|
I don't think the idea of needing every post to be a full effort post is a good one. The better idea is expecting effort to match effort. If someone makes a well-reasoned argument, they should expect the same in return. If someone makes a giant effortpost with sources and so on, there should at least be a reasonable attempt to respond in the same. But banning low-effort posts is sort of ridiculous imo. SA has a whole has tried to ban low-effort posts and emptyquoting in the past and it has always returned back to allowing them. Some times people like to make jokes or show support for a post without having to pull out their APA formatting guide. Effectively moderating effort-for-effort posting is something that is going to be more time-consuming but that's something that goes back to D&D desperately needing more mods. EDIT: And to put some good stuff in here, even with its problems D&D is probably still one of the better political forums on the Internet. In a time when political discourse is increasingly atomized down to 280 characters at time, this remains a place where I can get good, solid opinions and news on current events, frequently from people with personal experience. That is irreplacable and is due to large part to the efforts of mods and SA culture in general. 1stGear fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Oct 13, 2020 |
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:31
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 2, 2024 00:56 |
|
|
Aramis posted:Just to be clear, there's quite a few things that could/should be improved, but I just wanted to throw my 2 cents in there. I think it would be a shame to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I'm going to jump the responding queue to say this: I don't think there is anything beyond the pale or unsaveable about D&D. This thread is in no way a "get your poo poo together" type thing. Just me being the QCS Mod, I hear the bad things, I don't get to hear a lot of good things and that paints a picture that may not be true. It's loving fantastic to hear about the cool stuff and cool people here. There is stuff every forum can do better and not a lot of chances for people to give input like this. At least there wasn't till recently. The D&D mods have been doing their direct feedback stuff on specific questions that have been great and a lot of good comes out of them.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:34
|
|
|
I mostly lurk D&D for information and news, and while I'm in Europe I do follow the US politics threads since politics is one of my hobbies, yet I don't think I have any useful input on squaring that particular circle of inherent hostility. However, I would like to contribute a bit on something that I do like in D&D that isn't necessarily as 'high-brow' as some would perhaps like to see? And that is specific threads for topics that can be silly. The most obvious example being the libertarian thread, which is explicitly a thread for making fun of all the ridiculous monstrous absurdity that falls under the label of libertarianism. Be it just non-libertarians discussing the latest and greatest hits of libertarian 'thinkers' on the world wide web, or when some hapless genuine libertarian manages to bumble in there to be piled on, the conversation tends to be informative and funny, and in the best cases even helpful for picking up debate technique against these titans of thought. Another one could be the SPAAAAAACE megathread, since it encompasses stuff like news about lakes on Mars to people obliquely hinting at ancient astronaut theories, and the conversations that ensue. That thread also has experts in relevant fields like GR, cosmology and particle physics etc., so if someone has genuine questions about event horizons or light cones, someone usually has the patience to hammer out an informative post that a layman can comprehend. The unifying factor for threads like these is that they're not all about effort posts, the SPAAAAAACE thread can have a friendly diversion to sci-fi every now and then, and that still seems like reasonable-ish content for a D&D thread about mostly speculative things like interstellar travel logistics or first encounter scenarios. I guess I'm with some of the posters up-thread who want more community fun in D&D, if just (in my case) to take the edge off the emotionally charged politics wrestling threads. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:38
|
|
|
Count me in as someone who was and is ecstatic about the primary/GE threads being created and spun off from USPOL. One of the things I've always loved about D&D in general is that it's a place I can come to to get news and analysis from sources I trust. I can get that from visiting a mainstream news site, but what makes D&D superior is that I also get turned on to new people and organizations all the time that I otherwise never would have heard of. I think the problem arises from the fact that "what is happening in US politics right now" and "what do we think should be happening in US politics in the future" are two related but ultimately separate questions. And don't get me wrong, they're both valuable discussions to have! But it's really loving hard to talk about both in the same thread in a forum with sequential posts. Sometimes I just want to know what's going on in the world without having to read 20 pages of why the Democrats shouldn't have done X. And sometimes I'm really interested in discussion of why the Democrats doing X was dumb and what they should be doing instead. But it's rare that I want to read both of them at the same time, and when they're both stuck together in the same thread, having each one popping in every few posts makes the other harder to read. So I think it makes sense, even after the presidential election is over, to keep those two discussions in separate threads. I'm not suggesting that the "now" thread should be only links to articles without any discussion, because I've gotten a lot of insight from goons commenting on the news. But I do think there is merit in having separate "discuss the news" and "talk about the future" threads so that they can both have productive discussions. Another thing that I think would be useful is to have a general, codified rule of "don't be a dick." It's basically an unwritten rule already, but I feel like the fact that it's unwritten means that a lot of probes for it often get responded to with "this is so arbitrary and unfair, I didn't break any rules!" There are so many posts in D&D that are more hostile than they need to be, and as SamuraiFoochs pointed out, you can be right and still be a massive rear end in a top hat. Having an actual rule to point to would probably cut down on the accusations of "unfair" probes.