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.
But what's the benefit of having two subforums then?
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?
it's likely such a small subset of threads that it would still make sense to keep subforums separate, I don't know why everyone's chomping at the bit to merge them if there are other alternatives that could work to accomplish similar goals
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.
But what's the benefit of having two subforums then?
Because some people prefer the distinction for the other threads where it wouldn't make sense and dislike tags/filtering?
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.
But what's the benefit of having two subforums then?
Because some people prefer the distinction for the other threads where it wouldn't make sense and dislike tags/filtering?
But you've effectively built a filter that will still require different moderation styles for threads that are going to be in different subforums? And people will go in perhaps not knowing which ruleset to play with if it's linked in two subforums, either
ToxI kill threadsDilige, et quod vis facRegistered Userregular
I don't hate the cross-posting as a solution on its face, but it feels like an over-engineered solution, from a technical perspective.
Maybe not! Maybe it's taking advantage of the modern tools and I'm just presuming it would be difficult based on how Vanilla acts.
maybe the real panopticon was the friends we made along the way
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Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered User, Transition Teamregular
Is there anyone who has actually proposed a forum structure in which D&D and SE++ are fully merged together?
Because, to my memory, what has been proposed is the addition of new sub-forums dedicated to topics currently duplicated in current sub-forums across the website (movies, video games, music, books, ect).
Is the crisis at the heart of this proposal that there'll be uncertainty in which posting style "wins out" in those new sub-forums?
In the way that SE++ and D&D established their own posting style, what is to stop these new sub-forums from also developing their own style, born from the new sub-set of the forum community that begin to populate it?
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 a mod decree about staying on topic in D&D in, like, a year. And even then I'm nearly certain it was only in politics threads, the kind of thread that would have an "on topic discussion" and "vibes hangout" variant denoted by tags anyway.
I bring up again the TTRPG thread as a mostly inactive thread in CF and a thread in SE++ that is indistinguishable in style and content, but which people who mostly stay in the top half of the page would never get to see. That thread would not need a "on topic" and "off topic " version. Just one thread for everyone to hang out and talk about TTRPGs. The D&D "people" wouldn't need their own version because they generally don't mind digressions in that sort of thread, and the SE++ "people" wouldn't need their own version because they like talking about topics too.
Which also comes down to the idea that I don't think people either want to just read on topic on off topic posts all the time. The fact that the chat thread exists in D&D seems like proof of that.
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.
It is though. Because every time it's brought it, the tags are explained as "this will be the SE++ style one and this will be the D&D style one". This tag thing was just brought up, on this page, explicitly as an answer to cultural differences between the two general chatter forums.
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 a mod decree about staying on topic in D&D in, like, a year.
... because people immersed in the particulars of the culture are generally pretty good about keeping to the stated topic, returning to it quickly when making brief diversions, and calling on others to start separate threads (GD or otherwise) when one is apparently worthwhile?
I mean the difference isn't the forums like you're describing, Shryke, but there will be on-topic and off-topic tags. There are plenty of threads in SE that don't go off topic and threads in D&D that do go off topic. It's not a thing tied to either forum anymore.
I mean the difference isn't the forums like you're describing, Shryke, but there will be on-topic and off-topic tags. There are plenty of threads in SE that don't go off topic and threads in D&D that do go off topic. It's not a thing tied to either forum anymore.
To wit: the SE NFL thread has never once discussed raising chickens in an apartment.
maybe the real panopticon was the friends we made along the way
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.
I think that in general, given the software we have now, it's much easier to sort things the way they are, only because it is far easier to clearly state the topic of a thread in its title versus its tone, especially given that we like to have fun or clever thread titles.
With the new forums' ability to use tags, it becomes very easy to tag something as "chat" or "on-topic" and so I think it'll be easier to organize by topic first without making it harder to figure out what's what.
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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.
It is though. Because every time it's brought it, the tags are explained as "this will be the SE++ style one and this will be the D&D style one". This tag thing was just brought up, on this page, explicitly as an answer to cultural differences between the two general chatter forums.
I'm gonna be honest Shryke, I really feel like throughout these threads your actual goal is to poison the well of any conversation that might have an endpoint of change, to the degree where talking with you feels like an energy drain because I may as well debate with a wall
But if I deal with this on its face, bluntly: no, I don't think the tags are attached to the "culture" of each subforum because frankly in the non-political threads the cultures are very similar, and I do not feel identifying the framing of a thread by its on-topic or off-topic nature is any different from literally any OP that has existed on these forums, regardless of subforum origin. It's a setting of terms of discussion, no different than "discuss fashion in here" or "post about technology news". It defines a method of posting but isn't defining an entire forum subculture or else threads like the parenting ones wouldn't be interchangeable.
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.
It is though. Because every time it's brought it, the tags are explained as "this will be the SE++ style one and this will be the D&D style one". This tag thing was just brought up, on this page, explicitly as an answer to cultural differences between the two general chatter forums.
Those are just terms being used for shorthand, there won't be literal tags "D&D style" and "SE++ style"
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 a mod decree about staying on topic in D&D in, like, a year.
... because people immersed in the particulars of the culture are generally pretty good about keeping to the stated topic, returning to it quickly when making brief diversions, and calling on others to start separate threads (GD or otherwise) when one is apparently worthwhile?
That seems like a pretty weak defense.
Man if you think D&D threads mostly stay on topic then we have very, very different experiences. I have learned a lot about the Culture books series for example. There has never been a thread for it, or if there was then I never clicked on it. I sure did learn a ton about the series because I love Star Trek though. The bad news gone right thread also taught my a lot about CVTs. I even reported that ones cause it was over a week as a diversion as memory serves. Shit goes off-topic there all the time.
