even the most aggressive restructuring plan (that wasn't purely a joke/thought experiment) doesn't come remotely close to aligning with the holiday forum. And even if it did, the holiday forum here on PA/vanilla lacks a ton of the tools and features and QoL improvements that we would be utilizing on Coin Return to make the experience far more customizable, tolerable, and adaptable to each user.
I don't know that anyone's directly comparing them, but in case you are, it's a bad comparison.
Hell, New Jersey, it said on the letter. Delivered without comment. So be it!
+2
Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered User, Transition Teamregular
Hey, y'all, I'm happy to report that you can complain/criticize the holiday forums.
You are also generally free to discuss roms, Morrissey, Hitman 2 or TV Tropes. You can also make threads or posts about private servers for MMORPGS.
You can engage in discourse on all of these topics because the former, former admin of these forums isn't going to swing by and suddenly infract you.
I haven't seen an insufficient holiday cheer infraction since Tube left, personally, and couldn't find any in a quick search of the old holiday forums
Doesn't really change the fact that it wasn't clear of this was a thing people could express dislike of, where would be appropriate to do it, and the concern of folks wanting the mods to have a break even if they disliked the holiday forums.
I dunno. Like, this is a weird thing to push back on when you've got folks here telling you what they thought. "Well you shouldn't have thought that way!" Ok sure? But some of us did still.
Sure, I know now people thought that it still wasn't allowed. I also know that there were people that disliked the holiday forums, plenty of folks were vocal about that.
But I am pushing back on statements like this, which are categorically false:
But it's always been against the rules to complain about it so people mostly grumble in PMs or Discords or whatever.
It was previously against the rules, yes, and some people may have believed it was still against the rules. But I want to correct the record that it was not against the rules this year, doesn't seem to have been against the rules for a few years prior, and therefore was not "always against the rules."
I don't think there is a significant number of people who fear they'll get infracted if they mention in the Holiday forum that they don't like the Holiday forum. Maybe there's a few, but probably only a few.
The reason you're not hearing a lot of vocal complaints are: a) it's a done thing, it happens, there's not much point to complaining about it anymore, because obviously it won't change anything, b) the complaints are not going to be occurring in the Holiday thread because the people who avoid it aren't there to complain, and c) the people who dislike the Holiday forum are disproportionately D&D folks, who you are probably less familiar with, being from SE.
And c) derives from the fact that the Holiday forum is basically just SE, and a lot of people don't want that. Not because they don't like the people, but because if you're in D&D because you prefer more structured discussion that adheres closer to stated topics, and more long-form treatment of issues, you're going to be less happy in a place that abandons that in favor of a looser and more chat-oriented posting style.
But this does tie into why I am very much opposed to just lumping everything together and disallowing multiple threads on the same topic. Because while there are some discussions where the SE and D&D styles don't differ too much (basically, anything that is inherently more chatty), there are many where there is a fairly pronounced difference in style, and if you put a bunch of people chatting in a loose and off-topic manner with a bunch of people trying to have a more structured conversation, what you end up with is a bunch of people chatting in a loose and off-topic manner.
I don't think there's a grand conspiracy to kill D&D, and I don't think anyone (or at least not an appreciable number of people) is maliciously trying to edge out anyone else. But I do think that some of the ideas here to merge the forums will result, intentionally or not, with a forum that is basically just all SE. Just because of how the different styles will react to being squooshed together.
And the Holiday forum is the best indicator of this - everything gets lumped together, everything gets basically turned into SE, and a lot of D&Ders check out for that time because it's not what they want out of the forums.
Would you say I had a plethora of pinatas?
Legos are cool, MOCs are cool, check me out on Rebrickable!
NGL, bringing up how much people dislike the Holiday Forum as an argument against consolidation of specific subforums feels like a really flimsy argument against a restructure.
If only because I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting smushing all of the communities into one common space as a long term solution for Coin Return, especially when the Holday Forum has always been couched as a combination of a bit, and (initially, at least) as a bid by Tube to alleviate some of the treehousing that happens in specific subforums.
People are suggesting it as a way to make everyone get along though. And that is, as you note, part of what Tube was saying he wanted to do with it.
It is also, in practice, literally merging the two discussion forums into one space.
It shouldn't be surprising that people are taking it as a potential example of what the results of a D&D/SE++ merger could look like.
Then the question becomes whether people dislike the Holiday Forums because they make it harder to sort topics and put the current discussions on hold (which wouldn't be a problem on CoRe because there will still be categories), or whether they dislike the Holiday Forums because "so-and-so was there". Because most people have been saying the former, and I have a lot more empathy for the former than for the latter.
That's ignoring other potential options. Including "because I don't like the style of posting that takes place in the Holiday forums". And I want to specifically focus on that because, honestly, I think maybe a big part of the problem here is people keep making the assumption that people prefer one subforum over another based on who's posting there. Even as people keep saying it's about the culture and style of discussion. You are making that mistake right here. This is why I've continually pointed out that D&D and SE++ have been different subforums with different cultures for decades at this point. It's got nothing to do with grudges. And we shouldn't keep pretending that's all it is.
I don't know what culture means though. D&D and SE++ don't have different clothes or dialects or musical heritage or observations of the Solstice.
If culture is moderation and rules, we're not doing that: the whole forum is following the same rules.
If culture is posting style, I remain unconvinced that D&D and SE++ actually have different posting styles. The content of the subforums is indistinguishable in most cases.
So that leaves me thinking culture means the specific people in it. I don't know what else it could be.
I peace out of the holiday forum for the most part because I find it chaotic to the point that I don’t enjoy it. I don’t complain about it not because I feel beholden to some rule, but because it’s not worth complaining about. I can take a break too. But if some hypothetical new forum structure used the holiday forums as a model, it probably wouldn’t be a place I spent a lot of time.
If the holiday forums accomplish the goal of giving mods a break, that’s great and seems worth doing for a bit. Maybe we need summer holiday forums done quick too.
Hey, y'all, I'm happy to report that you can complain/criticize the holiday forums.
You are also generally free to discuss roms, Morrissey, Hitman 2 or TV Tropes. You can also make threads or posts about private servers for MMORPGS.
You can engage in discourse on all of these topics because the former, former admin of these forums isn't going to swing by and suddenly infract you.
The honest answer is -- we didn't know this!
So I appreciate that a ton for just coming out and saying it. We saw a new admin take over for the old admin, no announcements of major changes, all the rules threads stay the same, so just kind of expected the rules were the same old same old. I would have felt weird like, testing all of the rules to see if I get infracted now, so I didn't. I've been wanting to make DAoC private server threads for like two years! My time has come!!
+2
Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered User, Transition Teamregular
Hey, y'all, I'm happy to report that you can complain/criticize the holiday forums.
You are also generally free to discuss roms, Morrissey, Hitman 2 or TV Tropes. You can also make threads or posts about private servers for MMORPGS.
You can engage in discourse on all of these topics because the former, former admin of these forums isn't going to swing by and suddenly infract you.
The honest answer is -- we didn't know this!
So I appreciate that a ton for just coming out and saying it. We saw a new admin take over for the old admin, no announcements of major changes, all the rules threads stay the same, so just kind of expected the rules were the same old same old. I would have felt weird like, testing all of the rules to see if I get infracted now, so I didn't. I've been wanting to make DAoC private server threads for like two years! My time has come!!
I would say you have as much a chance of being infracted by Tube or Geebs on any of those actions as you have of Patrick Rothfuss returning to the Writer's Block.
NGL, bringing up how much people dislike the Holiday Forum as an argument against consolidation of specific subforums feels like a really flimsy argument against a restructure.
If only because I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting smushing all of the communities into one common space as a long term solution for Coin Return, especially when the Holday Forum has always been couched as a combination of a bit, and (initially, at least) as a bid by Tube to alleviate some of the treehousing that happens in specific subforums.
People are suggesting it as a way to make everyone get along though. And that is, as you note, part of what Tube was saying he wanted to do with it.
It is also, in practice, literally merging the two discussion forums into one space.
It shouldn't be surprising that people are taking it as a potential example of what the results of a D&D/SE++ merger could look like.
Then the question becomes whether people dislike the Holiday Forums because they make it harder to sort topics and put the current discussions on hold (which wouldn't be a problem on CoRe because there will still be categories), or whether they dislike the Holiday Forums because "so-and-so was there". Because most people have been saying the former, and I have a lot more empathy for the former than for the latter.
That's ignoring other potential options. Including "because I don't like the style of posting that takes place in the Holiday forums". And I want to specifically focus on that because, honestly, I think maybe a big part of the problem here is people keep making the assumption that people prefer one subforum over another based on who's posting there. Even as people keep saying it's about the culture and style of discussion. You are making that mistake right here. This is why I've continually pointed out that D&D and SE++ have been different subforums with different cultures for decades at this point. It's got nothing to do with grudges. And we shouldn't keep pretending that's all it is.