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:43
|
|
|
Whatever problems with toxicity D&D may have, it's a far better leftist/left-leaning place to post than some of the online shitholes that are more well known (like Reddit or social media). I use D&D as a major source of news and genuinely enjoy almost all of the discussion that goes on here. The only thing I really don't like is pigeonholing people or their politics based on tags. I know I've probably been guilty of this, which is why I try to self-police and say something along the lines of "[group] generally seems to think that..." instead of "[group] thinks x and y". I get people's frustration with derails about the election in USPOL; I'm pretty sick of the Biden arguments myself, which is why I haven't been participating in the GE thread lately. But I also don't like how people don't want to hear (often, not always) honest criticism of a candidate and banish posting along those lines to the GE thread so that they don't have to hear it. That's frustrating and just breeds resentment. I don't know what the answer is but there should be some sort of happy medium found between "no discussion of Biden at all in USPOL" and "endless derails over whether Biden is or isn't garbage". F_Shit_Fitzgerald fucked around with this message at 01:52 on Oct 13, 2020 |
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:43
|
|
|
Catching up on happenings around the world via D&D (especially the various incarnations of USPOL) has been a part of my daily routine for a while now, and overall I really value it. I'd agree with several previous posts that there are a few really, really, really lovely individual posters who could be done without, since six hour probes are clearly insufficient in curtailing their shittiness. I think one possible rule that might improve some of the threads is, in addition to frowning upon Twitter links without additional commentary, also trying to minimize the number of "random person on Twitter" posts. If it's a reporter, or a political figure, or someone with clearly relevant expertise, fine, but less "random sick burn or uninformed guessing from someone on the internet". I feel like some of the most contentious posting ends up almost being an "is versus ought" confusion, driven by difficulties in understanding disagreement. Sometimes people disagree! Sometimes they even have different interpretations of things that might seem clearly abhorrent to me, but that disagreement can be honest and not a secret mask for cackling evil. I think the "assume good faith" rule in D&D is generally a good one, though hard to enforce, but sticking with that and maybe adding a "please don't try to perform amateur phrenology to determine what those dastardly Others really believe" clause.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:44
|
|
|
Athanatos posted:I don't think there is anything beyond the pale or unsaveable about D&D. This thread is in no way a "get your poo poo together" type thing. Just me being the QCS Mod, I hear the bad things, I don't get to hear a lot of good things and that paints a picture that may not be true. Oh, that's absolutely how I'm interpreting the thread, and I'm genuinely excited to see interest in improving the place! The baby/bathwater I'm referring to is not D&D as a whole, but the general balance of seriousness and irreverence. It's true that the signal to noise ratio of certain threads is pretty bad, and doing something about it would be very welcome. I just wanted to point out that a healthy mix of fun/seriousness is an inherent part of what makes this place valuable to me, and I would find it a shame if the pendulum swung back too hard.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:45
|
|
|
1stGear posted:I don't think the idea of needing every post to be a full effort post is a good one. The better idea is expecting effort to match effort. If someone makes a well-reasoned argument, they should expect the same in return. If someone makes a giant effortpost with sources and so on, there should at least be a reasonable attempt to respond in the same. But banning low-effort posts is sort of ridiculous imo. SA has a whole has tried to ban low-effort posts and emptyquoting in the past and it has always returned back to allowing them. Some times people like to make jokes or show support for a post without having to pull out their APA formatting guide. GBS exists and if you have a forum specifically for deep dives into subjects and effort posts it doesn't make a lot of sense to allow cheerleading and shitposting in the Serious Discussion subforum. I agree that DnD is still better than a lot of other places online but the signal to noise ratio has gotten very bad in the ten plus years I have lurked and posted here. And to be fair, I am definitely guilty of plenty of white noise posting myself, I just think in general it makes sense to hold people here to higher standards.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:46
|
|
|
