Larry Parrish posted:

i think the biggest problem with this subforum is that absolutely nobody knows what it's supposed to be for, not even the mods. some people treat it as 'd&d, but with different mods'. personally I would say it's the Marxist political forum since you can do most of the same posting that happens here in the d&d forum, and it's really hard to actually argue with a liberal because you just have totally different base assumptions about the world. others treat it as some kind of weird friend zone and only post about lunch and buying respirators to brave the Wal-Mart exclusion zone. it has a lot of people posting in it which doesn't help any of this. i don't even, ultimately, particularly care what it's purpose is, so long as it has one.

also, nobody reads the stickies in this forum because the mods usually have it full of stupid poo poo, so it might be a while before anybody answers

Gumball Gumption posted:

It's the politics forum where you can tell people gently caress you and I think that's good.

grieving for Gandalf posted:

I think more than anything, being leftists means we have a different attitude towards even what would be normally considered "non-political" topics. I want to say we're pretty much all in agreement that everything is political, which will definitely put us at odds with the denizens of other subforums that usually focuses on those topics

some plague rats posted:

It seems like the biggest problem with cspam is that mods and IKs seems to be chosen exclusively from a pool of the most annoying, thin-skinned losers on the site and there's no obvious way to get rid of them when they continually make awful calls that drive everyone insane. This is not uniquely a cspam problem but it's where you asked

Larry Parrish posted:

i think it's ok to have off topic poo poo but I don't think it's terribly ok to have off topic threads if that makes sense. the gaming thread is kind of an exception because there's a lot to talk about when it comes to politics in books and games and movies. music is a less useful discussion topic imo but related. parenting and gardening and etc have basically no place here and appear to just be chat threads. i guess you could make the argument that the gardening one could be about organizing community gardens but somehow I doubt it.

really queer Christmas posted:

Where CSPAM fails is that, its only rarely ever reaches that potential and is mostly a couple of megathreads that people probably use bookmarks to find filled with thread regulars that will post 100 times a day. The best threads in the subforum usually get maybe a page a day or even a week - if that.

If CSPAM had a lot more threads and less megathreads, I feel like this place would be a lot better. I also think making sure you have a diverse mod crew so you don't get like all of the mods coming from one thread deciding policy for the whole place when this subforum has really good posters, and really bad posters.

WampaLord posted:

Personally, I've never seen this happen in a C-SPAM megathread, I don't think it's an actual problem.

Megathreads are going to happen and while I'm all for people making new smaller threads, the problem is that if the new smaller thread ends up successful, it just becomes a megathread eventually. If the new smaller thread isn't successful, it falls back a couple pages and effectively dies. I don't get the hate about megathreads.

I also don't see what "rebooting" a megathread accomplishes, I haven't really seen a bunch of new posters come out for a rebooted version of a megathread that they weren't already posting in.

grieving for Gandalf posted:

I suppose there's a gradient here as to how related to the forum's "purpose" a thread is, but I don't know why a given forum's community can't have a little off topic thread about something. if there wasn't a desire for a parenting thread in CSPAM, it wouldn't be frequented and wouldn't be on the first page. but I think other people have a stronger idea of what a forum's purpose is meant to be than I do, which I respect

docbeard posted:

There's things I'm less fond of but rather than post about those (right now at least), my supper is ready and while I'm not gonna post about it I am gonna eat it.

Gumball Gumption posted:

I don't really care about chat threads, they don't bother anything and I think SA has a real problem with people not just passing by things they find annoying but are not harmful. But if you're talking about things like the weather thread or gaming, everything is political. Games does not want to hear endless bullshit about leftism in video games. Cspam does. It fills a role.

WampaLord posted:

I don't think it "hurts" but also it doesn't really gain anything either other than just making sure threads don't go too many pages, basically it's strange to me that people focus on "threads with lots of pages" as the main problem when they are not really a big problem. I see new people jump in to supposed "insular megathreads" all the time.

People calling honest descriptions of reality "doomposting" is a much bigger problem than megathreads, imo.

Gumball Gumption posted:

Also the alternative to current events threads that go off track now and then is something more like how D&D does it and everyone would be so mad.

Korean Boomhauer posted:

i read a ton of threads here but dont really post in them because theres people in there that can word things way better than i can and im mostly reading to learn for the most part

some plague rats posted:

It seems to be left up to the mood of each individual mod on that day to decide what the tone of the forum is, basically

Takanago posted:

The conclusion to this might just be that I'm a dumbass that doesn't know to check chat thread for misc. breaking news but I guess it would be nice if there were more room for single-purpose threads to cover specific topics.

