|
Cease to Hope posted:I'm sympathetic, but it's a politics forum. It's a hazard adults should already be aware of. It should not be a unexpected trigger to have people being negative about the news in the political news thread. Think of it like a law against selling some really addictive drug that only makes you feel bad, but the sentence for conviction is just being physically unable to sell drugs anymore on one particular street, instead of prison or a fine
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 21:14
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 20, 2024 09:48 |
|
|
Jarmak posted:IIRC the other reason "doom posting" was made actionable was because of its negative mental health effects on posters. If this is the case, it’s kind of a weird thing and should at the very least be supported by evidence. There’s evidence that what people here might characterize as “doomism” is a healthy response that can lead to positive action. I’ve posted several other examples here before. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0074708 quote:Qualifications such as “global warming hysteria” and “energy policy schizophrenia” put forward by some climate change skeptics, usually outside the academic arena, may suggest that people who seriously worry about the environment suffer from psychological imbalance. The present study aimed to refute this thesis. While habitual worrying in general is strongly associated with psychopathological symptoms, in a survey a near-zero correlation was found between habitual ecological worrying and pathological worry. Instead, habitual ecological worrying was associated with pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors, and with a personality structure characterized by imagination and an appreciation for new ideas. The study had sufficient statistical power and measures were valid and reliable. The results confirm that those who habitually worry about the ecology are not only lacking in any psychopathology, but demonstrate a constructive and adaptive response to a serious problem. In the public domain, these findings may contribute to a more rational and less emotional debate on climate change and to the prevention of stigmatization of people who are genuinely concerned about our habitat and are prepared to do something about it (“habitual worriers are not crazy”). In the academic arena this study may contribute to environmental psychology (“habitual worrying is part of a green identity”), as well as to the literature on worry and anxiety (“habitual worrying can be a constructive response”). Seems like a half-baked policy by people who aren’t qualified to deal with strangers’ mental health online.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 21:22
|
|
|
I mean, for climate in particular I think it's fairly clear there are posters on Something Awful who absolutely do not "demonstrate a constructive and adaptive response". One of the hallmarks of climate doomerism here is that any action (maybe short of a complete restructuring of society or other more extreme proposals) is a pointless exercise that's just there to appease the populace that something is being done. I do agree that doomerism doesn't equate to being crazy or mental illness.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 21:25
|
|
|
CommieGIR posted:Is asking people to stay on topic making the forums better? Probably, given that each topic in D&D is usually focused on a single point I don't think a single one of my probations stopped me from posting how I liked and its not my place to say if any of my probations were unfair or wrong. I'm aware that a lot of my posts that could have been slapped were instead ignored because I was liked by the mod in one forum, and others where I got the backs up of posters in another forum that instead caught a probation and I've since stopped posting there. Epic High Five posted:These questions should be asked in opposite order, imho. Or maybe 1-2-1'. Gotta have a philosophy...gotta have a plan, even if the plan's gotta make room for volunteer staff and lots of unexpected stuff Yeah its a bit up in the air really. But there are a huge amount of probations that I look at in the lepers colony and I just think what is this achieving in the long run apart from teaching people that they can get their forums enemies booted out if they manage to rile them up enough to cross the line. I just think unless a post breaks one of the big rules it should be very rarely acted upon. Or to put it another way; My dog likes going outside to play in the garden. To get outside I have to unlock the door with keys that jingle when I turn them. The keys are always in the lock so my dog learnt that he can get me to open the door by nudging the keys so they make a noise. The problem is I don't always want to let him outside, yet he jingles the keys anyway because that's what he wants to do. And eventually, after hes been doing it for so long I finally get annoyed and let him out just to make it stop. Its been mentioned before that the majority of reports just get misc'd with no action needed but you will still remember the name of the poster reported, or the type of post being complained about. And if you see it crop up again and again over a period of time you eventually take action over it. The posters in this forum have been taught to jingle the keys.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 21:33
|
|
|
