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serious gaylord posted:Hello this is a perfect encapsulation with everything wrong with the current moderation in D&D right now.The man got some mild criticism and instead of being normal about it just swung wildly for the worst reading possible while simultaneously being as dismissive as possible in tone. While I'm not a fan of CommieGIR "posting through it", as the saying goes, in all fairness they have been attacked relentlessly by dozens of posters for the past week and I can't blame them for getting increasingly more defensive and flippant. What really needs to be discussed is these coordinated harassment campaigns against D&D mods that certain groups of posters clearly dislike, and the particularly vicious and vile nature of the attacks. It's not a "both sides" issue either. I myself have voiced a ton of criticism against Majorian and the_steve in the past, but I've never accused them of being pedophiles or agents of <intel agency>, for example. Maybe people should tone down their rhetoric several notches if they actually want to see some positive change.
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Oct 26, 2021 20:19
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Pentecoastal Elites posted:literally "no one deserves to have their concerns heard unless they are more polite to me and my posting pals" Well, there is a wide spectrum between "being polite" and "not accusing someone of being a pedophile." I'm just saying that people are much less likely to actually hear your concerns about someone if you're constantly using the most extreme rhetoric imaginable when describing that person and flinging wild accusations at them This shouldn't be a controversial statement. I know the Internet can make people particularly vicious, but but at the end of the day we should all remember there are humans on the other side of our screens.
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Oct 26, 2021 20:38
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fart simpson posted:made some charts. all of these are limited to the calendar year 2021, and only scraping data from public forums because i didnt log in to scrape the data This is all fantastic, and is working as most D&D regulars want, and if anything, Handsome Ralph deserves a raise.
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Oct 27, 2021 04:31
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One request I have is for toxxes to be brought back. There's so many upcoming opportunities. You believe Dems will lose in 2022? Toxx. Think there will be another massive Covid wave in the winter? Toxx. Claim that the rumors are true and that Sinema and Manchin will join the GOP? Toxx. I understand that previously, mods found it difficult to keep track of them. Perhaps we could use a public google sheet or something.
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Oct 27, 2021 08:01
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Son of Thunderbeast posted:Consider that a lot of these posters are people that used to be D&D posters (even regulars) and who have been driven out of the forum, either forcefully due to bad moderation, or who have voluntarily elected to stop participating in the threads because of bad moderation. Many of these people would still like to participate but the continuing bad policies and moderation actions, as well as the intractable refusal to seriously engage with any of the more pointed and direct criticisms, mean that their opinions get outright dismissed as trolling or just opinions that you don't want to care about because they're now considered outsiders and result in posts like this one that I'm responding to. Consider that a lot of people also left D&D because of some of those very posters you mention, and the moderators' inability or refusal to consistently moderate and punish the toxicity they bring. To avoid generalizing, I should specify that I'm talking about people who absolutely cannot help but be vicious assholes whenever they post in a D&D thread, or are barely able to conceal their disdain for the "libs" they are arguing with, and for the forum as a whole. I'm talking about people who come to this forum and to these threads not to bridge gaps in understanding and knowledge, but to exploit and widen them. I am curious, also, why those who abandoned D&D in favor of CSPAM keep coming back. Obviously they are welcome to. CSPAM, however, has thrown off its shackles and become a top-level forum. It too has plenty of threads for a variety of politics topics, and a much larger population of posters. Yet some of its denizens continue to reach for the pot of boiling water, so to speak, despite repeatedly being told by their pals not to. What is the point of continuing to post in D&D where the prevailing opinions and political stances frustrate the hell out of you? And if the goal is to expose yourself to differing opinions (which is actually commendable), why get insanely angry when that actually happens and why come to these feedback threads to complain about it? How many D&D regulars/mains also post in CSPAM, as opposed to vice versa, and why do you think that discrepancy exist, especially if one of those places actually has such bad moderation and policies like you claim?