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 a mod decree about staying on topic in D&D in, like, a year.
... because people immersed in the particulars of the culture are generally pretty good about keeping to the stated topic, returning to it quickly when making brief diversions, and calling on others to start separate threads (GD or otherwise) when one is apparently worthwhile?
That seems like a pretty weak defense.
Man if you think D&D threads mostly stay on topic then we have very, very different experiences. I have learned a lot about the Culture books series for example. There has never been a thread for it, or if there was then I never clicked on it. I sure did learn a ton about the series because I love Star Trek though. The bad news gone right thread also taught my a lot about CVTs. I even reported that ones cause it was over a week as a diversion as memory serves. Shit goes off-topic there all the time.
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
We're actually working on doing some previews of certain features and tools in XF to show off to folks soon, so good shout.
Hell, New Jersey, it said on the letter. Delivered without comment. So be it!
+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.
I think that in general, given the software we have now, it's much easier to sort things the way they are, only because it is far easier to clearly state the topic of a thread in its title versus its tone, especially given that we like to have fun or clever thread titles.
With the new forums' ability to use tags, it becomes very easy to tag something as "chat" or "on-topic" and so I think it'll be easier to organize by topic first without making it harder to figure out what's what.
Totally agreed, which is why I think that any discussion of reorganization (or not) needs to be inclusive of the logistical/software tools we have at our disposal, as opposed to framing things through the lens of what we have here at PA/Vanilla.
Hell, New Jersey, it said on the letter. Delivered without comment. So be it!
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.
It is though. Because every time it's brought it, the tags are explained as "this will be the SE++ style one and this will be the D&D style one". This tag thing was just brought up, on this page, explicitly as an answer to cultural differences between the two general chatter forums.
I'm gonna be honest Shryke, I really feel like throughout these threads your actual goal is to poison the well of any conversation that might have an endpoint of change, to the degree where talking with you feels like an energy drain because I may as well debate with a wall
But if I deal with this on its face, bluntly: no, I don't think the tags are attached to the "culture" of each subforum because frankly in the non-political threads the cultures are very similar, and I do not feel identifying the framing of a thread by its on-topic or off-topic nature is any different from literally any OP that has existed on these forums, regardless of subforum origin. It's a setting of terms of discussion, no different than "discuss fashion in here" or "post about technology news". It defines a method of posting but isn't defining an entire forum subculture or else threads like the parenting ones wouldn't be interchangeable.
I guess it's nice of you to explicitly state you are arguing in bad faith and think people don't actually mean what they are saying. Honesty is good I suppose.
And the tags are being explicitly brought up as an answer to the differing posting cultures of the two forums. It's literally how we started talking about
tags last page. I'm not sure what there is to argue when it comes to their intent.
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.
It is though. Because every time it's brought it, the tags are explained as "this will be the SE++ style one and this will be the D&D style one". This tag thing was just brought up, on this page, explicitly as an answer to cultural differences between the two general chatter forums.
I'm gonna be honest Shryke, I really feel like throughout these threads your actual goal is to poison the well of any conversation that might have an endpoint of change, to the degree where talking with you feels like an energy drain because I may as well debate with a wall.
Not only through these threads, a lot of the "exile" to SE++ seems to be driven explicitely for this, because Shryke, your quest to avoid any change or improvement on anything, ever, comes off as really callous and insensitive and enough people got tired of dealing with it.
Do agree that, yes, a lot of the non-politics threads on D&D just don't stay rigidly on topic, and if "better moderation" can handle the issues by itself, well, there shouldn't be an issue to not have duplicates of politics threads.
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 a mod decree about staying on topic in D&D in, like, a year.
... because people immersed in the particulars of the culture are generally pretty good about keeping to the stated topic, returning to it quickly when making brief diversions, and calling on others to start separate threads (GD or otherwise) when one is apparently worthwhile?
That seems like a pretty weak defense.
Man if you think D&D threads mostly stay on topic then we have very, very different experiences. I have learned a lot about the Culture books series for example. There has never been a thread for it, or if there was then I never clicked on it. I sure did learn a ton about the series because I love Star Trek though. The bad news gone right thread also taught my a lot about CVTs. I even reported that ones cause it was over a week as a diversion as memory serves. Shit goes off-topic there all the time.
I think we need to drop the idea of "stay on topic" verse "lol random posting kind of near a topic."
Both forums will diverge on a discussion. That is normal in discussions. The difference is tone, types of post/views on how posts should be structured, and the level or focus of the discussion. Along with at times people being refocused back to a topic.
The split between the two is very much on style, preferred items of discussion, level of discussion (wonk verse personal experience), sourcing at times, and meme verse no meme in specific threads.
I think all of us go to the short hand of "off topic" verse "on topic" but that really undersells how different the cultures of the two forums are around certain threads and posting styles.
And even with that we have tons of overlap in posters. And I would argue some posters go to D&D for the larger wonk/long form discussion and also SE++ on the same topic for the more off the cuff informal style. Both have a place but some people want one or the other. And our goal should keep both. Let them co-exist. And the easiest way is to maintain the structure.
Accepting we have two different cultures of posting with cross pollination I think is an important baseline for how we structure a forum going forward. Because no action should be taken that prefers one over the other otherwise we will bleed a large amount of users.
+9
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 a mod decree about staying on topic in D&D in, like, a year. And even then I'm nearly certain it was only in politics threads, the kind of thread that would have an "on topic discussion" and "vibes hangout" variant denoted by tags anyway.
