|
D&D is a place where "happier" threads get to slowly die from neglect while "angry" threads burn like stars, leading to posting swarms. I don't mean the topics in the "happy" threads are themselves positive love fests, I mean they are there to discuss news and evens that are a bit more provincial. The Japan thread I guess would be an example of this - you have like 3-5 people posting most of the news, when a big news topic that is large enough to hit the international wire comes in more people flood in, looking for information on "what happened, what does this mean for x" type posts. And because the traffic is small enough, most people get their answers, they leave satisfied, to come back in 6 weeks when the next news piece hits. The historical trivia threads (flags, maps, presidents, political cartoons most of the time) are a similar "happy" style where you can go in, read a page, and not feel overwhelmed - there is no call to action, it is a thread to learn and entertain. People go there to learn something new or interesting. Axeil mentioned the LF prison reform thread as another example of this, but the information is slightly more contemporary and does have a call to action, on what should be done to change this. The police reform thread from a couple month ago was a pretty good example of that too - where you have 3-5 knowledgeable people doing most of the legwork with 1000 word posts about the topic itself. Everyone leaves happy, conversation mostly over. There is nothing more to learn - D&D now has their talking points on topic X for the foreseeable future. I think most people like reading those threads - you have them bookmarked but they're not a thread to go to everyday - you wait until you see 20 new posts and go check it out. There appears to have been fewer threads like this over time here, because people who are knowledgeable about X leave, because there is nothing new to learn about X, because there are fewer new posters who want to learn about X - and those people are going to end up going to /AskX instead to learn about it. "Angry" threads are current news - the posts never stop. The news never stops. Unless you are reading the thread every couple hours, you can't keep up. Quote something from 3 pages back? - no one cares, something else is here. See something you find interesting, but the tweet is 30 minutes old? Too late, you hosed up, conversation over. This is the worst part of USPOL, or UKMT, or AUSPOL - USPOL being the worst because it is the most active. At the same time, it can make these threads very useful, because you have 50 posts curating a personalized twitter feed, so it means I never need to go to twitter myself. The people still reading these threads have read everything else - saturated with info from the happy threads, ready to repeat it on command when they think it is needed. But at the same time, you're preaching to the choir - there are no more souls to convert here, but you're gonna loving try anyway. You end up reading the same arguments and defenses, over and over again. It never stops until someone gets ramped to a two week probe. The thread only gets better when you liberally use the ignore list - but that only comes in after you're so loving tired of reading the same thing from the same poster. After writing all this down, I have no idea how to square this circle. Some people come and read D&D for one style of thread, one for the other. Most posters can move between threads and change their posting style to fit. Some...just loving can't. They're looking for an argument, and will find one no matter what. And that is maybe because the topics being discussed have become life or death to the poster - if you don't agree with me on x, this will lead to my death. That really appears to be the answer for so many loving people here. How can you "win" against or change someone who thinks this.
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 00:28
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 4, 2024 21:31 |
|
|
Enforce not being an rear end in a top hat. The entire radioactive culture here is built on the idea that being on the right team entitles you - if not obliges you - to be a huge loving rear end in a top hat all the time. Like it’s always the same couple of dildos making drive by shitposts and personal attacks every time, this isn't complicated, and giving them sixers has just led them to develop hilariously overblown persecution complexes.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 00:33
|
|
|
Athanatos posted:Are arguments that bleed over into other spaces a common thing? It really seems to depend on the day. I find it happens more towards the weekend. If you ask around I'm sure you'd hear some talk about USPOL (The thread I spend the most time in here and is sort of about the overarching U.S Politics related topics that are in the news cycle) on weekends and "Weekend posters", which tend to be crossover posts from the GE thread. Typically I find the thing that tends to start the most heated flame wars and very personal arguments that go beyond simply debating are disagreements over Joe Biden as a candidate for President and whether one should vote for him or not and extremely strong feelings as to one or the other that lead to the personal stuff and dogpiling based on sides and what not. I would say there's a lot of that in the GE thread just as a default topic and if there's a chance for it to come up in the USPOL thread is usually when I start to think about bailing out for the day. There almost need to be specific rules about that and like how posting about Joe Biden is supposed to be done, particularly if he wins the election and thus becomes integral to USPOL's daily topics. Kale fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Oct 13, 2020 |
