multijoe posted:

going to expend my (1) posting in this thread token to say: lol

Kaedric posted:

This poster and all posters saying the same thing are literally the exact problem with D&D, just a heads up. Just an unslakeable thirst to punish those with wrongthink.

Also a big megalol that I could tell you exactly who would be asking for this before I even opened the thread.

socialsecurity posted:

No one has ever been forumbanned for "wrongthink" theyve been banned for being assholes over prolonged periods of time. The fact people continue to pretend people only get probed for hating the Dems or whatever
Is why discourse has been ruined in DnD

Kavros posted:

This thread has come too early for me to provide my own complete thoughts on the subject, because this issue is complicated and laughably weird to even want to deal with in the first place. I can still type out a poo poo ton of words about the subject on the spot, so I'll do the best with what I've thought out so far.

I really want anyone attempting to reform or stabilize D&D to remember two things above all else — and even if you already totally know these things, it's probably a good idea to keep it up in front in your mind to help with pushing through the decisions that require the most effort or long-term consistency.

_


1. The metadebate about D&D and what to do with it is never going to have a crowdpleaser answer, and you will have incredibly livid detractors even if you are making the best available choices at the time, and

2. Pursuant to (1), your goal is ultimately to displease and drive away the correct people, and their adamant displeasure will be incidental evidence that what you are doing is working.


_


There's going to be work in consistently identifying what kinds of "contributions" (and all related pseudoadvocacy invented to insist and/or gloat that you're ruining D&D by not letting their toxicity run rampant) genuinely make the forum a worse terrible super crazier place and ensure continued years of the subforum's deserved infamy. And here I'm not even really talking about the people who are obviously unwell enough like msdos or ymb or caps lock broken that they forced the expansion of stronger ban methodology, ramps, and conclusive exclusion and an effective mitigation of their direct influence on the forums through full forumbans — but in hindsight and with observation of how they responded to their forumbans, you can say it did go a long way towards capping most of the most toxic, most insanely pathological, most pervasively negative elements. And this shouldn't have even been the case; like threadbans, they were, according to the oral lore of the forums, mostly started or initially engaged upon as a tortured stopgap implementation related to a larger issue involving admin noninvolvement or incomplete investment and understanding of the condition here.

Anyway, so. The first half of the equation was that it was ultimately important to do that, but the second and much harder question is what you do to keep that from having to be necessary most of the time — what process to use for maintaining the rest of the userbase so that you don't stricture and ossify the forum or create some actually powerfully lame fairweather 'decorum' incentivization

What I tend to do just as a regular poster is identify other posters who, whether I disagree with them or not, trend away from obsessive or genuinely toxic presence — and, however they choose to contribute and however often, generally make the place either more interesting and funny, or more informative, or both!

Then I guess I tend to track if they're posting more, or posting less, and if they're posting less or they have stopped posting, try to understand why. One particular poster who I ended up using as sort of a bellweather for the current state of the forum for a long time was Deteriorata (sp?) because on whatever subjects he wanted to contribute to, he would be able to consistently participate both in contribution and pushback, and was also entertaining. It's not that I had to be coming from the same political standpoint as him or thinking he's the flawless poster boy of politics posting, it's just that he represents a good example of worthwhile contribution and also being, you know, pithy or not exhausting rather than being a wall-of-words guy, just to explain where I'm coming from with isolating him as a direct example.

If Deteriorata and similar posters were posting more, things were looking good. If they were posting less because the forum environment was just too hilariously broken and stupid, I couldn't disagree with that decision, but it spoke to the level of how much a problem the forum was having.

And in that analysis you'll have the story about what's making the forum better or worse at any given time. The more the beneficial posters post, the more I'm likely to come away from binging a politics thread with either new actually useful information, or at least something that actively made me laugh or feel better about the state of the world, or have some generally good commiseration about that other people tend to care and have cool new information or takes. Either form of positive contribution is a way to have a politics-based community (which is effectively what this place has to be, even if the phrase 'politics-based community' is hives inducing) not be terrible.

Which is hard, because politics is essentially the act of looking at and seeking info about the present global or national condition of dehumanizing neoliberalism, deranged nationalism, factional polarization fueled by the worst possible entities, and related existential threats that have such an impact on people's mental health that most qualified psychological trades still don't know what to even do about it. How are you even supposed to moderate that without wanting to rip your eyes out?

Anyway, politics as the central draw or purpose of a forum? It produces an environment prone to doomposting, negative contribution feedback loops, toxic and obsessive contributions by unwell people who have pathological attachments to certain ideological or axiomatic points and positions that will bombard any unregulated environment with unwell tenacity. And then you either have to deal with it or it just gets worse. This is why there have been so many conspicuous missteps, like the "democrat party" thing, or the fanatically unwinnable issue of how to deal with rhetorical flooding of certain points of (even genuine) advocacy, like what has to be done with the subject of accusations of Biden being a rapist, or the general everything that happened with previous mods who flamed out in tremendously embarrassing fashion because they turned out to be really super stupid in one or more unforgivable ways, resulting in genuinely amazing moments like nazi covert D&D mod counterintel drama. But the less spent on these details the better, because I think this is more about what to do going forward.

This is why I am leery about calls to improve the forum through incentivizing or mandating "effortposting" or to curtail "drive by" posting because I don't think that necessarily makes a forum about politics better. Relief valve posting can be positive and constrained, and sometimes you just want to shoot the poo poo or just slam down some onion byline observation about current issues. I'm pedantic enough on my own, I don't think the forum needs to emulate me further in that regard.