I bring up again the TTRPG thread as a mostly inactive thread in CF and a thread in SE++ that is indistinguishable in style and content, but which people who mostly stay in the top half of the page would never get to see. That thread would not need a "on topic" and "off topic " version. Just one thread for everyone to hang out and talk about TTRPGs. The D&D "people" wouldn't need their own version because they generally don't mind digressions in that sort of thread, and the SE++ "people" wouldn't need their own version because they like talking about topics too.
Which also comes down to the idea that I don't think people either want to just read on topic on off topic posts all the time. The fact that the chat thread exists in D&D seems like proof of that.
the idea isn't that people only want to read one or the other, it's that nearly all of the problems occur when the line isn't clear (structural problem) or when the line is ignored (moderation problem)
making the line less clear doesn't solve either
Allegedly a voice of reason.
+8
Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered User, Transition Teamregular
I guess I might ask that if there are threads in D&D that aren't strictly on-topic, as a base assumption, why should they continue to be situated in the On-Topic sub-forum?
And, honestly, same question for SE++ with threads that are off-topic.
Because I'm currently reading conflicting messages that an On-Topic tag is tantamount to just issuing a D&D tag onto a thread itself, while also seeing folks mentioning that there are threads within D&D that don't follow the sub-forum's designation?
I guess I might ask that if there are threads in D&D that aren't strictly on-topic, as a base assumption, why should they continue to be situated in the On-Topic sub-forum?
And, honestly, same question for SE++ with threads that are off-topic.
Because I'm currently reading conflicting messages that an On-Topic tag is tantamount to just issuing a D&D tag onto a thread itself, while also seeing folks mentioning that there are threads within D&D that don't follow the sub-forum's designation?
Some of the politics ones have completely different tones and activity levels, they both can be on topic but the type of discussion that's considered good or on topic can be wildly different.
+1
Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered User, Transition Teamregular
I guess I might ask that if there are threads in D&D that aren't strictly on-topic, as a base assumption, why should they continue to be situated in the On-Topic sub-forum?
And, honestly, same question for SE++ with threads that are off-topic.
Because I'm currently reading conflicting messages that an On-Topic tag is tantamount to just issuing a D&D tag onto a thread itself, while also seeing folks mentioning that there are threads within D&D that don't follow the sub-forum's designation?
Some of the politics ones have completely different tones and activity levels, they both can be on topic but the type of discussion that's considered good or on topic can be wildly different.
But a variety of proposals feature a sub-forum just for those political threads.
So what about the non-political threads? The LEGO thread, the MCU thread, ect...
+2
minor incidentpublicly subsidized!privately profitable!Registered User, Transition Teamregular
I guess I might ask that if there are threads in D&D that aren't strictly on-topic, as a base assumption, why should they continue to be situated in the On-Topic sub-forum?
And, honestly, same question for SE++ with threads that are off-topic.
Because I'm currently reading conflicting messages that an On-Topic tag is tantamount to just issuing a D&D tag onto a thread itself, while also seeing folks mentioning that there are threads within D&D that don't follow the sub-forum's designation?
Some of the politics ones have completely different tones and activity levels, they both can be on topic but the type of discussion that's considered good or on topic can be wildly different.
To me, that's a good cause to have different threads with different expectations set by the OP. The recurring example is a US Politics thread that discusses establishment politics and the assumption that the Democratic Party is either Good, or Internally Salvageable, in contrast to a second US Politics thread with the assumption that the two party system is a Failed System with a focus on discussing Disestablishment Leftist political angles.
Both are perfectly valid, and aren't really "on topic / off topic", but simply different takes on a discussion that you are asked to approach honestly.
Hell, New Jersey, it said on the letter. Delivered without comment. So be it!
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.
It is though. Because every time it's brought it, the tags are explained as "this will be the SE++ style one and this will be the D&D style one". This tag thing was just brought up, on this page, explicitly as an answer to cultural differences between the two general chatter forums.
I'm gonna be honest Shryke, I really feel like throughout these threads your actual goal is to poison the well of any conversation that might have an endpoint of change, to the degree where talking with you feels like an energy drain because I may as well debate with a wall
But if I deal with this on its face, bluntly: no, I don't think the tags are attached to the "culture" of each subforum because frankly in the non-political threads the cultures are very similar, and I do not feel identifying the framing of a thread by its on-topic or off-topic nature is any different from literally any OP that has existed on these forums, regardless of subforum origin. It's a setting of terms of discussion, no different than "discuss fashion in here" or "post about technology news". It defines a method of posting but isn't defining an entire forum subculture or else threads like the parenting ones wouldn't be interchangeable.
I guess it's nice of you to explicitly state you are arguing in bad faith and think people don't actually mean what they are saying. Honesty is good I suppose.
And the tags are being explicitly brought up as an answer to the differing posting cultures of the two forums. It's literally how we started talking about
tags last page. I'm not sure what there is to argue when it comes to their intent.
Those are just terms being used for shorthand, there won't be literal tags "D&D style" and "SE++ style"
Yes, that's my point? That regardless of what you call them it's still just recreating the current subforums with tags.
This type of response is why I stopped going into DnD for the record, because shryke I also feel frustrated reading your responses sometimes. If anyone here isn't arguing in good faith it feels like frankly, you. And if you are, you've consistently, for years, done a piss poor job at seeming sincere.
"Stick in the mud" is the phrase you conjure in my mind
I guess I might ask that if there are threads in D&D that aren't strictly on-topic, as a base assumption, why should they continue to be situated in the On-Topic sub-forum?
And, honestly, same question for SE++ with threads that are off-topic.
Because I'm currently reading conflicting messages that an On-Topic tag is tantamount to just issuing a D&D tag onto a thread itself, while also seeing folks mentioning that there are threads within D&D that don't follow the sub-forum's designation?