Cease to Hope posted:I'm sympathetic, but it's a politics forum. It's a hazard adults should already be aware of. It should not be a unexpected trigger to have people being negative about the news in the political news thread. oh, they expect it and they come seek it out anyway because they're absolutely addicted when the doomposting rule was first put into place there were several people who would regularly come to D&D politics megathreads to post stuff along the lines of "I read ten politics forums and reddits every day and keep having panic attacks over political news, how do I stop the panic attacks" or "politics is so hopeless that I really don't see why life is worth living, please convince me to continue to exist". folks got pretty sick of talking them through their anxiety several times a month most of the worst of those types have been forumbanned by now, though
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 21:35
|
|
|
Flying-PCP posted:Think of it like a law against selling some really addictive drug that only makes you feel bad, but the sentence for conviction is just being physically unable to sell drugs anymore on one particular street, instead of prison or a fine I don't buy into that analogy. I see "doomerism" deployed more as a thought terminating cliche to fend off negative commentary more than I see unconstructive nihilism. The latter sort of poster definitely exists, but I do see more people mad about would-be Arzys and Rimes. Main Paineframe posted:most of the worst of those types have been forumbanned by now, though yeah. past tense, not present.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 21:37
|
|
|
TheDisreputableDog posted:But it wasn’t a suggestion, it was a statement from Jeffrey that conservative viewpoints as a whole aren’t welcome here. That's good that you feel this way, and here's why. First, it's really hard to support most online attempts at advocating "breaking right on any position" because the "breaking right" is usually completely completely completely disingenuous — nine out of ten times it's just a conservative talking about a completely conservative position ... but they're rhetorically blowing chaff by claiming some form of "but this isn't/i'm not really conservative" status, an act which has become monumentally tiresome and consumed all manner of supposed identifications and contortionist labels, from moderate to centrist to 'i'm socially liberal and financially conservative'. So you're already working against that when you're upset about how people respond to even supposedly civil introduction of things that ever so gently 'break just right of center' — supposedly. And conservatism in the US and in most other republics has degenerated to reactionary nativist anti-intellectualism and the glorification of autocratic solutions, always that come paired with intentional sabotage of democratic systems to secure power by any means available to them. Conservative majorities have intense comorbidity to projects of clear but graduated steps to secure minority rule, spread out carefully enough to try to avoid acute and potentially effective reprisal. In some places this has already succeeded and given us the first test cases of using modern supremacist-nationalist conservative grievances to overthrow a functioning democratic process and replace it with a first stage complete autocracy. Because of that being the reality of conservatism as a movement today, it's impossible to afford it equal space and standing in an environment that is striving for inclusiveness. It's simply not going to happen. There is no advocacy for conservatism at present that won't ultimately come to benefit these ends. No other division among the remaining political spectrum is even close even if you include extremely fringe cases like weird revolutionary groups and keyboard regime apologetics for brutally authoritarian countries. This isn't new knowledge or even a truly post-2016 revelation. It existed beforehand and has no root cause in recent open radicalizations. And people maintaining online spaces have figured out that you have to make a choice between what you think is important. You can only choose efforts to artificially sustain an environment being 'welcoming' to conservative viewpoints, or you can choose efforts to keep an environment being actually inclusive. You can't do both. You also can't not choose; inaction forces an outcome one way or the other. As an example for how long ago this decision has been one you have to make, you can go back in time towards proposition 8, where forum moderators started discovering that letting people advocate conservative positions in their culture war meant they would openly and vehemently argue against allowing gay people to marry. And if they were given official cover to do so as equally officially supported viewpoints at the table of the 'marketplace of ideas' (or whatever) the inevitable consequence is that gay people would fight back but become quickly tired of places where people were given a safe podium to openly advocate against their humanity and inclusion and attempt to intentionally consign and constrain them to second class citizen status. You had to decide which was important to your environment: was it important to allow taking the fully standard, fully nationally endorsed conservative position on non-heterosexuals, immigrants and people of color, and trans identified people? Or was it important to you to make sure that your environment was not one where people of these identities would be forced to argue against and endure constant invalidations and advocacy for their active marginalization? If the people with the power to make these changes took the former option, everyone