I like D&D, but I don't think it's perfect. Maybe I like it more than some other people because I don't read every thread and the ones I read regularly tend to be slower-paced than the lightning round US politics threads. I don't think there's anywhere except here (and I include CSPAM in that too, because I like both forums tbh) that I would ever want to do in-depth discussions about Canadian politics, for example. I like it that you can still find effortposts on various topics here, even if they're rarer than they used to be. I've learned a lot from this forum over the years. Based on my experience posting in this forum for like ten years, and being a regular poster in a few threads like CanPol for almost all that time, I'd say I have noticed that there are fewer effortposts and more shitposting over time. But I think that's understandable--the world of politics is a very different place now than it was a decade ago, and I understand people not wanting to put in as much effort arguing on the internet, especially if things change in your personal life. I find that in my own life I tend to have less time to write up an effortpost than I did when I was a student, for example, and that means either short posts or not posting unless I have the time to spare. And to be honest, I wouldn't want a D&D where every single post had to be an effortpost. Sometimes it's great to have a thread where I can have faster and shorter discussions with people over time about a piece of recent news. For example, I think CanPol, the thread where I've probably invested the most time, more often than not strikes a good balance between shortform posting about current events and longer-form posting about larger issues based on effortposting. I have noticed an increase in doomposting, which I understand. Climate news, for example, got me in a bad headspace for a while and it definitely affected the way I was interacting with people around here. I've also noticed somewhat of an increase in the acrimonious distaste some posters have for others--and I mean here both specific callouts and complaints about other groups of posters in the aggregate. I don't know if that's healthy, and I think it's something the mods could discourage (not necessarily even with probations, maybe just with encouragement not to post about posters) even if it's not something that can be outright banned. In the threads where I think of myself as a regular, I try to set a good example by being understanding to others and offering effortposts when I have the time and energy. I don't know if that makes any difference, but it makes me feel like I'm helping more than hurting. For the forum as a whole, based on what I've seen and what I've heard from others I do think more mods and IKs are needed. D&D is a highly active and very emotionally charged forum and I can totally understand why the small group of people responsible for managing it get burned out and detached. I think sharing their workload across more people will in the long run be a positive thing, even if in the short run there are some teething issues as new people get up to speed. vyelkin fucked around with this message at 02:00 on Oct 13, 2020 |
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:50
|
|
|
I really dislike the culture of "this thread versus that thread" that's been brewing and getting more and more intense since USPOL and the GE thread were split off. I think it's a bad thing. That may be in disagreement for many posters here, and I hardly even post on D&D, but I do lurk there a lot and that's my opinion on it. There's definitely an "us versus them" that is becoming more and more prevalent in the USPOL thread (and to some extent in the GE thread) that is annoying. I acknowledge the concerns that led to the split, but I can't say I agree with them. USPOL has basically become "look at this absurd thing Trump said/did, now let's watch as nobody does anything about it". And GE thread has become nothing except a dogpile of anti-Democrats crowd against the occasional pro-Democrats comment. I see very little discussion happening (in those threads, and I'm not saying there's none), because with people "quarantined" as it were there's little to discuss. I don't have any solid answers here, but I think the thread split was a bad move and more aggressive moderation/focusing the conversations should be the answer rather than splitting the camps. If that means more mods/IKs, then yeah, I support that move. But I don't think splitting threads up is the correct response to a thread becoming toxic.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:55
|
|
|
Magil Zeal posted:I really dislike the culture of "this thread versus that thread" that's been brewing and getting more and more intense since USPOL and the GE thread were split off. I think it's a bad thing. That may be in disagreement for many posters here, and I hardly even post on D&D, but I do lurk there a lot and that's my opinion on it. There's definitely an "us versus them" that is becoming more and more prevalent in the USPOL thread (and to some extent in the GE thread) that is annoying. You can probably trace this back to the original split during 2016 where there was a Trump thread and a USPOL thread separate from each other but both basically filled with the same news but dramatically different posting cultures going on within them.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:58
|
|
|
I just want to say thank you to the posters that publicly supported me. Again, the incident in question didn't happen in D&D, but it is also an issue here, albeit perhaps less so now here than other places (which I appreciate). I mostly just pointed it out in the hope that it would continue to make certain people consider how they can damage others with their thoughts potentially, even people who genuinely agree with them ideologically and are trying just as much to try to be part of the solution. That said, I've said my piece, thanks to all.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 02:07
