|
So another topic is threadbans. Across SA, this tool has been used sparingly, because it is difficult to enforce. There is no admin-level option to prevent someone from posting in one thread, and even if there were, it'd have to be re-applied every time the thread reboots. Moreover, mods already have a tool: we can ban a user. Typically a user is not threadbanned until they've earned one or more full-blown account bans, and it's used as a way of keeping someone who otherwise posts OK across the site from posting in one place where they keep earning ban+30s and similar. When mods turn over, records of who is threadbanned aren't always kept, since there's no central repository: at best, maybe it's mentioned in a probe reason and hopefully someone looks at a user's rap sheet when making future mod decisions. But this is unreliable. The reason we did not threadban anyone from the boardgame thread was that it would have been a huge leap up, out of proportion to what they were doing, and a misuse of a tool mods are instructed to use very sparingly if at all. The posters being complained about were both issued probations, and directly contacted via PMs. One of them has largely stopped doing the bad things and has been contributing to the thread in a positive way for a year, save one or two minor sixers for needling the thread: the other got ramped up to a hard probe, and when VideoGame stepped in, they tried gloating about Mayveena and got a stark warning that seems to have worked. On the evidence I would argue that the moderation actions taken have actually worked, in the way they're supposed to, by encouraging people to change their behavior and become good contributors to threads. I do not like to hear that there are people who have left the thread and never returned, because there is someone posting there who they know likes the game Kingdom: Death. That seems really unfortunate. But I do not feel, other mods do not seem to feel, four different admins explicitly said in the mod thread that they did not feel, that any of the posts by these posters rose to the level where a ban, much less a threadban, was appropriate. This speaks to a broader issue of thread culture vs. SA culture, perhaps. I feel responsible for protecting and promoting the culture that TG as a whole has adopted. I would like to think that I have some feel for what that culture is. Not everyone is on the same page, I think there will always be some people who want a rowdier atmosphere where some light trolling may earn a troll toll and you can say "gently caress you" to a person you're mad at, others would prefer a place that has no hostility at all whatsoever, and I think we have to find a middle ground somewhere. My impression at the time was that several posters in the boardgame thread were expecting to have their view of the culture of that thread aggressively imposed via probations and bans, and that includes not having people present in the thread who like Kingdom: Death, and, not allowing people to poke at the thread with some trolling. Which, I will reiterate, has always been probed, just not as harshly as some folks wanted. Magnetic North posted:I was trying to dance around the issues here, but the fallout from this Podima situation is making this all the more relevant, because it directly calls into question the judgement of the moderation team. This is not the first time this has happened. I hope you did not intend to imply that anyone on this or any previous TG mod team has ever done the things that Podima did; e.g., create and enforce an unsafe, exploitative, sexually charged and abusive offsite game environment and then actively pressure people not to make a fuss or break the game's fiction by complaining about it, much less take any action to protect players announcing they were being hurt. I put it to you that this is, actually, the first time this has happened. Unless there's something I don't know about a previous mod. Reene was officially a mod but actually not present on SA for some months before I was asked to IK and then, a couple months later, mod the TG forum in autumn 2020. Since then, potatocubed was a mod and then stepped down; Antivehicular! became a mod when potato stepped down, and Podima was added last fall, two days after the last blowup in the boardgame thread happened. Nobody else has been a TG mod, we have had some IK turnover though so that might be who you're thinking of. quote:Still, let's please not talk about specific non-mod goons or games or incidents without very good reason. Even if you disagree, I don't think the feedback thread will be well served by letting user X say that user Y sucks. I agree with this sentiment. It makes me feel gross to bring up and name people, like it's a callout. But I felt I could not explain my view of what happened, why, or get to a place where I can talk about what we should do going forward, without mentioning the key people involved at least tangentially. Especially given prada slut was already mentioned and he was not the poster that Mayveena communicated to us as having a big problem with, just not mentioning anyone going forward would have left that hanging. quote:Leperflesh is utterly reticent to dole out probes to fix problems for whatever reason. I say Leperflesh, but this would includes the other two mods who gave up their gavels in 2022. Not Antivehicular or Podima. I forget their names, since they both bailed nearly a year ago and were also bad at their job. Rather than hand out probes, they wanted to talk poo poo out. It's a noble thought, but one look will tell us it does not work, at least not always. This isn't some "We don't see the ships that were saved by the lighthouse" issue; we have threads that were rendered dysfunctional that possessed