of an identity forced to endure these invalidations would largely drift away if not burn out wholesale, and the people left would radicalize in their homogeneity and cyclically drive out anyone not enthusiastic about these invalidations. If the people with the power to make these changes took the latter option, conservatives would complain that the environment was hostile to conservatives. You'll just have to deal with it. I cannot afford any sympathy otherwise, and it will always be this way for you as long as you do not personally abandon conservatism as a guiding ethos. The division between conservative political advocacy and anything else standing against it has cavernous gaps mostly created by the part where you cannot inclusively provide benefit and advocacy to conservatism without empowering an organized effort to dismantle anything about government and society which I essentially have to rely upon to live. I don't get great or complete protections the way things are, but I'll certainly take it over what would happen if modern american conservatism succeeded and brought the country to the inevitable endpoint of any nativist mob movements. It doesn't matter to me whether you think you are doing so harmlessly; witlessness even with a sincere lack of knowledge about what it would do to people like me is irrelevant to the issue of whether or not we should ignore the paradox of tolerance for the sake of making sure such views are supposedly to be allowed equal inclusive permission. Jeffrey is stating it as an observation, but I would add that this is why you're never going to have a situation here where what he is saying is not the sincere truth of the matter. And, more importantly, why I advocate that it never be. Nobody needs to posture or strive for an ideal of supposedly equal footing for opinions between rightist spectrum arguments and the 'everything else' category. If this place is hostile to conservatives, it is better than any other nonimaginary outcome you can actually get. If you feel this place is hostile to conservative viewpoints, that's basically just shorthand for this being a place that hasn't automatically failed at intersectional inclusiveness for those of us who have identities that nationalists and nativists paint very clear targets on.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 21:54
|
|
|
Here's an example of the type of doomerism that gets pretty tired and old, from earlier this morning. Zero effort, zero engagement, just a driveby poo poo on any expressed optimism or hopefulness. I don't particularly begrudge the poster for feeling hopeless, I've been there plenty, but it's not the type of engagement I'd hope for in D&D. That's the type of completely unconstructive nihilism I'd prefer people avoid.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 21:55
|
|
|
Kavros posted:. Agree with the whole post but I wanted to single this out as particularly well-put.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 22:02
|
|
|
tq has gotten bounced out of goon communities going back like 4+ years for exactly this poo poo. dude feeds off of the attention of people trying to talk him out of his depressive outlooks or something. idk precisely what the deal is but it's been going on for ages and it's never been about having a mutual discussion
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 22:03
|
|
|
How are u posted:Here's an example of the type of doomerism that gets pretty tired and old, from earlier this morning. The post it's replying to is its own sort of blinkered unrealistic nothing, though. I don't see a great difference.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 22:06
|
|
|
Cease to Hope posted:The post it's replying to is its own sort of blinkered unrealistic nothing, though. I don't see a great difference. Toxic positivity is a heck of a thing too
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 22:11
|
|
|
mawarannahr posted:If this is the case, it’s kind of a weird thing and should at the very least be supported by evidence. There’s evidence that what people here might characterize as “doomism” is a healthy response that can lead to positive action. I’ve posted several other examples here before. Yeah but it doesn't say that shooting your doom jizz all over a thread improves anyone's mental health or even the poster's mental health. And there's a big difference here between doom posting versus explaining the state of things. I think that's kind of the issue. I absolutely think its good for people to say, "Hey, look at this thing, it's really bad and here's why." The other stuff.....SA's probably not the place for that.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 22:12
|
|
|
Fritz the Horse posted:It's technically a positive feedback loop in that it's self-reinforcing. The effects on mental health are negative. A negative feedback loop maintains something at a relatively constant level like a thermostat. Positive feedback is "spiral out of control." A feedback loop that was negatively toward positive, one might say.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 22:33
|
|
|