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 00:36
|
|
|
Definitely mod the woman who thinks that Pride is a bunch of degenerate sickos who make the cishets hate queer people, teach the fuckin controversy. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 00:38
|
|
|
fool of sound posted:Long before I was a mod I wanted D&D to encourage people to make more threads about smaller, more specific topics. Threads don't need to sustain a conversation indefinitely to be valuable, and specific threads almost always have much higher quality conversation than the D&D megathreads. If people have ideas for how to encourage focused discussion threads, I'm all ears. Barring technical changes like prohibiting bookmarks or some sort of auto tagging system, the solution seems pretty straightforward (albeit harsh) : if a topic looks like it should break out then a mod can create a breakout thread and largely prohibit discussion of that topic in the general thread. Eventually posters may learn to do this naturally but the current common posting method is entrenched enough that it's going to take a serious, although maybe not sustained, lift to make it reality. On a technical side possibly more suited for qcs, the report system needs a major overhaul. Even just being able to see if a post has been reported from the thread would be a major improvement, and there are a lot of transparency problems with the current system that I think result in some negative posts going unreported and moderator actions appearing inconsistent. One idea, albeit with foreseeable drawbacks, would be making reports visible but anonymous to both illustrate what someone is asking to be punished and, by virtue of semi-visibility, be motivated to put some thought and effort into the report. Finally, toxicity has been brought up repeatedly, but I really don't understand why toxicity is not aggressively punished with fast ramps. I understand the concern about silencing opinions, but my belief is that the toxic posting actually silences people who would post the same opinion without the toxicity, and the result is that some opinions seem to be shared largely by hugely nasty bullies seemingly allowed to run largely free. Mods should feel free to forever banish people whose goal seems largely to make others feel worse - if their views have merit then someone else will surely come along to express them without endless venom, snideness, or passive aggressivity. And it doesn't even seem like some grand purge is needed, given that a single long probe can turn a thread from a slog into a pleasant-ish read. SA has decided that serious racists do not deserve a voice here - why should the extremely toxic receive any less?
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 00:38
|
|
|
one of the biggest fuckups this sub forum ever did was the creation of “containment” threads where opinions that aren’t enjoyed could just be booted off. All it’s done is create resentment where groups of people just try to score sick ownz. As a result, this sub forum is also incredibly easy to troll, ive never seen a group of people gleefully champing at the bit to take any and every piece of bait laid out, to the point where a gang tag creates tizzies.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 00:38
|
|
|
PenguinKnight posted:one of the biggest fuckups this sub forum ever did was the creation of “containment” threads where opinions that aren’t enjoyed could just be booted off. All it’s done is create resentment where groups of people just try to score sick ownz. seconded, close the bubble threads. I understand having a GE thread for the election but it’s ridiculous that there’s two of them.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 00:42
|
|
|
I feel I need to voice my concerns about the Slow Mode. While I like the idea in theory, the time might be a little too high. Also it has been used in some awkward times that I feel has stifled potentially good discussion because of it. That is something I am sure can and will be corrected over time. Long term concerns are perhaps doing something about the never-ending gaslighting and whataboutism in much of D&D. For example we all know that Obama and W both have a ton of blood on their hands and pushed some awful policies but we don't need that same dog and pony show to come out ever five minutes. It hurts the threads badly, we see the same with the NoJoe people as well. There are valid criticisms to be had but using it to shame or doomsay constantly has become a big thing on the forum and has done a lot of damage. We need to find a way to keep the circular arguments out of threads. Maybe the solution is to have more threads and keep certain subjects in those threads to effectively quarantine them. I'll echo what a