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exmarx
Feb 18, 2012


The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

fool of sound posted:

OK, so with feedback, here's where I'm at right now:

---Rename USPol to USNews; thread is in permanent slow mode
---Make it clear that when big breaking news happens, anyone can feel free to make a fast thread for that topic with very loose OP standards. Generally encourage people to make more threads.
---We put a big directory of threads on US affiliated topics in the OP, and people are allowed to advertise new threads there.
---Mods and IKs will monitor USNews and push conversations and arguments that last over-long into appropriate threads.
---Add a rule to USNews that any posted article or tweet should have a minimums of a sentence of two summarizing the context and what they find interesting, funny, or informative about it.

sounds good. agree that slowmode probably isn't necessary though.

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Majorian
Jul 1, 2009

exmarx posted:

sounds good. agree that slowmode probably isn't necessary though.

Personally, as a poster, I'm not a fan of slowmode myself. I type quickly, and I like to respond to other people's thoughts quickly in a quick-moving current events-related thread. But while I'm an IK, I'm not a full mod, so I'm also not one of the people who has to comb through the absolute boatload of reports that USPOL generates (that's why I frequently tell posters to PM me or the other IKs if they have a problem). It seems to me like fos, MPF, GJB, and the rest of the folks who are full mods, and who do have to pick through that mountain of reports every day, are putting in way more time and effort than is fair to ask of them, and having (temporary) periods of slow-posting is probably extremely helpful to them.

I wonder if instituting slow posting during peak hours (or, conversely, off-hours/"graveyard shift") would be a helpful thing. I'm just spitballing. If that's an awful, idiotic idea, feel ignore it - I come up with bad ideas all the time. But it seems like it could regulate the flow a little bit more effectively and less obtrusively than just having blanket slow posting implemented.

Majorian fucked around with this message at 09:53 on Jan 12, 2021

Unormal
Nov 16, 2004

Mod sass? This evening?! But the cakes aren't ready! THE CAKES!
Fun Shoe
The reason splitting news posts and chat posts into different threads doesn't work, and hasn't worked, is that the whole point is to post news and then have everyone chat about it and when you split them up neither of them work.

KillHour
Oct 28, 2007


Unormal posted:

The reason splitting news posts and chat posts into different threads doesn't work, and hasn't worked, is that the whole point is to post news and then have everyone chat about it and when you split them up neither of them work.

I can only speak for myself, but that's not really my suggestion. It's more like a general rule of "Okay, this has stopped being the topic of the moment and new news is coming out, so spin the discussion y'all are having into a new thread" or "This was a derail to begin with, so if you want to have it, you're free to have it somewhere else."

Herstory Begins Now
Aug 5, 2003
SOME REALLY TEDIOUS DUMB SHIT THAT SUCKS ASS TO READ ->>
I'm strongly opposed to splitting dnd up like that: dnd doesn't even sustain a full page of active threads, so i'm not sure splitting off 80% of the activity to a subforum is necessary, or even serves much of a purpose besides artifically dividing the community. Like if someone makes a new thread, it's going to be on page one for as long as anyone cares to post in it once a week. I don't think a lot of discussion is being choked out or falling between the cracks because it can't get a foothold in the forum. At least not because of structural issues. Practically, a lot of threads that seem interesting just aren't what people show up here to read/post about.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
USpol is probably going to be a trash fire as long as US politics is a trash fire.

Helsing
Aug 23, 2003

DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU :love::love::love: JOE BIDEN
While it's worthwhile to experiment with different approaches one of the problems that I forsee with many of these proposed suggestions is that setting the boundaries of debate is itself a highly politicised decision. Obviously some degree of restriction on what can be said is necessary but the question is how to achieve the best balance.

Many discussions here about American politics get bogged down by arguments over the appropriate scope of the argument. This can be frustrating but I think that the alternative can be worse in many cases because it heavily biases the discussion in favour of a fairly narrow perspective.

Helsing
Aug 23, 2003

DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU :love::love::love: JOE BIDEN

Slow News Day posted:

I definitely did not suggest "putting a moratorium on debating controversial, traumatic or otherwise upsetting events for a month", unless your definition of "debate" consists of playing Dwight in the middle of a crisis.