I don't know what culture means though. D&D and SE++ don't have different clothes or dialects or musical heritage or observations of the Solstice.
If culture is moderation and rules, we're not doing that: the whole forum is following the same rules.
If culture is posting style, I remain unconvinced that D&D and SE++ actually have different posting styles. The content of the subforums is indistinguishable in most cases.
So that leaves me thinking culture means the specific people in it. I don't know what else it could be.
That's because you don't listen to what people are actually saying on this front and just substitute in your own explanation. You do it explicitly in that last paragraph of yours.
Just because people can't specifically quantify the differences doesn't mean they aren't there and that people don't feel them. Just dismissing people telling you this isn't going to help the conversation.
0
minor incidentpublicly subsidized!privately profitable!Registered User, Transition Teamregular
Hey, y'all, I'm happy to report that you can complain/criticize the holiday forums.
You are also generally free to discuss roms, Morrissey, Hitman 2 or TV Tropes. You can also make threads or posts about private servers for MMORPGS.
You can engage in discourse on all of these topics because the former, former admin of these forums isn't going to swing by and suddenly infract you.
The honest answer is -- we didn't know this!
So I appreciate that a ton for just coming out and saying it. We saw a new admin take over for the old admin, no announcements of major changes, all the rules threads stay the same, so just kind of expected the rules were the same old same old. I would have felt weird like, testing all of the rules to see if I get infracted now, so I didn't. I've been wanting to make DAoC private server threads for like two years! My time has come!!
To be fair, for anyone who wasn't dialed into tube's whole thing, it could be pretty opaque on which rules were serious business rules and which ones were just tube's idiosyncrasies getting enforcement (and also which ones were just awkward corporate mandates from PA). And because none of that got edited when Geebs took over, it's... well, it's a bit of a confusing mess!
But again, all the more reason we started from scratch for Coin Return, so there's less ambiguity and assumptions that have to be made about community conduct.
minor incident on
Hell, New Jersey, it said on the letter. Delivered without comment. So be it!
+8
ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered User, Moderatormod
NGL, bringing up how much people dislike the Holiday Forum as an argument against consolidation of specific subforums feels like a really flimsy argument against a restructure.
If only because I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting smushing all of the communities into one common space as a long term solution for Coin Return, especially when the Holday Forum has always been couched as a combination of a bit, and (initially, at least) as a bid by Tube to alleviate some of the treehousing that happens in specific subforums.
People are suggesting it as a way to make everyone get along though. And that is, as you note, part of what Tube was saying he wanted to do with it.
It is also, in practice, literally merging the two discussion forums into one space.
It shouldn't be surprising that people are taking it as a potential example of what the results of a D&D/SE++ merger could look like.
Then the question becomes whether people dislike the Holiday Forums because they make it harder to sort topics and put the current discussions on hold (which wouldn't be a problem on CoRe because there will still be categories), or whether they dislike the Holiday Forums because "so-and-so was there". Because most people have been saying the former, and I have a lot more empathy for the former than for the latter.
That's ignoring other potential options. Including "because I don't like the style of posting that takes place in the Holiday forums". And I want to specifically focus on that because, honestly, I think maybe a big part of the problem here is people keep making the assumption that people prefer one subforum over another based on who's posting there. Even as people keep saying it's about the culture and style of discussion. You are making that mistake right here. This is why I've continually pointed out that D&D and SE++ have been different subforums with different cultures for decades at this point. It's got nothing to do with grudges. And we shouldn't keep pretending that's all it is.
I don't know what culture means though. D&D and SE++ don't have different clothes or dialects or musical heritage or observations of the Solstice.
If culture is moderation and rules, we're not doing that: the whole forum is following the same rules.
If culture is posting style, I remain unconvinced that D&D and SE++ actually have different posting styles. The content of the subforums is indistinguishable in most cases.
So that leaves me thinking culture means the specific people in it. I don't know what else it could be.
culture refers to D&D being largely on-topic enforced and SE having no enforcement for staying on topic
it doesn't apply to every thread equally, which is also part of the issue when the lines become unclear, but there being exceptions to the idea doesn't mean the idea doesn't exist
I haven't seen an insufficient holiday cheer infraction since Tube left, personally, and couldn't find any in a quick search of the old holiday forums
Doesn't really change the fact that it wasn't clear of this was a thing people could express dislike of, where would be appropriate to do it, and the concern of folks wanting the mods to have a break even if they disliked the holiday forums.
I dunno. Like, this is a weird thing to push back on when you've got folks here telling you what they thought. "Well you shouldn't have thought that way!" Ok sure? But some of us did still.
Sure, I know now people thought that it still wasn't allowed. I also know that there were people that disliked the holiday forums, plenty of folks were vocal about that.
But I am pushing back on statements like this, which are categorically false:
But it's always been against the rules to complain about it so people mostly grumble in PMs or Discords or whatever.
It was previously against the rules, yes, and some people may have believed it was still against the rules. But I want to correct the record that it was not against the rules this year, doesn't seem to have been against the rules for a few years prior, and therefore was not "always against the rules."
I don't think there is a significant number of people who fear they'll get infracted if they mention in the Holiday forum that they don't like the Holiday forum. Maybe there's a few, but probably only a few.
The reason you're not hearing a lot of vocal complaints are: a) it's a done thing, it happens, there's not much point to complaining about it anymore, because obviously it won't change anything, b) the complaints are not going to be occurring in the Holiday thread because the people who avoid it aren't there to complain, and c) the people who dislike the Holiday forum are disproportionately D&D folks, who you are probably less familiar with, being from SE.
And c) derives from the fact that the Holiday forum is basically just SE, and a lot of people don't want that. Not because they don't like the people, but because if you're in D&D because you prefer more structured discussion that adheres closer to stated topics, and more long-form treatment of issues, you're going to be less happy in a place that abandons that in favor of a looser and more chat-oriented posting style.
But this does tie into why I am very much opposed to just lumping everything together and disallowing multiple threads on the same topic. Because while there are some discussions where the SE and D&D styles don't differ too much (basically, anything that is inherently more chatty), there are many where there is a fairly pronounced difference in style, and if you put a bunch of people chatting in a loose and off-topic manner with a bunch of people trying to have a more structured conversation, what you end up with is a bunch of people chatting in a loose and off-topic manner.
I don't think there's a grand conspiracy to kill D&D, and I don't think anyone (or at least not an appreciable number of people) is maliciously trying to edge out anyone else. But I do think that some of the ideas here to merge the forums will result, intentionally or not, with a forum that is basically just all SE. Just because of how the different styles will react to being squooshed together.
And the Holiday forum is the best indicator of this - everything gets lumped together, everything gets basically turned into SE, and a lot of D&Ders check out for that time because it's not what they want out of the forums.
At one point during these discussions the prospect of on-topic and off-topic tags was raised - if there are discussions that merit it, I can't see why there'd be an issue with two threads roughly on the same subject matter in the same subforum because they'd be two distinct threads with different themes?
This would mean that like, the NHL thread and the wrestling thread for example, where there isn't really a forced on- or off-topic thread guideline, might get to actually have posters from multiple subforums who don't venture out of their preferred internet box right now, which would make them visibly more alive than they are at present in SE or D&D
I haven't seen an insufficient holiday cheer infraction since Tube left, personally, and couldn't find any in a quick search of the old holiday forums
Doesn't really change the fact that it wasn't clear of this was a thing people could express dislike of, where would be appropriate to do it, and the concern of folks wanting the mods to have a break even if they disliked the holiday forums.
I dunno. Like, this is a weird thing to push back on when you've got folks here telling you what they thought. "Well you shouldn't have thought that way!" Ok sure? But some of us did still.
Sure, I know now people thought that it still wasn't allowed. I also know that there were people that disliked the holiday forums, plenty of folks were vocal about that.
But I am pushing back on statements like this, which are categorically false:
But it's always been against the rules to complain about it so people mostly grumble in PMs or Discords or whatever.
It was previously against the rules, yes, and some people may have believed it was still against the rules. But I want to correct the record that it was not against the rules this year, doesn't seem to have been against the rules for a few years prior, and therefore was not "always against the rules."
I don't think there is a significant number of people who fear they'll get infracted if they mention in the Holiday forum that they don't like the Holiday forum. Maybe there's a few, but probably only a few.
The reason you're not hearing a lot of vocal complaints are: a) it's a done thing, it happens, there's not much point to complaining about it anymore, because obviously it won't change anything, b) the complaints are not going to be occurring in the Holiday thread because the people who avoid it aren't there to complain, and c) the people who dislike the Holiday forum are disproportionately D&D folks, who you are probably less familiar with, being from SE.
