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I don't have any great ideas about this, but particularly for super long running threads with massive page counts, the gigantic piles of thread specific rules that accrue against rehashing "uninteresting" topics kind of suck. If a thread with hundreds of pages has a list of verboten topics that are moderated according to the whims of whether someone thinks a rehash is based on something significantly "new," it's hard to have debate or discussion on those topics. I'm sure whoever is moderating that is tired of hearing about it, but just because it devolved into a slap fight 300 pages ago doesn't mean it should be moderated differently in my opinion. All that does is force the thread to become more insular and pedantic over time, and the moderation just feels arbitrary from the standpoint of someone who doesn't have an encyclopedic knowledge of so much posting history. speng31b fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Apr 24, 2022 |
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Apr 24, 2022 01:14
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some plague rats posted:Yeah this is fair. To use a recent example, I think if you're posting here and not just saying obviously inflammatory poo poo it's safe to assume you think genocide is bad, because basically nobody in their right mind thinks otherwise. If you're responding to a post by assuming that's what someone thinks then you need to slow down and take a minute to think about what they probably were actually saying, and whether you're actually trying to have a conversation or just scoring points. We literally have a forum right next door where you can go and say whatever absolutely wild poo poo you feel like and dunk on everyone, I do it all the time and it's great I agree, and in fact it would be great if it was totally unacceptable to accuse another poster of posting in bad faith as a way of dismissing their argument. Transphobic poo poo should just be against the rules as table stakes, but otherwise if you think someone else is posting in bad faith and have evidence of it, just report the post instead?
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Apr 24, 2022 01:39
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cinci zoo sniper posted:I sympathise with your concerns, but I would like to remind that the topic of my thread is current events in Russian war with Ukraine - it is meant to be a newsfeed with some nuance. The list of topics that are more likely to see the posts scrutinised from “boring posts” rule of D&D perspective is populated on the basis of having regular derails about them, and consists of the following topics: I understand your perspective. From the standpoint of someone coming into a thread without understanding the full history of why some of these topics have been historically difficult to moderate it just seems like a pretty lovely tradeoff to be honest. But I also don't have to moderate that thread, so I get it. And for the record I didn't mean to single out your thread; it's the latest example of this, but other long running or hot topic threads have had this same issue in the past, and I'm just not sure the default response of building up an increasingly elaborate set of rules about valid topics that are often applied subjectively is the greatest solution.
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Apr 24, 2022 01:52
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cinci zoo sniper posted:I speculate that the long term, sustainable solution to this requires a posting culture change, and moving away from the megathread model. It should be a normal practice for complex topics to have multiple threads, where each thread clearly defines what it should be about - say, in D&D we have the current events thread for war in Ukraine, and a “WW3” escalation thread spun out of it. I’m sure this model has its own problems, but to me it seems like the most user friendly way to defuse heated threads about major topics. Yeah, maybe? I suspect that sub dividing hot topics into multiple threads would hit a wall pretty fast. A few threads is fine, but if you have half a dozen off limit topics on popular threads, I don't know that spinning up new threads in each case is realistic or would really result in better discussion.
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Apr 24, 2022 03:18
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Maybe I'm oversimplifying this, but what's wrong with just backing down on the policy of "any position is fair game" to the degree necessary to avoid topics that are clearly adjacent to bigotry? Like I mentioned in my critique of megathread off-limit topics lists, let's not pretend we're being super purist about "not moderating positions" anyways. We've acknowledged that some kind of mental shortcuts to moderate positions are apparently necessary if we judge that the positions in question invite too many slapfights or are off topic or whatever. If we can do that for stuff that makes moderation inconvenient in other cases, why not do the same for stuff that's the tiniest semantic nitpick away from bigotry? Is "wow this topic is lame and sucks to moderate" really a better thing to make position moderation exceptions for than "if I squint a little this topic is just straight up transphobia?" If you want to chalk it up to "we can't have nice things" and just blame the posters, sure cool whatever. But whatever the root cause, I think we've proven that no pure strain Socratic discourse is being lost by cutting this poo poo out. speng31b fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Apr 24, 2022 |
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Apr 24, 2022 16:11