On a more serious note,Raenir Salazar posted:A Excel spreadsheet that's like the Postinomicon/Adminomicon/Modinomicon(??? Still workshopping this) that's like a central compedium of modmin notes on problematic users, current thread/forum bans, and perhaps an automated tool like a spreadsheet formula to track ramps and probes would be a useful tool. Report improvements are planned, though any major overhauls are a longer-term project. There are plans for some shorter-term, smaller improvements. Epic High Five posted:I don't think it's limited to mod tools. It's probably admin tools as well. One of the reasons some threads had to go monthly was because the drop down page select box doesn't truncate the list at all so the box itself was getting so large that in super busy threads it was showing up as a noticeable strain on the servers. I can't even begin to imagine what a mess stuff like the front page is under the hood, all inherited of course as should surprise nobody To clarify, we received several reports that threads with multiple thousands of pages caused more issue for clients (specifically, web browsers locking up) rather than the servers themselves. UCS Hellmaker posted:Issue is everything with lepers colony and the probation system is all radium code, like it's literally a system he handcoded for the forums that physically should not be possible and somehow works. chooch or Jeff had said before that any real edits with that code is very iffy, because if something doesn't work well it tends to take the forums down as Donny goes nuts trying to write a report message. Aside from it being some of the worst radium code on the site, most of this isn't actually true. We've patched up a lot of the horrible gaps in it; for example, it used to be possible for a moderator to approve or reject any pending modqueue requests because it didn't bother making sure the person doing so was an administrator so long as they knew or could guess the names of the correct form fields. Frankly, I'd like to rewrite most of it, but there are infinitely more important things to worry about before that. Main Paineframe posted:the whole [report queue] thing probably hasn't been touched by a coder in ten years, and probably won't ever be. the system works fine for small numbers of reports and only a few forums get more than a half-dozen reports a day The Shortest Path posted:I find that the report explanation field isn't nearly long enough to give good explanations, most of the time. And PMing a mod to expand on a report reason feels weird unless it's something really serious. Epinephrine posted:I've run into this too. It's like I'm trying to tweet all the reasons a post sucks and I can't tweet storm. The report queue has had a handful of patches. For example, we added a courtesy 'reported post is NWS' checkbox that can forewarn mods that the reported post is not work safe in case they were modding at work. Report reasons used to be optional, meaning posts could be reported and mods could have no idea what the reporter was even complaining about. The server previously did not validate the maximum length of reports, which previously could cause some issues when clever people did some HTML editing. Report posts were slightly redesigned to facilitate a planned future change to enable multi-line reports once there's some better handling for it on the server side of things.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 22:57
|
|
|
How are u posted:Here's an example of the type of doomerism that gets pretty tired and old, from earlier this morning. I don't know why one person claiming "everything will be fine" is much different from another saying "no it won't". Maybe there is some context I'm missing, but claiming that incremental change is too slow to address the realities of climate change feels like a coherent line of thinking. Edit: same for fascism, even if I disagree. Cpt_Obvious fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Oct 28, 2021 |
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 23:11
|
|
|
Sorry to go off topic but it seems a fast way to do this — I’m procrastinating too much. May I have a two-week probation, please? Thanks. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 23:17
|
|
|
the searing glory of radium code never ceases to amaze 
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 23:19
|
|
|
I'm not as pessimistic as most about the future, but when I see someone make a low-effort optimism post like "don't worry, everything will be fine if we just elect more progressives  ", it's like nails across a chalkboard to me. It's just empty hope with nothing substantial, just as meaningless as the "everything is hosed, we're all dead in 10 years" posts.So why not try to offer something more substantial? There are a whole lot of threads here to just talk about things, but very few to talk about actually doing things. The mutual aid thread is the only one I can think of, and it's depressingly inactive. Let's have more threads for doing things. Hell, let's have a whole forum for it. Like a LAN for local activism. Is there a protest in your city and you need more warm bodies?  Is the Local 69420 on strike and they need snacks? Trying to organize support for a candidate, or running for office yourself? I know, goon projects and all that, but I think it really doesn't help to call someone a doomer if you don't offer them a way to make a difference. It's like telling a depressed person to just stop being sad.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 23:28
|
|
|
Cease to Hope posted:The post it's replying to is its own sort of blinkered unrealistic nothing, though. I don't see a great difference.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 23:41
|
|
God I fucking love Diablo 3 gold, it even paid for this shitty title
|
