|
LGD posted:Why would that be at all weird? D&D is widely perceived as having mods who are heavy handed, capricious, ideologically driven, and serve the preferences of a subset of regulars who are keen to mass-report anything they don't like. Starting a thread is a much more attention-getting and "serious" undertaking than mere posting (can't autoban with a post!), so it should be no surprise that people are disinclined to start new threads. Meanwhile, most threads started by mods are not actually a natural result of a conversation hitting enough critical mass to deserve a spinoff, but because mods feel they need to intervene to remove a derail (the precise motivations are left as an exercise for the reader). Indeed, the very fact that the mods so frequently intervene (relative to other forums) in the most-read threads to dictate how conversations should be "properly" sequestered in fact almost certainly heavily reinforces those impressions/tendencies. And how do we fix it? We've already taken away that: Yes, we need to be more hands off. We're agreed there.
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2021 23:29
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 24, 2024 09:20 |
|
|
I wouldn't mind the heavy handedness if the mods weren't capricious and ideologically driven.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2021 23:29
|
|
|
If the ideology is "weird hyper-aggro posting is not allowed" then I'm 100% down for heavy handed ideological enforcement.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2021 23:32
|
|
|
fool of sound posted:Roughly half, like I said a couple posts ago. Honestly I only was a USPol poster because I got asked to IK it specifically (and to a lesser extent the PoliToons thread because I was a regular poster there) after posting in the 2020 primary thread and the feedback thread at the time. Once I was made a full mod I stopped reading it regularly, since it's extremely difficult to keep up with. In general, a lot of mods ended up being USpol regulars because they were selected to be USpol IKs, since that what we needed the most of. Epinephrine posted:You're fighting an uphill battle against the User Control Panel here, and I don't know if that's a fight you can win. Current Events Thread in Internet VFW does a monthly thread refresh. If a poster is solely down for that thread and obsessively f5 from page 1 to page done, they can use the last post link to new thread to keep their continuity of posting. Just remember to press the bookmark star. If you just check in for newspaper hour once a week then you gotta do that big ol forums scroll once every four sessions. Durring that scroll you could stumble across something, or see the mental health has new post, or find some country thread you just read a story about in the big thread. TUROP Thread also practices the same ritual. As far as moderation tools go, closing threads on the monthly and opening threads on the monthly are basically your only weapon against the User Control Panel. Having a 4 digit page count behemoth of a flagship thread is cool, I guess if it's 2015. But this is 2021, dispense with proof of posting, believe in institutions. USNEWS is, if nothing else, a rebranded institution that can coast off name recognition entirely.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2021 23:36
|
|
|
Yeah, please start making new threads monthly for US News.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2021 23:38
|
|
|
My suggestion is that lepers colony responses be much more succint and boilerplate, i.e "posting about posters", "continued arguing after a mod said to drop it", "shitposting", and not what seems like the mod getting the last word for six hours in the offender's leper's colony entry.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2021 23:39
|
|
|
KirbyKhan posted:Current Events Thread in Internet VFW does a monthly thread refresh. If a poster is solely down for that thread and obsessively f5 from page 1 to page done, they can use the last post link to new thread to keep their continuity of posting. Just remember to press the bookmark star. If you just check in for newspaper hour once a week then you gotta do that big ol forums scroll once every four sessions. Durring that scroll you could stumble across something, or see the mental health has new post, or find some country thread you just read a story about in the big thread. TUROP Thread also practices the same ritual. This sounds pretty workable to me, I think it'd be super worth giving a try. It's really not a big ask for people who largely only browse by bookmarks (I'm one of them!) to re-tick the thread every month if they wanna follow it. I don't think it'll be a perfect fix for a lot of the issues discussed in here but it'd be a positive change on it's own merits, I at least can't think of any problems like posting timers have.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2021 23:41
|
|
|