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Main Paineframe posted:One thing I haven't seen brought up yet, even by the mods, was the "working the refs" problem previous iterations of D&D had. How do people feel that's going right now? Sorry to snip just the first part of this post, but I think it's solid and brings up some topics I've been pondering as well. A lot of concerns in this thread directly or obliquely reference the problem of posters not trusting other posters to be posting in good faith, and then maneuvering either directly or indirectly to stop bad faith posters or even entire lines of argument that are presumed to be associated with a category of known bad faith posters. And again, I won't be able to make a single coherent suggestion about how to fix this, so it'll probably just sound like I'm complaining, but I'm going to try to apply this to my experience posting in SA and D&D for a number of years, albeit as not the most committed or active poster for the past few years. Basically what it boils down to is that D&D "serious posting" ethos combined with constant suspicion of bad faith posting makes for an especially toxic environment. And while I totally understand the history and valid reasons for suspicion of bad faith posting in specific cases, it's pretty demoralizing to come into a thread and see a viewpoint be shouted down as bad faith, against thread rules, boring, when it's sincerely not any of those things. And again, because D&D is all about unironic serious posting, the undertone to all of that is highly moralistic. You took a bad stance that bad faith posters tend to align with and therefore you're a piece of poo poo and/or troll. Maybe you're just a fundamentally bad human being -- oh by the way I checked your post history and therefore gently caress you. When those are table stakes to engagement it's honestly just too emotionally draining to engage with a lot of content on here. I don't have all the solutions, but a small improvement to "not moderating positions" might be to set clearly defined limits around it (i.e., bigotry adjacent) and apply the rule not just to moderation but to posters trying to police other posters' conduct. I always appreciated the stricter rules against backseat modding in the past and I'm not sure why those were relaxed.
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Apr 24, 2022 18:52
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cinci zoo sniper posted:I think this is a salient argument, but this coin, in my opinion, does have the other side. There’s a lot of malicious posts (which I would define from D&D perspective as posting in any way that isn’t meant to constructively move the conversation forwards in the lowest number of posts possible), and plenty of high-visibility posters making malicious posts exclusively. Just look at US CE, it appears to have 2 dozen regulars while having maybe half a dozen contributors. Yeah I totally agree that the behavior under suspicion actually does happen, but depending on the specific case maybe or maybe not to the degree suspected by posters. My position is going to sound hypocritical because in the case of the trans thread I'm totally on the side of "that thread never should have happened," because I think bigotry adjacent topics should just be defined as off limits with as little ambiguity about it as possible. The great tradition of Socratic discourse isn't adding value to anyone there, and I think that can just be decided and done. That's why my tentatively suggested solution looks more like the following, in order of priority: - Strictly but narrowly define the positions that are off limits, per forum and not per thread to avoid recurrences. Trans bigotry talking points should clearly be one of those. Perhaps a short discussion about any topic added to this short list of known bad topics is helpful. - Harsher penalties for posters proven to be actually acting in bad faith, ideally thread bans. My guess is that the really disruptive behavior is more restricted to a small but active set of posters than a mass conspiracy by posting enemies. - Strictly enforce the no posting about posters and no backseat mod rules. Use the report button. Even when it's justified by past experience, it makes posting into a toxic shithole that doesn't have much to do with debate or discussion and makes the posting culture in the forum and each thread increasingly insular. Noone going in to discuss a topic wants to be personally moralized about, and doing so drives people to seek out alternatives for lower emotional stakes poo poo posting. speng31b fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Apr 24, 2022 |
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Apr 24, 2022 19:38
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Agreed on the number nuance, I fully believe that people inside the problem threads overestimate it, myself including, and just speculate that people out of them are likely to underestimate it. It’s definitely a thread-level problem as well, rather than some grand conspiracy. That's interesting, if unfortunate. I think thread bans are actually a pretty elegant tool and in an ideal scenario solve a lot of issues. That said, I think regular old long probes or bans for proven troll behavior outside the bounds of a subforum's rules would do the trick as well. People who post in a subforum should know that sub's rules and be willing to accept the consequences for loving up there. Strong sub wide policies to enforce the accepted culture of that sub make sense to me. Lots of thread specific gotchas I'm not so thrilled about. empty whippet box posted:The problem with this when it comes to bigots saying bigoted things is that if nobody says anything in the thread, and just reports it, then what winds up happening is the poster will get a 6er for bad discussion practices or something, and not for their bigotry. And then the thread moves on and the person was allowed to post their bigotry with absolutely no pushback at all. A probation for not dotting your i or crossing your t is not the same as a probation for being a bigoted sack of poo poo. When I see someone posting something harmful and bigoted, I feel the need to tell them to gently caress themselves with a sideways rake because I think of someone coming into the thread and seeing no pushback against them at all and thinking "wow, this really must be what people think here". There were examples of this in the trans athletes thread as well, where posters being obviously bigoted were repeatedly called out for being bigoted but then were probated on a posting technicality. That's not a good look. But koos did not strictly follow the no posting about posters rule there, because (this is my perception of why, anyway) it was obvious that it was warranted in this case. Yeah, the premise of my suggestion relies (as I said) on the first two bullet points being set up and taking priority to the third. To get to the point where you could be strict about the posting about posters rule and backseat mod rules, you first need to have unambiguous exceptions to the "all positions are valid" rule, and mechanisms to enforce those exceptions effectively from a moderation standpoint. Otherwise you're just arming the biggest assholes with the loudest megaphone and restricting everyone else to do anything about it, which I am clearly not advocating for.