And c) derives from the fact that the Holiday forum is basically just SE, and a lot of people don't want that. Not because they don't like the people, but because if you're in D&D because you prefer more structured discussion that adheres closer to stated topics, and more long-form treatment of issues, you're going to be less happy in a place that abandons that in favor of a looser and more chat-oriented posting style.
But this does tie into why I am very much opposed to just lumping everything together and disallowing multiple threads on the same topic. Because while there are some discussions where the SE and D&D styles don't differ too much (basically, anything that is inherently more chatty), there are many where there is a fairly pronounced difference in style, and if you put a bunch of people chatting in a loose and off-topic manner with a bunch of people trying to have a more structured conversation, what you end up with is a bunch of people chatting in a loose and off-topic manner.
I don't think there's a grand conspiracy to kill D&D, and I don't think anyone (or at least not an appreciable number of people) is maliciously trying to edge out anyone else. But I do think that some of the ideas here to merge the forums will result, intentionally or not, with a forum that is basically just all SE. Just because of how the different styles will react to being squooshed together.
And the Holiday forum is the best indicator of this - everything gets lumped together, everything gets basically turned into SE, and a lot of D&Ders check out for that time because it's not what they want out of the forums.
I mean to be clear, while I'm more in favor of a reorganization than keeping things as is, I also don't think we should lump everything together or ban multiple threads on the same topic. I think multiple threads on the same topic could potentially be useful for everyone involved.
My desire would be more to organize our subforums by topic rather than by vibe, as I think the organized by vibe method can be confusing and unintentionally exclusionary. We could then have different threads for different vibes, but like, I know when I click on a given subforum what the threads there are going to be about, and if I see two threads on the same topic next to each other I can decide which one better suits my current vibe.
That may be some different people browsing the forums in different ways, but that's my personal logic for how I'd like to see things.
NGL, bringing up how much people dislike the Holiday Forum as an argument against consolidation of specific subforums feels like a really flimsy argument against a restructure.
If only because I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting smushing all of the communities into one common space as a long term solution for Coin Return, especially when the Holday Forum has always been couched as a combination of a bit, and (initially, at least) as a bid by Tube to alleviate some of the treehousing that happens in specific subforums.
People are suggesting it as a way to make everyone get along though. And that is, as you note, part of what Tube was saying he wanted to do with it.
It is also, in practice, literally merging the two discussion forums into one space.
It shouldn't be surprising that people are taking it as a potential example of what the results of a D&D/SE++ merger could look like.
Then the question becomes whether people dislike the Holiday Forums because they make it harder to sort topics and put the current discussions on hold (which wouldn't be a problem on CoRe because there will still be categories), or whether they dislike the Holiday Forums because "so-and-so was there". Because most people have been saying the former, and I have a lot more empathy for the former than for the latter.
That's ignoring other potential options. Including "because I don't like the style of posting that takes place in the Holiday forums". And I want to specifically focus on that because, honestly, I think maybe a big part of the problem here is people keep making the assumption that people prefer one subforum over another based on who's posting there. Even as people keep saying it's about the culture and style of discussion. You are making that mistake right here. This is why I've continually pointed out that D&D and SE++ have been different subforums with different cultures for decades at this point. It's got nothing to do with grudges. And we shouldn't keep pretending that's all it is.
I don't know what culture means though. D&D and SE++ don't have different clothes or dialects or musical heritage or observations of the Solstice.
If culture is moderation and rules, we're not doing that: the whole forum is following the same rules.
If culture is posting style, I remain unconvinced that D&D and SE++ actually have different posting styles. The content of the subforums is indistinguishable in most cases.
So that leaves me thinking culture means the specific people in it. I don't know what else it could be.
Internet culture doesn't need some broad item like clothes or music.
But I can argue very well there are different dialects between SE++ and D&D like any groupings. And there is cross over.
Part of it is expectations of post and how post are written. Length and detail. Reaction to posts. In jokes. And comfort in discussion styles on different topics.
That last one I think is where people get aggressive.
There are different posting styles, different weighing of information/data/experience on the forums. And different goals on what folks want to talk about around topics. And these are expectations built on decades both from moderating styles but also from community expectations.
And the thing is we have a good experiment of smashing the two together and we see one wins out causing those on the other take a break. And not just because it is the holidays.
But here I will put my own experience. I do post a bit in G&T and SE++ but mostly D&D.
For SE++ I mostly just post in the Warhammer thread but will pop into others at times to poke around. The Warhammer thread not only sticks to warhammer stuff but it is a topic that itself leads to silliness. And I am okay with it rotating from serious to silly.
But when I am in non-[chat] on D&D especially on current affairs I am there for the wonk talk. The deep dives. The long form discussions with data and stats. The big over arching view. And a lot of times I learn from it. Also it more fits how I look at things because of my job and education. This is very much my own area of comfort. The SE++ equivalents aren't the discussion style I am looking for and thus I just move on.
And part of that is because I have been more comfortable in D&D for ages.
When it comes down two it we are a federation of different style of communities. Not separate but still different. We have different accents/dialects. We have our own internal cultural norms. And then we have a lot of cross norms that lets people flow between them.
But a massive restructure has the greatest chance of shedding existing long standing members. And that to me does probably worry me the most. Maybe on Coin Return over time we shift things as we as a community have control to do that.
But also we are making a life boat for group of communities who have been around for 20+ years.
And we also have a few data points that forcing them together loses people as well.
I think trying to recreate D&D and SE++ with tags is just going to be even more messy and confusing. It seems like a bad solution to a problem you created with a previous solution.
NGL, bringing up how much people dislike the Holiday Forum as an argument against consolidation of specific subforums feels like a really flimsy argument against a restructure.
If only because I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting smushing all of the communities into one common space as a long term solution for Coin Return, especially when the Holday Forum has always been couched as a combination of a bit, and (initially, at least) as a bid by Tube to alleviate some of the treehousing that happens in specific subforums.
People are suggesting it as a way to make everyone get along though. And that is, as you note, part of what Tube was saying he wanted to do with it.
It is also, in practice, literally merging the two discussion forums into one space.
It shouldn't be surprising that people are taking it as a potential example of what the results of a D&D/SE++ merger could look like.
Then the question becomes whether people dislike the Holiday Forums because they make it harder to sort topics and put the current discussions on hold (which wouldn't be a problem on CoRe because there will still be categories), or whether they dislike the Holiday Forums because "so-and-so was there". Because most people have been saying the former, and I have a lot more empathy for the former than for the latter.
That's ignoring other potential options. Including "because I don't like the style of posting that takes place in the Holiday forums". And I want to specifically focus on that because, honestly, I think maybe a big part of the problem here is people keep making the assumption that people prefer one subforum over another based on who's posting there. Even as people keep saying it's about the culture and style of discussion. You are making that mistake right here. This is why I've continually pointed out that D&D and SE++ have been different subforums with different cultures for decades at this point. It's got nothing to do with grudges. And we shouldn't keep pretending that's all it is.
I don't know what culture means though. D&D and SE++ don't have different clothes or dialects or musical heritage or observations of the Solstice.
If culture is moderation and rules, we're not doing that: the whole forum is following the same rules.
If culture is posting style, I remain unconvinced that D&D and SE++ actually have different posting styles. The content of the subforums is indistinguishable in most cases.
So that leaves me thinking culture means the specific people in it. I don't know what else it could be.
My understanding was that different subforums definitely could have different rules. Do you have any evidence suggesting the entire forums were following one ruleset?
I haven't seen an insufficient holiday cheer infraction since Tube left, personally, and couldn't find any in a quick search of the old holiday forums
Doesn't really change the fact that it wasn't clear of this was a thing people could express dislike of, where would be appropriate to do it, and the concern of folks wanting the mods to have a break even if they disliked the holiday forums.
I dunno. Like, this is a weird thing to push back on when you've got folks here telling you what they thought. "Well you shouldn't have thought that way!" Ok sure? But some of us did still.
Sure, I know now people thought that it still wasn't allowed. I also know that there were people that disliked the holiday forums, plenty of folks were vocal about that.
But I am pushing back on statements like this, which are categorically false:
But it's always been against the rules to complain about it so people mostly grumble in PMs or Discords or whatever.
It was previously against the rules, yes, and some people may have believed it was still against the rules. But I want to correct the record that it was not against the rules this year, doesn't seem to have been against the rules for a few years prior, and therefore was not "always against the rules."
I don't think there is a significant number of people who fear they'll get infracted if they mention in the Holiday forum that they don't like the Holiday forum. Maybe there's a few, but probably only a few.