Heck Yes! Loam! posted:Yeah, please start making new threads monthly for US News. Also not a bad idea at all. If I recall, doesn't UK and a couple other regional threads do seasonal/monthly threads? e: Yes they do.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2021 23:41
|
|
|
Suggestion: The word "tankie" should be blacklisted. Namecalling was once frowned upon in D&D and really doesn't add anything to the discussion except to escalate pettiness, the word has lost most of its original meaning, it's posted ad naseum when certain subjects come up, and it's confusing to me personally because for years I thought a tankie was someone who worked for a think tank. If you're going to blacklist stuff like democrat party or whatever I don't see why this is allowed.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2021 23:41
|
|
|
Craig K posted:My suggestion is that lepers colony responses be much more succint and boilerplate, i.e "posting about posters", "continued arguing after a mod said to drop it", "shitposting", and not what seems like the mod getting the last word for six hours in the offender's leper's colony entry. I actually like that part, but I may be out on my own here
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2021 23:42
|
|
|
Starks posted:Suggestion: The word "tankie" should be blacklisted. Namecalling was once frowned upon in D&D and really doesn't add anything to the discussion except to escalate pettiness, the word has lost most of its original meaning, it's posted ad naseum when certain subjects come up, and it's confusing to me personally because for years I thought a tankie was someone who worked for a think tank. If you're going to blacklist stuff like democrat party or whatever I don't see why this is allowed. Blacklisting microaggressive namecalling on a per-name basis is a hilarious but ineffective policy. It doesn't accomplish anything but making D&D and its mods look petty.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2021 23:43
|
|
|
Epinephrine posted:E) I don't think my problem has been with the actual subject matter experts tbh and that was a poor choice of words on my part, and I apologize for that. My point is that mods and IKs here are not really qualified to look at scientific literature and say "yes this study deserves to be discussed in the covid thread" and "this one does not" and if the mod team is expected to litigate that then we'd better start getting paychecks. No one is being forced or compelled to respond to everything posted in the thread, and if something is obviously and egregiously harmful or misleading, I am trying to keep an eye out and deal with it quickly. The thread took a dip lately with some nonsense and I asked for more eyes on the thread to help, and posting has improved with some exceptions. I firmly believe that moderation here is not about determining who is correct or qualified but ensuring that people can feel safe and comfortable posting their opinions without feeling attacked by other posters. I have tried to give some leeway to posters who need to vent because we're in year 2 of an ongoing worldwide pandemic and tensions are going to run high as there's not a single person here whose life hasn't been impacted by Covid in some way. It's not perfect and I'm not always happy with how things are going, but that's my take; it's an ongoing work in progress.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2021 23:45
|
|
|
Cease to Hope posted:Blacklisting microaggressive namecalling on a per-name basis is a hilarious but ineffective policy. It doesn't accomplish anything but making D&D and its mods look petty. You're probably right but then I should be allowed to say Demonrat and "Dumb Yank". I'm open to a liberalizing of the rules as well. Maybe bring back the R word? I know its a long shot but you miss 100% of the shots you don't take Starks fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Oct 26, 2021 |
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2021 23:51
|
|
|
Starks posted:You're probably right but then I should be allowed to say Demonrat and "Dumb Yank". I'm open to a liberalizing of the rules as well. Is Democrat party actually getting probed for being said? I've always seen it as more of something that gets other posters angry vs something the mods are handing out probes for.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2021 23:54
|
|
|
CommieGIR posted:Also not a bad idea at all. If I recall, doesn't UK and a couple other regional threads do seasonal/monthly threads? USPol used to have seasonal threads too, but unlike the other regional threads, for some reason the mods could never create the next thread on time and eventually they just stopped bothering altogether and edited the season out of the title
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2021 23:54
|
|
|
Starks posted:You're probably right but then I should be allowed to say Demonrat and "Dumb Yank". I'm open to a liberalizing of the rules as well. That's just being a hostile dickhead, which should get people probed. A petty list of banned words is not the right solution to the problem of aggro posting.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2021 23:55