But perhaps the distinction you're missing is that D&D is not just a debate forum, it's also a discussion forum. And USPol is really good about discussing current events, which involves sharing new developments, exchanging useful information and helping others gain insight into what is going on. Things don't have to be debated all the time, and it should be reasonable to ask people to tone down the contrarianism temporarily, especially if it might result in a derail (which is indeed what happened when that debate broke out). When someone claims January 6th was the worst thing a president has ever done, correcting them by listing All The Other Horrible poo poo Presidents Have Done serves no purpose whatsoever in that current context.

Post like a human being, and stop expecting others to go "beep beep, correction confirmed, thank you kind poster" whenever you tut-tut them.


I don't want topick on you but this is very silly and absolutely not a reasonable standard for a discussion about politics.

Kalit
Nov 6, 2006

The great thing about the thousands of slaughtered Palestinian children is that they can't pull away when you fondle them or sniff their hair.

That's a Biden success story.

Rigel posted:

I don't know why people are continuously obsessed with trying and retrying and trying yet again slow mode, it is a solution to a nonexistent "problem". It leads to complaints and hard-to-follow edited replies to posts that came afterwards. Maybe lurkers who don't post often will be happy, but I'm not sure why they get a vote.

FWIW, I'm a user who posts often and I am in support of permanent slow mode (ideally ~3-5 minutes, but since that isn't possible I'm still for 10 minutes). The reasons why I think it helps is for the following:
  • It cuts down on knee-jerk reaction posts, which seems to be a common way of slapfights to get started/continue (I am definitely guilty of this)
  • It encourages people to be caught up in the thread before posting. Granted, the flip side is it just encourages edits to occur well after the fact of the post, but I think people take a little more time and thought if they can't post until X minutes have passed
  • I imagine it makes mod/IK life a lot easier, since there's a lot less to wade through

My subjective view of this comes from the times that slowmode has been implemented for weeks in the recent past.

captainblastum
Dec 1, 2004

I think that there's always going to be a big US-centric thread where posters have a fairly serious discussion about current events, no matter where that thread is, or what it's named. Splitting it up or making a subforum seem like doomed attempts to me. As a mostly lurker - it's not that bad right now? It moves fast but a lot of that is the same stuff being discussed multiple times, which isn't the worst thing to me. It's bad when it turns into white-noise or aggressive attempts to lay sick burns on another poster, and that's the sort of posting that should be stamped out, in my opinion.

Egregiously frivolous reports should earn a probation. rear end in a top hat PMs about mod decisions should earn a probation or even a ban (that one quoted earlier deserves a ban +30 I think), those are above and beyond just being a jerk. Being a jerk in general should come with warnings and eventually punishment, we're not in a room talking, you can't just blurt something out - it takes effort to make a post and there's multiple opportunities to either change it or just not post it. Probe reasons could be clearer sometimes, but I don't think that they need to cite a specific rule.

Mods/IKs ending derails or eternal arguments with a "move on from this" post is more effective than it gets credit for, I think, and should be done more often, and earlier.

Is it still really hard to moderate on a mobile device or the awful app? If it is that seems like it should be the priority for any technical updates.

The Bloop
Jul 5, 2004

by Fluffdaddy
Problem(??): USPol is very popular and gets lots of posts
Solution: Break it up so it will be less popular

People can make other threads now. People obviously like posting in a combo-platter megathread of news and chat and occasional pet pictures. The fact that the thread is newsy and chatty isn't anyone's complaint, is it? Following multiple concurrent threads doesn't seem like what people want, so it doesn't seem like it will solve any problems, just make things less like what people seem to want.

A decision about the tone of conversation (no flaming shitposts, no inflammatory nobody tweet dumps, no calling people a nazi/lib/babykiller just because they are insufficiently left of Bernie Sanders) is good, and welcome. Order in the sense of people understanding the consequences for bad posting and the mod team applying those rules as consistently as possible, good.

But why change the thing people like about it? Again, if you want an in-depth thread about [issue], by all means start one, and even link to it whenever [issue] comes up in USPol.. but why erase a popular thing when that popularity is an obvious argument that it's mostly already what people want

Aramis
Sep 22, 2009



I feel like the primary problem is not the nature of the thread itself, though I'm sure some people have some gripes there as well, it's that the thread is nigh-unmoderatable. Considering that moderation is part of what makes these forums functional and moderators are unpaid volunteers, this is something that we should be sensitive to as a community.

Aramis fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Jan 12, 2021

fool of sound
Oct 10, 2012
Because the existing structure isn't conducive to good moderation or even good posting. It sucks the life out of other interesting threads in the subforum and eats up all our moderation time and resources dealing with dumb slapfights that nobody learns or develops from. A lot of people claim to like really lovely threads, but that's doesn't change the fact that they suck and have in this case sucked consistantly for years.