few probes. I think talking about my mod style is fair game and I encourage it. I don't know if it's helpful to talk about potatocubed's mod style, since he's not a mod any more, and I haven't seen him post here yet. Podima was only a mod for a few months but any moderation he did that people need to have reviewed can be reviewed, although I don't think sixers are really worth worrying about. I will let Antivehicular speak for herself. The boardgame thread was by far the worst most contentious and difficult moderation issue of my 2.5 years as a moderator. If it serves as an example that talking to people doesn't work, then let's talk about it. I have maybe been defending my previous actions but I do want to do better and I am absolutely open to change. It has been a little ironic to see a poster who cops the most reports and probes in a different thread, asking for the thread to have more harsh probes (I'm not talking about you here!) but that irony aside, I do want to hear from more people about this if they have thoughts on it. Talking vs. probations, I mean, or how severe a probation should be for trolling, or the level at which a ban should be issued. quote:My theory: I don't think Leperflesh likes dealing with the bullshit of modding. He probably doesn't like getting nastygrams from annoyed goons. (I did message these mods in the past for help and guidance, and I tried to be as forthright and understanding in this process as I could despite my annoyance.) I don't know the full extent of what goes into modding, outside excerpts from mods and IKs who have talked about it. Clearly, it is work. Volunteer work. Still, I can only have so much sympathy because that is what you signed up for. It's also not contractual; it can end whenever necessary and someone else can tag in if life gets in the way. Mods are granted special privileges for this position because it's necessary, but if he isn't here to spend some personal time using those mod powers to try and make the forum better, then we can only imagine that the reason for being a mod is he wants his little blue star so his long posts are marked as A Very Special Boy. I think that sucks. What I find extremely gratifying about moderation is success stories. When someone has been a problem, you talk to them, they agree to stop being a problem, and then they stop being a problem? That's awesome. It's also great helping to promote cool stuff that happens in this forum, solving problems for people, organizing fun stuff (and we need to do more of that). What I find very ugly about being a moderator is just handing out a series of escalating probations, someone is mad, they feel condescended to, other people maybe gloat a bit at their enemy getting a red stamp of disapproval. It's nasty and sometimes negative reinforcement works and sometimes it doesn't. Being yelled at sucks. I spend far more personal time trying to make this forum better by talking to people than it would take to just moderate via buttons. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Mar 19, 2023 |
#
?
Mar 19, 2023 21:41
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 8, 2024 15:51 |
|
|
Leperflesh posted:So another topic is threadbans. Across SA, this tool has been used sparingly, because it is difficult to enforce. There is no admin-level option to prevent someone from posting in one thread, How can you misuse tools that don't exist? Threadban has always meant "do not post here again or you will be probed/ban" and it's not exactly hard to enforce that. Why would a general ban have to happen before a threadban? That makes no sense and is backwards in every way. If a person is not welcome in a single thread they can and do continue posting elsewhere unless they cause more problems there too. quote:I do not like to hear that there are people who have left the thread and never returned, because there is someone posting there who they know likes the game Kingdom: Death. That seems really unfortunate. That's because no one left because people in the thread like a game they don't and you know that*. They left because you refused to do anything about the repeated garbage. You made Mayveena an IK but gave her no power to do anything about the issues she or others saw. Then you invented off-site Discord drama whole-cloth to shift the blame for her leaving. *Or you would if you knew anything about the thread. People talked about K:DM without issue long before Prada and Jarofpiss showed up or started showing their asses about it. quote:The boardgame thread was by far the worst most contentious and difficult moderation issue of my 2.5 years as a moderator. That's because you refused to take action on the one repeated issue despite almost every regular poster asking you to multiple times. It's not some mystery. When you refuse to stop the problem it continues being a problem. quote:I spend far more personal time trying to make this forum better by talking to people than it would take to just moderate via buttons. So you admit you don't actually do anything. Even in the Podima thread last night you made a long effort post that said nothing and people called you out for it. Word count does not equate to moderation. You protected the shittiest people that everyone in the thread wanted gone and drove away good folks that fought back against the gross poo poo. It's an abject failure of moderation and not even the only thread where it's happened in TG. And yes, the thread is settled now because you and those you protected won the battle of attrition. Congrats. Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Mar 19, 2023 |
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2023 22:02
