|
I gave D&D a try for awhile, and eventually gave up and left. The biggest reason I stopped bothering was less the mods and more the posters. A few years back, I spent a great deal of time on trying to make an informative, useful OP about climate change that specifically called out things not to post, useful resources for people (including sources for further reading and arguing with their climate-denying uncle), then steering the thread into having the kind of discussion I'd like to see. The thread felt like it constantly had shitposts, extremely tedious arguments, and doomerism anyways. The attepted focus of the topic (local actions, activism, and information) was ignored. People often popped into the thread to ask about things that were covered in the OP. My favorite example was someone trying to be helpful by posting an article they thought was neat that I'd included in the OP something like two years prior. I guess moderators could have cracked down on it more, but they would have had to probate a hell of a lot of people. As it was, they did nail a few people for worthless posts, and it didn't change much. That thread wasn't the only example. I came at D&D with the idea that effort might be rewarded, funnily enough, inspired by those great effort posts I learned so much from in the LF days: If I was responding to an argument, I'm Joe-loving-nobody with no credentials you know about, so if I'm making a claim, I should back it up with evidence, including linked articles and highlighting the relevant quotes. Rarely, someone would respond in kind. The "debate" portion aside--most people aren't doing anything of the sort--the "discussion" part rarely was interesting either; my feeling isn't that people are coming here to build a better understanding of issues. These days, I sometimes check on a thread and I might as well have gone to Twitter dot com instead. A tiny minority of posts have anything interesting to say, and I get the sense of people talking with authority and expertise they don't actually have, rarely bothering to back up anything they say, but rather just assuming the person they're yelling at ought to know about some niche piece of history or news they know about. Again, I guess you could try to moderate to encourage reading comprehension, but corralling a bunch of cats would be easier. Sometimes moderation isn't great--there's certainly been some examples of bias, as people have already pointed out in this thread--but I don't really know that the biggest onus of change on these forums is on the unpaid moderators in the unenviable position of dealing with hot-headed arguments. Rather, people should become the posts they'd rather see. Maybe I'm in the minority in this, but I'd love to see more in-depth, well-sourced, interesting posts that seek to educate, test ideas, or come to better understandings, or take time to cultivate quality new sources and discussions of them. Ultimately, D&D will be what the community makes of it.
|
#
¿
Oct 31, 2021 00:23
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 17:53 |
|