|
|
|
Cease to Hope posted:That's just being a hostile dickhead, which should get people probed. A petty list of banned words is not the right solution to the problem of aggro posting. Also its more hands on, when the consensus is: Hands off, mods. I think with insults like that, we gotta take it contextually. Granted, I don't think demonRAT, chud, tankie, etc. really is a sign a conversation or discussion is going well.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2021 23:57
|
|
|
Starks posted:Suggestion: The word "tankie" should be blacklisted. Namecalling was once frowned upon in D&D and really doesn't add anything to the discussion except to escalate pettiness, the word has lost most of its original meaning, it's posted ad naseum when certain subjects come up, and it's confusing to me personally because for years I thought a tankie was someone who worked for a think tank. If you're going to blacklist stuff like democrat party or whatever I don't see why this is allowed. This and also "doomer" should be added to the pile insomuch as both words can have their legitimate uses but 99% of the time they're used as derogatory terms 'round these parts to mean "person to the left of me" and "person who has any degree of pessimism about the future whatsoever" respectively.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2021 23:57
|
|
|
Heck Yes! Loam! posted:Is Democrat party actually getting probed for being said? I've always seen it as more of something that gets other posters angry vs something the mods are handing out probes for. It's about as clear an indicator that the user is not in fact looking to have a conversation but rather wants to stir up poo poo and make people mad as you can get. It's not the word, it's the intent of the person using the word. It's the intent of "I don't respect you and refuse to use the correct words just to piss you off."
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2021 23:59
|
|
|
How are u posted:It's about as clear an indicator that the user is not in fact looking to have a conversation but rather wants to stir up poo poo and make people mad as you can get. Yeah but can't you just ignore that, or mock it or anything else. It seems like banning it is like the gun circle in Thunderball. Heck Yes! Loam! fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Oct 27, 2021 |
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2021 00:00
|
|
|
How are u posted:It's about as clear an indicator that the user is not in fact looking to have a conversation but rather wants to stir up poo poo and make people mad as you can get. Making poo poo up about what you think other people mean when they post things has continuously been brought up as a problem and yall just keep doing it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2021 00:02
|
|
|
Heck Yes! Loam! posted:Is Democrat party actually getting probed for being said? I've always seen it as more of something that gets other posters angry vs something the mods are handing out probes for. It was for a short time. Somebody used it, someone else pointed out that it was a right-wing meme and it was bad taste to signal-boost it. Then 20 trolls leapt out of the darkness and started using it constantly just to piss everyone off. Some probes were handed out for it, and the fad died.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2021 00:02
|
|
|
CommieGIR posted:And how do we fix it? We've already taken away that: Yes, we need to be more hands off. We're agreed there. You're apparently not agreed at all, given how fool of sound just threw a huge tantrum and stacked more arbitrary rules onto the thread and then threadbanned someone for entirely made-up reasons My first piece of advice would be: don't do that anymore e: the best piece of advice, if you actually care about d&d, is to stop being mods. That won't be happening because imaginary internet power is the sweetest fruit of all though so I'm keeping things reasonable Yinlock fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Oct 27, 2021 |
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2021 00:03
|
|
|
KirbyKhan posted:Current Events Thread in Internet VFW does a monthly thread refresh. If a poster is solely down for that thread and obsessively f5 from page 1 to page done, they can use the last post link to new thread to keep their continuity of posting. Just remember to press the bookmark star. If you just check in for newspaper hour once a week then you gotta do that big ol forums scroll once every four sessions. Durring that scroll you could stumble across something, or see the mental health has new post, or find some country thread you just read a story about in the big thread. TUROP Thread also practices the same ritual. Huh, that's an interesting pitch. I think it's probably a compelling one. also very large threads make phones sad, and as a regular phoneposter that is also a compelling argument