Other then [chat] there is no thread in D&D that doesn't have some kind of topic. That topic can be broad, like "movies" or "US congress" or "Elon Musk". Or it can be fairly specific, like "US immigration policy" or "Red Dwarf". But there's always something.
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.
It is though. Because every time it's brought it, the tags are explained as "this will be the SE++ style one and this will be the D&D style one". This tag thing was just brought up, on this page, explicitly as an answer to cultural differences between the two general chatter forums.
I'm gonna be honest Shryke, I really feel like throughout these threads your actual goal is to poison the well of any conversation that might have an endpoint of change, to the degree where talking with you feels like an energy drain because I may as well debate with a wall
But if I deal with this on its face, bluntly: no, I don't think the tags are attached to the "culture" of each subforum because frankly in the non-political threads the cultures are very similar, and I do not feel identifying the framing of a thread by its on-topic or off-topic nature is any different from literally any OP that has existed on these forums, regardless of subforum origin. It's a setting of terms of discussion, no different than "discuss fashion in here" or "post about technology news". It defines a method of posting but isn't defining an entire forum subculture or else threads like the parenting ones wouldn't be interchangeable.
I guess it's nice of you to explicitly state you are arguing in bad faith and think people don't actually mean what they are saying. Honesty is good I suppose.
And the tags are being explicitly brought up as an answer to the differing posting cultures of the two forums. It's literally how we started talking about
tags last page. I'm not sure what there is to argue when it comes to their intent.
I guess I might ask that if there are threads in D&D that aren't strictly on-topic, as a base assumption, why should they continue to be situated in the On-Topic sub-forum?
And, honestly, same question for SE++ with threads that are off-topic.
Because I'm currently reading conflicting messages that an On-Topic tag is tantamount to just issuing a D&D tag onto a thread itself, while also seeing folks mentioning that there are threads within D&D that don't follow the sub-forum's designation?
Other then [chat] there is no thread in D&D that doesn't have some kind of topic. That topic can be broad, like "movies" or "US congress" or "Elon Musk". Or it can be fairly specific, like "US immigration policy" or "Red Dwarf". But there's always something.
If you can believe it, SE++ operates largely in the same exact way!
Outside of the "lol random" threads, the consistent threads that populate SE++ are just as topical.
+9
QuetziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered User, Moderatormod
I guess I might ask that if there are threads in D&D that aren't strictly on-topic, as a base assumption, why should they continue to be situated in the On-Topic sub-forum?
And, honestly, same question for SE++ with threads that are off-topic.
Because I'm currently reading conflicting messages that an On-Topic tag is tantamount to just issuing a D&D tag onto a thread itself, while also seeing folks mentioning that there are threads within D&D that don't follow the sub-forum's designation?
Other then [chat] there is no thread in D&D that doesn't have some kind of topic. That topic can be broad, like "movies" or "US congress" or "Elon Musk". Or it can be fairly specific, like "US immigration policy" or "Red Dwarf". But there's always something.
And you would aver that these threads never go off topic?
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 a mod decree about staying on topic in D&D in, like, a year.
... because people immersed in the particulars of the culture are generally pretty good about keeping to the stated topic, returning to it quickly when making brief diversions, and calling on others to start separate threads (GD or otherwise) when one is apparently worthwhile?
That seems like a pretty weak defense.
Man if you think D&D threads mostly stay on topic then we have very, very different experiences. I have learned a lot about the Culture books series for example. There has never been a thread for it, or if there was then I never clicked on it. I sure did learn a ton about the series because I love Star Trek though. The bad news gone right thread also taught my a lot about CVTs. I even reported that ones cause it was over a week as a diversion as memory serves. Shit goes off-topic there all the time.
I think we need to drop the idea of "stay on topic" verse "lol random posting kind of near a topic."
Both forums will diverge on a discussion. That is normal in discussions. The difference is tone, types of post/views on how posts should be structured, and the level or focus of the discussion. Along with at times people being refocused back to a topic.
The split between the two is very much on style, preferred items of discussion, level of discussion (wonk verse personal experience), sourcing at times, and meme verse no meme in specific threads.
I think all of us go to the short hand of "off topic" verse "on topic" but that really undersells how different the cultures of the two forums are around certain threads and posting styles.
And even with that we have tons of overlap in posters. And I would argue some posters go to D&D for the larger wonk/long form discussion and also SE++ on the same topic for the more off the cuff informal style. Both have a place but some people want one or the other. And our goal should keep both. Let them co-exist. And the easiest way is to maintain the structure.
Accepting we have two different cultures of posting with cross pollination I think is an important baseline for how we structure a forum going forward. Because no action should be taken that prefers one over the other otherwise we will bleed a large amount of users.
What prevents this style of conversation from happening by having [chat] in chaos instead of D&D, a dedicated politics sub forum where the terms of discussion can be tagged up front, and a specialized media forum where more formal deep dive threads can be created in parallel with more general threads with less risk of falling off the front page because a catch all general interest forum has too many non-media threads pushing stuff down?
On [chat] I think we beat that dead horse, the topic of [chat] is [chat]. It is going to appear some where but again its culture, posting styles, and personality is more in line with D&D than SE++. There are post in SE++ style which would lead to reports, confusion, and so on.
It isn't an SE++ style. [chat] will probably be [chat] where it is and wasn't part of my discussion anyways.
I think again though whatever you call the SE++ equivalent and the D&D equivalent the biggest thing is you need to make sure there are places for both posting styles. Because when you collapsing them one will be pushed out, we lose people and that shouldn't be our end goal.
At the same time having the tag system seems nice, but it is just putting two forums together and people continue to ignore the other's tags no matter what you call them. Or you just get post like, "Take this to the X thread it doesn't belong here."