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:100%. I RPed with Winson, I chatted with him from time to time, he was and I assume still is a Good Egg. Making the industry thread was a good idea and I am, hopefully we all are, joking about him taking "the blame." Yes, that was a joke. Winson is a nice man and I too have chatted with him on discord in the not-too-distant past and wish him well. Leperflesh posted:At least three, plus if I understand it correctly the old #partyhard channel on IRC is still alive. I think it's more accurate to say that many posters in TG also participate on discords where gaming happens. As far as I'm aware, there's just one active TTRPG discord that also distanced itself from Something Awful around the time Lowtax abuse stuff finally came out. It's still heavily populated with current/former TG people but not exclusive to them. A few others were created but are slow or died off. There's also the separate board games discord that's entirely its own community, albeit one sourced from here. Leperflesh posted:I agree with this sentiment. It makes me feel gross to bring up and name people, like it's a callout. But I felt I could not explain my view of what happened, why, or get to a place where I can talk about what we should do going forward, without mentioning the key people involved at least tangentially. Especially given prada slut was already mentioned and he was not the poster that Mayveena communicated to us as having a big problem with, just not mentioning anyone going forward would have left that hanging. To clarify, I only mentioned a specific poster because Bottom Liner dropped that username in the SAD thread on Podima. And as far as board game modding and sexism allegations... as a woman I'd agree that the phrase "difficult to work with" is a very fraught one to use. Especially as a descriptor from a man regarding a woman. I don't remember if that was the exact phrasing though, so if that not exactly what was said it's a bit different. If it was, it's pretty thoughtless and crass. It is also perfectly valid to release someone from some responsibility because of challenges working with them. I don't have any context or place to evaluate whether the IK being removed from the board games thread was appropriate or not, but "difficult to work with" in terms of misogyny ends up being shorthand for "filed reports with HR about being sexually harassed" tier things. And that elevates a lot of implications both on the behavior of the person in the managerial role and the victim/reportee and is a really serious accusation to level.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2023 22:23
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:Ignoring escalating probations for something. Singular very offensive posts get serious probations; some behavior will earn a ban or even a permaban. Merely being annoying deserves action, sure - but my style is to treat people like adults and talk to them and tell them what's wrong and what we want them to do or not do. Does this post come across as someone that cares about moderating a thread? Or is making any effort to listen to the members of the thread raising an issue with them repeatedly?
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2023 22:26
|
|
|
Nuns with Guns posted:And as far as board game modding and sexism allegations... as a woman I'd agree that the phrase "difficult to work with" is a very fraught one to use. Especially as a descriptor from a man regarding a woman. I don't remember if that was the exact phrasing though, so if that not exactly what was said it's a bit different. If it was, it's pretty thoughtless and crass. I gotta say that, and perhaps it's just me, but it's never occurred to me as being a phrase with any sexist connotations. I think it's a pretty big step to go ahead and imply someone's sexist for using that.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2023 22:26
|
|
|
Nuns with Guns posted:And as far as board game modding and sexism allegations... as a woman I'd agree that the phrase "difficult to work with" is a very fraught one to use. Especially as a descriptor from a man regarding a woman. I don't remember if that was the exact phrasing though, so if that not exactly what was said it's a bit different. If it was, it's pretty thoughtless and crass. Antivehicular used that phrase or something like it, and she is a woman, and she explained at the time that she didn't intend anything like that by it but it was an unfortunate choice of words regardless. I never used those words. Bottom Liner posted:Does this post come across as someone that cares about moderating a thread? Or is making any effort to listen to the members of the thread raising an issue with them repeatedly? I made that post very early in the troubles described, and kept up with the thread for months after that, up until VideoGames took over. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Mar 19, 2023 |
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2023 22:28
|
|
|
Folks are gonna disagree with moderation styles and decisions, but that's not misconduct or a reason to demod someone. That's just being part of a community.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2023 22:36
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:
GrandpaPants posted:Like what is the threshold of toxicity needed to get threadbanned? Prada actively trolls the thread and derails discussions. Like yeah sure some people take the bait and doesn't put them on ignore or whatever, but you could actually do something that the community has repeatedly called for? I mean if your intention is to make this place so unpalatable that most discussion takes place offsite, that's fine, but that's doing a poo poo job at being a community moderator. This is the post you were replying to, and note how it points out how its been an ongoing issue that you have refused to act on and how your repeated word dumps and talking things out fix nothing but give space for the behavior to continue which inevitably pushes out the people bothered by it. And that was your first post on that topic in the current thread, but the issue (and your responses to it) go back to the previous thread. dwarf74 posted:Folks are gonna disagree with moderation styles and decisions, but that's not misconduct or a reason to demod someone. That's just being part of a community. Sure, but how much of the community have to disagree with the moderation decisions until they change? Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Mar 19, 2023 |
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2023 22:40
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:I'm glad you dug up the actual quotes because I was thinking I would do that anyway. I'll add that in addition to the things you mentioned, I believe Antivehicular also had a PM from Mayveena alluding to this? I may be remembering that incorrectly. Based on what had been said up to that point that I made that post, it sounded as though Mayveena had been booted or fled due to something nasty, and I was not happy at all about that. Especially given she told me previously that she was getting DMs on that discord about her independent moderation decisions. quote:I was angry. I know you feel your discord has been unfairly maligned and I'm not on your discord so how could I know what happened? (If I am, please feel free to boot me, I don't even know which discord is "your discord" but I joined a bunch when the lowtax thing came out and I don't use any of them). After I publicly posted that question about the discord, you posted a defense and explanation of what had happened based on your own investigation. Thank you for doing that because it made things much more clear. As you said, the "game of chinese whispers" had been going on, the hint had sounded way worse than the situation you have described. All I felt I could do at the time was drop it because by then VideoGames had already volunteered to step in and mediate, explicitly asking people to contact them. I was convinced that any continued mod actions I took in that thread would just lead to more arguing - there was a total lack of trust and I don't think my continued involvement would have been healthy for any of us. I hoped that Podima joining the team (two days later on Aug 10th) would add another option for people, I let other mods deal with future reports from the boardgame thread, and even though I have lots of board games and love board games I feel like my presence in that community is no longer welcome so I'm staying out. quote:It's clearly still an open wound, and I am very sorry. I'm sorry that I brought up the discord at all at the time, but I wanted to defend Mayveena. I did not know which posters in the thread were on your discord but there had been at least a couple posters in the thread previously calling Mayveena out for her probation decisions and for all I knew they had done something bad via DMs on your offsite. I was angry because in addition to having some confusing and frustrating interactions with me and Anti and I think potato, and here was this hint that she had simultaneously been bullied on an offsite and what you heard from me in the thread was after I had to take a time out and not totally blow my loving top about it all over the thread.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2023 22:48
|
|
|
Bottom Liner posted:Sure, but how much of the community have to disagree with the moderation decisions until they change? If there's actual misconduct, sure. But a... What, two year old disagreement about moderation style?... Isn't it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2023 22:59
|
|
|
dwarf74 posted:You don't get to just declare yourself and the people who agree with you as "the community." I’m not declaring anything. I asked how many people have to ask for action before it happens because there were more than a dozen. It was a one sided thread issue too, it’s not like there was another group fighting for Prada and Jar. It’s apparently not enough for a dozen people, the thread IK, and the OP to all ask for moderation to stop problematic behavior. And what is this thread for if not to discuss ongoing moderation issues? This is not about something that happened two years ago, it’s about a pattern of non-action affecting TG threads. Great contribution, amazing moderation team \/ Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Mar 19, 2023 |
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2023 23:05
|
|
|
Oh man lol are people still on the same pearl clutching arguments about KD:M almost a decade after the kickstarter? Amazing community.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2023 23:08
|
|
|
Plutonis posted:Oh man lol are people still on the same pearl clutching arguments about KD:M almost a decade after the kickstarter? Amazing community. All I know about KD:M is that it has lovingly modelled monster buttholes and a lot of tits on its models. I have no idea if the actual writing behind it is edgy trash or anything.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2023 23:10
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:All I know about KD:M is that it has lovingly modelled monster buttholes and a lot of tits on its models. I have no idea if the actual writing behind it is edgy trash or anything. It's pretty much a Dark Souls ripoff from what I looked and the titty horror models are from an optional supplement. It's like saying saying a Bethesda game is for creeps if your only interaction with them is Loverslab (and well, if some Loverslab mods were also made by Bethesda).