|
|
|
I mostly lurk D&D because I don't think that I'm qualified to talk about a lot of stuff, but I do read USPOL and a few other threads, and the most exhausting thing for me is watching the thread blow up because someone picks a fight. I would call it a debate ... but it isn't. It's frequently made in bad faith and having to read more tedious, condescending fight posts just makes me want to mash the report button over and over. I don't want to post because I know that if I post something that's wrong - even by accident! - there's a decent chance that I am going to get roasted alive and I honestly just don't want to deal with it, especially when the consequences for "person with 30+ probations" will be "another probation, and then they will continue to do the same thing". Maybe I'm off base but that feels like it's part of the problem - there is rarely any meaningful consequence for being an rear end in a top hat.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 02:09
|
|
|
I'm not taking any positions on anything in here right now but I'd just like to say that the feedback has been good and I have been reading it as a baby mod trying to improve my moderation and the forums.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 02:11
|
|
|
Athanatos posted:I do hear a lot about Doom Posting, and Doomscrolling. Question for anyone, do you think a mod team should try and be arbiters of optimism in threads? What about if it gets to a point where someone is ONLY posting negative "we are all doomed" type things? I don’t like that because it becomes fundamentally a topic choice, that is, what’s the acceptable level of optimism in the climate change thread? Not even the scientists are certain. Nor should mods force discussions into only accepting marginal value as the only framework for discussion. To continue my use of climate change as the example. One should not be should not be probated for arguing that say a 2% reduction in emissions by 2050 is unacceptable because of an enforced framework of “it’s better than nothing.” One should be allowed to argue that neither of proposed policies are acceptable.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 02:21
|
|
|
Seven Hundred Bee posted:Doomposting is pretty easy to spot. In the polls thread, for example (which is the thread I read the most) every so often someone comes in and posts an elaborate fan fiction of Trump stealing the election and argues with anyone who tries to convince them that no, that can't happen. Its basically playing out anxiety over 2016, which is understandable, but that person would probably benefit from a 6'er as a chance to take a step back. Thing though is invoking 2016 actually justifies why "doomposting," whatever that means, should be allowed, as the supposed "arzying" turned out to be... absolutely correct. And how many times was that probated in Election Erection or D&D in the lead-up? But in any case, patrolling pessimistic posting seems like enforcing an ideology in any case which absolutely should not be what D&D is for and creates an echo chamber that no one, centrist leftist conservative or what have you, wants. I really think the line only needs to be drawn with clear suicidal ideation.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 02:42
|
|
|
I think part of the problem with D&D is that disagreements now to often involve the reporting and probation system first. A decade + ago we got just as angry with each other. Spitting mad, have to wait a day to respond to a post angry. We could have angry good arguments and even be a bit mean to each other. I’m also hesitant about being too strictly on topic, marginal discussions are where interesting things, new ideas, happen. It would be a shame to lose our fringe and weird voices. All the recent mods and IKs have been great. We need more. Another part of the problem is how discussions are being perceived. People perceive that internal disagreement is the thread consensus against them. Outside of D&D some of our worst posters are perceived as representative of the whole forum.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 02:49
|
|
|
human garbage posted:I don't think this kind of person should be allowed to post in D&D. It is honestly loving disgusting that the mods tolerate these people's presence and I can't understand why it's not banworthy. They got a week. I cropped out their name so I hope this doesn't count on breaking whatever rules about posting about specific people. That's my thoughts on D&D. Classon Ave. Robot fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Oct 13, 2020 |
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 03:05
|
|
|
I've been in D&D for a looong time. And I've always loved it, through the high and low points. I don't post much anymore, as life has me too busy to go about fighting libertarians all day, but I value this forum perhaps more than any other on SA (yes, that includes GWS, my true home). I come here for political news, for philosophy, for the map and flag threads, and for hardcore effortposts about things that I wouldn't know about otherwise. More than anything else, though, I come to D&D because it's literally the only insightful, funny, and high quality political forum anywhere on the internet. Even the worst D&D poster is higher quality than any pundit I can think of, nevermind the garbage on reddit and what have you. D&D has, for almost 20 years (yikes!), been the premier place for intelligent nerds to discuss politics. Whatever the mod and admin team does, I'm for it if it keeps the high quality posting coming in one-two punches with the hilarious and acerbic poo poo I read everyday in USPOL and the other awesome threads. Stay great, D&D. Stay great.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 03:10
|
|
|