This Is the Zodiac
Feb 4, 2003

Ghost Leviathan posted:

USpol is probably going to be a trash fire as long as US politics is a trash fire.
It's this. USPol isn't the trash fire, US Politics is the trash fire, USPol just discusses the trash fire that is US Politics. USPol is fine. USPOL IS FINE.

If you are whining about USPol, you are taking arguing on the internet way too seriously.

Slapfights don't make USPol suck. Slapfights that mods or IKs participate in, and then end by banning or probating, make USPol suck. Seriously, it's not hard to understand why this gets people all riled up. If you want to participate in discussions, don't moderate them. If you feel the need to moderate a discussion, get the gently caress out of it or call in another mod.

USPOL. IS. FINE.

enki42
Jun 11, 2001
#ATMLIVESMATTER

Put this Nazi-lover on ignore immediately!

The Bloop posted:

Problem(??): USPol is very popular and gets lots of posts
Solution: Break it up so it will be less popular

People can make other threads now. People obviously like posting in a combo-platter megathread of news and chat and occasional pet pictures. The fact that the thread is newsy and chatty isn't anyone's complaint, is it? Following multiple concurrent threads doesn't seem like what people want, so it doesn't seem like it will solve any problems, just make things less like what people seem to want.

A decision about the tone of conversation (no flaming shitposts, no inflammatory nobody tweet dumps, no calling people a nazi/lib/babykiller just because they are insufficiently left of Bernie Sanders) is good, and welcome. Order in the sense of people understanding the consequences for bad posting and the mod team applying those rules as consistently as possible, good.

But why change the thing people like about it? Again, if you want an in-depth thread about [issue], by all means start one, and even link to it whenever [issue] comes up in USPol.. but why erase a popular thing when that popularity is an obvious argument that it's mostly already what people want

I think the "break out new threads as derails come up" model is way better than the "create arbitrary divisions and carve USPol up into liberal / socialist, reformist / revolutionist, dem bad / dem good" or whatever. I agree that people do want a one-stop shop for US politics stuff, and permanently dividing stuff doesn't make sense.

But taking a topic that's a multiple page derail and spinning off a thread is different than that though. The argument has already got to the point (usually) that only a portion of the thread is arguing about it, but it's sucking the air out of everything else and souring the whole conversation. By pushing those folks off into a seperate thread, maybe even one that doesn't have to be permanent, you can keep the argument going, it's not a huge distraction for people who are done with the argument, and it doesn't have to necessarily ban discussion of that topic forevermore in USPol, it just gives it an escape valve if the derail comes up again.

The F the police thread is a great example of this - it was born out of a multi-page derail in USPol, and while it's had it's contentious moments for sure, people can just avoid that thread if they don't want to get into the derail, and it's been way more productive than the argument was in USPol. Plus, it's not like police abolition is now some taboo topic in USPol - people were talking about it yesterday. If things start to seriously derail people can be redirected to that thread, but it's still perfectly fine to bring up police funding in USPol even though that thread exists.

There's also the side benefit of less drama from mods / IKs saying "take it to a new thread" vs. "stop arguing about this"

QuoProQuid
Jan 12, 2012

Tr*ckin' and F*ckin' all the way to tha
T O P

fool of sound posted:

OK, so with feedback, here's where I'm at right now:

---Rename USPol to USNews; thread is in permanent slow mode
---Make it clear that when big breaking news happens, anyone can feel free to make a fast thread for that topic with very loose OP standards. Generally encourage people to make more threads.
---We put a big directory of threads on US affiliated topics in the OP, and people are allowed to advertise new threads there.
---Mods and IKs will monitor USNews and push conversations and arguments that last over-long into appropriate threads.
---Add a rule to USNews that any posted article or tweet should have a minimums of a sentence of two summarizing the context and what they find interesting, funny, or informative about it.

These are all good. My only suggested addition would be to add a rule giving mods permission to punish those who post tweets with unverified conspiracies and unfounded speculation, especially from unverified randos. Back when Trump got COVID-19, the USPOL thread was overrun by people posting tweets that alleged Trump was secretly wearing an oxygen tank beneath his suit and badly Photoshoped images of Trump in the ICU.

Basically, I'd like people to exercise some degree of critical thinking when they see something sensationalist instead of copying the URL and slamming the post button.