Cpt_Obvious posted:I don't know why one person claiming "everything will be fine" is much different from another saying "no it won't". Maybe there is some context I'm missing, but claiming that incremental change is too slow to address the realities of climate change feels like a coherent line of thinking. It doesn't seem to be claiming "everything will be fine", but rather "if X happens, everything will be fine". It doesn't take for granted that X will happen, it just refers to the possibility that X might happen and speculates on what it might lead to. It doesn't claim to be an absolutely certain telling of a future that's yet to happen. A lot of arguments in D&D spring from someone treating speculation as fact, and speaking with absolute certainty of what they think is going to happen for another three years or ten years or more.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 23:42
|
|
|
Ok, all the mods and admins are in agreement that casting aspersions on accusers is unacceptable. In theory this has been the policy for almost two years now, but some stuff has slipped by, and we'll make an effort to be more vigilant about it. This isn't to say that this is an automatic permaban, but it's an automatic harsh probe and/or a ban. We can't stop people from believing this in their hearts, but we can stop them from posting about it. However this is an issue: ScootsMcSkirt posted:or expresses that her assault doesn't matter when weighed against the "greater good" This framework would mean that any response to the question "how can you vote for Joe Biden in the face of Tara Reade's accusation?" is bannable as rape apologism. Vocally disbelieving Reade is bannable under the general "do not cast aspersions on accusers" rule, as is believing her account but arguing that, under their personal moral calculus, other matters won out. This isn't a theoretical catch-22 either, the hesitancy to formally ban it in the 2020 primary thread was in large part due to people doing just this, and I strongly suspect that these calls make a lot of posters who would otherwise participate in the MeToo thread hesitant to do so. This isn't just a D&D issue either; I don't think the games mods would be super happy about calls to ban everyone who still plays WoW for 'supporting rape' or similar, nor would CD mods probably allow liking Kevin Spacey's acting in K-Pax to be called rape apologism. Obviously these aren't a 1:1 comparison for a number of reasons, the point is that lots of wealthy and powerful people are awful, and acting in a way that benefits them is not the same thing as supporting them.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 23:46
|
|
|
Main Paineframe posted:It doesn't seem to be claiming "everything will be fine", but rather "if X happens, everything will be fine". It doesn't take for granted that X will happen, it just refers to the possibility that X might happen and speculates on what it might lead to. It doesn't claim to be an absolutely certain telling of a future that's yet to happen. X is "santa claus's arrival". it's not any more realistic than the supposed doomposting
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 23:47
|
|
|
Cease to Hope posted:X is "santa claus's arrival". it's not any more realistic than the supposed doomposting Asserting that a hoped-for good thing can't possibly happen is kind of, um, doomerism in itself.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 23:50
|
|
|
astral posted:On a more serious note, This is more a you question astral but it be nice if you talked more about what your doing and up to, it's interesting to hear backend stuff, or the reality of the 20 years of tech debt.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 23:53
|
|
|
Deteriorata posted:Asserting that a hoped-for good thing can't possibly happen is kind of, um, doomerism in itself. If the probability of an event that somebody puts hope into has a really low chance of being observed based on past history, measurable democrat response to climate change for example, then that hope is not valuable and begs for somebody to explain that. That explanation should be welcome.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 23:55
|
|
|
I think trying to manage 'doomerism' isn't necessarily a bad thing, but like moderating any charged topic it's going to be based on tone, context, and ultimately, interpretation. Being a "doomer" about say, the value of voting is frequently looked down on or mocked by the same people the will then turn around and literally doompost about the inevitability of the Final Form of Fascism should the democrats fail to get elected to a chorus of "sensible" posters reinforcing that idea.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2021 23:58
|
|
|
Deteriorata posted:Asserting that a hoped-for good thing can't possibly happen is kind of, um, doomerism in itself. Killin_Like_Bronson posted:If the probability of an event that somebody puts hope into has a really low chance of being observed based on past history, measurable democrat response to climate change for example, then that hope is not valuable and begs for somebody to explain that. That explanation should be welcome. The hoped-for good event is the Democratic Party pushing out its centrists yet still holding power, or (given the original context) having enough control of the Senate in the near-term to not need the centrists. There are several unlikely events there, all chained together. Santa Claus is more realistic, but it doesn't matter. Neither post is unacceptable. They're both just the posters saying more about their own outlook than anything substantive. There's no rule that every post has to be strictly realistic. There's no need for a rule like that. What the hell is the problem with that post?