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2021 00:04
|
|
|
Fritz the Horse posted:I'm still curious as to the ballpark number of forum and thread banned posters in D&D. It might not be an effective strategy but some posters have made the forum bans sound like they're doing harm or mods have been too trigger happy with them. I guess I'd be surprised if there were much more than a dozen, fifteen forum bans. Could be wrong. I guess I'll risk breaking the new rules (and being "the new spreadsheet goon") to answer this (eta: this is a very rough estimate. it could be 1/2 this as FoS mentions a few posts down, there are some warnings in here!) Starting with 1/1/2020 I filtered a list of entries by "Requested By" of all the current D&D mods, as well as Majorian and MPF, then filtered by 'contains "forum ban"' in the Punishment Reason, then filtered the for only the unique values of Horrible Jerk in that list. I came up with the following 10 posters: Covok Dett Rite gudetama Mafic Rhyolite PeterCat poll plane variant Stringent the 2016 lover UP AND ADAM VitalSigns Applying the same steps with 'thread ban' gives the following list of 19 posters: Bucky Fullminster DarkCrawler forbidden dialectics Nix Panicus PeterCat Regarde Aduck Ruzihm Sharkie SKULL.GIF SorePotato St. Dogbert The Angry Bum The Great Autismo! TwoQuestions UP AND ADAM Vasukhani Verus virtualboyCOLOR VitalSigns Accounting for duplicates this is a total of 26 forum-and-thread-banned posters: Bucky Fullminster DarkCrawler forbidden dialectics Nix Panicus PeterCat Regarde Aduck Ruzihm Sharkie SKULL.GIF SorePotato St. Dogbert The Angry Bum The Great Autismo! TwoQuestions UP AND ADAM Vasukhani Verus virtualboyCOLOR VitalSigns Covok Dett Rite gudetama Mafic Rhyolite poll plane variant Stringent the 2016 lover Lib and let die fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Oct 27, 2021 |
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2021 00:09
|
|
|
Democrat party is the most annoying little shibboleth because the people using it are just doing so to get a rise out of people and the latter always, always fall for it. It's incredibly childish of both parties. Generally the only blanket word ban I support are slurs, including ableist ones, and I don't really care if anyone thinks I shouldn't. There are some others terms of abuse that I'll shoot side eye at but I support looking at them in context and determining if they're being used in a way that's harmful. Generally I trust that D&D posters make a conscious effort to avoid acting and posting in a bigoted way and that they'll edit their behavior if called out. It's always heartening to see that someone has edited out a part of a post and replaced it with an apology before I even get to it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2021 00:11
|
|
|
Cpt_Obvious posted:Then you're probing the wrong people. GJB said he wanted a chill place to relax and talk about politics, you're never going to get that by bending to tyrannosaurus dorkus. So, this is a great example of why I previously had a notional policy of not weighing in on feedback before it runs its course, which I have lately proceeded to completely ruin. Having a chill place to relax and talk about politics appeals to me substantially more than it probably should, and it may wind up being my conclusion as to the direction we should take... but the matter is far fron settled and I'd really like to hear more community takes.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2021 00:12
|
|
|
Also Lib and Let Die and least a few of those are warnings to the effect of "you are close to a forum/threadban". Vitalsigns for instance isn't forum banned and honestly I'm perfectly happy to let his USnews threadban expire at this point since it's been a few months and he's been a consistantly good contributor elsewhere.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2021 00:13
|
|
|
A Maine Paineframe says I think short derails on innocuous stuff like food tends to be fun chill "eye of the storm" moments and I enjoy them in the forums scrolling equivalent of listening to a radio or podcast; never know when I might wanna perk up and be like "Hey I know this cool thing about pizza, did you know it was made in Italy?" and get my 2 slices in before something news worthy comes up or we get asked to stop the derail. I think these sorts of derails can be useful in letting people cool off their crusts after a particularly contentious argument. Anyways, I'd like to repeat a point I made which was something I had edited into my original post but since it was an edit maybe it was missed because I think it was said "Almost no one is suggesting bringing back debates" and well, I did, I happened it up. Where that could serve a slightly more productive version of "Take it to a new thread" is rather than expect users to volunteer to make a thread about a specific topic