Lib and let die
Aug 26, 2004

Can the new thread's OP include a specific statement on how old or fresh a topic needs to be for it to be something that will be allowed to discuss in a new USPol?

The 2020 Primary cycle comes up every so often in USPol and it's immediately shut down with directives from Ralph and Majorian alike that 'this isn't the place to re-litigate the 2020 primaries' but when 2016 or further back, or how the Republican Party failed to stop Trumpism during their primary cycle or something, there is zero pushback from thread IKs. It's clearly something that people still want to talk about, otherwise the IKs wouldn't have to rebuke people for bringing it up.

Maybe a discussion thread specifically for looking an intra-party politics within the democrat party is in order?

Main Paineframe
Oct 27, 2010

captainblastum posted:

I think that there's always going to be a big US-centric thread where posters have a fairly serious discussion about current events, no matter where that thread is, or what it's named. Splitting it up or making a subforum seem like doomed attempts to me. As a mostly lurker - it's not that bad right now? It moves fast but a lot of that is the same stuff being discussed multiple times, which isn't the worst thing to me. It's bad when it turns into white-noise or aggressive attempts to lay sick burns on another poster, and that's the sort of posting that should be stamped out, in my opinion.

Egregiously frivolous reports should earn a probation. rear end in a top hat PMs about mod decisions should earn a probation or even a ban (that one quoted earlier deserves a ban +30 I think), those are above and beyond just being a jerk. Being a jerk in general should come with warnings and eventually punishment, we're not in a room talking, you can't just blurt something out - it takes effort to make a post and there's multiple opportunities to either change it or just not post it. Probe reasons could be clearer sometimes, but I don't think that they need to cite a specific rule.

Mods/IKs ending derails or eternal arguments with a "move on from this" post is more effective than it gets credit for, I think, and should be done more often, and earlier.

Is it still really hard to moderate on a mobile device or the awful app? If it is that seems like it should be the priority for any technical updates.

There's always going to be a thread for discussing US current events, and there's always going to be threads for discussing the several endless subjective circular arguments that D&D's US politics buffs have been having nonstop for the past five or six years. What we're proposing is that those things be in separate threads. There's clearly a lot of people interested in arguing "who was worse, Obama or Trump", for instance, but they don't have to have that conversation in the current events thread and drown out discussion of what's happening currently. There's absolutely nothing current about that subject, and it's clearly one that D&Ders are perpetually interested in discussing, so it's a perfect candidate for a separate thread.

I just wanna be clear that "the current status quo, but with more moderator activity" is not an option here, because the current status quo is literally unmanageable, and that puts a significant damper on the ability of moderators to be involved. We literally doubled the number of people who had buttons in this forum and it didn't change a thing. USPol needs meaningful change. The question now isn't whether it should change, but how exactly the change should be carried out.

Gerund
Sep 12, 2007

He push a man


Lib and let die posted:

Can the new thread's OP include a specific statement on how old or fresh a topic needs to be for it to be something that will be allowed to discuss in a new USPol?

The 2020 Primary cycle comes up every so often in USPol and it's immediately shut down with directives from Ralph and Majorian alike that 'this isn't the place to re-litigate the 2020 primaries' but when 2016 or further back, or how the Republican Party failed to stop Trumpism during their primary cycle or something, there is zero pushback from thread IKs. It's clearly something that people still want to talk about, otherwise the IKs wouldn't have to rebuke people for bringing it up.

Maybe a discussion thread specifically for looking an intra-party politics within the democrat party is in order?

Its called polliwonks if you're being intellectually honest.

The Bloop
Jul 5, 2004

by Fluffdaddy
Having a news thread that is JUST for the news tweets and not for ANY discussion does have value, although I'm not sure how many people will contribute regularly

Other than that, I think one general chat thread and separate threads for in-depth analysis free of shitposting is the way to go

It's disheartening to hear the powers-that-be say that something extremely popular is lovely, like someone condescendingly telling you that you shouldn't enjoy Marvel movies or Steven King novels or McRibs or whatever. I definitely agree that the megathread is light on in-depth analysis and philosophical rigor, and that those things are valuable. I just disagree that they are the only things that are valuable. People obviously are getting something out of it or it wouldn't be such a big, problematic thread. Calling it "bad" is just letting personal preference override the obvious fact that posters are voting with their posts that they do, in fact, want it.