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Apr 24, 2022 20:10
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Fritz the Horse posted:It's certainly not the goal of moderation to enforce a "liberal politics zone" experience. I'm not dismissing your perspective or others that feel that way since this is a feedback thread. It's not really borne out in the posting traffic numbers, though. I think you're slightly misinterpreting the post you quoted given their usage of "liberal left." You're right that there's quite a bit of back and forth between liberalism and leftism, but actual unironic rightist viewpoints are less common and tend to be immediately correlated to bad faith. I don't think that's bad, it's more about forums culture and what SA is or has become (vs reddit, etc) Is SA or D&D less good if it's more or less openly acknowledged that it isn't a place for rightist / conservative viewpoints? That we don't engage with some arguments from these standpoints seriously? speng31b fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Apr 24, 2022 |
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Apr 24, 2022 21:09
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What do people actually want from SA and D&D? At the risk of using the old forums cliche, at least for me, it's a (dead, etc) comedy forum. When I was more than a decade younger and also a stupid moron, SA was one thing. I don't need or want D&D to be a beautiful pure philosophical discourse from all possible perspectives. I don't need to engage in a valiant quest to slay the dragon of someone else's ignorance. These days if I find myself in a serious argument with someone who may or may not be looking to promote their bigotry, I don't have the emotional energy to engage that with complete sincerity. Just speaking for myself, I don't need or want SA to be the place it was more than a decade ago, or even just a few years ago. As they say, "and nothing of value was lost."
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Apr 24, 2022 21:43
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Koos Group posted:That's all well and good for you, but there are other people who do want discourse with a variety of viewpoints, and who want to educate others and be educated themselves. This difference is why there are a wide variety of boards here at SA for everyone to enjoy. I think where this rubs me the wrong way is the undertone of condescension in the usage of "education" here. I don't not want to engage with transphobic content because I like being ignorant, and you saying that educating transphobes at the expense of what the posters here are telling you they want out of their experience is a "you" thing. In other words, compromising the purity of your posting vision in a specific way wouldn't bring the whole thing crashing down, and might make the experience incrementally better.
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Apr 24, 2022 21:49
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Koos Group posted:Apologies, I wasn't trying to imply that about you. What I mean is that the board's purpose is educational in general, and the education is meant to be a two-way street in general. In general I don't disagree, but I think you might consider particular exceptions (based on specific discussion about each) to the "don't moderate positions" rule based on the evidence at hand and the human feelings people in this thread are expressing / perspective of the audience you have agreed to be a moderator for.
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Apr 24, 2022 21:56
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Koos Group posted:I am considering them. I've been trying to figure out the details of how positions would be moderated if that were to become a policy. That's good to hear and I appreciate it. Koos Group posted:As for whether a rule being in place would prevent the people who made the statements and were later punished from making the statements in the first place, I hadn't considered that. In this specific case I don't know that it would Presumably the entire premise of the thread would be off limits? Or do you still think a thread about whether trans athletes should be allowed to compete or not is valid under this hypothetical policy?
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Apr 24, 2022 22:39
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Herstory Begins Now posted:consider this test 'if i spout off about this after 6 beers in a 7-11, is someone likely to knock my teeth out' Where do you live that the average customer of a 7-11 is trans positive and also prone to assault
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Apr 24, 2022 22:52
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Cicero posted:It kind of seems like there maybe just needs to be another split, if posters fundamentally differ on what they want from a debate forum. I'm a little bit curious to explore this concept, though I suspect most posters would find more cons than pros with it. If cspam is d&d but for lower stakes poo poo posting, what would a new sub that's like d&d but with strict topic moderation look like? Is there anything to this idea or is it a joke?