The Political Cartoon Thread is the best thread on this sub-forum and has been for years. We need more mods/ik and they need to come from within the community. Hostile shitposting should be hit harder and that includes mine.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 03:13
|
|
|
Probably Magic posted:Thing though is invoking 2016 actually justifies why "doomposting," whatever that means, should be allowed, as the supposed "arzying" turned out to be... absolutely correct. And how many times was that probated in Election Erection or D&D in the lead-up? But in any case, patrolling pessimistic posting seems like enforcing an ideology in any case which absolutely should not be what D&D is for and creates an echo chamber that no one, centrist leftist conservative or what have you, wants. I really think the line only needs to be drawn with clear suicidal ideation. Except the part where there are enough legitimate factual variables that make comparisons to 2016 spurious at best, and as an emphatic statement of what WILL happen? Nah. Also all I'll say is I will no longer be posting in D&D from here on barring certain changes because a certain extremely high profile D&D poster sent me an extremely abusive PM that never would have flown in a public post, which I have to think is exactly why they sent it via PM. For the record I'm not putting any mods/admins on blast for this; I have reported the incident and they are already working on it, but I'm legitimately disgusted and if I weren't as stable as I am, it's the kind of poo poo that might drive self-destructive behavior. I also want to make it clear that I don't think even a majority of the NoJoe crowd would sign off on what I received. But I'm legit repulsed by the fact that I received the level of abuse that I did from someone who, at least at one juncture, was really respected in USPOL (and probably even moreso in CSPAM). This person if anything proved my point for me, not in any way that's "police thought" or "burn down D&D or CSPAM" but rather, some people have legit issues and it runs people off.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 03:14
|
|
|
World Famous W posted:The Political Cartoon Thread is the best thread on this sub-forum and has been for years. When you go to make a hostile shitpost, could you instead just close the window once the post is typed? This is what I've been trying to do a lot of the time and it's like 90% as satisfying and has cut way down on the amount of hostile shitposts i generate.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 03:15
|
|
|
Classon Ave. Robot posted:I don't think this kind of person should be allowed to post in D&D. It is honestly loving disgusting that the mods tolerate these people's presence and I can't understand why it's not banworthy. They got a week. I cropped out their name so I hope this doesn't count on breaking whatever rules about posting about specific people. That was a super gross post, but speaking as someone who got a multiday for a super gross post last week, sometimes we have bad days. It's patterns of lovely behavior that are really the problem; I don't know who that was so maybe they have a pattern.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 03:16
|
|
|
Athanatos posted:And since that is a pretty open ended OP there, let me start you off with a prompt you can answer that will help me out a lot: What keeps me coming back to read is some of the informative goons and threads about what is actually going on in general (think elections, country politics etc) and some of the more in depth discussions (think the prison thread etc) What stops me from posting more or bothering to read more is (IMO) kinda out of control leftist hive mind purity test when it comes to US politics stuff, and to a lesser extent the UK thread. A lot of discussion seems to just get detailed. I’m not sure what the solution is, maybe it’s like the seperate election threads now, or maybe more “argue in good faith” rules but it’s definitely something that frustrates me while reading.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 03:17
|
|
|
BRAKE FOR MOOSE posted:That was a super gross post, but speaking as someone who got a multiday for a super gross post last week, sometimes we have bad days. It's patterns of lovely behavior that are really the problem; I don't know who that was so maybe they have a pattern. They made another nearly identical identical post shortly after they came off probation and didn't get punished for it at all because someone had asked them if they still thought the same thing. Classon Ave. Robot fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Oct 13, 2020 |
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 03:17
|
|
|
Freakazoid_ posted:I don't want individual effort post threads. I want all of D&D to be effort posts. The only exception should be the chat thread, that's it. Sometimes a single sentence is a more succinct, coherent, and true argument than a wall o’ da text. Some of our text wall generators are the worst posters in the forums. Phone posted:There's someone who regularly posts lengthy, well-researched, and thoroughly cited posts about the American immigration system, the political situation in South America, and how American foreign policy intervened in Brazil throughout the Obama administration. It's concise, there's citations, there's graphs... and it gets ignored. This isn’t new either. I spent about five or six years repeating this in the various religion threads over the years: What do you mean by faith? I mean faith is having an ultimate concern for X. This is taken from, cites theologian. Here’s the exact text from the work types up in a quote. Here’s the analogous structure from existentialist philosophy. These are the mainline denominations that use this understanding of faith. Here’s the historical antecedents and spiritual roots of the concept. Next drat page what do you mean by faith you aren’t using the dictionary definition?