If it is truly unsustainable, that's one thing, but that's not the claim I'm seeing, at least not a convincing one.

fool of sound
Oct 10, 2012

The Bloop posted:

Having a news thread that is JUST for the news tweets and not for ANY discussion does have value, although I'm not sure how many people will contribute regularly

Re read the proposal

Insanite
Aug 30, 2005

Kalit posted:

FWIW, I'm a user who posts often and I am in support of permanent slow mode (ideally ~3-5 minutes, but since that isn't possible I'm still for 10 minutes). The reasons why I think it helps is for the following:
  • It cuts down on knee-jerk reaction posts, which seems to be a common way of slapfights to get started/continue (I am definitely guilty of this)
  • It encourages people to be caught up in the thread before posting. Granted, the flip side is it just encourages edits to occur well after the fact of the post, but I think people take a little more time and thought if they can't post until X minutes have passed
  • I imagine it makes mod/IK life a lot easier, since there's a lot less to wade through

My subjective view of this comes from the times that slowmode has been implemented for weeks in the recent past.

Slow mode in the 5-10m range seems like it could be a good thing for all of these reasons. It could also encourage more discussion in other threads.

How thoughtfully are you debating and discussing if you can't wait a few minutes between posts, anyway?

The Bloop
Jul 5, 2004

by Fluffdaddy

fool of sound posted:

Re read the proposal

It's the same. I guess I read it fine the first time.


I was making a different suggestion.

A thread JUST for news has value.

A general chat thread ALSO has value.

Breakout topic threads ALSO ALSO have value.

Lib and let die
Aug 26, 2004

The Bloop posted:

Breakout topic threads ALSO ALSO have value.

I think there's a hangup here about wanting to be the OP of a popular, long-running thread.

We need to normalize threads opening, running their discourse, and then dying. Naaaats, semen yah, ama bee see ma dah and all that. Not every thread is going to (nor needs to) turn into a 666 page, year long odyssey.

Jarmak
Jan 24, 2005

fool of sound posted:

OK, so with feedback, here's where I'm at right now:

---Rename USPol to USNews; thread is in permanent slow mode
---Make it clear that when big breaking news happens, anyone can feel free to make a fast thread for that topic with very loose OP standards. Generally encourage people to make more threads.
---We put a big directory of threads on US affiliated topics in the OP, and people are allowed to advertise new threads there.
---Mods and IKs will monitor USNews and push conversations and arguments that last over-long into appropriate threads.
---Add a rule to USNews that any posted article or tweet should have a minimums of a sentence of two summarizing the context and what they find interesting, funny, or informative about it.

I support this proposal and think the best thing to do now is to give it a try and then have a feedback discussion again after we have some data. There's even already implemented modding improvements that haven't fully born fruit yet so it makes sense to give everything a chance to shake out.

fool of sound
Oct 10, 2012

Lib and let die posted:

We need to normalize threads opening, running their discourse, and then dying. Naaaats, semen yah, ama bee see ma dah and all that. Not every thread is going to (nor needs to) turn into a 666 page, year long odyssey.

This is absolutely true. A thread doesn't need to run indefinitely to be valuable.

Rigel
Nov 11, 2016

When we say USPol is un-moderatable in its current form, by what metric or standard are we saying that? I've said in the beginning ITT that I do not recognize the existence of a serious problem, and I still don't.

Is it "if we can't properly respond to and adjudicate every report then we have failed?" If so, then why is that necessarily even an absolute requirement that must be met? It could be an ideal, something to hope and strive for, but in everyday life, we do not expect everyone who breaks a law to be caught or everyone who speeds on the road to be pulled over. Some people are just simply going to be lucky and get away with poo poo, but we all understand enforcement does occur, and just the credible threat of enforcement leads to compliance. If someone whines about their hated forum enemy's bad posting yesterday and how the moderation is uneven, then shrug and say "well, maybe they got away with something last night. We were busy, but next time perhaps they won't." If they keep whining, probe them.

Every past attempt to fundamentally alter D&D so that you don't have a thread which is a firehose of activity has failed, and I don't know why this would end differently. I believe that people are going to relentlessly whine and bitch and complain to the moderators about slow mode until they relent again, and they are not going to change their posting behavior of having one central post/discuss/react/argue thread about US news and politics.

enki42
Jun 11, 2001
#ATMLIVESMATTER

Put this Nazi-lover on ignore immediately!

Lib and let die posted:

I think there's a hangup here about wanting to be the OP of a popular, long-running thread.