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Oct 27, 2021 19:32
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Lib and let die posted:I don't necessarily enjoy only having my pre-existing beliefs reinforced. It'd be nice to have an intellectual challenge that isn't couched in some decorum-clad kayfabe requiring that one side present their criticisms as a compliment sandwich in which you have to acknowledge a good (or 'less evil') thing that the democrats do/did/want to do before you can in-good-faith criticize them for things they don't do/do but don't go far enough/do that are straight up evil. Okay but the criticisms you mention usually take the form of "how do you explain this, liberals  " or some variation of it, rather than any genuine effort on your part (the royal "you", not you specifically), which gets tedious and exhausting to deal with and inevitably results in flame wars.The irony in your statement is that the denizens of D&D are probably 90% in alignment with you regarding the failures and shortcomings of the Democratic Party, and are as frustrated as you are. Everyone agrees that immigration is a ball they have dropped completely, for example. The issue is that the leftist criticisms use insanely over-the-top rhetoric like "Dems actually want brown people to suffer" — and at that point, contrary to what you claim, it becomes obvious that the poster is indeed only interested in reinforcing their pre-existing beliefs.
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Oct 27, 2021 19:50
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Jimong5 posted:I only came here because I made an observation in the QCS thread and CommieGIR "suggested" I post in here. There are some aspects of D&D I find appealing, like I would sometimes rather argue rightward than leftward, or the extended effortpost nature this forum should be about. I'm perfectly willing to accept that D&D is not the serious politics forum though, a position that has been seemingly reinforced by the regulars, the mod staff, and the admin staff in this thread. I mean come on, you're complaining that people have feedback you don't agree with in the feedback thread. If we want D&D to be a hugbox let's all just admit it and move on. Giving feedback is obviously fine, the reason there's pushback from mods and D&D regulars is that the feedback from CSPAM regulars has been taking the form of "why can't D&D be more like CSPAM". So my question is, what's the point? CSPAM already exists. Why do you want a second forum for shitposting that is, for the most part, unmoderated?
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Oct 27, 2021 19:58
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Jimong5 posted:Then you don't actually want feedback from anyone that dislikes how D&D is run because CSPAM is right there? So, that should be the official position then? Because it seems like the mod/admin staff is trying really hard to avoid just admitting that's the official position. I think it depends on the feedback, right? Calls for lax moderation and a higher tolerance for shitposting are probably not going to be agreed to. After all, if "merge D&D and CSPAM" is overwhelmingly viewed as a dumb idea, I'm not sure why "make D&D indistinguishable from CSPAM" shouldn't be treated as equally silly.
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Oct 27, 2021 20:10
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Grooglon posted:I've seen folks in this thread passionately argue both that D&D regulars need to learn how to deal with harsh tones AND D&D regulars need to stop posting with harsh tones. If we assume that the answer is not for D&D regs to always be nice while everyone else gets to always be mean, I'm not sure what the takeaway is here except that everyone has an opinion. Me, when posting twitter hot takes in USNews: Wow, you libs really can't handle it when someone PROVES that Democrats get off on brown people suffering, huh? Me, when someone explains to me how threads work: Excuse me, your D&D voice is so toxic and condescending, can you please tone it down? 
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Oct 28, 2021 00:27
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At this point, there's such an incredible lack of trust in the moderation system that the only way to combat it is to make the system more transparent. Add more filters to Leper's Colony, such as forum and the moderator issuing the probation. Give people a way to track the status of reports they send, including the ability to know why a specific report did not result in a probation. Make it so that multiple posters can report a post. Add a little message underneath reported posts like "this post was reported by 2 posters". Add an "appeal" button where a user can appeal a probation issued on their account, and an admin other than the one who approved the initial probation has to act as a second set of eyes on it. Limit the number of appeals to X per month or something to prevent abuse.
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Oct 28, 2021 01:54
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Skyl3lazer posted:I have a question/mod feedback, why was this post probated? I'm not a mod, but I recognize TwoQuestions to be a particularly notorious doomposter. They constantly post articles and tweets and then misrepresent what is happening. If you look at the quoted post, the article is about Manchin and Sanders arguing about something behind closed doors. TwoQuestions, though, decided to spin it as "bill is dead", which was a dumb take.
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Oct 28, 2021 17:31
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mawarannahr posted:I don’t get why thought fragments shouldn’t be allowed because you don’t think they contribute anything. It’s a thread where people post unfunny band names (the bottom of the web forum barrel, together with chats about tipping and list your pet peeves). It’s fine if not every single thing has a message you can discern. Because there are a lot of people who don't post frequently in USNews and don't follow the nitty-gritty of the discussions in it, and instead just skim the thread once or twice a day for important highlights of the day and some associated commentary (hence the thread name, USNews). Posting a news article with a grossly misleading if not outright dumbass interpretation of what the article says lowers the reliability of the thread for those users. Unfunny band names, on the other hand, don't have that effect.