The reason you're not hearing a lot of vocal complaints are: a) it's a done thing, it happens, there's not much point to complaining about it anymore, because obviously it won't change anything, b) the complaints are not going to be occurring in the Holiday thread because the people who avoid it aren't there to complain, and c) the people who dislike the Holiday forum are disproportionately D&D folks, who you are probably less familiar with, being from SE.
And c) derives from the fact that the Holiday forum is basically just SE, and a lot of people don't want that. Not because they don't like the people, but because if you're in D&D because you prefer more structured discussion that adheres closer to stated topics, and more long-form treatment of issues, you're going to be less happy in a place that abandons that in favor of a looser and more chat-oriented posting style.
But this does tie into why I am very much opposed to just lumping everything together and disallowing multiple threads on the same topic. Because while there are some discussions where the SE and D&D styles don't differ too much (basically, anything that is inherently more chatty), there are many where there is a fairly pronounced difference in style, and if you put a bunch of people chatting in a loose and off-topic manner with a bunch of people trying to have a more structured conversation, what you end up with is a bunch of people chatting in a loose and off-topic manner.
I don't think there's a grand conspiracy to kill D&D, and I don't think anyone (or at least not an appreciable number of people) is maliciously trying to edge out anyone else. But I do think that some of the ideas here to merge the forums will result, intentionally or not, with a forum that is basically just all SE. Just because of how the different styles will react to being squooshed together.
And the Holiday forum is the best indicator of this - everything gets lumped together, everything gets basically turned into SE, and a lot of D&Ders check out for that time because it's not what they want out of the forums.
At one point during these discussions the prospect of on-topic and off-topic tags was raised - if there are discussions that merit it, I can't see why there'd be an issue with two threads roughly on the same subject matter in the same subforum because they'd be two distinct threads with different themes?
This would mean that like, the NHL thread and the wrestling thread for example, where there isn't really a forced on- or off-topic thread guideline, might get to actually have posters from multiple subforums who don't venture out of their preferred internet box right now, which would make them visibly more alive than they are at present in SE or D&D
Using tags in this way is just recreating the two subforums in a more chaotic and hard to navigate manner. It's Elon Musk recreating trains with a bunch of Teslas on rails.
I think trying to recreate D&D and SE++ with tags is just going to be even more messy and confusing. It seems like a bad solution to a problem you created with a previous solution.
You don't need to do it for every single thread though? The whole intent is to have a shared space where applicable.
We don't need to tag D&D on the Lego thread, or have divergent parent threads, or say wrestling is SE only... the vast majority of threads in the general spaces probably won't need these tags.
They *would* help in a shared politics space to guide tone.
NGL, bringing up how much people dislike the Holiday Forum as an argument against consolidation of specific subforums feels like a really flimsy argument against a restructure.
If only because I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting smushing all of the communities into one common space as a long term solution for Coin Return, especially when the Holday Forum has always been couched as a combination of a bit, and (initially, at least) as a bid by Tube to alleviate some of the treehousing that happens in specific subforums.
People are suggesting it as a way to make everyone get along though. And that is, as you note, part of what Tube was saying he wanted to do with it.
It is also, in practice, literally merging the two discussion forums into one space.
It shouldn't be surprising that people are taking it as a potential example of what the results of a D&D/SE++ merger could look like.
Then the question becomes whether people dislike the Holiday Forums because they make it harder to sort topics and put the current discussions on hold (which wouldn't be a problem on CoRe because there will still be categories), or whether they dislike the Holiday Forums because "so-and-so was there". Because most people have been saying the former, and I have a lot more empathy for the former than for the latter.
That's ignoring other potential options. Including "because I don't like the style of posting that takes place in the Holiday forums". And I want to specifically focus on that because, honestly, I think maybe a big part of the problem here is people keep making the assumption that people prefer one subforum over another based on who's posting there. Even as people keep saying it's about the culture and style of discussion. You are making that mistake right here. This is why I've continually pointed out that D&D and SE++ have been different subforums with different cultures for decades at this point. It's got nothing to do with grudges. And we shouldn't keep pretending that's all it is.
I don't know what culture means though. D&D and SE++ don't have different clothes or dialects or musical heritage or observations of the Solstice.
If culture is moderation and rules, we're not doing that: the whole forum is following the same rules.
If culture is posting style, I remain unconvinced that D&D and SE++ actually have different posting styles. The content of the subforums is indistinguishable in most cases.
So that leaves me thinking culture means the specific people in it. I don't know what else it could be.
My understanding was that different subforums definitely could have different rules. Do you have any evidence suggesting the entire forums were following one ruleset?
I haven't seen an insufficient holiday cheer infraction since Tube left, personally, and couldn't find any in a quick search of the old holiday forums
Doesn't really change the fact that it wasn't clear of this was a thing people could express dislike of, where would be appropriate to do it, and the concern of folks wanting the mods to have a break even if they disliked the holiday forums.
I dunno. Like, this is a weird thing to push back on when you've got folks here telling you what they thought. "Well you shouldn't have thought that way!" Ok sure? But some of us did still.
Sure, I know now people thought that it still wasn't allowed. I also know that there were people that disliked the holiday forums, plenty of folks were vocal about that.
But I am pushing back on statements like this, which are categorically false:
But it's always been against the rules to complain about it so people mostly grumble in PMs or Discords or whatever.
It was previously against the rules, yes, and some people may have believed it was still against the rules. But I want to correct the record that it was not against the rules this year, doesn't seem to have been against the rules for a few years prior, and therefore was not "always against the rules."
I don't think there is a significant number of people who fear they'll get infracted if they mention in the Holiday forum that they don't like the Holiday forum. Maybe there's a few, but probably only a few.
The reason you're not hearing a lot of vocal complaints are: a) it's a done thing, it happens, there's not much point to complaining about it anymore, because obviously it won't change anything, b) the complaints are not going to be occurring in the Holiday thread because the people who avoid it aren't there to complain, and c) the people who dislike the Holiday forum are disproportionately D&D folks, who you are probably less familiar with, being from SE.
And c) derives from the fact that the Holiday forum is basically just SE, and a lot of people don't want that. Not because they don't like the people, but because if you're in D&D because you prefer more structured discussion that adheres closer to stated topics, and more long-form treatment of issues, you're going to be less happy in a place that abandons that in favor of a looser and more chat-oriented posting style.
But this does tie into why I am very much opposed to just lumping everything together and disallowing multiple threads on the same topic. Because while there are some discussions where the SE and D&D styles don't differ too much (basically, anything that is inherently more chatty), there are many where there is a fairly pronounced difference in style, and if you put a bunch of people chatting in a loose and off-topic manner with a bunch of people trying to have a more structured conversation, what you end up with is a bunch of people chatting in a loose and off-topic manner.
I don't think there's a grand conspiracy to kill D&D, and I don't think anyone (or at least not an appreciable number of people) is maliciously trying to edge out anyone else. But I do think that some of the ideas here to merge the forums will result, intentionally or not, with a forum that is basically just all SE. Just because of how the different styles will react to being squooshed together.
And the Holiday forum is the best indicator of this - everything gets lumped together, everything gets basically turned into SE, and a lot of D&Ders check out for that time because it's not what they want out of the forums.
At one point during these discussions the prospect of on-topic and off-topic tags was raised - if there are discussions that merit it, I can't see why there'd be an issue with two threads roughly on the same subject matter in the same subforum because they'd be two distinct threads with different themes?
This would mean that like, the NHL thread and the wrestling thread for example, where there isn't really a forced on- or off-topic thread guideline, might get to actually have posters from multiple subforums who don't venture out of their preferred internet box right now, which would make them visibly more alive than they are at present in SE or D&D
Using tags in this way is just recreating the two subforums in a more chaotic and hard to navigate manner. It's Elon Musk recreating trains with a bunch of Teslas on rails.
So 1. That's a shitty thing to say to somebody - please don't compare me to a billionaire tyrant?
2. If you're not putting these tags on every single thread then no, it's not recreating the subforums. It's creating an expectation by the OP for how they hope people will chat within the thread. 75% of the threads likely won't need these tags.
QuetziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered User, Moderatormod
I think if, in the situation myself or Cello is describing, we end up fully recreating SE and D&D within a tagging system, we will have truly fucked up
My belief (or maybe hope) is that we wouldn't need those splitting tags for every thread, or that we can find other ways to split threads that become too much of a chaotic melee when combined (splitting a busy movie thread into new releases and the Tubi trough, splitting TV shows by genre, whatever we find that works) that isn't just using tags to recreate the old system.
+6
minor incidentpublicly subsidized!privately profitable!Registered User, Transition Teamregular
NGL, bringing up how much people dislike the Holiday Forum as an argument against consolidation of specific subforums feels like a really flimsy argument against a restructure.