I don't disagree that this exists but there really shouldn't be any reason to be. No one cares who the OP of a thread is past page 1, and it would be good to make people realize that. The OP of the coronavirus thread is threadbanned from it, and it's a super active thread. I couldn't tell you who originally posted any of the other threads I post in.

Aramis
Sep 22, 2009



The elephant in the room here is that a lot of people seldom visit the D&D homepage and rely entirely on bookmarks. Spinning off a discussion in a new thread is a good way to drastically reduce how much visibility and participants it will have.

I am all for normalizing thread creation, but I don't think it'll work/stick unless something is done to mitigate that.

fool of sound
Oct 10, 2012
I think compounding the issue is the long standing D&D expectation that OPs be high effort, and while I think that's important for long running threads, it doesn't need to be the case for temporary or experimental threads, and shouldn't be such a barrier to making new threads.

Raenir Salazar
Nov 5, 2010

College Slice
I like the idea of a USPol subforum where the idea is to that whenever a topic comes up the idea is to create a bunch of specific threads for discussing specific topics to make the whole thing easier to moderate (without cluttering the front page of D&D), I also like slowmode, 5 minutes would be better but 10 minutes is fine. For the problem of "how to follow a conversation thats a result of people editing a post to include additional responses" I dunno, I think maybe leaning on people to adopt a standard of 1 edit max to respond before they need to wait for the 10 minutes to expire, if in 10 minutes they still want to respond they can but 90% of the time I suspect people will just drop it as the moment passes. I think that would shut down a lot of slap fights without the ability for people to harvest that instant gratification.

Helsing
Aug 23, 2003

DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU :love::love::love: JOE BIDEN
Narrowly defined discussion topics can work in certain specific circumstances as an imperfect solution but they create a huge bias in favour of a certain viewpoint. To a large degree the people in a discussion need to collectively set the appropriate boundaries and then argue persuasively for them, and we need to accept that attempting to expand or shrink the scope of the debate is itself part of the debate and for the most part mods should let things play out organically. If one person thinks that Trump's victory was largely due to decisions made during the Obama administration and someone else thinks Trump's election had nothing to do with previous administrations and is entirely due to events during the campaign then I don't think the mods should be systematically favouring one of those arguments over the other. Each perspective should be argued for and against on its merits, because in many ways the scope of your analysis is one of the most important factors in determining your political beliefs.

I think this is also related to the electoralism debates. The fact most D&D goons wanted Bernie to win is a lot less significant than people might think. What seems to separate D&D's cliques is not policy per se but rather worldview. When people get called liberals the real meaning of that epithet is that the person in question has a certain theory of politics, political change and power. Likewise, calling someone a NoJoe or whatever usually implies that the poster has unrealistic or childish beliefs about how politics actually works in practice. The shared policy commitments are mostly secondary and its the underlying beliefs about lomitics that are really in contention.

My point here isn't that improvemente are impossible, but simply that we need to be clear about the actual sources of disagreement. I think there's less unity and shared values in D&D than the overall tenor of this thread would imply. What that means is that our ability to make sweeping changes is limited because the disagreements here are deeper and sharper than I think some peoole want to recognize.

Epinephrine
Nov 7, 2008

Lib and let die posted:

Naaaats, semen yah, ama bee see ma dah
The actual line is not gibberish, but "Nants ingonyama bagithi baba"; this first line from Lion King's The Circle of Life is an easy google. The vocalist was most definitely not cheering for semen.

How are u
May 19, 2005

by Azathoth
I have a suggestion regarding the issue of rap sheets full of dumb 6 hour probations that seem to have no effect whatsoever: spend a month or so moderating D&D and make the minimum probation length 1 week. Slap-on-the-wrist sixer? 1 week. One day off to cool down from an argument? 1 week.

I remember 15 years ago when I was first starting to post on Something Awful I was so god drat scared of getting banned that I barely posted a thing. When I did it was after really thinking about whether it was something worth posting. Even now there are times where I'll hit Quote, start to type something out, and then abandon the whole thing after thinking for more than 2 seconds about whether I'm going to post something worthwhile.

Try it out for a month and see how everybody likes the results. I think people will post better.

DTurtle
Apr 10, 2011


Rigel posted:

I don't know why people are continuously obsessed with trying and retrying and trying yet again slow mode, it is a solution to a nonexistent "problem". It leads to complaints and hard-to-follow edited replies to posts that came afterwards. Maybe lurkers who don't post often will be happy, but I'm not sure why they get a vote.
The bolded part came up a number of times. I think it might be good to simply ban "edit replying" to newer posts. If it is something important, then you can reply to it in 10 minutes. If it is something that is stupidly wrong and needs to be called out immediately, then 3 or 5 other posters will do it before the 10 minutes are over.