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2023 23:14
|
|
|
Plutonis posted:It's pretty much a Dark Souls ripoff from what I looked and the titty horror models are from an optional supplement. It's like saying saying a Bethesda game is for creeps if your only interaction with them is Loverslab (and well, if some Loverslab mods were also made by Bethesda). https://i.imgur.com/2yqCGvQ.png The core rule book depicts gross poo poo but way to simultaneously downplay criticism of it and admit you aren’t really familiar with it. And again, that game was discussed long before the issues at hand came up. This was not about a specific game, this was a problem with 2 posters being extra lovely in the face of backlash about the game. Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Mar 19, 2023 |
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2023 23:17
|
|
|
Plutonis posted:It's pretty much a Dark Souls ripoff from what I looked and the titty horror models are from an optional supplement. It's like saying saying a Bethesda game is for creeps if your only interaction with them is Loverslab. If Bethesda had made those mods themselves then yes, I would take them to task for it as well.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2023 23:17
|
|
|
Tekopo posted:This is the first I heard of people sending DMs on the discord about her moderating decisions Do you see how this looked to me, though? She's not just pissed about being de-IKed, she's totally gone from the thread, which has a lot of people from your discord; I hear she's no longer on that discord; she told me previously people had DMed her about her moderation on there. I jumped to a conclusion that maybe she'd been mistreated there. Obviously what I'd heard was incomplete, and I'm sorry. quote:One of the main issues is that you didn't mention any DMs at the time, you just made allusions to it or tried to create innuendos about something that you had zero information on Bottom Liner posted:I’m not declaring anything. I asked how many people have to ask for action before it happens because there were more than a dozen. It was a one sided thread issue too, it’s not like there was another group fighting for Prada and Jar. It’s apparently not enough for a dozen people, the thread IK, and the OP to all ask for moderation to stop problematic behavior. You were not asking for "moderation", which was already taking place, you can check the rap sheets and leper's colony: you were demanding one or two posters to be threadbanned, specifically, with nothing less acceptable. What you got was still moderation, in the form of both mods communicating with with the people in question and securing agreements over what they would stop doing, and probations for subsequent posts that even just barely skirted the line. In May of last year, he was ramped to a full week for a bad post, subsequently he earned a sixer the following month, and Podima gave him another day off in November for a really really minor post that normally nobody would get probed for. Meanwhile, literally hundreds of normal posts in the thread. You are still super angry about posters who are just posting normally now. It seems to me that the moderation worked. I feel like the outcome is a good thread now. I hope that anyone who was avoiding the thread would go back to it. I would like to hear from anyone else who also thinks the thread is still in a bad place and needs more aggressive moderation. *** Kingdom Death is loving gross, Plutonis. We were told the pic Bottom Liner posted is, apparently, a "volunteer" according to the rulebook text but even if that's true, it obviously sucks, nobody should be recommending it to anyone, I really don't think we need to hash out that it sucks. Nobody in the boardgame thread is allowed to discuss it because it sucks. The mod decision back then was not to ban people just for saying they liked it or wanted to play it, Mayveena made a harder-line rule that it just isn't to be discussed in that thread whatsoever, and that has worked out well. I really don't get why some folks feel a compulsion to defend it when people mention that it exists and is gross.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 00:06
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:I gotta say that, and perhaps it's just me, but it's never occurred to me as being a phrase with any sexist connotations. I think it's a pretty big step to go ahead and imply someone's sexist for using that. It absolutely does, as well as other issues with any minority in a hostile work environment. It's very common corporate-speak for "will object to sexist/racist/etc. remarks aka get you in trouble with HR." Leperflesh posted:Antivehicular used that phrase or something like it, and she is a woman, and she explained at the time that she didn't intend anything like that by it but it was an unfortunate choice of words regardless. I never used those words. That does change the context then and it sounds like something that was already worked through to me. Still, it sounds sensible to try to recruit a mod or IK for board game thread to meet that community's needs. I'm not seeing a compelling reason for a thread ban though? If someone's being poo poo just probate them like normal. It sounds like the problem posters already stopped loving around anyway.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 00:08