If only because I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting smushing all of the communities into one common space as a long term solution for Coin Return, especially when the Holday Forum has always been couched as a combination of a bit, and (initially, at least) as a bid by Tube to alleviate some of the treehousing that happens in specific subforums.
People are suggesting it as a way to make everyone get along though. And that is, as you note, part of what Tube was saying he wanted to do with it.
It is also, in practice, literally merging the two discussion forums into one space.
It shouldn't be surprising that people are taking it as a potential example of what the results of a D&D/SE++ merger could look like.
Then the question becomes whether people dislike the Holiday Forums because they make it harder to sort topics and put the current discussions on hold (which wouldn't be a problem on CoRe because there will still be categories), or whether they dislike the Holiday Forums because "so-and-so was there". Because most people have been saying the former, and I have a lot more empathy for the former than for the latter.
That's ignoring other potential options. Including "because I don't like the style of posting that takes place in the Holiday forums". And I want to specifically focus on that because, honestly, I think maybe a big part of the problem here is people keep making the assumption that people prefer one subforum over another based on who's posting there. Even as people keep saying it's about the culture and style of discussion. You are making that mistake right here. This is why I've continually pointed out that D&D and SE++ have been different subforums with different cultures for decades at this point. It's got nothing to do with grudges. And we shouldn't keep pretending that's all it is.
I don't know what culture means though. D&D and SE++ don't have different clothes or dialects or musical heritage or observations of the Solstice.
If culture is moderation and rules, we're not doing that: the whole forum is following the same rules.
If culture is posting style, I remain unconvinced that D&D and SE++ actually have different posting styles. The content of the subforums is indistinguishable in most cases.
So that leaves me thinking culture means the specific people in it. I don't know what else it could be.
My understanding was that different subforums definitely could have different rules. Do you have any evidence suggesting the entire forums were following one ruleset?
I haven't seen an insufficient holiday cheer infraction since Tube left, personally, and couldn't find any in a quick search of the old holiday forums
Doesn't really change the fact that it wasn't clear of this was a thing people could express dislike of, where would be appropriate to do it, and the concern of folks wanting the mods to have a break even if they disliked the holiday forums.
I dunno. Like, this is a weird thing to push back on when you've got folks here telling you what they thought. "Well you shouldn't have thought that way!" Ok sure? But some of us did still.
Sure, I know now people thought that it still wasn't allowed. I also know that there were people that disliked the holiday forums, plenty of folks were vocal about that.
But I am pushing back on statements like this, which are categorically false:
But it's always been against the rules to complain about it so people mostly grumble in PMs or Discords or whatever.
It was previously against the rules, yes, and some people may have believed it was still against the rules. But I want to correct the record that it was not against the rules this year, doesn't seem to have been against the rules for a few years prior, and therefore was not "always against the rules."
I don't think there is a significant number of people who fear they'll get infracted if they mention in the Holiday forum that they don't like the Holiday forum. Maybe there's a few, but probably only a few.
The reason you're not hearing a lot of vocal complaints are: a) it's a done thing, it happens, there's not much point to complaining about it anymore, because obviously it won't change anything, b) the complaints are not going to be occurring in the Holiday thread because the people who avoid it aren't there to complain, and c) the people who dislike the Holiday forum are disproportionately D&D folks, who you are probably less familiar with, being from SE.
And c) derives from the fact that the Holiday forum is basically just SE, and a lot of people don't want that. Not because they don't like the people, but because if you're in D&D because you prefer more structured discussion that adheres closer to stated topics, and more long-form treatment of issues, you're going to be less happy in a place that abandons that in favor of a looser and more chat-oriented posting style.
But this does tie into why I am very much opposed to just lumping everything together and disallowing multiple threads on the same topic. Because while there are some discussions where the SE and D&D styles don't differ too much (basically, anything that is inherently more chatty), there are many where there is a fairly pronounced difference in style, and if you put a bunch of people chatting in a loose and off-topic manner with a bunch of people trying to have a more structured conversation, what you end up with is a bunch of people chatting in a loose and off-topic manner.
I don't think there's a grand conspiracy to kill D&D, and I don't think anyone (or at least not an appreciable number of people) is maliciously trying to edge out anyone else. But I do think that some of the ideas here to merge the forums will result, intentionally or not, with a forum that is basically just all SE. Just because of how the different styles will react to being squooshed together.
And the Holiday forum is the best indicator of this - everything gets lumped together, everything gets basically turned into SE, and a lot of D&Ders check out for that time because it's not what they want out of the forums.
At one point during these discussions the prospect of on-topic and off-topic tags was raised - if there are discussions that merit it, I can't see why there'd be an issue with two threads roughly on the same subject matter in the same subforum because they'd be two distinct threads with different themes?
This would mean that like, the NHL thread and the wrestling thread for example, where there isn't really a forced on- or off-topic thread guideline, might get to actually have posters from multiple subforums who don't venture out of their preferred internet box right now, which would make them visibly more alive than they are at present in SE or D&D
Using tags in this way is just recreating the two subforums in a more chaotic and hard to navigate manner. It's Elon Musk recreating trains with a bunch of Teslas on rails.
I think this comes down to a simple philosophical difference on hierarchy and structure. You believe it makes more logical sense to sort by conversation style (rigidly on-topic vs being allowed to drift off topic freely), and then by topic of conversation. That's valid!
But some people believe that they want to first ascertain the topic of conversation, then choose the thread that suits the way they want to engage in that topic. I'm one of those people, and to me, the PA way has always felt backwards and awkward. It works, but it always felt like it was just doing it wrong. Like swinging a bat or shooting a bow left handed (for a righty, obviously), and that flipping that hierarchy would make things feel more natural.
I can't say one side is objectively right or wrong (because they're not, this is absolutely a vibes thing that plays differently with everyone's brains), but I think that's a significant part of the core disagreement we keep coming back to.
Edit: also, as quetzi and cello allude to above, once you get down to topic, i don't think anywhere near every thread needs delineation in conversation style via tagging, so in my mind, it also makes more sense to handle the broadest divisions (topics) at the subforum level, then the engagement style (which isn't always needed) on the micro (thread) level.
minor incident on
Hell, New Jersey, it said on the letter. Delivered without comment. So be it!
Like, as an SE poster and someone who is a big enough hockey fan to have been in a fantasy keeper league for over a decade, the NHL thread is something that I would post in if it existed in one of my usual spaces
But I continually forget it exists because it's in D&D and frankly I rarely step in there more than once every 2 or 3 months
I would not be surprised if this was a common experience for a lot of threads people would cross-pollinate
The fact that you feel like you'd need tags for this is an implicit acknowledgement of the culture divide people keeping bringing up.
And if you are doing that, what's the point in the merge in the first place?
Even in threads where you might think it won't be needed I think the most likely outcome is simply that it defaults to one style or the other and the people who don't like that style leave. Or at least get very annoyed.
I haven't seen an insufficient holiday cheer infraction since Tube left, personally, and couldn't find any in a quick search of the old holiday forums
Doesn't really change the fact that it wasn't clear of this was a thing people could express dislike of, where would be appropriate to do it, and the concern of folks wanting the mods to have a break even if they disliked the holiday forums.
I dunno. Like, this is a weird thing to push back on when you've got folks here telling you what they thought. "Well you shouldn't have thought that way!" Ok sure? But some of us did still.
Sure, I know now people thought that it still wasn't allowed. I also know that there were people that disliked the holiday forums, plenty of folks were vocal about that.
But I am pushing back on statements like this, which are categorically false:
But it's always been against the rules to complain about it so people mostly grumble in PMs or Discords or whatever.
It was previously against the rules, yes, and some people may have believed it was still against the rules. But I want to correct the record that it was not against the rules this year, doesn't seem to have been against the rules for a few years prior, and therefore was not "always against the rules."
I don't think there is a significant number of people who fear they'll get infracted if they mention in the Holiday forum that they don't like the Holiday forum. Maybe there's a few, but probably only a few.
The reason you're not hearing a lot of vocal complaints are: a) it's a done thing, it happens, there's not much point to complaining about it anymore, because obviously it won't change anything, b) the complaints are not going to be occurring in the Holiday thread because the people who avoid it aren't there to complain, and c) the people who dislike the Holiday forum are disproportionately D&D folks, who you are probably less familiar with, being from SE.
And c) derives from the fact that the Holiday forum is basically just SE, and a lot of people don't want that. Not because they don't like the people, but because if you're in D&D because you prefer more structured discussion that adheres closer to stated topics, and more long-form treatment of issues, you're going to be less happy in a place that abandons that in favor of a looser and more chat-oriented posting style.
But this does tie into why I am very much opposed to just lumping everything together and disallowing multiple threads on the same topic. Because while there are some discussions where the SE and D&D styles don't differ too much (basically, anything that is inherently more chatty), there are many where there is a fairly pronounced difference in style, and if you put a bunch of people chatting in a loose and off-topic manner with a bunch of people trying to have a more structured conversation, what you end up with is a bunch of people chatting in a loose and off-topic manner.