Having the forum itself be defined with set rules that do support the culture that exist is important. Also making sure the overall CoC is strictly enforced across all the forums.
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."
This year, no rules thread was made in the Holiday event. I cannot check, but I do not recall that any year previously had a rules thread. If the rules are changed and it isn't communicated to the community, that's a moderation failure, and is one of the issues we need to address.
Note that I'm not blaming any of the current mod staff, just noting that this is an example of something we can do better at moving forward.
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 a mod decree about staying on topic in D&D in, like, a year.
... because people immersed in the particulars of the culture are generally pretty good about keeping to the stated topic, returning to it quickly when making brief diversions, and calling on others to start separate threads (GD or otherwise) when one is apparently worthwhile?
That seems like a pretty weak defense.
Man if you think D&D threads mostly stay on topic then we have very, very different experiences. I have learned a lot about the Culture books series for example. There has never been a thread for it, or if there was then I never clicked on it. I sure did learn a ton about the series because I love Star Trek though. The bad news gone right thread also taught my a lot about CVTs. I even reported that ones cause it was over a week as a diversion as memory serves. Shit goes off-topic there all the time.
I think we need to drop the idea of "stay on topic" verse "lol random posting kind of near a topic."
Both forums will diverge on a discussion. That is normal in discussions. The difference is tone, types of post/views on how posts should be structured, and the level or focus of the discussion. Along with at times people being refocused back to a topic.
The split between the two is very much on style, preferred items of discussion, level of discussion (wonk verse personal experience), sourcing at times, and meme verse no meme in specific threads.
I think all of us go to the short hand of "off topic" verse "on topic" but that really undersells how different the cultures of the two forums are around certain threads and posting styles.
And even with that we have tons of overlap in posters. And I would argue some posters go to D&D for the larger wonk/long form discussion and also SE++ on the same topic for the more off the cuff informal style. Both have a place but some people want one or the other. And our goal should keep both. Let them co-exist. And the easiest way is to maintain the structure.
Accepting we have two different cultures of posting with cross pollination I think is an important baseline for how we structure a forum going forward. Because no action should be taken that prefers one over the other otherwise we will bleed a large amount of users.
What prevents this style of conversation from happening by having [chat] in chaos instead of D&D, a dedicated politics sub forum where the terms of discussion can be tagged up front, and a specialized media forum where more formal deep dive threads can be created in parallel with more general threads with less risk of falling off the front page because a catch all general interest forum has too many non-media threads pushing stuff down?
On [chat] I think we beat that dead horse, the topic of [chat] is [chat]. It is going to appear some where but again its culture, posting styles, and personality is more in line with D&D than SE++. There are post in SE++ style which would lead to reports, confusion, and so on.
It isn't an SE++ style. [chat] will probably be [chat] where it is and wasn't part of my discussion anyways.
I think again though whatever you call the SE++ equivalent and the D&D equivalent the biggest thing is you need to make sure there are places for both posting styles. Because when you collapsing them one will be pushed out, we lose people and that shouldn't be our end goal.
At the same time having the tag system seems nice, but it is just putting two forums together and people continue to ignore the other's tags no matter what you call them. Or you just get post like, "Take this to the X thread it doesn't belong here."
Having the forum itself be defined with set rules that do support the culture that exist is important. Also making sure the overall CoC is strictly enforced across all the forums.
In case you're concerned at all - the Zonugal version of the revamp would include a space specifically for [chat] since it really is its own little ecosystem
Okay I just need to step in here and ask a LOT of folks to cool the fuck off. There's been like a dozen reports in the past hour or so in this thread alone and reading through the past few pages make it very clear that there's become a lot of arguing in bad faith, attacking users rather than their arguments, and people trying to dictate what conversations should or should not be about here.
Please start treating each other with more respect, and stop trying to shut down certain conversations just because you disagree with them. I'm about to go to bed and if I check this thread over breakfast and see that folks haven't been able to take a deep breath and start being kinder to each other, I'm going to be very disappointed and make it well known to anyone breaking the CoC and rules.
As a primary D&D poster who really dislikes the Holiday forums and mostly avoids the forums during the holidays aside from the chat thread, I'm feeling pretty ok with the tentative subforum structure on the Coin Return beta site. Maybe some tweaks are necessary but it mostly seems logical - maybe it's just because there's only a handful of people testing it so far, but it doesn't at all feel like everyone is being 'mashed together' like I do during the holiday forum.
There is a single 'Treehouse' forum that's for chat threads, of which I'd expect there to be some different concurrent threads where people will self organize into groups and have their own thread culture / rapport back and forth. There will maybe / probably be more cross-pollination but I think that's largely fine if desirable? But overall I'm not overly concerned about there not being an explicit SE or D&D.
Aside from the 'Treehouse', there are dedicated subforums that cover a lot of the common topics, and while I think there will probably be some adjustment and occasional steering from the moderators I think the tagging system and clear OPs on topic and scope will help address a lot of the concerns. I don't think duplicate threads on a single topic are necessarily a bad thing even at the moment, but I definitely think there are some threads / topics that don't really need to be distinctly 'the D&D NFL thread' or 'the SE NFL thread'.
Presently there are also some threads that don't really exist in one space or another - e.g. most of the more casual workout / job threads that I wouldn't mind participating in are presently segregated in SE where I don't post.
While I wouldn't be surprised if there are some people who want to remake the forums into Holiday Forums / SE / D&D just all the time or get rid of one or the other cultures. I think even the current tentative structure as-is with proper moderation will be just fine. And to be quite honest, if it's not just fine and it turns into a giant knife-fight even with clear rules and active moderation, it'll be pretty trivial to re-create the two subforums and send people back to their corners.