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 03:27
|
|
|
fool of sound posted:Long before I was a mod I wanted D&D to encourage people to make more threads about smaller, more specific topics. Threads don't need to sustain a conversation indefinitely to be valuable, and specific threads almost always have much higher quality conversation than the D&D megathreads. If people have ideas for how to encourage focused discussion threads, I'm all ears. At one point we had a news thread, and I wonder if we can do something a little more focused: 1) Any time something big happens we just make a thread about it. Debates and elections we know will generate thousands of posts in advance and we can safely shunt that to its own thread. The recent Trump's got COVID thread is another successful example of this. 2) Once a week, news roulette: choose a news item at random that was or would be discussed in one of the megathreads, make a new thread about that, and sticky it. This keeps the event-thread habit going and might help cross-pollinate posters across the megathreads.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 03:27
|
|
|
I think D&D is the best general political forum/social posting space and CSPAM the best left version of that anywhere on the internet today, full stop. Part of that is because there's not a lot of good out there, but that doesn't detract from many years of insightful, quality posts and difficult moderation work. This is going against the consensus a little but I think the GE thread is pretty good most of the time, and probably about as good as anything can possibly be considering what's discussed therein. I think this is entirely, 100% due to the earlier mod action of actually doing something about the rape apologia that was getting posted there. It took a little time and effort - everything does - but people made it very clear what the problems were and who it was hurting and the mods responded very effectively. It's probably because I'm a huge sicko but some of the arguments going on in that thread are, IMO, very good. There's often a lot of chaff because someone on one side of the argument or the other will drop a drive by shitpost or get heated for unrelated reasons and it will start a little conflict, but I think that's largely okay (or at least not really a big deal). There are only a few real dummies who still post there and I can see the mods starting to sort them out. The good posts/arguments/etc are often really good, and force me to interrogate my own position, or consider something in a new light, or bring forward some facts or concepts I had no clue about (joepinetree's posts about South America are extremely good). I actually like that people get genuinely upset there because I think the gravity of the subject matter demands it. The difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, what it means for me as an individual and the future of my country, the worth of my vote and how I should or shouldn't use it ethically or strategically, the machinery of the American economic/political system vs. the individuals that act within it or direct it -- a lot of these ideas really drill into some subject matter that I think is both difficult to wrap your head around without something like the GE to frame it, but extremely important to talk about. I don't think you can talk about it from an objective, emotionless position, nor do I think you should. I think that actually having a heated, emotionally-charged discussion about it is okay, and I think what the community and mods have shown with the rape apologia shutdown is that it can be done without the argument becoming toxic to the community or dangerous to the people having it. As far as improving D&D: I think ramps can be better enforced (I think they have been, recently), and I agree with the sentiment that more focused discussions budding off of the megathreads is good and should be encouraged. I think there are, actually and objectively, very few bad posters, but they're out there and I hope the mods will be a little more apt to crack down on them now that we're not as worried about bans being handed out. GreyjoyBastard posted:I'm not taking any positions on anything in here right now but I'd just like to say that the feedback has been good and I have been reading it as a baby mod trying to improve my moderation and the forums.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 03:45
|
|
|
Pentecoastal Elites posted:I actually like that people get genuinely upset there because I think the gravity of the subject matter demands it. The difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, what it means for me as an individual and the future of my country, the worth of my vote and how I should or shouldn't use it ethically or strategically, the machinery of the American economic/political system vs. the individuals that act within it or direct it -- a lot of these ideas really drill into some subject matter that I think is both difficult to wrap your head around without something like the GE to frame it, but extremely important to talk about. I appreciate you posting this because I do think this speaks to how some people approach D&D and I don’t know how to reconcile this with people who want a forum that is overall less toxic and aggressive. Maybe have threads with a disclaimer that this is the purpose of the thread? I appreciate posting here is cathartic for some people. I think part of the challenge is that people want different things from D&D and you can’t make other posters have the same motivations as you do or want to talk about the same thing - and that’s ok. Seven Hundred Bee fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Oct 13, 2020 |