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Oct 28, 2021 18:51
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Discendo Vox posted:Here's what I've got time to write up atm. Way back in another life I was a moderator on a (now defunct) forum that had a politics section, and I can unequivocally state that what you wrote here is really the only way to go about things if the desire is to have a space where informative, insightful and productive conversations can occur, even about the most controversial and divisive issues. A moderation policy based on inclusiveness does not work, because it comes at the expense of everything else. In fact, moderation by its nature is about exclusion, i.e. clamping down on extreme and subversive tone, language and behavior that undermines discussion and banning users who insist on not moderating themselves despite repeated warnings. Trying to be inclusive while moderating results in the worst and most abusive users controlling every conversation because such users also tend to post very frequently, in a way that is incendiary and difficult to ignore, and their goal tends to be to hurt others. By their very nature, they target those who are their opposites and try to run them off the site; anyone who is an expert or might have deep knowledge in the subject matter, or even displays curiosity and generosity by going out of their way to try to fill gaps in their knowledge and then sharing what they learned with others, is a threat to such users. After all, if someone is explaining the reason why something works the way it does, rather than joining them in advocating for ignoring or abolishing that thing, they are a detractor and must be attacked. This is not an abstract problem. For example, social media sites by and large suck rear end because of lax moderation — because the people in charge have determined that having a large number of users is more important than having high-quality users, that high engagement is what matters the most, etc. And they adopt and maintain these policies under the guise of free speech and inclusiveness, even if the result is basically the paradox of tolerance. It's also not a problem that SA is exempt from. You, Discendo Vox, have experienced it recently, when a bunch of abusive posters did not like your efforts with the Media Criticism thread and created a (now gassed) mock version of it in CSPAM out of sheer spite, and to this day continue to troll and try to derail the actual thread and spread doubt about your expertise in the subject matter ("they purport to be a professor of media analysis"). It's why certain users continue to post what they claim are personal details about your life from years and years ago. You aren't the only victim either: we have also seen this psycho behavior in other contexts, such as that one guy/gal who revealed that they are an economics professor and immediately got attacked for it. Similarly, the Covid thread has lost almost all of its experts because its IK has been adamantly refusing to moderate the conversation and enforce even the most basic and common sense rules, and gives ridiculous platitudes about inclusiveness when called out. The list goes on. At the end of the day I don't care about someone's ideology or political alignment as long as they come into discussions in this forum (or in real life, for that matter) with an open mind, do simple things like vet their sources and post civilly, and adopt an attitude of humility when talking to someone who is more knowledgeable than them in the subject being discussed. I know that's a lot to ask when it's a broader topic like politics where the strength of one's convictions tends to be inversely proportional to their level of knowledge, but this type of culture can indeed become a reality with strict and consistent moderation, so long as it is backed by an alignment of purpose between mods, admins and Jeffrey. The latter two groups have said they don't like reading the politics forums and that's fine; it would be sufficient for them to simply trust the mods and support them when controversies arise (rather than looking for reasons to overturn the probations/bans they have issued). Joementum posted:I don't really read D&D threads any more so none of this affects me and you should all do whatever you think will work, but I wanted to chime in and say that this is the kind of thing I tried to do for about two years when I was a mod of this forum and I honestly don't think it will work. Expecting to turn an old comedy forum into a civil debate society is going to be very difficult, particularly when the people who you want to do all this work are volunteers scorned by most of the people posting here until they get burned out and/or doxxed. As Discendo Vox stated, the scorn and harassment is done on purpose to make all but the most lax of moderation efforts difficult if not impossible. It's why you weren't able to consistently do the things in the list despite wanting to, and it's why the two mods who are trying to consistently do them today (CommieGIR and Handsome Ralph) are repeatedly attacked with accusations of bias and more. The answer is not to stop trying, though. It's for the admins and Jeffrey to support the moderators and their endeavors by coming down hard on the harassers. Said harassers will of course try real hard, in a coordinated fashion, to make the case that they are actually being prosecuted for their ideology (using catchphrases like "punishing posting enemies"), but it's important to recognize those efforts for what they really are: another attempt to undermine and abuse the forum and its regulars. At the end of the day, a lot of us want a space where posts have informative and educational (and perhaps, god forbid, even humor) value, or help us gain more insight about topics we care about. Different opinions are fine, and even welcome, so long as one isn't a raging rear end in a top hat about them. If you want to insist on snidely calling that "decorum", be my guest. Gumball Gumption posted:If I thought it did I would say it did. Again, this is my main complaint with D&D that it's impossible to ever have what you say taken in earnest. It is always assumed there is a motive or a lie. In many cases, the existence of an ulterior motive is incredibly clear and can be trivially proven, since those users tend to simultaneously post in one CSPAM thread or another and brag about having riled up D&D, or empty-quote posts from D&D in order to encourage others to do so (what we call "brigading"). Maybe you yourself don't partake in such behavior, but many of the people who have posted strong criticisms of D&D in this thread frequently do. To make matters worse, those who point out such instances are accused of attempting to incite forum war, which is profoundly ironic, to say the least.