they were arguing tediously over; they get issued mod challenges to debate out the issue, people are allowed to volunteer to be their second on a team and the debate takes place in another thread; winner gets a free AV. As for the broader issue of contentious tedious arguments I think a big issue often comes to many posters just having widely irreconcilable differences in their operating paradigms/ideology. If one person thinks everything is because of class struggle and someone else doesn't think that, there's kinda no point to the argument because often neither person is willing to accept the other person's premise and its often unfun and unfair and too much work to have to for the sake of the argument accept that premise or break it down in order to respond to the root causes of the argument as it underlies it when the other side possibly is either not willing to do the same or feels that their ideology is morally correct and even considering seeing things from the other point of view is just entirely unacceptable. For example when discussing video games, I am willing to acknowledge and respect the side of the argument that is arguing from the idea "All art is political because all art is influences by the pre-existing social context" because its a pretty reasonable framework, but that doesn't mean I have to accept it when discussing a work where I just don't see those political or pre-contextual inferences; the minimum for both people is to respect that there's an underlying difference in frameworks and to keep an open mind about those differences and how they might not be reconciliable. Going into a discussion to declare Final Fantasy 7 can only be viewed from the lends of climate change and late stage capitalism and no other lens is valid and insists on discussing every micro-element of FF7 from their predetermined lens is needlessly antagonistic and that's my analogy for why so many arguments become tedious and overly wrong where even if like in the FF7 example I agree with them it is an uninteresting discussion and sometimes I might want to discuss something new about it because we're on a internet forum and taking about FF7 in a different lens is not going to make climate change worse or uphold the power structures enabling capitalism. I don't know how you can force people to be more tolerant of disagreement; if you are honestly convinced that climate change is going to kill us all and that every second of delay, inaction, or discussion is tantamount of making it happen; some people do feel that there is a moral imperative to act and lash out at targets within reach. I wish more people kept the categorical imperative in mind because an pro-life abortion activist is going to be just as convinced about the rightness of their cause and that it justifies their acts and if you get to live in your world where you can act on what you consider to be the prevalent moral imperative well so do people who you view as abhorrent. That's what it means to be tolerant on some level; and why many liberals tend to believe in things like processes and structures; so the people who feel the most strongly about one thing or another stay at opposite sides of the table and behave because the first one to pull the trigger on their believes will end up lighting the table on fire. That's why I favour having more mods and more IKs, to keep discussion flowing, to engage in discussions to try to defuse them, to give an outlet so the contentious discussions that go on for too long can be diffused when they've run their course; to give people encouragement to post better and more tolerantly. And well if people refuse to be tolerant, that their ideas are the only correct and morally right ideas, well you have the ones who are stubborn and the discussion just goes nowhere, and those who are assholes; the latter should be discouraged more pointedly; and at least in the former the discussion should probably just be put on hold or shunted off to Debate Thunderdome if they care so much about it because at least there's something in it for people to engage them, a bright light, a prize at the end of the tunnel. In short, in a conflict between people who care, and people who do not care; I think that's a crux of the problem, because you can never make someone who doesn't care to care about something; and you can't make someone who does care very strongly pretend to not care just to be polite. I think recognize the root problem might proffer a plausible workable solution.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2021 00:14
|
|
|
fool of sound posted:Also Lib and Let Die and least a few of those are warnings to the effect of "you are close to a forum/threadban". Vitalsigns for instance isn't forum banned and honestly I'm perfectly happy to let his USnews threadban expire at this point since it's been a few months and he's been a consistantly good contributor elsewhere. Yep, and I definitely should have noted that it's a super rough estimate, sorry!