few others have said with the petty interpersonal fights have also gotten bad as well as the constant need to feel to either correct others and/or troll. I know with a lot of posters it is well meaning, at least at first, but it encourages a dog pile and derails threads. I do feel we need to help encourage more high effort posting. I try to set an example but I will admit that sometimes I am too guilty of not doing enough. One easy thing to start doing is having a rule of looking to see if something was posted in the last 2 or 3 pages of a thread. I know in USPOL lately it has been particularly bad where the same thing will have been posted by different posters every 2 pages. I don't think it is a huge ask to have someone check the last couple of pages of the thread to see if something has been posted already, especially if it a current event thread effectively.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 00:46
|
|
|
I created the polls thread because I wanted a place to talk about polls and electoral strategy and I wasn’t able to do that in the GE thread - and apparently enough people also agree that they find that topic interesting because it’s a fairy busy thread and doesn’t seem to generate much drama or reports. I think that means the system works - and is probably some proof that smaller threads with a narrow focus are good.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 00:48
|
|
|
It seems everyone seems to agree that the problematic threads are USPOL and the general election thread. They are two separate threads to discuss the same thing which in my opinion is already a bad solution its always going to lead to tribalism and us vs them mentality. I think the major contention is that the USPOL regulars just see it as issue of "toxic" posters and the general election posters see it as an ideology disagreement. I think everyone can agree with the points being made arbitrary and ineffective moderation, trolling, insincere posting and strawmanning etc. We don't need to make this a callout zone but the_steve isn't loving voldemort you can say his name, people have pointed out his IKing of the general election thread as creating a hostile posting zone but I mean me and several other posters could say the same of moderation in USPOL. In my opinion the last few iterations of modding in DnD have fostered and catered to a very narrow view of acceptable politics and anything contrary to that is probed and basically silenced, correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't that the whole point of creating C-spam in the first place. I don't have the post saved but Lightning Knight made a great post right before he stopped modding DnD basically saying that modding DnD sucks because you have a bunch of people that technically don't break the rules but are just decorum poisoned dumbasses that can't be debated or discussed with and just makes posting unbearable. Another complaint people are expressing how bad DnD is to post and read in this thread or lack of community. Say what you want about C-spam but we don't have these issues, several of the DnD mods and IK's are able post in C-spam without it turning into the shitshow it regularly does in the general election thread with the dogpiles and whatever else. I think the solution is just for people to get thicker skins and have clear rules and consistent moderation.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 00:49
|
|
|
Freakazoid_ posted:Long term, I really want something like the old D&D rules to come back. Probate all low effort posts, good punctuation, citing sources when necessary or upon request, that sort of thing. I miss those long effort posts replying to other long effort posts. Yes, it means having to argue with someone who's good at arguing for a position you don't like, but I often found it more insightful. I think something like this would end up being a natural result of slow posting anyway, but I wanted to make it clear what I want to see out of D&D. Do you, or anyone else free to answer this question, think there is value in having "Effort Post" threads? We've had something like that in the past in Sports Forums. Threads where you are expected to put effort and thought into posting. No one word replies, no quick sentence rebuttable. I don't think this is an answer for an entire forum, but maybe have some threads be "Put effort into your posts" is something worth trying? This also relies on the Mods watching the thread be the arbiters of what constitutes effort so it may not be viable.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 00:52
|
|
|
fool of sound posted:Long before I was a mod I wanted D&D to encourage people to make more threads about smaller, more specific topics. Threads don't need to sustain a conversation indefinitely to be valuable, and specific threads almost always have much higher quality conversation than the D&D megathreads. If people have ideas for how to encourage focused discussion threads, I'm all ears. This is a great question too. Threads do not have to be some epic megathread spanning weeks and months and years. Sometimes a thread is a weekend discussion that dies off. Any ideas you have that can foster things like this would be great. I think that also wraps around to "More community threads."