I guess I might ask that if there are threads in D&D that aren't strictly on-topic, as a base assumption, why should they continue to be situated in the On-Topic sub-forum?
And, honestly, same question for SE++ with threads that are off-topic.
Because I'm currently reading conflicting messages that an On-Topic tag is tantamount to just issuing a D&D tag onto a thread itself, while also seeing folks mentioning that there are threads within D&D that don't follow the sub-forum's designation?
Other then [chat] there is no thread in D&D that doesn't have some kind of topic. That topic can be broad, like "movies" or "US congress" or "Elon Musk". Or it can be fairly specific, like "US immigration policy" or "Red Dwarf". But there's always something.
And you would aver that these threads never go off topic?
I really think this isn't actually the difference.
Its not about going off topic, though D&D will spin off new threads if it goes too long the GDST system, its more posting style, expectations, discussion goals, and focus. These are our cultural difference.
We need not to use this "off topic" verse "on topic" thought process. Its preserving the two different cultures/styles/communities we have.
Again we are a federated set of communities with a lot in common but still with our own cultures that developed over decades of differing moderation and expectations.
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.
It is though. Because every time it's brought it, the tags are explained as "this will be the SE++ style one and this will be the D&D style one". This tag thing was just brought up, on this page, explicitly as an answer to cultural differences between the two general chatter forums.
Those are just terms being used for shorthand, there won't be literal tags "D&D style" and "SE++ style"
The new tags will be "Roolz" and "Droolz" and the thread creator gets to decide what the tag means in the context of their own thread.
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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.
It is though. Because every time it's brought it, the tags are explained as "this will be the SE++ style one and this will be the D&D style one". This tag thing was just brought up, on this page, explicitly as an answer to cultural differences between the two general chatter forums.
I'm gonna be honest Shryke, I really feel like throughout these threads your actual goal is to poison the well of any conversation that might have an endpoint of change, to the degree where talking with you feels like an energy drain because I may as well debate with a wall
But if I deal with this on its face, bluntly: no, I don't think the tags are attached to the "culture" of each subforum because frankly in the non-political threads the cultures are very similar, and I do not feel identifying the framing of a thread by its on-topic or off-topic nature is any different from literally any OP that has existed on these forums, regardless of subforum origin. It's a setting of terms of discussion, no different than "discuss fashion in here" or "post about technology news". It defines a method of posting but isn't defining an entire forum subculture or else threads like the parenting ones wouldn't be interchangeable.
I guess it's nice of you to explicitly state you are arguing in bad faith and think people don't actually mean what they are saying. Honesty is good I suppose.
And the tags are being explicitly brought up as an answer to the differing posting cultures of the two forums. It's literally how we started talking about
tags last page. I'm not sure what there is to argue when it comes to their intent.
Those are just terms being used for shorthand, there won't be literal tags "D&D style" and "SE++ style"
Yes, that's my point? That regardless of what you call them it's still just recreating the current subforums with tags.
No, I'm indicating your bad faith posting is obvious for anyone trying to read the thread for more than a few pages
Other folks give ideas, or discuss thoughts, and are willing to entertain new concepts, but you only post specifically to drag conversation down
It's patently obvious
I'm just posting my thoughts on the issue. I'm not even posting anything different from what other people are saying. There's multiple people making basically or exactly the same points I am in here. What are you even going on about?
The fact that you can't even imagine that people would actually think that the merging of forums are a bad idea and that D&D and SE++ have distinct cultures that people enjoy and that therefore the only reason people would say that is because they are pulling some long con is a problem with you. How are you going to have an actual discussion about what the new forum's look like structurally if you literally can't imagine that people with different opinions then you mean what they say?
This type of response is why I stopped going into DnD for the record, because shryke I also feel frustrated reading your responses sometimes. If anyone here isn't arguing in good faith it feels like frankly, you. And if you are, you've consistently, for years, done a piss poor job at seeming sincere.
"Stick in the mud" is the phrase you conjure in my mind
Not only through these threads, a lot of the "exile" to SE++ seems to be driven explicitely for this, because Shryke, your quest to avoid any change or improvement on anything, ever, comes off as really callous and insensitive and enough people got tired of dealing with it.
This is not the thread to call out any specific posters or their posting style. Please stay on the topic of Forum Structure.
I guess it's nice of you to explicitly state you are arguing in bad faith and think people don't actually mean what they are saying. Honesty is good I suppose.
Do not post in such a passive-aggressive tone or style. Further arguing with this tone will result in a thread kick.
Posts
But what's the benefit of having two subforums then?
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it's likely such a small subset of threads that it would still make sense to keep subforums separate, I don't know why everyone's chomping at the bit to merge them if there are other alternatives that could work to accomplish similar goals
Because some people prefer the distinction for the other threads where it wouldn't make sense and dislike tags/filtering?
But you've effectively built a filter that will still require different moderation styles for threads that are going to be in different subforums? And people will go in perhaps not knowing which ruleset to play with if it's linked in two subforums, either
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Maybe not! Maybe it's taking advantage of the modern tools and I'm just presuming it would be difficult based on how Vanilla acts.
Because, to my memory, what has been proposed is the addition of new sub-forums dedicated to topics currently duplicated in current sub-forums across the website (movies, video games, music, books, ect).
Is the crisis at the heart of this proposal that there'll be uncertainty in which posting style "wins out" in those new sub-forums?
In the way that SE++ and D&D established their own posting style, what is to stop these new sub-forums from also developing their own style, born from the new sub-set of the forum community that begin to populate it?
I haven't seen a mod decree about staying on topic in D&D in, like, a year. And even then I'm nearly certain it was only in politics threads, the kind of thread that would have an "on topic discussion" and "vibes hangout" variant denoted by tags anyway.