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 03:57
|
|
|
Bar Ran Dun posted:Sometimes a single sentence is a more succinct, coherent, and true argument than a wall o’ da text. Some of our text wall generators are the worst posters in the forums. What you want is Twitter.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 03:58
|
|
|
Seven Hundred Bee posted:I appreciate you posting this because I do think this speaks to how some people approach D&D and I don’t know how to reconcile this with people who want a forum that is overall less toxic and aggressive. Thanks! I think that’s a very good idea, yeah.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 03:58
|
|
|
SamuraiFoochs posted:Except the part where there are enough legitimate factual variables that make comparisons to 2016 spurious at best, and as an emphatic statement of what WILL happen? Nah. Nobody knows what will happen though. I think the idea of elections ceasing to happen if Trump wins again is ridiculous and its own form of doomposting, but it should be allowed. Topic curtailing should be about preventing abuse of users (and I'm sorry for your PM experience, that's unfortunate) not "deciding what is in the real of the possible." That's far too heavy a mod hand in discussion. And I think the "doomposting" rule needs to be heavily reviewed as its application, as can be seen, is so relative and therefore not particularly effective.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 04:04
|
|
|
I’m not trying to single out teacup here, but their post was the most recent that repeated something that has been echoed over and over in this thread:teacup posted:What stops me from posting more or bothering to read more is (IMO) kinda out of control leftist hive mind purity test when it comes to US politics stuff, and to a lesser extent the UK thread. A lot of discussion seems to just get detailed. D&D can either be open to debate or it can be a series of silos where posters are corralled according to their ideology and most of the posts get generated when someone visits another silo to snipe at the posters there. I would prefer it to be the former, with ideologically diverse moderation that can handle the heat—it feels as though most of the posters are perfectly happy with the status quo of the latter, however, which is disappointing to me. I’ll try to be constructive with a couple of suggestions: 1) We could use more threadbans. Right now in the GE thread, there’s a post that I reported around 5 p.m. that has been up since noonish. As far as I can tell, the only thing the poster does in that thread is wait for their probation to be up and then bombard everyone with lengthy screeds about the morally bankrupt and toxic NoJoes. There isn’t a probation length that’s magically going to get people to change their ideologies, and if they’re unable to discuss things with people who disagree with them without insulting them every other sentence, they should be asked to post elsewhere. 2) Following the election, US goons and the people who read the megathreads about US politics should make a real effort to stop sorting posters by ideology and start addressing behaviors. The only real effect now is that good posters on both “sides” of the left-moderate divide never talk to each other, because they’re posting alongside their comrades in siloed threads instead of actually discussing issues with each other. All that said, I enjoy reading D&D, even if I’m reading the thread that everyone else seems to find so unacceptably toxic. I like reading arguments on the internet. What can I say.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 04:09
|
|
|
On the subject of 'what is awesome about dnd' I want to shoutout the presidents thread as one of the particularly cool things this forum has generated. Fritz deserves a shout out for all the presidents posts, but a bunch of people have contributed really good history write ups. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3849787
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 04:13
|
|
|
Why do I come to DnD? I want to know what is going on in the world. (Would you look at that, it's an endless stream of misery, each horror greater than the last.) Typically, I click the Politoons thread, then go back a page or two and start looking at the monkeys. (the monkeys being the toons themselves, not the posters) Then if I still have time, I will check out other threads. Recently it has been the Book Club thread, as it is fairly slow, and also fun. If I am still feeling completely broke brained, I will head into USPOL or one of the other "active" threads, once again not looking more than a page or so back, as that is a lot of text to read, and I might not have that much time. Hopefully, my story of "what is a DnD use case" is helpful. What is good: The fun threads. (Politoons/Book Club) Those weird short threads that die because no one other than OP is posting, as no one has anything relevant to say and just posting "this is good, keep it up" doesn't feel right for DnD. The best example of the second would be that thread from where someone was reading a book from the 90s where a Chinese communist party apparatchik was visiting the US.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 04:16