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2021 00:15
|
|
|
fool of sound posted:Also Lib and Let Die and least a few of those are warnings to the effect of "you are close to a forum/threadban". Vitalsigns for instance isn't forum banned and honestly I'm perfectly happy to let his USnews threadban expire at this point since it's been a few months and he's been a consistantly good contributor elsewhere. But this is just the reason they aren't a good tool in the first place. either use the probation function, or it isn't worth punishing over.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2021 00:15
|
|
|
Lib and let die posted:I guess I'll risk breaking the new rules (and being "the new spreadsheet goon") to answer this this is actualy rather helpful, I'm not totally sure it's a complete list but I've been contemplating the idea of making a central list and have usually concluded "well, that's a lot of effort, maybe I'll just do it on the fly as people violate forumbans" and then didn't do that either e: also what fos said
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2021 00:15
|
|
|
Lib and let die posted:I guess I'll risk breaking the new rules (and being "the new spreadsheet goon") to answer this You should search for 'don't come back', as that's a mod favorite
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2021 00:15
|
|
|
I got threadbanned from the Immigration thread for saying the FBI should be disbanded, which I'm more or less fine with because it's pretty funny.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2021 00:15
|
|
|
GreyjoyBastard posted:this is actualy rather helpful, I'm not totally sure it's a complete list but I've been contemplating the idea of making a central list and have usually concluded "well, that's a lot of effort, maybe I'll just do it on the fly as people violate forumbans" and then didn't do that either yeah, there's a few other things not counted for, I presume there's some variation in "don't post in this thread anymore," or "threadban"/"thread ban" etc, so it's really just a bird's eye vies of what it might be.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2021 00:18
|
|
|
Threadbans and forumbans were specifically an admin directive. The idea is that by using them instead of harsh punishments, someone who is a problem in one place but not others isn't denied access to the entire forums because they can't contain themselves in one specific area. I'm... torn of the efficacy really. For some posters it's absolutely worked, for others it's just encouraged a bad poster to be bad elsewhere instead, and for some others they'd probably have been fine to come back after like a week or something via normal probations. I do think that threadbans in particular have been overused lately tbh.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2021 00:20
|
|
|
GreyjoyBastard posted:this is actualy rather helpful, I'm not totally sure it's a complete list but I've been contemplating the idea of making a central list and have usually concluded "well, that's a lot of effort, maybe I'll just do it on the fly as people violate forumbans" and then didn't do that either That you haven't been keeping a list shows how worthless and arbitrary the system is. you don't even know who is on it. free everyone.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2021 00:23
|
|
|
fool of sound posted:Threadbans and forumbans were specifically an admin directive. The idea is that by using them instead of harsh punishments, someone who is a problem in one place but not others isn't denied access to the entire forums because they can't contain themselves in one specific area. I'm... torn of the efficacy really. For some posters it's absolutely worked, for others it's just encouraged a bad poster to be bad elsewhere instead, and for some others they'd probably have been fine to come back after like a week or something via normal probations. I do think that threadbans in particular have been overused lately tbh. I would say that they have not been used well at all. The bad posters that post good elsewhere don't actually exist, they were always good posters that got driven to aggro posting in D&D over months by the tedious little shits you let have the run of the place and never punish, but always slap the people who call them out on it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2021 00:23
|
|
|
fool of sound posted:Threadbans and forumbans were specifically an admin directive. The idea is that by using them instead of harsh punishments, someone who is a problem in one place but not others isn't denied access to the entire forums because they can't contain themselves in one specific area. I'm... torn of the efficacy really. For some posters it's absolutely worked, for others it's just encouraged a bad poster to be bad elsewhere instead, and for some others they'd probably have been fine to come back after like a week or something via normal probations. I do think that threadbans in particular have been overused lately tbh. This might be outside of this thread but if they're an admin decree why have they been given no technical support? It's very odd and feels silly to avoid using the tools we have, probes and bans, to use these adhoc tools that you're not even really keeping track of and then also not give you any way to make it a real system. It's really weird and something that I never understand about SomethingAwful. We're a gated community yet really hate the idea of using that gate.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2021 00:26
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 24, 2024 09:20 |
|
|
Gumball Gumption posted:This might be outside of this thread but if they're an admin decree why have they been given no technical support? It's very odd and feels silly to avoid using the tools we have, probes and bans, to use these adhoc tools that you're not even really keeping track of and then also not give you any way to make it a real system. It's really weird and something that I never understand about SomethingAwful. We're a gated community yet really hate the idea of using that gate. Preaching to the choir here.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2021 00:27
|
|