|
|
|
Tekopo posted:The original KS had optional(CW) rape/forced impregnation minis. The stuff that's present in the core box is mostly okay, and I can understand people getting into it without knowing what was available in the kickstarter, but I wouldn't support them for the same reason I wouldn't support a wargaming company that had a KS selling SS patches or Hitlerjugend knives. ...That's one way to word this, yes.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 00:19
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:You are still super angry about posters who are just posting normally now. I am not “super angry” about anything beyond your inaction driving off good people that made the board game thread a better place in favor of lovely people that make it worse. I’m bringing this back up in support of others here that feel the same about your lack of moderation or problem solving across TG. I am also part of those “normal posts” in the board game thread, which I came back to only because Mayveena asked me to. I didn’t start the requests for thread bans. I didn’t demand anything. There’s no need for more aggressive moderation now, the damage is done and folks have moved on. You see that as a win so that’s that. Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Mar 20, 2023 |
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 00:21
|
|
|
Plutonis posted:...That's one way to word this, yes. (EDIT: I mean one example is Compass Games, which I've been incredibly weary of buying from recently)
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 00:32
|
|
|
For gently caress's sake, horny anime pinup minis for perverts isn't the same thing as fascism.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 00:37
|
|
|
Nuns with Guns posted:For gently caress's sake, horny anime pinup minis for perverts isn't the same thing as fascism. And graphic depictions of sexual assault aren’t the same thing as anime pinup minis And yet
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 00:40
|
|
|
I’m not really interested in arguments if fascism is worse or better than normalising rape, to be honest.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 00:40
|
|
|
Bottom Liner posted:And graphic depictions of sexual assault aren’t the same thing as anime pinup minis I already said I find the art in the loving rulebook skeevy. I don't own the drat game. I didn't give any money for any of that poo poo. I don't see a problem with trying to give the game a place to talk about it without everyone assuming you're a rapist for breathing on the game, either. That second kickstarter is still one of the highest funded board games on the platform and I assume most of the people who've bought or played it aren't chuds or creeps. Tekopo posted:I’m not really interested in arguments if fascism is worse or better than normalising rape, to be honest. I wasn't making that argument, but you can go gently caress yourself for implying I was.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 00:45
|
|
|
Nuns with Guns posted:I already said I find the art in the loving rulebook skeevy. I don't own the drat game. I didn't give any money for any of that poo poo. I don't see a problem with trying to give the game a place to talk about it without everyone assuming you're a rapist for breathing on the game, either. That second kickstarter is still one of the highest funded board games on the platform and I assume most of the people who've bought or played it aren't chuds or creeps.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 00:50
|
|
|
I would really rather not relitigate the Board Game Thread issue again, but I feel like I should make a statement here, so here goes: As mentioned, I am a woman, and I am well aware that phrases like "difficult to work with" are often used as HR-speak against minorities. It was a bad phrasing, and I apologize for it; I chose because I was actively having difficulties working with Mayveena at the time, and it felt like a direct expression of the situation, but that doesn't excuse it. I was a pretty new mod at the time, and I had never had any contact with Mayveena as a mod or poster before the situation in question occurred. We received a report about someone posting potential spoilers in the Board Game thread, and after I googled a bit to try and pin down if they were actually spoiling anything or not (it was unclear), I erred on the side of caution and gave the poster a "hey, be careful about spoilers" warning sixer, pretty late at night. I came back the next day to find a PM from Mayveena about how she was uncomfortable with it, because it was her thread to administrate, and suggesting that she might step down if she was "unneeded." This was an incredibly weird and offputting PM to get! If it had just been "hey, don't probe anyone about spoilers and other inside-baseball thread stuff, leave that