Koos Group posted:

We already have a rule that sources require some explanation if they're being used to make an argument. As well as one that users must not misrepresent the source. We do read sources when a user is reported for this, which you should know. What Cinci and I are proposing is more along the lines of not letting sources make your argument for you, but only using them as a "see also" sort of reference, or a citation for a fact.

Koos Group posted:

I'm not sure I understand the analogy to austerity. The reason that standards implied by D&D's three rules are called guidelines rather than rules is to emphasize that they aren't exhaustive. If you act in bad faith, the rule you're breaking is the one to not impede discussion. And there are other ways you could break this rule that aren't enumerated, as well. The guidelines are simply the most common things that come up.

Discendo Vox posted:

At this juncture, one of the actions needed is to actively re-solicit the groups of educated users that were driven out of the forum over the past 6 or so years. The lawyers, the scientists, the people who used to make discussion viable in greater detail. Per Bar Ran Dun's comment, we now face an active negative stereotype of DnD, continuously reinforced elsewhere, whenever there's an attempt to have someone from anywhere else on SA participate.

Turgid Flagella posted:

Lib and let died.

ETA: why would I post on LALD? It was made very clear by the last pre-bam probation on my rap sheet that my specific expertise as part of the Dem fundraising machine isn't as recognized as the credentials of other posters just because I'm a cranky, cantankerous rear end in a top hat.

SpiritOfLenin posted:

I'm gonna pipe up and say that really aggressive modding for the Ukraine thread specifically is a good thing. Having a low tolerance for shitposts, clancychat etc. in that thread is fine - if you want to post stuff like that, there are other subforums' Ukraine-threads that have that. Probably there is the occasional post that maybe didn't need a sixer, but like, who the gently caress cares about sixers?

Discendo Vox posted:

No, you do not, and you know you don't. You have a "guideline" that isn't predictably enforced, and I do know it's not predictably enforced.

Josef bugman posted:

The China thread is also rarely posted in and frequently it is just one poster for weeks at a time.

Really, this seems like a good overview of the situation in D&D is a whole, less posting more of it being for a smaller audience of, I'll say "dedicated", readers and it being less about chats with politics and more about showing how bright you are.

If that is what is wanted then great, but be aware that is what is happening.

Josef bugman posted:

The China thread is also rarely posted in and frequently it is just one poster for weeks at a time.

Really, this seems like a good overview of the situation in D&D is a whole, less posting more of it being for a smaller audience of, I'll say "dedicated", readers and it being less about chats with politics and more about showing how bright you are.

If that is what is wanted then great, but be aware that is what is happening.

MikeC posted:

and if I respond I am the one eating the probe.

MikeC posted:

Just FYI, the twitter dude you are quoting is a Cato institute researcher. They are borderline isolationist in their FP thinking. They heavily argue against intervention and adventurism and it is through this lens they view the Russo-Ukrainian war. I'll assume this was a good-faith question. Most IR analysts of the realist school also do not view this war in isolation, especially US-based analysts who view this conflict as just one of many issues that need to be managed in order for the United States to maintain its hegemonic grip in the world that is growing evermore multipolar. Within this framework, Ukrainian territorial integrity is of minimal consequence to the United States. Unlike the bipolar world of the post-war era, proxy wars against *the* rival center of power are no longer zero-sum games. Since the emergence of China as a player with Great Power ambitions, any decrease in stability or power projection of the Russian state to protect its traditional spheres of influence necessarily results in the ability of Beijing to incorporate these regions into its own. This expansion is no longer theoretical with China emerging as Central Asia's security guarantor in the most recent SCO meeting held in Samarkand which saw Putin politically isolated and playing second fiddle with many CTSO countries that nominally rely on Russia as the guarantor and arbiter of security issues in the region.

Since almost all analysts see China as the new primary competitor to the United States, many view this current conflict as somewhat of a sideshow where the US and its treaty allies should not be wasting their strength. See the recent discussion on how the militaries and the hawks in many NATO countries are fretting that the Ukrainians are firing off all the ammunition they might need if they went to a shooting war with China. Even Mearsheimer, who takes an incredibly passive stance on Russia even in realist circles, is an absolute hawk against the Chinese and thinks Taiwan should be defended without question by the US. So when viewed within a wider geopolitical spectrum, Russia is not a primary threat, especially now that it is exhausting itself in Ukraine and US foreign policy should account for that fact. Generalizations tend to make fools of everyone and it is no different when talking about "realists" when everyone that falls within this loose category has differing views of how to proceed. What is common beyond the multipolar issue is that whatever they advocate, Ukraine is just a small part of the puzzle and it is the future of Russia that is more relevant. To them, what is scary isn't the prospect of Ukraine once again falling into the Russian orbit. What is scary is the possibility of Putin dragging Russia so far into the deep end that the Russian state itself collapses as an entity or suffers a sustained period of internal infighting which would see China gobble up tracts of the Siberian far east giving it access to the Arctic circle at worst or see Russia (with its wealth of energy and mineral resources) being driven into Beijing's arms as a junior partner in a new "Pax Sinica". The most ardent of these believers include people like Mearsheimer who everyone loves to hate in this thread who believe that the West should be doing its best to drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing instead of pushing the two together at every opportunity.