I don't think there's a grand conspiracy to kill D&D, and I don't think anyone (or at least not an appreciable number of people) is maliciously trying to edge out anyone else. But I do think that some of the ideas here to merge the forums will result, intentionally or not, with a forum that is basically just all SE. Just because of how the different styles will react to being squooshed together.
And the Holiday forum is the best indicator of this - everything gets lumped together, everything gets basically turned into SE, and a lot of D&Ders check out for that time because it's not what they want out of the forums.
I mean to be clear, while I'm more in favor of a reorganization than keeping things as is, I also don't think we should lump everything together or ban multiple threads on the same topic. I think multiple threads on the same topic could potentially be useful for everyone involved.
My desire would be more to organize our subforums by topic rather than by vibe, as I think the organized by vibe method can be confusing and unintentionally exclusionary. We could then have different threads for different vibes, but like, I know when I click on a given subforum what the threads there are going to be about, and if I see two threads on the same topic next to each other I can decide which one better suits my current vibe.
That may be some different people browsing the forums in different ways, but that's my personal logic for how I'd like to see things.
And this is pretty much my stance, too, as someone who is softly in favor of some kind of merge.
I know you weren't doing it, but occasionally we get people floating the idea of trying to get rid of having multiple threads on a given topic, and a few folks are like "Hey, yeah, it's confusing having multiple threads!" and I will argue vociferously against that every time I see it because I legit think that trying to force everyone to talk about the same topics in the same place and the same manner will be absolutely fuck over the D&D folk.
Would you say I had a plethora of pinatas?
Legos are cool, MOCs are cool, check me out on Rebrickable!
Fwiw I've stopped posting in DnD and I am happier for it, but I still got along with and like talking to the majority of folks; ideally some of the more um, aggro posters (wether they realize they are being as such or not) can find it in them to chill out for the sake of making the community last longer, get along better as a whole and make this whole endeavor worthwhile
The fact that you feel like you'd need tags for this is an implicit acknowledgement of the culture divide people keeping bringing up.
And if you are doing that, what's the point in the merge in the first place?
Even in threads where you might think it won't be needed I think the most likely outcome is simply that it defaults to one style or the other and the people who don't like that style leave. Or at least get very annoyed.
It isn't though? It's a setting of the terms of a thread, no different than an OP but using the shorthand of tags to let people decide if they want to click it.
minor incidentpublicly subsidized!privately profitable!Registered User, Transition Teamregular
The music thread is another good example. Both SE and DND have one, and they're basically the exact same thing. But they can both occasionally go long periods of time being inactive because the regulars in those threads happen to not be sharing anything new. A single, combined music thread would be substantially better for all involved and be far more regularly active.
Hell, New Jersey, it said on the letter. Delivered without comment. So be it!
Like, as an SE poster and someone who is a big enough hockey fan to have been in a fantasy keeper league for over a decade, the NHL thread is something that I would post in if it existed in one of my usual spaces
But I continually forget it exists because it's in D&D and frankly I rarely step in there more than once every 2 or 3 months
I would not be surprised if this was a common experience for a lot of threads people would cross-pollinate
I feel like crossposting would solve this issue entirely too.
Also I think "Cross posting" was expressly forbidden once upon a time and vanilla dropped/blocked/doesn't even support that concept entirely because of Tube's loathing of that kind of feature.
Like, as an SE poster and someone who is a big enough hockey fan to have been in a fantasy keeper league for over a decade, the NHL thread is something that I would post in if it existed in one of my usual spaces
But I continually forget it exists because it's in D&D and frankly I rarely step in there more than once every 2 or 3 months
I would not be surprised if this was a common experience for a lot of threads people would cross-pollinate
I feel like crossposting would solve this issue entirely too.
But that's also stupid. Why would I go to two different places and copy the exact same post for both of them when they should just be one thread. Especially since copying a post on mobile isn't that easy so a lot of people just aren't going to do it.
Like, as an SE poster and someone who is a big enough hockey fan to have been in a fantasy keeper league for over a decade, the NHL thread is something that I would post in if it existed in one of my usual spaces
But I continually forget it exists because it's in D&D and frankly I rarely step in there more than once every 2 or 3 months
I would not be surprised if this was a common experience for a lot of threads people would cross-pollinate
One thing I think that does help this is the bookmark ability we have now and I figure the new forums will have.
Like, as an SE poster and someone who is a big enough hockey fan to have been in a fantasy keeper league for over a decade, the NHL thread is something that I would post in if it existed in one of my usual spaces
But I continually forget it exists because it's in D&D and frankly I rarely step in there more than once every 2 or 3 months
I would not be surprised if this was a common experience for a lot of threads people would cross-pollinate
I feel like crossposting would solve this issue entirely too.
But that's also stupid. Why would I go to two different places and copy the exact same post for both of them when they should just be one thread. Especially since copying a post on mobile isn't that easy so a lot of people just aren't going to do it.
It would be one thread, modern software makes them the same endpoint they just show up in both places.
Vanilla just doesn't support it, but vbulletin/phpbb did but Tube was very much against people doing it because he was kind of a shithead.
0
minor incidentpublicly subsidized!privately profitable!Registered User, Transition Teamregular
I haven't seen an insufficient holiday cheer infraction since Tube left, personally, and couldn't find any in a quick search of the old holiday forums
Doesn't really change the fact that it wasn't clear of this was a thing people could express dislike of, where would be appropriate to do it, and the concern of folks wanting the mods to have a break even if they disliked the holiday forums.
I dunno. Like, this is a weird thing to push back on when you've got folks here telling you what they thought. "Well you shouldn't have thought that way!" Ok sure? But some of us did still.
Sure, I know now people thought that it still wasn't allowed. I also know that there were people that disliked the holiday forums, plenty of folks were vocal about that.
But I am pushing back on statements like this, which are categorically false:
But it's always been against the rules to complain about it so people mostly grumble in PMs or Discords or whatever.
It was previously against the rules, yes, and some people may have believed it was still against the rules. But I want to correct the record that it was not against the rules this year, doesn't seem to have been against the rules for a few years prior, and therefore was not "always against the rules."
I don't think there is a significant number of people who fear they'll get infracted if they mention in the Holiday forum that they don't like the Holiday forum. Maybe there's a few, but probably only a few.
The reason you're not hearing a lot of vocal complaints are: a) it's a done thing, it happens, there's not much point to complaining about it anymore, because obviously it won't change anything, b) the complaints are not going to be occurring in the Holiday thread because the people who avoid it aren't there to complain, and c) the people who dislike the Holiday forum are disproportionately D&D folks, who you are probably less familiar with, being from SE.
And c) derives from the fact that the Holiday forum is basically just SE, and a lot of people don't want that. Not because they don't like the people, but because if you're in D&D because you prefer more structured discussion that adheres closer to stated topics, and more long-form treatment of issues, you're going to be less happy in a place that abandons that in favor of a looser and more chat-oriented posting style.
But this does tie into why I am very much opposed to just lumping everything together and disallowing multiple threads on the same topic. Because while there are some discussions where the SE and D&D styles don't differ too much (basically, anything that is inherently more chatty), there are many where there is a fairly pronounced difference in style, and if you put a bunch of people chatting in a loose and off-topic manner with a bunch of people trying to have a more structured conversation, what you end up with is a bunch of people chatting in a loose and off-topic manner.
I don't think there's a grand conspiracy to kill D&D, and I don't think anyone (or at least not an appreciable number of people) is maliciously trying to edge out anyone else. But I do think that some of the ideas here to merge the forums will result, intentionally or not, with a forum that is basically just all SE. Just because of how the different styles will react to being squooshed together.
And the Holiday forum is the best indicator of this - everything gets lumped together, everything gets basically turned into SE, and a lot of D&Ders check out for that time because it's not what they want out of the forums.
I mean to be clear, while I'm more in favor of a reorganization than keeping things as is, I also don't think we should lump everything together or ban multiple threads on the same topic. I think multiple threads on the same topic could potentially be useful for everyone involved.
My desire would be more to organize our subforums by topic rather than by vibe, as I think the organized by vibe method can be confusing and unintentionally exclusionary. We could then have different threads for different vibes, but like, I know when I click on a given subforum what the threads there are going to be about, and if I see two threads on the same topic next to each other I can decide which one better suits my current vibe.
That may be some different people browsing the forums in different ways, but that's my personal logic for how I'd like to see things.
And this is pretty much my stance, too, as someone who is softly in favor of some kind of merge.