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 00:54
|
|
|
Athanatos posted:Do you, or anyone else free to answer this question, think there is value in having "Effort Post" threads? We've had something like that in the past in Sports Forums. Threads where you are expected to put effort and thought into posting. No one word replies, no quick sentence rebuttable. it could be a fun thing that people could opt into when they're making threads, clearly state it in the OP and let mods enforce it. but, as you mention, it'd just add more poo poo for mods to do and I think establishing a baseline of "actually have enough mods to do all the poo poo that needs to be done" has to be the first priority before adding more work (also making people capitalize things is Wrong though and has nothing to do with overall Effort levels)
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 00:54
|
|
|
Many of the problems that D&D has had is when there is a political impasse that can not actually be resolved by debate and discussion, lines are drawn, and eventually the entire topic is banned or contained because it remains unresolved. It's usually over things that people consider fundamental moral values. The "don't be an rear end in a top hat" enforcement is a nice idea, but that's been tried before, and it's led to people Calm Hitlering about rape and police brutality. As time goes on, the decorum breaks down because people on each side of the moral argument just start getting completely tired of having to relitigate it. Threads like USPOL are always going to be at risk of this. This is a diagnosis and I truly don't have a solution to it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 00:56
|
|
|
Athanatos posted:Do you, or anyone else free to answer this question, think there is value in having "Effort Post" threads? We've had something like that in the past in Sports Forums. Threads where you are expected to put effort and thought into posting. No one word replies, no quick sentence rebuttable. This ties in to the 'I would like there to be more threads' thing, but I'd be fine with people asking that a thread be 'high effort only' if they PM us and have a nice OP written up. There would have to be leeway for good faith questions, but we have a bunch of people in D&D who I know can make well-constructed arguments when pressed to do so.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 00:59
|
|
|
Phone posted:I'm being genuine when I ask this: Why have a feedback thread when you're going to funnel Certain Kinds Of Feedback into the black abyss of PMs? I've been in QCS a long time. I've seen a lot of these types of threads start off fantastic, and then get dragged down into "XXX is a bad mod," "No way YYY poster is the issue." I'm not interested in having judge and jury about specific posters and Mods at this time. That's not saying I'm not willing to have the conversation, but making an entire thread dragging individuals into the mud. This thread has been fantastic for the most part and having it degrade to pointing figures and arguments is not a great way to find out how D&D can be better.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 00:59
|
|
|
BRAKE FOR MOOSE posted:Many of the problems that D&D has had is when there is a political impasse that can not actually be resolved by debate and discussion, lines are drawn, and eventually the entire topic is banned or contained because it remains unresolved. It's usually over things that people consider fundamental moral values. The "don't be an rear end in a top hat" enforcement is a nice idea, but that's been tried before, and it's led to people Calm Hitlering about rape and police brutality. As time goes on, the decorum breaks down because people on each side of the moral argument just start getting completely tired of having to relitigate it. Threads like USPOL are always going to be at risk of this. This is a diagnosis and I truly don't have a solution to it. There is literally no reason to tolerate Calm Hitler poo poo either.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 00:59
|
|
|
I agree - I think a lot of what we’re taking about boils down to something simple: D&D needs a rule that you shouldn’t post like a toxic rear end in a top hat. Right now some posters do and they have an outsize effect on discussions and drag them down. I think it would help if we could generally accept that posting on a dying comedy forum is not the end all be all of political activism and that the stakes here are quite low - as far as I know nobody has the agency to fix a lot of the problems that we’re facing. I too don’t want a calm Hitler poster, but I think D&Ds current rules actually are more likely to enable that in that they focus solely are handing out punishment for breaking fairly strict rules (when they’re enforced at all). And we can stop that too if it comes up, it’s not mutually exclusive. Let’s cut down on the toxicity first and then can deal with other issues as they arise.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:01
|
|
|
I have some thoughts to post in here when I have a bit more time later, but for now let me just signal boost this:Raskolnikov38 posted:gjb and hs are decent IKs but my suggestion is to see if like 8 mods of different forums that don’t post in dnd would be willing to be part time mods of dnd. if this is the most difficult to mod forum, then bring in some experienced ringers for a while Also quickly Athanatos posted:The IK assignment varies wildly between forums. Some places it's random and you just do fun stuff with your buttons for a while. Other forums, like D&D, they are just Jr Mods who read what they can and respond to flare ups. They are not meant to be the end all be all of moderation in a place and should just be a small extension of a mods eyes. In addition to agreeing that dnd badly need more mods and Iks, I want to also add that one of the single biggest things that would help here is just people self policing more. The vast majority of what I have probated in my time as an IK is some low effort or aggressive poo poo that someone slammed out in 10 seconds and didn't give a second thought to. A huge amount of the aggressive white noise in DnD would be avoided just by people taking 5 seconds to proof read a post and asking 'does this add anything? am I being a dick?' and then deciding whether to close the window or to hit post. Also I don't think I realized until I became an ik just how easy it is to fire off stupid posts like that or how cumulatively tedious they can make the place. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Oct 13, 2020 |
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:03
|
|
|
PenguinKnight posted:As a result, this sub forum is also incredibly easy to troll, ive never seen a group of people gleefully champing at the bit to take any and every piece of bait laid out, to the point where a gang tag creates tizzies. A forum designated for arguments where people respond to arguments, you say?  And posting "things which millions of Americans believe in earnest" are definitely trolls and not, like, things people encounter every day. What I'm saying is this complaining about how a debate forum is easily riled into debate isn't saying much. The question is why bother? It's like throwing food to starving people and being "lol look how easy it is to get them to eat".