TheDisreputableDog
Oct 13, 2005

Main Paineframe posted:

We literally doubled the number of people who had buttons in this forum and it didn't change a thing. USPol needs meaningful change.

Perhaps increasing the number of mods/IKs didn't help because your (collective) moderation philosophy is the underlying problem here? A tenfold increase in the number of button-pressers won't help when they're using the buttons wrong.

Lots of people throughout the political spectrum have brought up fundamental issues with moderation itt that serve to both structurally narrow and sharpen the debate. The proposed response is an awkward and artificial disambiguation of what should be a natural conversation, and does nothing to address those concerns. The only proposal that even touches on moderation is the "this debate/argument is taking too long" one, which everyone not firmly in the middle of the overton window implicitly understands is going to be used as an additional excuse for silencing opinions mods don't agree with.

An additional layer of "this belongs here, not there" rules is not only going to generate even more spurious reports, it just band-aids a wound that needs surgery.

Owlspiracy
Nov 4, 2020


Helsing posted:

Narrowly defined discussion topics can work in certain specific circumstances as an imperfect solution but they create a huge bias in favour of a certain viewpoint. To a large degree the people in a discussion need to collectively set the appropriate boundaries and then argue persuasively for them, and we need to accept that attempting to expand or shrink the scope of the debate is itself part of the debate and for the most part mods should let things play out organically. If one person thinks that Trump's victory was largely due to decisions made during the Obama administration and someone else thinks Trump's election had nothing to do with previous administrations and is entirely due to events during the campaign then I don't think the mods should be systematically favouring one of those arguments over the other. Each perspective should be argued for and against on its merits, because in many ways the scope of your analysis is one of the most important factors in determining your political beliefs.

I think this is also related to the electoralism debates. The fact most D&D goons wanted Bernie to win is a lot less significant than people might think. What seems to separate D&D's cliques is not policy per se but rather worldview. When people get called liberals the real meaning of that epithet is that the person in question has a certain theory of politics, political change and power. Likewise, calling someone a NoJoe or whatever usually implies that the poster has unrealistic or childish beliefs about how politics actually works in practice. The shared policy commitments are mostly secondary and its the underlying beliefs about lomitics that are really in contention.

My point here isn't that improvemente are impossible, but simply that we need to be clear about the actual sources of disagreement. I think there's less unity and shared values in D&D than the overall tenor of this thread would imply. What that means is that our ability to make sweeping changes is limited because the disagreements here are deeper and sharper than I think some peoole want to recognize.

It's deontology vs. utilitarianism (or contractualism) and the worldviews are irreconcilable.

DTurtle posted:

The bolded part came up a number of times. I think it might be good to simply ban "edit replying" to newer posts. If it is something important, then you can reply to it in 10 minutes. If it is something that is stupidly wrong and needs to be called out immediately, then 3 or 5 other posters will do it before the 10 minutes are over.

Then you can't actually have a discussion, because by the time your 10 minute timer is up the thread ahs moved on. Slowmode is bad because it specifically discourages back and forth. It works in QCS because QCS isn't about posters engaging with one another, its about giving feedback to the moderators and admins. But in D&D it functions to essentially have people post disengaged commentary with no interaction.

It works well in theory for posters who want to read the thread through hours later, but it won't work in practice because the type of discussions people find useful, i.e. posters debating and discussing things and offering support for their points will stop, and then it'll just be a serious of disconnected "heres what I think" posts. Might as well call it "Post Your Favorite: Political Thoughts" edition and those same lurkers will come back and say "USPol isn't good anymore".

Owlspiracy fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Jan 12, 2021

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


fool of sound posted:

Because the existing structure isn't conducive to good moderation or even good posting. It sucks the life out of other interesting threads in the subforum and eats up all our moderation time and resources dealing with dumb slapfights that nobody learns or develops from. A lot of people claim to like really lovely threads, but that's doesn't change the fact that they suck and have in this case sucked consistantly for years.

Again, moderation can either get serious about enforcement or continue to re-invent the wheel of how forums are supposed to work to no effect whatsoever, and it looks like we're headed towards the latter. Again.

Making the minimum probe a week as suggested above is good. Ramping that begins sooner than after your first two years of shitposting might be helpful. Simple really.