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2021 00:14
|
|
|
Fister Roboto posted:I'm not as pessimistic as most about the future, but when I see someone make a low-effort optimism post like "don't worry, everything will be fine if we just elect more progressives The hard work of campaign volunteers has been regularly trashed in this forum, in the same way that work of other subject matter experts has been. Just ask the folks who worked to turn the VA legislature blue. They're never treated well for anything that improves the lives of real people and roundly mocked for any stretch goals that aren't achieved the first time around. They're harshly judged for not immediately becoming a perfect paradise regardless of how much ground is gained in the meantime. The people doomposting aren't looking for way out, they're looking to make everyone else as miserable as they are.
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2021 00:25
|
|
|
Cease to Hope posted:The hoped-for good event is the Democratic Party pushing out its centrists yet still holding power, or (given the original context) having enough control of the Senate in the near-term to not need the centrists. There are several unlikely events there, all chained together. Santa Claus is more realistic, but it doesn't matter. I'm agreeing with you and see no reason the doomer and the hopeful can't discuss things about their perceptions without a bunch of third parties rushing in to cry foul at the implications of advocating either side as the only acceptable stance. A discussion from two sides can happen, should be non-controversial, and even encouraged in a place called debate and discussion. Third parties coming in because they can't handle somebody else's discussion is what drove me away. I'm nobody and it doesn't matter but whatever thats my bit. Cromulent_Chill fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Oct 29, 2021 |
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2021 00:25
|
|
|
UCS Hellmaker posted:It's nice to hear that you've made progress on it, it's one of those things that is largely mod only and you or Jeff don't really talk about as a whole, so alot of information is pretty much from the ozma ask tell thread era or from chooch talking about it at least on my end. It's one of those things that largely no one really touched or talked about because it worked and was mod forum only. The bulk of what I have been working on recently has been dealing with technical debt in the forum infrastructure rather than the forum code. I'd rather not derail this thread any further with non-D&D-related technical stuff, but if you have technical questions, comments, etc. you're more than welcome to post them in the technical forum.
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2021 00:33
|
|
|
Yeah, I'm just frustrated, sorry. That's just so obviously to me a situation that doesn't need any intervention.
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2021 00:34
|
|
|
lol if you search 'everything will be fine' in dnd, every single use of it in the last ten months in dnd has been someone mocking the idea. I very much doubt there's a pandemic of people posting unrestrained optimism like that. dnd is by and large extremely cynical and pessimistic on both sides of the aisle and most of the debate is over just how cynical to be
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2021 00:41
|
|
|
I appreciate you responding and giving the 'official' mod opinion on this, though I wish it had happened much sooner. While I mostly just lurk, the metoo thread put me off reading dnd for months, and the dismissive way commiegr went about (not) addressing criticism didn't really give me high hopes this issue would be taken seriously. Guess we'll see.