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:04
|
|
|
There was something that happened in D&D maybe a few years ago that I found upsetting. There was a thread about Venezuela that was mostly made up of Venezuelans and Venezuelan exiles/refugees. The thread had a lot of discussion about current events there and also history and personal family stuff and experiences. Then a bunch of non-Venezuelans who were big fans of the current government came into the thread and they basically just tore the place up. They uncritically, they called the people already there liars and criminals and stuff like that, and shouted down anyone who tried to talk who disagreed with them. Of course, the inevitable happened. Most of the Venezuelan posters left, some of the more easily roled ones got pissed off and got probated or banned, and the thread died and was locked. I enjoyed the thread, and it seemed like a major loss to me.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:05
|
|
|
SamuraiFoochs posted:The number of NoJoe types who I really dislike this. A person is not their gang tag. While I understand you are just getting across the type of person and I'm not calling you out specifically, I see so many others who will say stuff like "Well they have a NoJoe tag, they are clearly THAT type of person." If you want to judge someone by the content they put out, fine. If you immediately decide someone is not worth listening too because of 150px × 44px under their username, that's a bad starting position. SamuraiFoochs posted:unironically embody the dril tweet about "no difference between good things and bad things" w/r/t those who choose to vote, even for something that they publicly admit that they know is an imperfect alternative, and that the idea that they do vote for the imperfect thing means that they think it's great in every way is kind of shocking. I got into it with someone this evening on Twitter who literally said that because I called them out on the fact that I believe that voting for an imperfect option is better than literally the apocalyptic one, they called me a fool and said I'd be complicit in the deaths of millions anyway (vis a vis climate change) and that I'm a loving moron for having optimism for any reason, and they tried to say that I was arguing they love Trump which I literally never was, that sort of hing. I do hear a lot about Doom Posting, and Doomscrolling. Question for anyone, do you think a mod team should try and be arbiters of optimism in threads? What about if it gets to a point where someone is ONLY posting negative "we are all doomed" type things?
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:05
|
|
|
I've been posting in d&d since 2008 and I think it's largely fine. The most disruptive posters eventually get funneled out and it's the best source of informed discussion about politics anywhere on the internet. If anything, I think the subforum is more tolerable these days than it's been in the past. Anecdotally, I report far fewer posts than I used to. Flame wars, derails, and bad faith posting still happens but I think it's fine. I do think people quoting themselves to brag about some dumb prediction they had is obnoxious and should be probe-able though. I think such posting enables the extreme one upsmanship that goes on especially in USPOL. Other than that though, just keep doing what you're doing IMO.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:06
|
|
|
Athanatos posted:I think this goes along with building a community mentioned earlier. Was there something that held you back from making a Book of the Month thread? I just got slammed with a bunch of personal stuff mid-summer and didn't really have the time or energy to pull it together or be involved to a level that I thought was sufficient. Stuff is calmer now so it's on my to-do list in the near future. If someone else wants to take a crack at it though feel free. fool of sound posted:Long before I was a mod I wanted D&D to encourage people to make more threads about smaller, more specific topics. Threads don't need to sustain a conversation indefinitely to be valuable, and specific threads almost always have much higher quality conversation than the D&D megathreads. If people have ideas for how to encourage focused discussion threads, I'm all ears. There are some community building frameworks that might be adaptable to work for the forums in this particular context, I'll do some research and see what shakes out.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:07
|
|
|
As far as doomposting goes it's more about the absurd conspiracy poo poo and literal "might as well kill ourselves" type stuff than generic pessimism.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:11
|
|
|