Homeless Friend posted:

exactly. when i woke up and theres was a "florida building front fell off" wtf do i post? i was like climate thread I guess. I rest my case mods & gentlemen

Some Guy TT posted:

as someone who posts content and has to arbitrarily guess the best thread for it i would have guessed epstein but yeah it can get arcane sometimes

i do like having semispecialized threads in part because it makes me think harder about where a post should go or if it should even be posted at all

really queer Christmas posted:

The witchcraft thread was open for like two days before Larry "trolled it" by saying it was a bourgeois hobby and got thrown out for a week. That is not enough time to build a culture, that was 100% just mods deciding arbitrarily that now the thread is serious business.

Jazerus posted:

lol gently caress larry up man. gently caress me up. gently caress em all up it's fine. obviously you might get some pushback if you ban or permaban for shaky reasons but that's a good thing right? mod sass is part of the culture here but nobody is actually going to oppose an obviously justified mod action in any way that matters. you won't have a target on your back unless you show a consistent pattern of grudge-probating, either against a person or a thread.

not sure where the perception came from that cspammers are going to "come after you". it sounds really weird from where i'm sitting. like let me just lay it out flat here: there's a narrative that started around 2017 and has grown over time that cspammers are wild animals, uncontrollable and bestial and unable to reason about what might work in the moderation of their own subforum. it's bizarre and has its origins in obscure slapfights that absolutely should not be taken into account by the actual staff of this website, which is one of the biggest reasons it is nice to have this feedback thread. it shows that you're trying to avoid preconceptions. but you clearly still have them if you sort-of still believe these tales about cspam bogeymen

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

is because people in D&D with way too much time on their hands and the thinnest skins in human history got called lil homie gay rear end by someone with a NoJoe tag and have been screeching about it ever since

VideoKid posted:

I can be wrong but I don’t think anyone is seriously mad about a mod giving out sixers.

docbeard posted:

And, not for nothing, I get not wanting people taking cheap shots at D&D or wherever, but we're gonna have to talk about CSPAM's difficult relationship with other forums on SA sooner or later. If it needs to be later, that's cool but the problems there are real, they're not just limited to a few bad eggs (on whichever side) and they will not go away on their own. And I don't know what the solution is there either, but not talking about it isn't it. And that conversation needs to be at least as candid as the rest of this.

Iridium posted:

Out of curiosity, what is it that you're hoping to have in hand when this thread wraps up? I don't mean the feedback that you're soliciting, what specifically is it that you're hoping that the feedback defines or directs for you? And what's the outcome you're hoping for, the happy path where you have what you need and all is well at the admin level?

Are you looking to create a blueprint for CSPAM moderation? Are you trying to define where to get hands on or hands off in this forum? Are you just searching for deeper understanding of the nature of CSPAM? Are you, in fact, a CIA/FBI/D&D honeypot trying to shore up a list of posters to put on a watchlist?

I have thoughts and feedback but I want to make sure I understand the intent before I get in to any of it.

Tiler Kiwi posted:

my new feedback is that I like the above users av, and Root is a great game and everyone in cspam should play it

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

Well, sorry I worded it that way I guess, but cspam is absolutely treated as a den of violent maniacs lusting for death and/or fully blackpilled nihilist doomers itching to go on forum invasions and doxx wrongthinkers.
If it's outside the scope of the thread I won't bring it up again or talk about why this is, but I sincerely hope that in reading this thread you guys recognize that it's not only harmless, but one of, if not the best internet left community out there and full of people who are engaged with and emotionally invested in it

vyelkin posted:

Maybe we could have a stickied thread for new threads? Like if you make a thread you can post in there to advertise it or to see if people are interested before you make it, and bookmark browsers could be encouraged to at least bookmark the new threads thread so they see what's going on in the forum? I dunno, maybe that's stupid and we should just all be willing to make the extra click or two to browse the forum itself.

docbeard posted:

I genuinely wish I knew how to combat this perception given that the response in this thread to this topic from probably the most reasonable fair-minded admin we've got (no offence Shine, I think you're probably super-reasonable and fair-minded too, I just don't know you as well) was

Which reads to me like it's seen as a one-sided conflict that (a few posters in) CSPAM are instigating all on their lonesome against Poor Innocent Insert Other Subform Name Here. And while I certainly won't deny that this sort of thing happens, it's quite far from the whole story. We get "brigaded" about as often as we "brigade" (and I kind of hate that term because of what it implies about how posters should just Stay In Their Lane and certainly not post in two different forums), we get people demanding that our threads get gassed or moved to some other forum or that we be shut down on almost a daily basis in QCS (which sure isn't necessarily something that should be taken seriously, but it's probably a semi-useful barometer), etc.

docbeard posted:

We've seen in the not too distant past what happens when a single forum becomes the scapegoat for all of Something Awful's ills. I'd very much like that to not happen again to anyone, much less to my favorite Something Awful forum.