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2021 00:43
|
|
|
Hi, I mostly just lurk the CA threads these days but I’ve been reading D&D since I first joined the forums and have learned many things from here, appreciated the effort posts, and have many times had my mind changed by seeing different sides of a discussion play out. While the Canadian posters are generally aligned in a lot of ways, I think we still have significant differences of opinion and I think that’s a good thing. I really like it when someone defends or challenges a viewpoint that I don’t hold—excepting hateful opinions of course—because I have lots of family and friends who have those viewpoints and it helps me understand them and why I agree/disagree. What prompts me to post is how the general CA thread was handled by a mod a few months ago. I’m not naming the mod here because this is not intended to be a critique of them personally. And I know people are going to read this post like I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, but the CA thread does not see a lot of mod intervention so the few times we see a mod those times stand out. Anyway, with zero notice, the OP of the old thread was copied to a new thread and the old thread closed. The impetus for this, when asked, was related to the large page count: Mod X posted:
The outcome kind of sucks, since the old thread was interrupted mid-conversation during some breaking news (and initially with no link to the new thread posted), while the new thread now has an OP by a mod that doesn’t read the thread, that none of the regulars are able to update.* Is it a big deal? Of course not. It’s just a thread, whatever. Send it to BYOB, I’d laugh. But since this clearly wasn’t intended to produce anything funny or interesting, I do think it would have been much better to to ask us to make a new thread and let someone spend the time on a new OP before everyone moved over. No one’s going to do it after the fact because the trigger’s already been pulled and everyone just wants to get back to posting again.I think this kind of interaction is just a symptom of mods that are paying too high a cost in time/stress when you see them not even reaching out for simple requests like this. It’s easier to just do it yourself, because then you don’t have to add another item to your todo list to check back later and follow up on. I’ve modded a forum before and so I know it’s a lot of work (this post is not me volunteering). For the volume of posters and posts we have here, on subjects that can be contentious, I think we just have way too few people trying to handle it. I know a lot of this thread is advocating for different mods, but I really have to wonder how much of the problem is just down to being stretched too thin. Only the mod in question can know why they decided to go with this approach to the CA thread, but that’s my take on it from the outside anyway. It wasn’t an urgent problem and it didn’t need a mod to be the one to address it, but that’s what happens when you’re stressed or pressed for time. Weirdly, and I know this is an unpopular opinion, I think at least part of the solution to “we want less heavy-handed mods” could actually be “add more mods/IKs.” People need breathing room to actually read threads and understand what’s going on in them and to do things proactively rather than just reacting to reports. And if you want it to be easier to remove a mod who isn’t a good fit, then you definitely want to be able to do that without significant impact on the remaining mod team, otherwise it’s always going to be a very high bar to clear. * It’s ended up being unintentionally hilarious because the OP is barely out of date even after our latest election though, so please don’t think I want this “fixed.” The 2019 OP is the OP we deserve.
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2021 01:35
|
|
|
Out of curiosity, where did my avatar go? Is someone handing out unrequested avatar blanks for avatars that are merely insulting? That's not really what the avatar blank functionality is for, is it? If you see an outright offensive avatar, sure, blank it without even asking. But a mild attempt at a weaksauce insult? Why bother blanking that? D&D doesn't need to be a no-redtexts zone. And personally, I think it's funny as hell if I manage to tilt someone so much with my boring-rear end posts that they actually reach for their wallet in an attempt to get back at me, only to waste their  on something as uninspired and boring as "#1 Hillary Fan".
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2021 01:45
|
|
|
Main Paineframe posted:Out of curiosity, where did my avatar go? Is someone handing out unrequested avatar blanks for avatars that are merely insulting? That's not really what the avatar blank functionality is for, is it? If you see an outright offensive avatar, sure, blank it without even asking. But a mild attempt at a weaksauce insult? Why bother blanking that? It's right there
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2021 01:48
|
|
|
Killin_Like_Bronson posted:It's right there
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2021 01:50
|
|
|
So is there an official stance on blanking avatars? Someone asked already but I don't think it was ever addressed.
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2021 01:51
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 20, 2024 09:48 |
|
|
Useful Distraction posted:So is there an official stance on blanking avatars? Someone asked already but I don't think it was ever addressed. The official stance is that they should only be blanked in cases of hate speech or similar, and D&D moderators have been blanking all red text they see on regulars despite that. It's been brought up repeatedly. The situation has not changed. It's jeff's pocketbook so whatever.
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2021 01:53
|
|