I'd like to echo what a few others have: that I generally enjoy D&D and come here for the same reason I have since waaay back when it was CE. There is no other community on the internet (that I've found) with such a high quality pool of smart, good-faith posters that strikes a great balance between literally breaking news and long-rear end effort posts about obscure parts of the US Tax code. A large part of why this subforum has been something I check multiple times a day and have for more than a decade is because of the high quality moderation. I will caveat this by saying I mostly lurk, but I think the moderation here is about as good and consistent as you can reasonably expect in a large, online community of politics and public policy dorks. You guys don't get enough credit. Thank you. The problems that do exist are things that, quite frankly, could be solved by people just putting other posters on ignore. Tired of the No Joe's ruining some thread that you just HAVE to read? Ignore. See someone posting in bad faith to call out their posting enemies? Ignore. If people put half the time into managing their ignore list as they do posting about posters, 90% of this poo poo would just end. The poster above that said this is the easiest place to troll is right. If you ignore instead of taking the bait, the derail that you ostensibly hate will die that much faster. Handing out weeklong probations for posting about posters instead of smashing the ignore button seems like a great idea to me. I am also in favor of escalating probations for breaking the same rules over and over. It's on us to ignore toxic folks, sure, but at a certain point it's kind of dumb to even probate people if you know they are just gonna go to sleep, wake up, and continue posting the same garbage. Sub Par fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Oct 13, 2020 |
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:12
|
|
|
Athanatos posted:I really dislike this. A person is not their gang tag. While I understand you are just getting across the type of person and I'm not calling you out specifically, I see so many others who will say stuff like "Well they have a NoJoe tag, they are clearly THAT type of person." Doomposting is pretty easy to spot. In the polls thread, for example (which is the thread I read the most) every so often someone comes in and posts an elaborate fan fiction of Trump stealing the election and argues with anyone who tries to convince them that no, that can't happen. Its basically playing out anxiety over 2016, which is understandable, but that person would probably benefit from a 6'er as a chance to take a step back.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:12
|
|
|
Jaxyon posted:A forum designated for arguments where people respond to arguments, you say? D&D, for as long as I’ve posted in it, has never been representative of the average American thought. Most of the right-wingers are gone outside of maybe 1-2 token members., for instance.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:12
|
|
|
Athanatos posted:Do you, or anyone else free to answer this question, think there is value in having "Effort Post" threads? We've had something like that in the past in Sports Forums. Threads where you are expected to put effort and thought into posting. No one word replies, no quick sentence rebuttable. Well maybe have the wording as "Put some thought into your posts". After all not every reply to a post needs to be a paragraph when it can be a sentence. It matters more if there is something worthwhile said. Also what sort of timeframes can you do as probes? I think if there is going to be more moderation then perhaps 6 hour probes might be a little too much, especially if there is going to be some rule changes and behavior modification. Perhaps things like 15, 30, 60 minute probes would work well there, as well as curtailing the circle arguments and whatnot. Less of a punishment more of a tool to get people to chill out. You can keep the Sixers for actual infections. Just spitballing here.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:13
|
|
|
enraged_camel posted:That happens a lot here too. Fortunately it's contained to the GE thread for the most part, but that containment itself has proven imperfect, not to mention problematic, as it has given such behaviors and mindsets a place to thrive and become normalized (since anyone who challenges them is piled on and they either give up or are probated) and leak out to the other threads. And this Twitter argument I had earlier is literally making me need to contact my therapist, but I'm sure that person is so loving glad they owned me into oblivion for even trying to do good in the world. Like, this is literally and I do mean literally my life's work in various aspects so when someone comes at me like that it fucks me right up, and the irony is that it's not as different from the weaponized ugliness of the far right as they like to think. This is not  , it's me basically saying you can still be on some level ideologically right and still be a gigantic flaming rear end in a top hat and even if you have a potentially valid perspective it's possible to express it in a really destructive way. I've been TRYING to be better about it from my end, FWIW, because I've definitely been guilty of saying "just vote" if you're in a swing state, and while I still believe that to be the right thing to do, I also acknowledge that there are things about it that could be triggering so I'm trying my best to avoid it and stick to specific issue discussions rather than harping on publicly about actions or lack thereof.Athanatos posted:I really dislike this. A person is not their gang tag. While I understand you are just getting across the type of person and I'm not calling you out specifically, I see so many others who will say stuff like "Well they have a NoJoe tag, they are clearly THAT type of person." I didn't use the gangtag as a means to single out any posters as a principle (though there is a correlation, which let's be honest, is to be expected, even though someone shouldn't be judged solely on that), I merely used it as a general signifier of a subset of people who are, in essence arguing "Dems are not Left, ergo bad" and take it really loving far, and I used that specific label to put it in a context that someone reading this thread might be more likely to understand. Again, the triggering exchange to which I refer didn't even happen here so I'm drat sure not calling anyone out specifically, I merely used it as a jumping off point because it got me thinking about the issue that I do see, albeit more rarely now (without punishment at least) in USPOL for example.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:15