I bring up again the TTRPG thread as a mostly inactive thread in CF and a thread in SE++ that is indistinguishable in style and content, but which people who mostly stay in the top half of the page would never get to see. That thread would not need a "on topic" and "off topic " version. Just one thread for everyone to hang out and talk about TTRPGs. The D&D "people" wouldn't need their own version because they generally don't mind digressions in that sort of thread, and the SE++ "people" wouldn't need their own version because they like talking about topics too.
Which also comes down to the idea that I don't think people either want to just read on topic on off topic posts all the time. The fact that the chat thread exists in D&D seems like proof of that.
It is though. Because every time it's brought it, the tags are explained as "this will be the SE++ style one and this will be the D&D style one". This tag thing was just brought up, on this page, explicitly as an answer to cultural differences between the two general chatter forums.
... because people immersed in the particulars of the culture are generally pretty good about keeping to the stated topic, returning to it quickly when making brief diversions, and calling on others to start separate threads (GD or otherwise) when one is apparently worthwhile?
That seems like a pretty weak defense.
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To wit: the SE NFL thread has never once discussed raising chickens in an apartment.
I think that in general, given the software we have now, it's much easier to sort things the way they are, only because it is far easier to clearly state the topic of a thread in its title versus its tone, especially given that we like to have fun or clever thread titles.
With the new forums' ability to use tags, it becomes very easy to tag something as "chat" or "on-topic" and so I think it'll be easier to organize by topic first without making it harder to figure out what's what.
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I'm gonna be honest Shryke, I really feel like throughout these threads your actual goal is to poison the well of any conversation that might have an endpoint of change, to the degree where talking with you feels like an energy drain because I may as well debate with a wall
But if I deal with this on its face, bluntly: no, I don't think the tags are attached to the "culture" of each subforum because frankly in the non-political threads the cultures are very similar, and I do not feel identifying the framing of a thread by its on-topic or off-topic nature is any different from literally any OP that has existed on these forums, regardless of subforum origin. It's a setting of terms of discussion, no different than "discuss fashion in here" or "post about technology news". It defines a method of posting but isn't defining an entire forum subculture or else threads like the parenting ones wouldn't be interchangeable.
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Those are just terms being used for shorthand, there won't be literal tags "D&D style" and "SE++ style"
Man if you think D&D threads mostly stay on topic then we have very, very different experiences. I have learned a lot about the Culture books series for example. There has never been a thread for it, or if there was then I never clicked on it. I sure did learn a ton about the series because I love Star Trek though. The bad news gone right thread also taught my a lot about CVTs. I even reported that ones cause it was over a week as a diversion as memory serves. Shit goes off-topic there all the time.
Here’s the culture thread, it’s what got me reading the series intitially:
https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/222768/the-culture-fully-automated-luxury-gay-space-communism/p1
Edit: it still has one of the best thread titles imo
We're actually working on doing some previews of certain features and tools in XF to show off to folks soon, so good shout.
Totally agreed, which is why I think that any discussion of reorganization (or not) needs to be inclusive of the logistical/software tools we have at our disposal, as opposed to framing things through the lens of what we have here at PA/Vanilla.
I guess it's nice of you to explicitly state you are arguing in bad faith and think people don't actually mean what they are saying. Honesty is good I suppose.
And the tags are being explicitly brought up as an answer to the differing posting cultures of the two forums. It's literally how we started talking about
tags last page. I'm not sure what there is to argue when it comes to their intent.
Yes, that's my point? That regardless of what you call them it's still just recreating the current subforums with tags.
Not only through these threads, a lot of the "exile" to SE++ seems to be driven explicitely for this, because Shryke, your quest to avoid any change or improvement on anything, ever, comes off as really callous and insensitive and enough people got tired of dealing with it.
Do agree that, yes, a lot of the non-politics threads on D&D just don't stay rigidly on topic, and if "better moderation" can handle the issues by itself, well, there shouldn't be an issue to not have duplicates of politics threads.
I think we need to drop the idea of "stay on topic" verse "lol random posting kind of near a topic."
Both forums will diverge on a discussion. That is normal in discussions. The difference is tone, types of post/views on how posts should be structured, and the level or focus of the discussion. Along with at times people being refocused back to a topic.
The split between the two is very much on style, preferred items of discussion, level of discussion (wonk verse personal experience), sourcing at times, and meme verse no meme in specific threads.
I think all of us go to the short hand of "off topic" verse "on topic" but that really undersells how different the cultures of the two forums are around certain threads and posting styles.
And even with that we have tons of overlap in posters. And I would argue some posters go to D&D for the larger wonk/long form discussion and also SE++ on the same topic for the more off the cuff informal style. Both have a place but some people want one or the other. And our goal should keep both. Let them co-exist. And the easiest way is to maintain the structure.
Accepting we have two different cultures of posting with cross pollination I think is an important baseline for how we structure a forum going forward. Because no action should be taken that prefers one over the other otherwise we will bleed a large amount of users.
the idea isn't that people only want to read one or the other, it's that nearly all of the problems occur when the line isn't clear (structural problem) or when the line is ignored (moderation problem)
making the line less clear doesn't solve either
And, honestly, same question for SE++ with threads that are off-topic.
Because I'm currently reading conflicting messages that an On-Topic tag is tantamount to just issuing a D&D tag onto a thread itself, while also seeing folks mentioning that there are threads within D&D that don't follow the sub-forum's designation?
Some of the politics ones have completely different tones and activity levels, they both can be on topic but the type of discussion that's considered good or on topic can be wildly different.
But a variety of proposals feature a sub-forum just for those political threads.
So what about the non-political threads? The LEGO thread, the MCU thread, ect...