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Oct 29, 2021 20:30
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Deteriorata posted:Lots of people get really mad when told that the biased source they're quoting is just making up numbers to tell them what they want to hear. If you think the whole thing is a rigged game, maybe you shouldn't post here. Yeah, and this is part of the "shared reality" that I mentioned in the QCS thread: if two people aren't even able to agree on which sources are trustworthy vs. which ones require enormous scrutiny, any other conversation between them, regardless of topic, is extremely unlikely to get anywhere. Like, how can you have a serious discussion about US foreign policy with someone who genuinely thinks that the CIA is not an intelligence agency, but an international crime syndicate? You cannot.
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Oct 30, 2021 19:33
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Bishyaler posted:This is a perfect example of my points. You don't believe that overthrowing democratically elected governments or funding death squads should be considered criminality. Leftists do, for good reasons such as "they're murdering leftists and installing fascist governments in their place". And your casual support for an institution which murders my ideological brethren makes me want to be extremely hostile to your lovely ideology, which is going to get the mods called on me. My point is not that the CIA does not commit heinous acts that should be universally denounced, but that the assertion that it is not an intelligence agency simply because it commits those acts is just profoundly wrong. Intelligence agencies in the modern era have many responsibilities, and spying is only one of them.
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Oct 30, 2021 19:47
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Gumball Gumption posted:You keep using this example and I'm almost positive someone saying it's an international crime syndicate is being hyperbolic and saying they believe the CIA's work is primarily criminal and that the bad outweighs the good. You're avoiding the intended message by latching onto a very literal reading. Bishyaler posted:And my point is that we are ideologically opposed because you appear to be able to divorce the institution from the mass murdering it's responsible for. Here's the full conversation: MonsieurChoc posted:On one hand, what Cheney did was illegal and extremely petty. On the other hand, the CIA is the evilest organization on Earth and must be destroyed if we are ever to know peace. CommieGIR posted:I mean, that's Intel Agencies in general. They all loving suck because they are all run by sociopaths and psychopaths. MonsieurChoc posted:The CIA isn’t an intel agency. Raenir Salazar posted:What does the 'I' stand for? MonsieurChoc posted:International Crime Syndicate. I don't know how you can read this conversation and conclude that: a) Liberals/D&D posters are a-OK with the CIA and its actions b) MonsieurChoc isn't simply trying to be as disagreeable as possible to derail the thread (which worked, btw)
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Oct 30, 2021 19:58
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Gumball Gumption posted:edit: Wait LMAO "Edit: Pretty much all literature on the CIA shows that it is very bad at it's supposed job of gathering intel, but very good at murder, drug smuggling, funding death squads and just crimes against humanity in general." Well, there was no "intended message". It's not about debating definitions instead of facts. It should be pretty obvious that the poster's sole intent was to derail the thread by picking a fight using hyperbolic rhetoric that they knew would get replies, and it is something that happens very frequently in this forum, i.e. even when two sides are 95% in agreement about something, one side focuses on the remaining 5% only for the sake of "othering" their opponent. Another context in which this happens is immigration: virtually everyone in this forum agrees that the situation at the southern border is terrible, but liberals are constantly accused of being okay with it, or not agreeing with the leftist posters that Democrats get off on the suffering of brown people, or something or another. It's just pure idiocy.