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Apr 24, 2022 23:16
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If a hypothetical new sub appeared that was just d&d with less tolerance for lovely topics that were bait for lovely viewpoints, would there be any value in the current d&d continuing to exist as a "free debate space" where no topic is off limits, or has the forums culture as a whole just moved on?
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Apr 24, 2022 23:28
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My impression is that there are two primary topics being discussed: 1 -- the merits of continuing the "don't moderate positions" policy with respect to viewpoints used to justify bigotry 2 -- within the framework of the current policy, is moderation being applied effectively (citing a specific instance) The following seems relevant to (1): Koos Group posted:As I said, I'm reconsidering moderating positions, so it isn't necessary to say things like this. The question I'll probably leave the thread on is how exactly to do it. What positions (or how to determine them), how to mitigate other factors this creates like insinuations, interrogations, and false positives; and so on. I think the danger cited of moderating positions has been framed in terms of the tendency to steer opposing viewpoints in the direction of a forbidden position. But I'm having a hard time thinking of a clear cut example of how someone could abuse this in the transphobia / trans athletes test case. As far as how to choose which positions are off limits, why not just start with the one that has proven to be problematic and go from there?
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Apr 25, 2022 01:13
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Very easy. Let’s say that the global conversation about trans athletes moves to some new accepted position. You take that, go find your posting enemy in an appropriate thread, and start some “what do you think about X” spiel. The objective here is to get them to cast doubt on this new position as a plausible premise, preferably disagree with it in stronger terms. Once that happens you just dump supporting material for it into the thread, declare them a transphobe, and chances are some bystander without the full context of your conversation will take the bait as well. At that point either your target concedes and has thus been mauled to your satisfaction, or they double down for posting culture reasons and you can murder by cop them. I understand this as a general framework for attack, what I mean is in the specific case of transphobia I'm having a hard time understanding how that vector would not be incredibly hard to practically utilize without it being extremely obvious. Baiting someone into an opposing political view or something like that is one thing. Baiting someone into outing themselves as transphobic is a bit harder presumably. And since the whole premise of this is that the topic is off limits, as someone trying to bait a posting enemy on an incredibly obvious front, you'd also be exposing yourself for punishment. speng31b fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Apr 25, 2022 |
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Apr 25, 2022 01:26
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cinci zoo sniper posted:I mean, you wouldn't be trying to get them to say “I am a transphobe”, you just want them to say something that could a transphobe could also be reasonably expected to say, which obviously works better with something new. You get to that point, and ideally have them double down by virtue of being annoying or having some jump into dogpile. If mods are intervening only at that point, they will need to 1) waste their time on retracing your antics to figure out what happened, and 2) deal the poster who not only has affirmed their punishment-worthy position, but also likely has someone baying for their blood. Okay, I mean, I won't deny that it's technically possible... but I think this example strains credulity a lot given the specific test case of transphobia. Given a set of all possible off limit topics, baiting people will undoubtedly be a problem in certain cases (and has been in the past; I recall this too) ... but the mechanics of posters illegitimately tricking others into outing their transphobic adjacent views without themselves falling into the forbidden topic in a more obvious way first seems kinda like, ehhh. To be clear, the reason I'm asking about this case specifically is that I don't think anyone here is endorsing a generalized framework for banning discussion on any possible topic, so you don't need to apply the discussion of countermeasures in a way that accounts for every possible topic either. speng31b fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Apr 25, 2022 |
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Apr 25, 2022 02:31
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Cease to Hope posted:Honestly I feel like the chief failing was that mods didn't close that mess of a thread 20-some pages previous. All of the haggling over probations is talking about how to mitigate the core failure: no mod foresaw how a "Does [minority] deserve the right to [x]" thread was inevitably going to end poorly. There were only ever two ways that thread was going to play out: either a bunch of people just posting agreement with the OP until it falls away, or someone coming in with arguments that dehumanize people. There was literally no other outcome I can think of so I tend to agree that if there's any lesson to take away from it at all, it's that a policy that puts that kind of thread to a stop before it starts is worth trying out.
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Apr 25, 2022 03:28
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Cease to Hope posted:edit: Koos Group, serious question, are you doing okay? I know you've gotten a lot of pretty harsh feedback around this issue, and it makes sense that it doesn't feel good, but are you like... actually okay, or do you need to take a break? And I genuinely don't mean this as a snide remark. But just consider if the choices you're making right now are the ones you want to wake up to tomorrow. speng31b fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Apr 25, 2022 |
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Apr 25, 2022 03:50
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