Meanwhile, very little of this:

quote:

---Rename USPol to USNews; thread is in permanent slow mode
---Make it clear that when big breaking news happens, anyone can feel free to make a fast thread for that topic with very loose OP standards. Generally encourage people to make more threads.
---We put a big directory of threads on US affiliated topics in the OP, and people are allowed to advertise new threads there.
---Mods and IKs will monitor USNews and push conversations and arguments that last over-long into appropriate threads.
---Add a rule to USNews that any posted article or tweet should have a minimums of a sentence of two summarizing the context and what they find interesting, funny, or informative about it.

... Addresses any serious problem with U.S. Pol or is even a new idea. It generally appears to increase the amount of work mods have to do while actively discouraging people from posting in U.S. Pol, and will even have mods stepping in to end discussions in Debate & Discussion. Nothing about the atmosphere of the forum will change, it will just move to other threads at best.

quote:

Having a news thread that is JUST for the news tweets and not for ANY discussion does have value, although I'm not sure how many people will contribute regularly

It's virtually worthless; if I want to read the news I can go to my preferred news site. It will also quietly die, because what sustains forums and provides any value is discussion.

It's become an article of faith in D&D that the largest and most popular discussions can never be anything but a nasty trash-fire despite the ideological divide being shorter than ever. I would encourage people to examine new, simpler approaches to this problem, as it's a rather bizarre state of affairs.

Cefte
Sep 18, 2004

tranquil consciousness

Main Paineframe posted:

I just wanna be clear that "the current status quo, but with more moderator activity" is not an option here, because the current status quo is literally unmanageable, and that puts a significant damper on the ability of moderators to be involved. We literally doubled the number of people who had buttons in this forum and it didn't change a thing. USPol needs meaningful change. The question now isn't whether it should change, but how exactly the change should be carried out.
I'm going to quote myself from October, because I'm emotionally disinvested enough in the forums these days to no longer feel shame.

Cefte posted:

My historical impression was that any act of moderation that's intended to alter the nature of a conversation, rather than to provide a foundation for that conversation, invites massive blowback. This is a dangerously libertarian argument, and it amuses me that I'm the one making it, but moderation decisions that confuse evidentiary discussion about awful events with support for those events are more likely to stop subject experts from sharing information than user brigading, because it's one thing to be mocked by a peer, it's another to be silenced by a superuser. If a post is bad enough to deserve punishment, it should be a clearly bad post for a predefined reason, and it should result in a long probation or a ban. If not, it shouldn't be a moderation issue. Increasing the market supply of moderation decisions just eats mod time and energy and widens the appeal of using them as a tool to beat your forum enemies with - I really do think that the 6 hour probe is an abomination.

[...]

The last point synthesises the two above - mods and IKs shouldn't be part of discussions that they're moderating. That's not to say that they shouldn't engage in D&D at all, but if a mod joins a conversation, they shouldn't end up probating someone who was debating with them - it demeans the moderation process. If they've broken the rules, it should be obvious to someone else. Lord knows how that would work with IKs and their threads, but it comes back to what I naively remember as the USPs of D&D:

Back-and-forth discussion in a community of nominal equals (unlike Twitter, where unless you're a tick you're shouting into the void / simping a star)
An opportunity to express considered opinions and respond to the same (even when unpopular)
A firm hand on brigading / white-noise (from whatever quarter)

And at the point where people start probating their conversation partners with zingers, you've lost the community of nominal equals.
Since then, you've doubled your moderators, you're telling me the situation hasn't improved, it's hell on the mod volunteers, and we've had multiple complaints in this thread that new stars are engaging in subjective arguments then probating those who disagree with them.

I hope your thread-focus changes work out, but they strike me as a massive cost in moderator effort - you're down in the trench, picking threads of conversations and telling them they have to go somewhere with less visibility, on your own subjective assessments. It strikes me as unpleasant work for all involved. I also have to echo everything Helsing has said on this page - it's a dangerous road to go down when your moderators are trying to steer the bounds of debate outside of clear equally applied rules.

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The Oldest Man
Jul 28, 2003

The years when D&D had the harshest/most punitive moderation were some of the worst for absolute trash-fire-quality discussion. A lot of people were simply frozen out of the forum since the impression of wrongthink = ban became prevalent. So I dunno how either a) that's supposed to be a 'new idea' when it's actually the oldest one in the D&D playbook or b) how that's supposed to generate better discussion when it had the opposite effect in the past.

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