|
|
|
Epicurius posted:There was something that happened in D&D maybe a few years ago that I found upsetting. There was a thread about Venezuela that was mostly made up of Venezuelans and Venezuelan exiles/refugees. The thread had a lot of discussion about current events there and also history and personal family stuff and experiences. People posting from an ideological base shouting down a person with lived experience isn't unique to this forum, but it is a problem here as it is elsewhere. Not sure how to combat it, though. Athanatos posted:I do hear a lot about Doom Posting, and Doomscrolling. Question for anyone, do you think a mod team should try and be arbiters of optimism in threads? What about if it gets to a point where someone is ONLY posting negative "we are all doomed" type things? I think perhaps it's less a mood(who isn't depressed by Trumpworld?) and more a style of low-content posts, often badly copying dril tweets and other catchphrases. IE "I'd like to see trump wriggle out of this one!", "nobody said a dog can't play basketball" etc PenguinKnight posted:D&D, for as long as I’ve posted in it, has never been representative of the average American thought. Most of the right-wingers are gone outside of maybe 1-2 token members., for instance. Point being, posting things which millions of people believe in earnest is not a troll. It's just as easily an earnestly held position. It's like going into a synagogue and saying "I hate Jews.....haha you guys thought I hate Jews, look how easily this place is trolled" Jaxyon fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Oct 13, 2020 |
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:15
|
|
|
Athanatos posted:Do you, or anyone else free to answer this question, think there is value in having "Effort Post" threads? We've had something like that in the past in Sports Forums. Threads where you are expected to put effort and thought into posting. No one word replies, no quick sentence rebuttable. I don't want individual effort post threads. I want all of D&D to be effort posts. The only exception should be the chat thread, that's it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:15
|
|
|
Seven Hundred Bee posted:I created the polls thread because I wanted a place to talk about polls and electoral strategy and I wasn’t able to do that in the GE thread - and apparently enough people also agree that they find that topic interesting because it’s a fairy busy thread and doesn’t seem to generate much drama or reports. I think that means the system works - and is probably some proof that smaller threads with a narrow focus are good. It’s a good thread and a really good way to keep up on a focused topic.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:18
|
|
|
Athanatos posted:Do you, or anyone else free to answer this question, think there is value in having "Effort Post" threads? We've had something like that in the past in Sports Forums. Threads where you are expected to put effort and thought into posting. No one word replies, no quick sentence rebuttable. DnD is explicitly the effort forum. The rules already expect mods to evaluate what constitutes effort. They're just not enforced. Athanatos posted:
I address this in my post. It is absolutely a problem and needs to be directly addressed, in no small part because it becomes a social norm in and of itself. There is a lot of zero-effort posts responding to twitter headlines- not articles, headlines. These become the standard of discussion. It is also weaponized against others. Caring is treated as a symptom of ignorance, and a threat to the identity of posters whose behaviors on the forum revolve around seeking out and sharing reasons for despair.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:18
|
|
|
Epicurius posted:There was something that happened in D&D maybe a few years ago that I found upsetting. There was a thread about Venezuela that was mostly made up of Venezuelans and Venezuelan exiles/refugees. The thread had a lot of discussion about current events there and also history and personal family stuff and experiences. Yeah seconding this is something that needs to be prevented in the future. The original thread was super interesting. Hearing about what was happening in Venezuela, the history of how things got there, and local society from people who lived there or had family there was really eye opening. Hell, if I recall the thread even managed to crowdfund one Venezuela goon's way out of the country. And then the thread got shouted down by idiot Americans claiming they were all lying CIA plants or rich "enemies of the revolution" or something. It was really frustrating. Maybe more thread IKs who actually live in the country the thread covers could help? Those threads are great reads because of local perspectives. Or maybe more thread bans against posters who consistently shout down locals in their own threads?