I know you weren't doing it, but occasionally we get people floating the idea of trying to get rid of having multiple threads on a given topic, and a few folks are like "Hey, yeah, it's confusing having multiple threads!" and I will argue vociferously against that every time I see it because I legit think that trying to force everyone to talk about the same topics in the same place and the same manner will be absolutely fuck over the D&D folk.
I think, broadly speaking, multiple threads on a single topic aren't a bad or confusing thing (if the difference is indicated in a reasonable way), but multiple threads on the same topic in totally different subforums feels like something where it can get confusing -- and especially so for folks not well versed in the deep lore of the forums (a thing that feels less reasonable to expect of people on a totally new site).
Hell, New Jersey, it said on the letter. Delivered without comment. So be it!
Like, as an SE poster and someone who is a big enough hockey fan to have been in a fantasy keeper league for over a decade, the NHL thread is something that I would post in if it existed in one of my usual spaces
But I continually forget it exists because it's in D&D and frankly I rarely step in there more than once every 2 or 3 months
I would not be surprised if this was a common experience for a lot of threads people would cross-pollinate
I feel like crossposting would solve this issue entirely too.
How many people cross post? It's an issue of UI. We're naturally sorted into subforums that most people don't cross or else there wouldn't be two sets of identical threads across subforums with variance in regular posters.
If the UX is such that you're presented directly with two threads, you make a choice between the two that suit your discussion interest and are more likely to click into it. Or there'll be just the one thead and you'll be like "oh, I'd like to post in the music thread" and go there. In this case I just tend to forget that the option is even *there* to check for the NHL thread because frankly, I don't recall that it exists since I don't venture to the subforum often, so you lose a potential poster in that thread.
Like, as an SE poster and someone who is a big enough hockey fan to have been in a fantasy keeper league for over a decade, the NHL thread is something that I would post in if it existed in one of my usual spaces
But I continually forget it exists because it's in D&D and frankly I rarely step in there more than once every 2 or 3 months
I would not be surprised if this was a common experience for a lot of threads people would cross-pollinate
One thing I think that does help this is the bookmark ability we have now and I figure the new forums will have.
Like, as an SE poster and someone who is a big enough hockey fan to have been in a fantasy keeper league for over a decade, the NHL thread is something that I would post in if it existed in one of my usual spaces
But I continually forget it exists because it's in D&D and frankly I rarely step in there more than once every 2 or 3 months
I would not be surprised if this was a common experience for a lot of threads people would cross-pollinate
I feel like crossposting would solve this issue entirely too.
But that's also stupid. Why would I go to two different places and copy the exact same post for both of them when they should just be one thread. Especially since copying a post on mobile isn't that easy so a lot of people just aren't going to do it.
It would be one thread, modern software makes them the same endpoint they just show up in both places.
Vanilla just doesn't support it, but vbulletin/phpbb did but Tube was very much against people doing it because he was kind of a shithead.
Then why bother having separate sub forums if the threads go to the same place?
Like, as an SE poster and someone who is a big enough hockey fan to have been in a fantasy keeper league for over a decade, the NHL thread is something that I would post in if it existed in one of my usual spaces
But I continually forget it exists because it's in D&D and frankly I rarely step in there more than once every 2 or 3 months
I would not be surprised if this was a common experience for a lot of threads people would cross-pollinate
One thing I think that does help this is the bookmark ability we have now and I figure the new forums will have.
This is how I track the SE++ threads I read.
While it's called "favorites" (by default) in XF, yes, nearly the exact same feature exists.
Also, notably, the "bookmark" feature is a totally different thing that lets you just save individual posts in a bookmark list, which is kind of a neat thing for marking a post you really like and would like to be able to refer back to years later. A hilarious story someone told, a great write-up on a movie or game, or an incredible shitpost.
Hell, New Jersey, it said on the letter. Delivered without comment. So be it!
People on the TT and testing the new forums have mentioned a much better Ignore/Block feature. Could we maybe get some screenshots and some demonstration of how it looks (and if that's already been posted my bad, I haven't been following a long at home). Because it seems like that'll be a big point in favor of merging things, because the current ignore list is terrible on Vanilla and something a bit more Scorched Earth™ is something I'm looking for haha
Like, as an SE poster and someone who is a big enough hockey fan to have been in a fantasy keeper league for over a decade, the NHL thread is something that I would post in if it existed in one of my usual spaces
But I continually forget it exists because it's in D&D and frankly I rarely step in there more than once every 2 or 3 months
I would not be surprised if this was a common experience for a lot of threads people would cross-pollinate
I feel like crossposting would solve this issue entirely too.
How many people cross post? It's an issue of UI. We're naturally sorted into subforums that most people don't cross or else there wouldn't be two sets of identical threads across subforums with variance in regular posters.
If the UX is such that you're presented directly with two threads, you make a choice between the two that suit your discussion interest and are more likely to click into it. Or there'll be just the one thead and you'll be like "oh, I'd like to post in the music thread" and go there. In this case I just tend to forget that the option is even *there* to check for the NHL thread because frankly, I don't recall that it exists since I don't venture to the subforum often, so you lose a potential poster in that thread.
Depending on how the crossposting was enabled/set up most of them just have the same title/thread in both subforums. Some forum softwares even indicate which of the two crossposted threads the user clicked on to get there when they make poast. But no matter which one you were in it should go to the exact same thread.
Obviously this doesn't make a whole lot of sense for every topic, but the on topic shit like warhammer or marvel movies it might.
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I don't know that anyone's directly comparing them, but in case you are, it's a bad comparison.
You are also generally free to discuss roms, Morrissey, Hitman 2 or TV Tropes. You can also make threads or posts about private servers for MMORPGS.
You can engage in discourse on all of these topics because the former, former admin of these forums isn't going to swing by and suddenly infract you.
I don't think there is a significant number of people who fear they'll get infracted if they mention in the Holiday forum that they don't like the Holiday forum. Maybe there's a few, but probably only a few.
The reason you're not hearing a lot of vocal complaints are: a) it's a done thing, it happens, there's not much point to complaining about it anymore, because obviously it won't change anything, b) the complaints are not going to be occurring in the Holiday thread because the people who avoid it aren't there to complain, and c) the people who dislike the Holiday forum are disproportionately D&D folks, who you are probably less familiar with, being from SE.
And c) derives from the fact that the Holiday forum is basically just SE, and a lot of people don't want that. Not because they don't like the people, but because if you're in D&D because you prefer more structured discussion that adheres closer to stated topics, and more long-form treatment of issues, you're going to be less happy in a place that abandons that in favor of a looser and more chat-oriented posting style.
But this does tie into why I am very much opposed to just lumping everything together and disallowing multiple threads on the same topic. Because while there are some discussions where the SE and D&D styles don't differ too much (basically, anything that is inherently more chatty), there are many where there is a fairly pronounced difference in style, and if you put a bunch of people chatting in a loose and off-topic manner with a bunch of people trying to have a more structured conversation, what you end up with is a bunch of people chatting in a loose and off-topic manner.
I don't think there's a grand conspiracy to kill D&D, and I don't think anyone (or at least not an appreciable number of people) is maliciously trying to edge out anyone else. But I do think that some of the ideas here to merge the forums will result, intentionally or not, with a forum that is basically just all SE. Just because of how the different styles will react to being squooshed together.
And the Holiday forum is the best indicator of this - everything gets lumped together, everything gets basically turned into SE, and a lot of D&Ders check out for that time because it's not what they want out of the forums.
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Geebs and Tube have the chance to do the funniest thing right now
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I don't know what culture means though. D&D and SE++ don't have different clothes or dialects or musical heritage or observations of the Solstice.
If culture is moderation and rules, we're not doing that: the whole forum is following the same rules.
If culture is posting style, I remain unconvinced that D&D and SE++ actually have different posting styles. The content of the subforums is indistinguishable in most cases.
So that leaves me thinking culture means the specific people in it. I don't know what else it could be.
If the holiday forums accomplish the goal of giving mods a break, that’s great and seems worth doing for a bit. Maybe we need summer holiday forums done quick too.
The honest answer is -- we didn't know this!
So I appreciate that a ton for just coming out and saying it. We saw a new admin take over for the old admin, no announcements of major changes, all the rules threads stay the same, so just kind of expected the rules were the same old same old. I would have felt weird like, testing all of the rules to see if I get infracted now, so I didn't. I've been wanting to make DAoC private server threads for like two years! My time has come!!
If either of them is lurking and reading this thread right now, I double dare them.
I TRIPLE DOG DARE THEM.
I would say you have as much a chance of being infracted by Tube or Geebs on any of those actions as you have of Patrick Rothfuss returning to the Writer's Block.
That's because you don't listen to what people are actually saying on this front and just substitute in your own explanation. You do it explicitly in that last paragraph of yours.