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Oct 30, 2021 20:20
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Gumball Gumption posted:I think that's a goofy argument to avoid engaging with the poster who doesn't like the CIA but it doesn't really matter because I think that exchange raises another D&D problem, why did people engage with that? Why did a mod engage with it instead of just bouncing it if it's agreed that it's pure idiocy? I agree with you that neither regular posters nor CommieGIR should have engaged with it. But the reason it should have been "bounced" isn't because it was "agreed" that it was pure idiocy, but because it went against the thread rules as laid out in its OP: fool of sound posted:This thread will be strictly moderated. To an even greater degree than most other threads, you are expected to read entire articles, think about them critically, and make thoughtful, earnest posts. Remember: bad articles aren't necessarily propaganda, and 'universal skepticism' is frequently just as intellectually lazy as credulity.
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Oct 30, 2021 20:43
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500 good dogs posted:Are you saying, as implied by your bold section, that the poster wasn't being earnest? How did you evaluate that? I already replied to this. And yes, what Deteriorata said.
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Oct 30, 2021 20:46
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Gumball Gumption posted:That works too but that rule is not enforced consistently at all. Yep, I agree with that. Lack of consistency in rule enforcement (especially in threads that are purportedly strictly moderated) is a major problem in D&D, as outlined in Discendo Vox's post a few pages back.
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Oct 30, 2021 20:47
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Alchenar posted:The problem with demanding an set of explicitly precise and consistently enforced rules is that there is a group of 'just asking questions' trolls who will calibrate their trolling to walk right up to the line but be careful not to cross it (unless they get caught out). Yeah, rules-lawyering is an issue, as is strictly obeying the letter but not the spirit of the rules in question. At some point things will need to be left to moderator discretion — it's why the "catch-all" rule exists: fool of sound posted:---These rules are general guidelines, and the mods take a dim view of posters acting as though they are exhaustive. Bad posts are punishable on the Something Awful Forums. 500 good dogs posted:Also clearly violates one of the D&D rules that clearly states "assume others are posting in good faith". The moderators should consider removing that from the rules list if it's not going to be enforced. Well, that is already assumed. But at some point, the poster gives moderators sufficient reason to invalidate that assumption, and a probation is issued.
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Oct 30, 2021 20:55
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Main Paineframe posted:who is saying "the CIA is good"???? jesus The poster you're quoting was banned from D&D after this absolutely psycho post: Bishyaler posted:I'm starting to understand why leftist revolutions shot so many people. Half those D&D posters would be against a wall before they finished their first smug diatribe The prosecution rests.
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Oct 30, 2021 21:33
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Yinlock posted:One major issue is that liberals and leftists have some big and very irreconcilable core differences, which gets compounded by many liberals identifying as leftist(and labeling leftists as fringe extremists) and can end up with new leftists thinking they're liberals and oh lord it's a huge clusterfuck. This is a good observation. One irreconcilable difference I can think of right off the bat that lies at the root of most heated disagreements today is the insistence of leftists that Democrats (especially Biden) should just flat out ignore laws they don't like (because it's what Republicans do when they are in power). When they get pushback from D&D regulars, they get increasingly more frustrated and that sometimes results in a probation. Essentially, one side believes that ends justify the means and the other doesn't. It's a fundamental disconnect that has no solution.
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Oct 30, 2021 21:51
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fool of sound posted:Believe me I hate the "we agree on most things" argument too, but the solution in that case is to interrogate those differences instead of just declaring an insurmountable gulf exists. State your beliefs clearly, argue with other peoples' stated beliefs. Don't let labels do the talking. I mean, the difference between "Dems should govern lawfully" and "Dems should ignore laws they don't like because that's the best way to wield political power" is quite irreconcilable, for example. And every time it comes up it results in flame wars and poo poo gets nasty.
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Oct 30, 2021 22:32
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Fritz the Horse posted:After the very level-headed and reasonable posts from user Koos Group and because they seem to represent a third-party to this circular argument, I would like to suggest that both D&D and CSPAM be made subforums of FYAD. i reported ur post for obvious trolling and bad faith
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Oct 30, 2021 23:04
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