Anyway.

Without any particular support or condemnation for the following posters quoted, I want to offer a cross section of parts of the Athanos thread for moderator feedback that I feel are pertinent enough to continued discussion and feedback here, and nominally worthwhile enough in at least analyzing why they were present as assessments or advice, that I want them to be present and be fresh in everyone's minds as we go through another (hopefully more visibly productive) revisitation of feedback that will hopefully Do Something, Possibly Just Anything.





























and last but certainly not least:

_

Anyway, thank you for your time. I do hope to see actual measurable change for D&D in the future; this represents probably the last time I will make a conspicuous effort and put myself out there with any reasonable expectation that something could be done about it, if nothing really visibly changes. I'm not saying this with any hostility or derision, but it's just that ... well, at this point, after this length of time, I think that it's only reasonable to have a cutoff moment where you acknowledge, based on further floundering or inaction or even just the opacity of decisionmaking about what to do with the forum, it's just ... not reasonable to expect things are going to turn out. Or, at very least, it's prudent to not take on the visibility or effort and conclude a low probability of productive change. D&D can certainly power by on mere inertia; it's not in any sort of substantively untenable condition, nor is it the subforum getting in the literal irl news because of ultimately very bad, very obvious issues. It can just chug along.

multijoe posted:

going to expend my (∞) posting in this thread token to say: lol

LGD posted:

GreyjoyBastard posted:

Rules change based on proposal from That Other Thread:

- One post per combat round is lifted.
- Do not attack other posters. Direct your poo poo to the mods.
- Do not quote other posters. Direct your poo poo to the mods.
- Do not get cute about the previous two.
- As always, do not be an rear end in a top hat.
- Forumbans still apply.
- Updating the OP is too much of a pain in the rear end on the phone, so I'll do it later.
- If this results in a total shitshow, we may alter the rules; "one post per 24 hours" seems plausible but we'll see.

GreyjoyBastard posted:

Rules change based on proposal from That Other Thread:

- One post per combat round is lifted.
- Do not attack other posters. Direct your poo poo to the mods.
- Do not quote other posters. Direct your poo poo to the mods.
- Do not get cute about the previous two.
- As always, do not be an rear end in a top hat.
- Forumbans still apply.
- Updating the OP is too much of a pain in the rear end on the phone, so I'll do it later.
- If this results in a total shitshow, we may alter the rules; "one post per 24 hours" seems plausible but we'll see.

GreyjoyBastard posted:

Rules change based on proposal from That Other Thread:

- One post per combat round is lifted.
- Do not attack other posters. Direct your poo poo to the mods.
- Do not quote other posters. Direct your poo poo to the mods.
- Do not get cute about the previous two.
- As always, do not be an rear end in a top hat.
- Forumbans still apply.
- Updating the OP is too much of a pain in the rear end on the phone, so I'll do it later.
- If this results in a total shitshow, we may alter the rules; "one post per 24 hours" seems plausible but we'll see.

thatfatkid posted:

Actually allow debate and discussion. Disagreeing with sabre rattling propaganda isn't genocide denial, especially when the associated press and US don't even describe what's happening in xinjiang as genocide anymore. (bit hard to with the uyghur population actually growing and their life expectancy and quality of life improving)

Cease to Hope posted:

my feedback is to keep banning blatant genocide deniers on sight

500 good dogs posted:

Dear mods,

Why do forum bans need to apply if there are already rules about not being an rear end in a top hat and not attacking/quoting other posters? I was under the impression that the forum bans were given due to behavior those posters exhibited when interacting with other members of D&D, which wouldn't be the case in here unless they were breaking one of the aforementioned two other rules.

GreyjoyBastard posted:

I did read your post in the other thread about this, and we may abolish that rule tomorrow.

GreyjoyBastard posted:

Quick rules amendment: "do not quote other posters" is lifted, "do not respond at other posters" replaces it.

It occurs to me that sometimes "i have an idea but other poster said it better" is a perfectly legitimate contribution. no, this is not an invitation to repost the "i am using my one post to post lol" thing

camoseven posted:

God drat you are such a loving loser

GreyjoyBastard posted:

i have absolutely no idea who you are so this is a weird forums vendetta even by something awful standards

GreyjoyBastard posted:

Quick rules amendment: "do not quote other posters" is lifted, "do not respond at other posters" replaces it.

It occurs to me that sometimes "i have an idea but other poster said it better" is a perfectly legitimate contribution. no, this is not an invitation to repost the "i am using my one post to post lol" thing

GreyjoyBastard posted:

i have absolutely no idea who you are so this is a weird forums vendetta even by something awful standards

GreyjoyBastard posted:

Quick rules amendment: "do not quote other posters" is lifted, "do not respond at other posters" replaces it.

It occurs to me that sometimes "i have an idea but other poster said it better" is a perfectly legitimate contribution. no, this is not an invitation to repost the "i am using my one post to post lol" thing

GreyjoyBastard posted:

Basically, the underlying concept is that I/we don't want people yelling at other posters for their opinions or otherwise sidelining actual, you know, mod feedback.

It seemed like a reasonable alternative to the Slowmode But Slower options.

Cpt_Obvious posted:

these days forum bans are reserved purely for ideological reasons