To me, that's a good cause to have different threads with different expectations set by the OP. The recurring example is a US Politics thread that discusses establishment politics and the assumption that the Democratic Party is either Good, or Internally Salvageable, in contrast to a second US Politics thread with the assumption that the two party system is a Failed System with a focus on discussing Disestablishment Leftist political angles.
Both are perfectly valid, and aren't really "on topic / off topic", but simply different takes on a discussion that you are asked to approach honestly.
This type of response is why I stopped going into DnD for the record, because shryke I also feel frustrated reading your responses sometimes. If anyone here isn't arguing in good faith it feels like frankly, you. And if you are, you've consistently, for years, done a piss poor job at seeming sincere.
"Stick in the mud" is the phrase you conjure in my mind
Other then [chat] there is no thread in D&D that doesn't have some kind of topic. That topic can be broad, like "movies" or "US congress" or "Elon Musk". Or it can be fairly specific, like "US immigration policy" or "Red Dwarf". But there's always something.
No, I'm indicating your bad faith posting is obvious for anyone trying to read the thread for more than a few pages
Other folks give ideas, or discuss thoughts, and are willing to entertain new concepts, but you only post specifically to drag conversation down
It's patently obvious
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If you can believe it, SE++ operates largely in the same exact way!
Outside of the "lol random" threads, the consistent threads that populate SE++ are just as topical.
And you would aver that these threads never go off topic?
On [chat] I think we beat that dead horse, the topic of [chat] is [chat]. It is going to appear some where but again its culture, posting styles, and personality is more in line with D&D than SE++. There are post in SE++ style which would lead to reports, confusion, and so on.
It isn't an SE++ style. [chat] will probably be [chat] where it is and wasn't part of my discussion anyways.
I think again though whatever you call the SE++ equivalent and the D&D equivalent the biggest thing is you need to make sure there are places for both posting styles. Because when you collapsing them one will be pushed out, we lose people and that shouldn't be our end goal.
At the same time having the tag system seems nice, but it is just putting two forums together and people continue to ignore the other's tags no matter what you call them. Or you just get post like, "Take this to the X thread it doesn't belong here."
Having the forum itself be defined with set rules that do support the culture that exist is important. Also making sure the overall CoC is strictly enforced across all the forums.
This year, no rules thread was made in the Holiday event. I cannot check, but I do not recall that any year previously had a rules thread. If the rules are changed and it isn't communicated to the community, that's a moderation failure, and is one of the issues we need to address.
Note that I'm not blaming any of the current mod staff, just noting that this is an example of something we can do better at moving forward.
In case you're concerned at all - the Zonugal version of the revamp would include a space specifically for [chat] since it really is its own little ecosystem
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Okay I just need to step in here and ask a LOT of folks to cool the fuck off. There's been like a dozen reports in the past hour or so in this thread alone and reading through the past few pages make it very clear that there's become a lot of arguing in bad faith, attacking users rather than their arguments, and people trying to dictate what conversations should or should not be about here.
Please start treating each other with more respect, and stop trying to shut down certain conversations just because you disagree with them. I'm about to go to bed and if I check this thread over breakfast and see that folks haven't been able to take a deep breath and start being kinder to each other, I'm going to be very disappointed and make it well known to anyone breaking the CoC and rules.
There is a single 'Treehouse' forum that's for chat threads, of which I'd expect there to be some different concurrent threads where people will self organize into groups and have their own thread culture / rapport back and forth. There will maybe / probably be more cross-pollination but I think that's largely fine if desirable? But overall I'm not overly concerned about there not being an explicit SE or D&D.
Aside from the 'Treehouse', there are dedicated subforums that cover a lot of the common topics, and while I think there will probably be some adjustment and occasional steering from the moderators I think the tagging system and clear OPs on topic and scope will help address a lot of the concerns. I don't think duplicate threads on a single topic are necessarily a bad thing even at the moment, but I definitely think there are some threads / topics that don't really need to be distinctly 'the D&D NFL thread' or 'the SE NFL thread'.
Presently there are also some threads that don't really exist in one space or another - e.g. most of the more casual workout / job threads that I wouldn't mind participating in are presently segregated in SE where I don't post.
While I wouldn't be surprised if there are some people who want to remake the forums into Holiday Forums / SE / D&D just all the time or get rid of one or the other cultures. I think even the current tentative structure as-is with proper moderation will be just fine. And to be quite honest, if it's not just fine and it turns into a giant knife-fight even with clear rules and active moderation, it'll be pretty trivial to re-create the two subforums and send people back to their corners.
I really think this isn't actually the difference.
Its not about going off topic, though D&D will spin off new threads if it goes too long the GDST system, its more posting style, expectations, discussion goals, and focus. These are our cultural difference.
We need not to use this "off topic" verse "on topic" thought process. Its preserving the two different cultures/styles/communities we have.
Again we are a federated set of communities with a lot in common but still with our own cultures that developed over decades of differing moderation and expectations.
The new tags will be "Roolz" and "Droolz" and the thread creator gets to decide what the tag means in the context of their own thread.
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I'm just posting my thoughts on the issue. I'm not even posting anything different from what other people are saying. There's multiple people making basically or exactly the same points I am in here. What are you even going on about?
The fact that you can't even imagine that people would actually think that the merging of forums are a bad idea and that D&D and SE++ have distinct cultures that people enjoy and that therefore the only reason people would say that is because they are pulling some long con is a problem with you. How are you going to have an actual discussion about what the new forum's look like structurally if you literally can't imagine that people with different opinions then you mean what they say?
This is not the thread to call out any specific posters or their posting style. Please stay on the topic of Forum Structure.
Do not post in such a passive-aggressive tone or style. Further arguing with this tone will result in a thread kick.
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