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:19
|
|
|
BRAKE FOR MOOSE posted:Many of the problems that D&D has had is when there is a political impasse that can not actually be resolved by debate and discussion, lines are drawn, and eventually the entire topic is banned or contained because it remains unresolved. It's usually over things that people consider fundamental moral values. The "don't be an rear end in a top hat" enforcement is a nice idea, but that's been tried before, and it's led to people Calm Hitlering about rape and police brutality. As time goes on, the decorum breaks down because people on each side of the moral argument just start getting completely tired of having to relitigate it. Threads like USPOL are always going to be at risk of this. This is a diagnosis and I truly don't have a solution to it. I largely agree with this assessment. To add onto this: I don't buy into the idea that if only people effort posted more, D&D would be able to pull back on the yoke, and it would truly be a posting paradise. There's someone who regularly posts lengthy, well-researched, and thoroughly cited posts about the American immigration system, the political situation in South America, and how American foreign policy intervened in Brazil throughout the Obama administration. It's concise, there's citations, there's graphs... and it gets ignored. It gets ignored by the posters. It gets ignored by the IKs. It gets ignored by the moderators. I say "ignore" because it isn't acknowledged, and the same posters, the same IKs, and the same moderators wind up making the same exact argument that was refuted a week earlier in the same exact thread. And the cycle continues.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:22
|
|
|
The old D&D Venezuela was brought up a few times. I dont remember it quite the same way some other people do. A lot of it was just people agitating for a coup. I'd say ask Lightning Knight about it. He was still d&d mod then and was hands on in that thread. He should have some insight on what worked there and what didn't.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:24
|
|
|
I've been lurking D&D for a long time now, and it might be a sunk-cost fallacy thing, but I still find it to have best ratio of information to current events with a very solid reaction time. There's just no other place quite like it on the internet. I genuinely learn a lot here on a regular basis. A few posters have railed against the capriciousness of mods, but I don't think this place could provide what it does without a fair bit of discretion on the part of the moderation team. I think that the somewhat loose discussion tone contributes a lot to making the place and commentary feel genuine and relatively spin-free, and I feel like putting in place heavy-handed measures to strictly enforce avoiding derails and ensure that every post be of high-quality would hurt that. Just to be clear, there's quite a few things that could/should be improved, but I just wanted to throw my 2 cents in there. I think it would be a shame to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:27
|
|
|
Athanatos posted:I do hear a lot about Doom Posting, and Doomscrolling. Question for anyone, do you think a mod team should try and be arbiters of optimism in threads? What about if it gets to a point where someone is ONLY posting negative "we are all doomed" type things? I mean, it's hard in the year 2020 to insist that everyone be upbeat and optimistic, but there are definitely specific people who come in just to lament or destroy or "leftier than thou" that D&D would be better off without. A simple "pull up, thread" from a mod/IK followed by "please spend some time offline" 6ers would help. In a lot of cases, again, it's very specific posters who over and over again come in to the thread to catalog their pain and lash out at people who don't validate their pain, or as happened to SamuraiFoochs, rear end in a top hat who want to tear down those that are actually doing work because it makes those assholes realize how little they're actually doing to help, so they have to lash out at that.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:28
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 4, 2024 21:31 |
|
|
I like D&D. I should naturally like other people to make effortposts, so I can see the appeal of a return to oldstyle D&D rules (without discriminatory demands for standard punctuation and spelling). However I do not think effortposts are the only valuable thing here. I would say that community is, and venting is, and threads that allow these things should not be banished just because some other posters find them toxic. Even less because someone thinks all threads should allow debate, which often means a thread continually rehearsing the same old arguments and ceasing to be informative at all. So rather than a new set of mod rules from on high, I'd like mods to enable threads/communities to set their own rules and threadbans, so that eg a climate change thread can exist without denialists making GBS threads it up. I also wish that the 'news only' USPOL thread had not died, but since I wouldn't want to post the news to it myself I can't really complain. If anything can be done on the coding side now, a way to filter out posts without novel links would be great. Oh dear me fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Oct 13, 2020 |
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2020 01:29
|
|