to the subject-matter experts," it would have been reasonable, but she seemed to be opposed to anyone other than her taking any moderation action in the thread. I had, and have, no idea how to work with that, and when other issues got raised with Mayveena, that's what I shared. This was all very shortly after I came online as a mod, so I have no idea what was going on with the Discord group at the time. To try and rerail this onto the topic of how to handle the offsite rule, I want to clarify that membership or non-membership in any offsite group will never factor into any decision I make as a mod, barring something like Kiwi Farms where the group is actively harming people. I would really rather not hear about where people's Posting Enemies are posting elsewhere, or adjudicate arguments between Tradgames_Discord_1 and Tradgames_Discord_1_FINALDRAFT or whatever, but I'm willing to sort through PMs about slapfights if that means that people are comfortable with letting us know about predators and harmful situations in offsite communities that are affecting TG.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 00:51
|
|
|
Nuns with Guns posted:I already said I find the art in the loving rulebook skeevy. I don't own the drat game. I didn't give any money for any of that poo poo. I don't see a problem with trying to give the game a place to talk about it without everyone assuming you're a rapist for breathing on the game, either. That second kickstarter is still one of the highest funded board games on the platform and I assume most of the people who've bought or played it aren't chuds or creeps. For comparison's sake, would you be okay with people discussing LotFP products here? Like trying to find the "good stuff" that's not sex poo poo in say, Kenneth Hite's Qelong? I'm wondering if you'd feel differently if it was something in your own wheelhouse.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 00:51
|
|
|
Arivia posted:For comparison's sake, would you be okay with people discussing LotFP products here? Like trying to find the "good stuff" that's not sex poo poo in say, Kenneth Hite's Qelong? I'm wondering if you'd feel differently if it was something in your own wheelhouse. I've never read Qelong or know anything about it. Lamentations was discussed here for a while before people realized Raggi was a lovely person, wasn't it? Are the head devs of Kingdom Death: Monster politically lovely like him? Kingdom Death: Monster had tie-in minis from Pathfinder in its kickstarter, so does that cast aspersions on Pathfinder or its fans? It's a thorny issue certainly, but I don't know. It feels weird to flat ban a huge game like that, too. D&D, Warhammer, and Magic certainly aren't free of problematic content or questionable sexual themes in many cases, either.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 00:59
|
|
|
To be clear, I wasn’t equating promoting fascism and whatever KDM did, or try to make it seem like they are equivalent in terms of how bad they are, or any of that crap. But I’ve personally seen a company that I have bought games from in the past release games with names such as “Triumph of the will” and “Lebensraum” and that has personally made me never consider buying a game from them again, even though some of the games I have from them are some of my favourites. The equivalence I was making is only in terms of reaction: ie, not supporting a company that has made some incredibly dubious choices in terms of products in the past. I wasn’t attempting to make an equivalence about the two subjects.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 01:00
|
|
|
I would say that having reviewed a number of absolutely, terrible dogshit games, not a few of which had developers that are also insane or bad people, almost every bad game that isn't also boring has at least one small spark in it somewhere that's worth stealing and rescuing for a better project. And it's absolutely possible to discuss these games, and dig out these gems, without also praising the authors and condoning or excusing whatever lovely things they wrote/did/support.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 01:02
|
|
|
The absolute baseline for reasonable discussion in a general thread is that if a number of people say they are uncomfortable with a topic it should be shuttered off to its own thread. I think that’s the only fair way to handle it for everyone involved. Let KDM fans have their own thread like any number of other popular games if people aren’t comfortable with the content. But again this is misrepresenting the issue at hand because the game had existed and been discussed long before without incident. It blew up because the people defending it were doing so in childish and lovely ways like calling people pearl clutchers. Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Mar 20, 2023 |
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 01:07
|
|
|
Why not just prohibit discussion of the offending miniatures, period? Just pretend that they don't exist and talk about what cool this weird Fromsoft inspired monster looks like or favorite strategies or whatever?
