Summer 2022 D&D Feedback.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Summer 2022 D&D Feedback.

Jarmak: Jan 24, 2005

Main Paineframe posted:

I've pretty much dropped out of USCE, but it's not really the moderation's fault. I've just accepted that US politics threads are going to be filled with extremely angry losers venting their anxiety all day in the most vitriolic manner possible with no real interest in whether the things they say are true, that no amount of moderation is going to change that, and that I'd rather shave my asscheeks with a woodchipper than continue to read what's essentially just a vent thread.

IMO, everyone would be a lot happier with the fresh arguments rule if we just admitted that it's a conflict two groups of people in the general US threads: the people who want to talk about different things every day, and the people who have one or two specific issues/subjects that they want to endlessly debate. Those two groups constantly fight in the general US politics threads and it annoys basically everyone.

The mods have (correctly, imo) decided that the general threads should be for the former group, and that the latter group can make dedicated threads for whatever they want to discuss instead of trying to constantly drag the general thread back to their one pet issue. But the mods won't say it because , so instead they have to go on a roundabout story about subjectivity vs objectivity and the educational purpose of the forums and poo poo.

To my knowledge (someone correct me if I'm wrong), the mods haven't been discouraging people from creating threads. It's just that people don't want to create threads, for reasons that really have nothing at all to do with the mods.

Personally, I think it's time to drop the whole image push toward emphasizing the appearance that moderation is absolutely objective with clear and specific rules for every little thing. The mods have put a lot of work into it, and it hasn't changed a drat thing. The people who used to complain that the rules were too vague and the enforcement too inconsistent are still complaining about those exact same things, the people who used to get sixers all the time are still getting sixers all the time, and most of the people who used to be threadbanned from various threads have been re-threadbanned from those threads. The rules thread is one of the best jokes in D&D and people are still asking for it to be even more specific. All in all, the only real impact of the ultra-decorumed rules rewrite is that the Leper's Colony is now much more boring. The same people who hated the rules before still hated them, and the same people who broke the rules all the time before still break them. The whole push for optics doesn't appear to have made any impact, now that the new mod honeymoon period is over and everyone's back to their usual attitudes.

I agree with this, also I take the stale arguments rule as a catchall "don't post like a tedious dickhead"-style rule the mods have for people who are being annoying assholes and making the thread miserable to read.

Like most every feedback thread in the history of DnD this one is again dominated by worst posters complaining about the fact they keep getting probed for posting bad, with a small handful of weirdos machoistic enough to keep touching the hot stove because they don't want it to appear that's actually the consensus.

I get pretty annoyed with CZSs decisions sometime, but even with it's flaws their iron-fisted rule is the only reason the DnD Ukraine thread is readable and should be considered a model for other threads. It's not an accident that makes them a target.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2022 19:02

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 01:24

Jarmak: Jan 24, 2005

Zachack posted:

If someone wants to debate a topic, and other people do not want to debate that topic, should that person (or persons) be able to force their will on others, particularly when other avenues are available?

This is the issue. People don't want their pet issues put into topical threads because they know there's not enough interest to actually sustain them. So they want to be able to force it.

I feel like this also has a high correlation with purple not actually wanting to discuss a topic, but rather yell at people about it, and those people aren't going to wander into those threads to be yelled at.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2022 20:02

Jarmak: Jan 24, 2005

Majorian posted:

I don't think one can fairly describe topics like the Democratic Party's squelching of left-wing candidates and movements as people's "pet issues. This is especially true when clearly a lot of people do want to discuss those issues and feel like they are being discouraged from doing so.

That's a perfect example of exactly what I'm talking about.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2022 20:10

Jarmak: Jan 24, 2005

Majorian posted:

See, to me it reads as one group of posters bringing up very valid points that challenge other posters' assumptions and declared values, and being told that actually no, they can't make those challenges outside of a quarantine thread. In other words, being discouraged from debating an issue.

Yes, you're being discouraged from debating an issue in a thread where it's neither topical nor do the people you want to challenge have any desire to debate you because it's your pet issue you never shut up about.

You can't force the topic of every thread to be about your personal crusade against the Democrats because you want to find liberals to yell at.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2022 20:24

Jarmak: Jan 24, 2005

World Famous W posted:

it's kinda funny that there are posters saying 'there are posters who just want to yell at others for not agreeing with em' and immediately follow that by complaining about their political beliefs

I'm not sure I follow the gotcha here. The people complaining about posters who just want to yell at other who disagree with them, are presumably annoyed with having to hear about the political beliefs of the posters doing the yelling for the Nth time.