|
|
|
I just wanted to echo the folks saying that this is one of the best sources of in-depth political analysis available on the internet. I also mostly check on threads like the Canadian Housing Bubble thread, occasionally CanPol, occasionally UKMT, occasionally the Sub-Saharan Africa thread. I do try to follow US politics from outside, and USPol has been on-and-off a good source for that. I like the idea of going back to enforcing the effort posts rule outside of the chat thread. I have seen the issues with the US election thread, and it does seem to me that all the low-effort problem posters have NoJoe tags, while the posters who get probated are the ones who call them out. I don't know what the ultimate solution is, but enforcing effortposts and cracking down on conspiracy theory-style doomposting might help.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 04:19
|
|
|
axeil posted:I believe the fundamental problem in this forum is that it is no longer a place for any sort of discussion, debate, analysis or information-sharing. It has primarily become a place to air your grievances against a perceived enemy and get in sick burns so you can high-five your posting pals. I am not immune to this, so I count myself as Part of the Problem which is why I've by and large ceased posting here. quote:For a more recent example, there's the GE thread, where expressing support for either major party candidate results in a dog-piling. You already called yourself out but this still deserves an  . NoJoes are a diverse group and the only thread they aren't instantly banned from you accuse them of dogpiling because a lot of them post there, while making vague generalities about all of them as posters being exactly the same. This is bullshit.Kale posted:Like there's a very noticeable difference between the tone of the GE thread versus just about all the other ones. There's definitely some arguments and disagreements that crop up by nature of it being a debate sub-forum, but it's not just this constant default of posters taking everything extremely personally and seemingly treating the insult and the slam on other posters as the end goal of posting, which they bring with them to every thread regardless of the rules or general topic of the thread. It's not great. I've noticed that other than the regular bad faith posters that stick around to flame the no joes while pretending to just be really interested in asking questions, people come in in good faith and say "well, obviously we have to vote for Biden" then when that doesn't work they give up and everyone else declares the thread a lost cause all over again. the only thread where we are supposed to engage in "is joe biden a good choice to vote for for president" but we aren't really supposed to say "no" there either, apparently, based on all these posts that want the thread purged or whatever. Djarum posted:We need to find a way to keep the circular arguments out of threads. Agreed, we don't need a thousand fresh rotating posters of "what about reducing the damage" either but that's not an easy problem to solve. I still think we should steal an argumans/kialo style structure and endlessly debate changes to the structure itself until we've properly mapped all of our arguments and their supporting assumptions and our own personal values "I can't talk about" just means "there are too many other posts" but a very interesting way to frame it Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Oct 13, 2020 |
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 04:20
|
|
|
I think there's mucho toxicity in the GE thread. Either it's people coming in to yell at NoJoes or too much pushback against the slightest defense of the idea that Biden might only be 99.999% as bad as Trump. I think it all comes down to two sets of people: people who haven't hit the limits of their frustration and people who have. Its been talked about before in the thread that ultimately it doesn't matter who you vote for, but the instant there's hostility is met with more hostility and that whole philosophy vanishes. I think the only thing needed is someone to tell people to mellow. It's a bunch of people trying to read entrails and divine the future and most arguments only get ugly because it's one opinion vs another, so yeah there just needs to be a regular reminder to be cool.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 04:28
|
|
|
D&D has been experiencing a slow-burning immigration of posters from CSpam that have totally different expectations for what they want out of a forum, and given the difference in the size of the forums this is unlikely to ever change. The end result is that D&D is going to continue to culturally shift from a debate forum to a fraternal forum, and there isn't anything that is going to change that.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 04:31
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 2, 2024 00:56 |
|
|
canpol is pretty decent. all the us politics threads are full of other country MRs and maniacs
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 04:32
|
|