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 01:09
|
|
|
The problem is that you then need to put on disclaimers every time you mention the game, because there legit might be some people that wouldn’t want to buy the game if they knew about the more egregious minis that were produced by the company. Which I think has happened in the past.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 01:14
|
|
|
Tekopo posted:To be clear, I wasn’t equating promoting fascism and whatever KDM did, or try to make it seem like they are equivalent in terms of how bad they are, or any of that crap. But I’ve personally seen a company that I have bought games from in the past release games with names such as “Triumph of the will” and “Lebensraum” and that has personally made me never consider buying a game from them again, even though some of the games I have from them are some of my favourites. The equivalence I was making is only in terms of reaction: ie, not supporting a company that has made some incredibly dubious choices in terms of products in the past. I wasn’t attempting to make an equivalence about the two subjects. I'm sure Kingdom Death makes most of its money on its titty figs day-to-day, and that translated over into the aesthetics and design choices of a lot of aspects of the board game, too. Going "Oh don't worry, we'll make some sexy male pinup figurines this time  " was a band-aid that doesn't address the issues with the other creep material in a way most gamers will ever care to consider.I'm sorry for snapping, I'm just worn out with so many first world luxury boutique things being fronts on the war on fascism, instead of the more banal and insidious (to me) kind of bad. Plutonis posted:Why not just prohibit discussion of the offending miniatures, period? Just pretend that they don't exist and talk about what cool this weird Fromsoft inspired monster looks like or favorite strategies or whatever? I think they're pulling more from the direct Berserk well, though From Software's games are obviously going to bleed into it at this point, too. The particular usage or implications of sexual assault and body horror and poo poo is way more directly Berserk at least. I guess it's worth considering how this forum approaches that comic, too, and how there's had to be a couple instance of cracking skulls because of background/side projects of the creator bleeding into discussion of Berserk. Which is difficult given Berserk is also one of the most influential mangas of all time.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 01:19
|
|
|
Nuns with Guns posted:I've never read Qelong or know anything about it. Lamentations was discussed here for a while before people realized Raggi was a lovely person, wasn't it? Are the head devs of Kingdom Death: Monster politically lovely like him? Kingdom Death: Monster had tie-in minis from Pathfinder in its kickstarter, so does that cast aspersions on Pathfinder or its fans? It's a thorny issue certainly, but I don't know. It feels weird to flat ban a huge game like that, too. D&D, Warhammer, and Magic certainly aren't free of problematic content or questionable sexual themes in many cases, either. No but the point is, I do know people who aren't chuds or creeps (and I mean IRL, not online) who did buy LotFP rules and products and would be upset to see them called either of those things despite a lot of the products in the line being pretty gross. However, the RPG community here has generally responded to discussion about LotFP by shouting down and trying to push out anyone who did read/play that game. I think it's a reasonable comparison to say that if you want KD:M discussion in the board games thread, we should open up LotFP discussion in the rpg threads (chat and OSR).
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 01:19
|
|
|
Nuns with Guns posted:I already said I find the art in the loving rulebook skeevy. You misrepresented the game as being just titty minis even though you’re aware of the more problematic content, which is why I think Tek’s response was apt.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 01:20
|
|
|
This is actually a good community discussion topic: when it comes to stuff like LotFP and KD:M, where there's a lot of skeeze but also apparently enough real game for people to want to discuss it, do people want that to be completely shut down? A lot of the issues with Board Game thread reports have had to do with otherwise-innocuous discussions that happened to involve KD:M tangentially (I remember one about horror-game mechanics where a harmless-sounding KD:M mech was mentioned), where it seemed inappropriate to mod just for the broad mention, but I'm willing to revise the policy if we want a broad-spectrum "do not talk about These Skeezy Games at all, in any context" policy for the forums.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 01:23
|
|
|
Perhaps instead of banning discussion of certain games you should just ban people being weird about them imo
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 01:26
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 8, 2024 15:51 |
|
|
Tism the Dragon Tickler posted:Perhaps instead of banning discussion of certain games you should just ban people being weird about them imo Yeah, that's just being sensible.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 01:27
|
|