Gumball Gumption posted:

That sounds like a problem but I don't grasp why it's CSPAM's problem. What happens to someone who sends 30 messages and can't behave themselves in a public place? CSPAM can't kick them out.

Oh Snapple! posted:

Like we can't stop someone from doing something we don't know and have no way of knowing they are doing.

Gumball Gumption posted:

Ok, so who has the power to kick that person off of the website?

Oh Snapple! posted:

Like genuinely if someone is spamming out threatening or questionable PMs I would like them to not be here because that's going far beyond the basic venting I view copying posts to lol at as.

Gumball Gumption posted:

How often is the friends bitching coming from people who want to protect someone who sent out 30 harassing PMS to one person?
How often is it from people mad that the mods and admins made an arbitrary decision based on "gently caress this guy" and then tried to pretend it was backed up on more than just a personal dislike?

docbeard posted:

There are a couple of problems that I see here, and they're all problems of perception, which are the hardest to deal with because it doesn't actually matter what the facts are if most people believe they're something else.

1) Does "most of the problem posters I deal with are people who've been posting in CSPAM making fun of other posters" necessarily equate to "most people who make fun of other posters are a problem"? Or is it the problem of the doctor who forgets that there are healthy people in the world because they only ever see sick people?

docbeard posted:

2) Is this standard being applied to every forum equally? (The answer here is "obviously no" if you include FYAD, but we can exclude them as an outlier because they operate under different rules...er, for some reason, but I think it's still no).

smarxist posted:

i don't understand why it's anyone else's business what tone people take regarding an issue, especially contained within its own thread about the subject. if you want to argue that in some form or another "doomposting" (which isn't even decently defined whatsoever to anything approaching objectivity) is affecting other people's posting experiences elsewhere on the forums, then i'd say prove it, otherwise either start the thread you want to post in about a subject or go somewhere else, i really don't know why this is such a highly discussed aspect of CSPAM considering the aforementioned nebulousness, containment, and freedom to do/post whatever the hell you want anywhere else

Barreft posted:

e: What's an apprx. numbers of complaints from D&D posters about cspam and vice-versa?

Barreft posted:

That surprises me honestly, not that I don't believe you. The people in the threads, like others have said, make fun of people but it never seems serious and everyone is pretty chill. But then PMs are anon so of course.

Barreft posted:

I don't know, but D&D is way to up it's rear end to be the only political forum. When I'm at work taking a poo poo and I see a ridiculous tweet in awful app in cspam I respond with a "jfc" with no fear of getting yelled at for a shitpost while making GBS threads because I didn't make and proofread a document.

mcclay posted:

tbh i would personally like the admins in thread to address the pretty constant issues of mods and admins circling around poo poo loving terrible mods when they make poo poo loving terrible decisions that piss everyone off. Part of the reason why people are so loving super hostile to mod action, even to the point of harming the sub-forum, is because the memories of Lowtax and Flavius and the debacle with the under cover nazi mod and the hardcore banning of those who called him out are still p. fresh in everyone's minds.\

Some kind of reconciliation and attempt to bridge that gap about that poo poo, rather than push it under the rug and pretend it didn't happen, would probably help build a lot more trust on the user side of things

Epic High Five posted:

THAT SAID, I don't know how much the COVID thread even has to do with anything beyond larry taking a pot shot at the posters there for no reason, unless it's clarified that it's the source of a lot of reports, so I have no idea how useful this discussion actually is

Pohl posted:

Ardennes posted:

Okay use your words.

AnimeIsTrash posted:

People just want mods that don't interfere outside of probing people for racism and stuff like that. It should really be that simple.

Epic High Five posted:

This is true but when people whining about forums they don't even post in is proven to be a good way to get things changed in that forum for no real reason, a war footing must be adopted. Like we are a day away from some QCS regular posting "CSPAM is a politics forum, why do they have a cooking thread" and the thread getting closed because the rest of the regulars rush in to paint it as some kind of ultra low carb thread making people mentally ill,

Epic High Five posted:

if Athanos is posting here for some CSPAM context to better tell those idiots to pound sand, I think we'd all do well to provide it

Joementum posted:

I don't think there are any major issues with CSPAM that need to be resolved. It's the forum for shitposting about politics and current events and that's fine. If people don't like the posting in a particular thread, they can start their own (which mods should leave alone and not gas) and see if other people want to post there. If there are abusive or harmful posts, those should be reported for a mod to deal with or discussed with mods in PMs.

Please just let people shitpost in peace instead of indulging the few who have some weird grudge to settle or enjoy trolling here.

Raskolnikov38 posted:

except the other places want to get cspam closed and paint the forum in the worst light possible outside of cspam. like step into the China threads (which you should do anyway because they’re cesspits) and they all act like cspam is an unregistered agent of the PRC