That seems pretty self-evident to me.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2022 20:49

Jarmak: Jan 24, 2005

World Famous W posted:

if you can't see why complaining about something and then doing just that in the same breath aint funny, I don't know what to tell you

Ahh, so you just fundamentally fail to understand the complaint. The issue is not whether disagreeing with people is okay, it's whether you should be able to turn any thread into a thread about your pet issue because people are sick of hearing about it and don't want to come to your thread on the topic.

Engaging someone on a topic that they were literally the ones to bring up is not an example of that.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2022 21:08

Jarmak: Jan 24, 2005

World Famous W posted:

Lol, I understand you fine, still find the pot complaining about the kettle funny

That's not what's happening, that is the point. This is a dumb "being intolerant of my intolerance makes you the intolerant one"-style gotcha.

XboxPants posted:

you are just misreading a pronoun

"their" means the complainers, not the yellers

Not misreading anything. Poster is trying to play a game where acknowledging the yeller's political beliefs with a negative framing is the exact same thing as the yellers bringing it up in every thread they post in regardless of its topical proximity.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2022 21:27

Jarmak: Jan 24, 2005

Gumball Gumption posted:

People posting different political opinions isn't you bring intolerant of intolerance. You really are exactly the thing you're describing dude.

That's not what I'm describing.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2022 21:41

Jarmak: Jan 24, 2005

VitalSigns posted:

Possibly but I was theorizing on why people might be deterred from starting the thread.

You said that, for example, "democrats are ineffectual" is a risky point to try to make and that if you want to argue it you need to include information mods don't know or make the argument in a novel way. And if you get it wrong, boom, probation. Doesn't seem worth it.

Would you need to have the rule if arguments that people are tired of seeing had their own threads? People who don't want to read arguments that Dems are ineffectual could just...not read that thread. If people are going in a thread about a well-worn topic and getting mad that there are arguments in there they're tired of hearing and reporting them maybe they could just not read threads they don't like instead?

Like I don't know what purpose the rule would be solving here

I agree and think that sort of rule shouldn't apply to people making a new thread for that reason.

Doesn't necessarily mean it should be a free-fire zone if/once it gets going, but I think the old SA norm of OPs having a high burden is out-modded by the megathread-focused zeitgeist of contemporary DnD. If anything OPs should be given extra leeway to encourage more topical threads given it's already a bit of an uphill climb.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2022 22:58

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 01:24

Jarmak: Jan 24, 2005

MSDOS KAPITAL posted:

You're both conflating two very different things: posting in a thread about whether the Dems are bad, and posting in the current events thread while thinking the Dems are bad. ("Dems are bad" is just an example of course.)

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" isn't a terrible maxim to hold as you're trying to guide discussion, but it breaks down when people can't agree on what the extraordinary claims are. Currently "the Democrats do not have an ideological project and their primary and perhaps sole purpose within our political system is to prevent leftward movement - thus as a party they are uninterested in acquiring and wielding power" is something of an extraordinary claim in USCE while "the Democrats are an ordinary political party" is not. If you react to current events in D&D while holding the former view, you will catch probations frequently as other posters (who don't agree with many of your premises) will force the discussion to drill down to that belief. Over and over. You probably won't be allowed to merely assert that the Dems are bad for the sake of argument by the person (or people) you're debating with, and neither will you be able to debate whether the Dems are bad (rightly, of course, as it's the USCE thread not the Dems Are Bad thread) by the moderation team. So you're stuck, and you can't really participate as a peer in USCE.

(Note that the inverse doesn't apply, however: since "the Democrats are an ordinary political party" is not treated as an extraordinary claim, you can freely react to current events in USCE while taking that as a given. If you're challenged on it you're free to insist that the terms of discussion be that your debate partner prove that they aren't (which very quickly turns into the situation previously discussed), or you can refuse to engage at all thereby "winning" the argument since the underlying assumptions that support your argument can never be challenged, while your partner's can.)

I don't know if there's a good way to square this circle for what it's worth, but I know that "create a thread about it" isn't the answer since the question isn't "how can I debate whether the Democrats are bad?" Most of the people having trouble with D&D don't really want to do that, I think - they want to react to current events in a social context that is actively hostile to basically the entire ideological framework that informs how they react to those current events. I don't know what compels them to desire that but it'd probably be better for most of them if they just stopped.

Calling something not ordinary is literally what extraordinary means. You don't get to decide extraordinary claims are just tenants of your ideology as a cheat code to having them be accepted by fiat. Having them be accepted as uncontroversial by a small number of people you chat with online does not make them them ordinary. It's like arguing with someone who believes the bible is the literal word of god and won't stop using that fact to justify every position despite the people they're arguing with not being Christian. You can't talk about anything without it instantly becoming about whether god is real.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2022 02:45

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