Just because people can't specifically quantify the differences doesn't mean they aren't there and that people don't feel them. Just dismissing people telling you this isn't going to help the conversation.
To be fair, for anyone who wasn't dialed into tube's whole thing, it could be pretty opaque on which rules were serious business rules and which ones were just tube's idiosyncrasies getting enforcement (and also which ones were just awkward corporate mandates from PA). And because none of that got edited when Geebs took over, it's... well, it's a bit of a confusing mess!
But again, all the more reason we started from scratch for Coin Return, so there's less ambiguity and assumptions that have to be made about community conduct.
culture refers to D&D being largely on-topic enforced and SE having no enforcement for staying on topic
it doesn't apply to every thread equally, which is also part of the issue when the lines become unclear, but there being exceptions to the idea doesn't mean the idea doesn't exist
At one point during these discussions the prospect of on-topic and off-topic tags was raised - if there are discussions that merit it, I can't see why there'd be an issue with two threads roughly on the same subject matter in the same subforum because they'd be two distinct threads with different themes?
This would mean that like, the NHL thread and the wrestling thread for example, where there isn't really a forced on- or off-topic thread guideline, might get to actually have posters from multiple subforums who don't venture out of their preferred internet box right now, which would make them visibly more alive than they are at present in SE or D&D
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I mean to be clear, while I'm more in favor of a reorganization than keeping things as is, I also don't think we should lump everything together or ban multiple threads on the same topic. I think multiple threads on the same topic could potentially be useful for everyone involved.
My desire would be more to organize our subforums by topic rather than by vibe, as I think the organized by vibe method can be confusing and unintentionally exclusionary. We could then have different threads for different vibes, but like, I know when I click on a given subforum what the threads there are going to be about, and if I see two threads on the same topic next to each other I can decide which one better suits my current vibe.
That may be some different people browsing the forums in different ways, but that's my personal logic for how I'd like to see things.
Internet culture doesn't need some broad item like clothes or music.
But I can argue very well there are different dialects between SE++ and D&D like any groupings. And there is cross over.
Part of it is expectations of post and how post are written. Length and detail. Reaction to posts. In jokes. And comfort in discussion styles on different topics.
That last one I think is where people get aggressive.
There are different posting styles, different weighing of information/data/experience on the forums. And different goals on what folks want to talk about around topics. And these are expectations built on decades both from moderating styles but also from community expectations.
And the thing is we have a good experiment of smashing the two together and we see one wins out causing those on the other take a break. And not just because it is the holidays.
But here I will put my own experience. I do post a bit in G&T and SE++ but mostly D&D.
For SE++ I mostly just post in the Warhammer thread but will pop into others at times to poke around. The Warhammer thread not only sticks to warhammer stuff but it is a topic that itself leads to silliness. And I am okay with it rotating from serious to silly.
But when I am in non-[chat] on D&D especially on current affairs I am there for the wonk talk. The deep dives. The long form discussions with data and stats. The big over arching view. And a lot of times I learn from it. Also it more fits how I look at things because of my job and education. This is very much my own area of comfort. The SE++ equivalents aren't the discussion style I am looking for and thus I just move on.
And part of that is because I have been more comfortable in D&D for ages.
When it comes down two it we are a federation of different style of communities. Not separate but still different. We have different accents/dialects. We have our own internal cultural norms. And then we have a lot of cross norms that lets people flow between them.
But a massive restructure has the greatest chance of shedding existing long standing members. And that to me does probably worry me the most. Maybe on Coin Return over time we shift things as we as a community have control to do that.
But also we are making a life boat for group of communities who have been around for 20+ years.
And we also have a few data points that forcing them together loses people as well.
My understanding was that different subforums definitely could have different rules. Do you have any evidence suggesting the entire forums were following one ruleset?
Using tags in this way is just recreating the two subforums in a more chaotic and hard to navigate manner. It's Elon Musk recreating trains with a bunch of Teslas on rails.
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You don't need to do it for every single thread though? The whole intent is to have a shared space where applicable.
We don't need to tag D&D on the Lego thread, or have divergent parent threads, or say wrestling is SE only... the vast majority of threads in the general spaces probably won't need these tags.
They *would* help in a shared politics space to guide tone.
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So 1. That's a shitty thing to say to somebody - please don't compare me to a billionaire tyrant?
2. If you're not putting these tags on every single thread then no, it's not recreating the subforums. It's creating an expectation by the OP for how they hope people will chat within the thread. 75% of the threads likely won't need these tags.
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My belief (or maybe hope) is that we wouldn't need those splitting tags for every thread, or that we can find other ways to split threads that become too much of a chaotic melee when combined (splitting a busy movie thread into new releases and the Tubi trough, splitting TV shows by genre, whatever we find that works) that isn't just using tags to recreate the old system.
I think this comes down to a simple philosophical difference on hierarchy and structure. You believe it makes more logical sense to sort by conversation style (rigidly on-topic vs being allowed to drift off topic freely), and then by topic of conversation. That's valid!
But some people believe that they want to first ascertain the topic of conversation, then choose the thread that suits the way they want to engage in that topic. I'm one of those people, and to me, the PA way has always felt backwards and awkward. It works, but it always felt like it was just doing it wrong. Like swinging a bat or shooting a bow left handed (for a righty, obviously), and that flipping that hierarchy would make things feel more natural.
I can't say one side is objectively right or wrong (because they're not, this is absolutely a vibes thing that plays differently with everyone's brains), but I think that's a significant part of the core disagreement we keep coming back to.
Edit: also, as quetzi and cello allude to above, once you get down to topic, i don't think anywhere near every thread needs delineation in conversation style via tagging, so in my mind, it also makes more sense to handle the broadest divisions (topics) at the subforum level, then the engagement style (which isn't always needed) on the micro (thread) level.
But I continually forget it exists because it's in D&D and frankly I rarely step in there more than once every 2 or 3 months
I would not be surprised if this was a common experience for a lot of threads people would cross-pollinate
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And if you are doing that, what's the point in the merge in the first place?
Even in threads where you might think it won't be needed I think the most likely outcome is simply that it defaults to one style or the other and the people who don't like that style leave. Or at least get very annoyed.
And this is pretty much my stance, too, as someone who is softly in favor of some kind of merge.
I know you weren't doing it, but occasionally we get people floating the idea of trying to get rid of having multiple threads on a given topic, and a few folks are like "Hey, yeah, it's confusing having multiple threads!" and I will argue vociferously against that every time I see it because I legit think that trying to force everyone to talk about the same topics in the same place and the same manner will be absolutely fuck over the D&D folk.
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It isn't though? It's a setting of the terms of a thread, no different than an OP but using the shorthand of tags to let people decide if they want to click it.
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I feel like crossposting would solve this issue entirely too.
But that's also stupid. Why would I go to two different places and copy the exact same post for both of them when they should just be one thread. Especially since copying a post on mobile isn't that easy so a lot of people just aren't going to do it.
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One thing I think that does help this is the bookmark ability we have now and I figure the new forums will have.
This is how I track the SE++ threads I read.
It would be one thread, modern software makes them the same endpoint they just show up in both places.
Vanilla just doesn't support it, but vbulletin/phpbb did but Tube was very much against people doing it because he was kind of a shithead.
I think, broadly speaking, multiple threads on a single topic aren't a bad or confusing thing (if the difference is indicated in a reasonable way), but multiple threads on the same topic in totally different subforums feels like something where it can get confusing -- and especially so for folks not well versed in the deep lore of the forums (a thing that feels less reasonable to expect of people on a totally new site).
How many people cross post? It's an issue of UI. We're naturally sorted into subforums that most people don't cross or else there wouldn't be two sets of identical threads across subforums with variance in regular posters.
If the UX is such that you're presented directly with two threads, you make a choice between the two that suit your discussion interest and are more likely to click into it. Or there'll be just the one thead and you'll be like "oh, I'd like to post in the music thread" and go there. In this case I just tend to forget that the option is even *there* to check for the NHL thread because frankly, I don't recall that it exists since I don't venture to the subforum often, so you lose a potential poster in that thread.
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Then why bother having separate sub forums if the threads go to the same place?
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While it's called "favorites" (by default) in XF, yes, nearly the exact same feature exists.
Also, notably, the "bookmark" feature is a totally different thing that lets you just save individual posts in a bookmark list, which is kind of a neat thing for marking a post you really like and would like to be able to refer back to years later. A hilarious story someone told, a great write-up on a movie or game, or an incredible shitpost.
Depending on how the crossposting was enabled/set up most of them just have the same title/thread in both subforums. Some forum softwares even indicate which of the two crossposted threads the user clicked on to get there when they make poast. But no matter which one you were in it should go to the exact same thread.
Obviously this doesn't make a whole lot of sense for every topic, but the on topic shit like warhammer or marvel movies it might.