Others, take a more middling stance where it is acknowledged that Moscow will always look to Beijing and vice versa so long as the US remains the 'first among equals' in the Great Power game but that there are reasons why you don't want Russia to go busto in Ukraine to the point where the state is in danger of collapse. The first is the potential of a messy exit by Putin and the semi-collapse of the Russian Federation along with the subsequent difficulty in accounting for the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. The second is the possibility of maintaining Russia as a 2nd tier power allowing the theoretical possibility of a Russia that is not wholly beholden to Chinese interests and is willing to play both sides to avoid complete domination by a foreign agenda and thus keep the Chinese in check to a certain degree. Advocates of this camp look not only for the potential of a more graceful exit for Putin (negotiated peace) but also to potential successors to Putin should he be liquidated, where assurance is given that the territorial integrity of Russia, sans Ukrainian territory, will be respected and even defended in the face of belligerence from China should they just find a way to end this stupid war. This assurance requires no belief of goodwill on behalf of the Russians as it is the natural position for the US to take in its continued quest to contain China and maintain dominance in the Pacific. A distant third that is sometimes cited is the possibility of full nuclear escalation between NATO and Russia should the conflict continue and Western involvement in it remains constant - though no one seriously believes this and is more of a fig leaf.

Of course, none of this cares about what happens to Ukraine or the Ukrainians. If you are in the morally purist camp, this view is often cited as 'stupid' or 'evil' or what have you but to the realists, it's just the cold truth. Ukraine is a chip and should be played to the best advantage. If there is a low-cost method of keeping them in the fight then great. If not, however, losing it to the Russians, while not necessarily desirable, is not a deal breaker as the next set of countries are NATO treatied and thus entrenched to form a solid barrier to potential Russian expansion. Exhausting the collective West economically and militarily makes little sense when the real competitor is China.

Just to reiterate though, the tweet you linked is not written by a dude from the classical realist camp. He is from the libertarian camp where the US should just stick to the US and avoid foreign entanglements as much as possible.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

MikeC posted:

Without access to classified materials, no one (including Twitter OSINT) can make a useful assessment of who is winning or who is more likely to retain an edge in the coming months. All outsiders can do is observe what has happened before and come up with a plausible scenario that fits the facts and behavior we have seen so far. Over the past 10 months with what we have witnessed the most likely assessment that can be made is that both the Ukrainians and the Russians are no longer capable of major offensive activities on the level that would either see the sudden liberation of Ukrainian territory or their sudden collapse.

The logical reasoning for this is simple. If the Ukrainians were legitimately on the ropes manpower-wise, would they have risked significant portions of their regular troops in a major counterattack to clear Kharkiv up to the Russian border? This move actually increased the frontage they needed to hold. Would a Ukrainian army that was facing a legitimate manpower crunch also launch sustained offensive pressure in Kherson when they had the option of continuing the status quo of pinning down Russia's best troops in Kherson in a state where they were under-supplied and were not a major offensive threat? Similarly, there are zero reasons to be alarmed about minor gains by the Russians here and there on the Donbas. If the Russians did have the forces in the numbers needed seriously reverse Ukranian fortunes, then we would have seen it deployed already and Kharkiv never would have happened. Local successes happen all the time. Just in October, everyone in the thread was breathlessly waiting for the total collapse of the Russian army after Kharkiv and were licking their chops at every minor village being liberated on the far bank of the Siverskyi river when in reality, it was the last gasp of the Ukrainian attack as the Russians firmed up their positions. The setbacks listed could easily have been a local overmatch forcing the defenders to move out. I think short of Putin getting removed from power and the war ending, the current situation is as good as the Ukrainians could have hoped for. Significant portions of the country have been liberated. Kyiv and Ukrainian sovereignty is safe, and the Russians are actively on a defensive posture or taking defensive measures on significant portions of the front with no prospect of any major offensive action. If you offered them on the 1st of March that at the end of November these would be the front lines, I think they would have taken that without thinking twice.

By the same token, there is no reason for over-exuberance on behalf of the Ukrainians. Every day this war drags on they lose more citizens that are in their economic and reproductive prime and the Ukrainian demographics weren't exactly healthy, to begin with. Their continued ability to wage war is almost entirely contingent on continued Western support and while that support still appears to be still quite solid, there is no way you prolong this war or slow roll your ability to liberate as much of your country as possible before your backers potentially get sick of the bill that you are wracking up on their credit cards. And it is clear they aren't exactly blitzing to clear back to the 2022 borders. Indeed we know they tried as they sustained attacks on Russian forces in the Izyum sector well past the days when the easy gains were being won and they couldn't crack the Russians. Same thing in Kherson when twice, they appeared to make hard pushes to force a breakthrough only to fail and have to resort back to the slow squeeze before the Russians decided to get smart and abandon the right bank. So while the Ukrainians aren't exactly in danger of collapsing, it appears they have spent the majority of their bullets for now.

This is all that one can reasonably say given public information. Maybe the Ukrainians or Russians are secretly building a new reserve for a big attack come the spring or even in winter if the weather allows for it. But I sincerely doubt any of us ITT have information on the existence of such an effort or would have access to such info even if it was true.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

VitalSigns posted:

Is picking out the fairly inoffensive sentence clause "who everyone loves to hate in this thread" and punishing a long informative post for it good modding, does that develop good discussion.

I'm not demanding an answer, this is a question for you guys to think about

VitalSigns posted:

Why even have a feedback thread if you're going to characterize people as "griping" for providing feedback you asked for. Don't have the thread then if some mild criticism and questioning is "griping" to you.

cinci zoo sniper posted:

Am I not allowed to say that you complain when you've written a complaint? Also, no comment on “people” meaning “the 200 probations goon”.

VitalSigns posted:

Anyways if you think those probes make for good discussion okay, seems penny ante stuff to me but I don't read that thread so maybe it's necessary or something.

cinci zoo sniper posted:

As I have suggested multiple times both to you, to other people in the gassed thread, and here - all you need to get me to ignore your thread is to name it more appropriately, e.g., “I want to talk about AI”. Do not name it after a specific, real-world thing, such as OpenAI ChatGPT or Google Bard, and the only reason I’ll have to read it then is if someone reports a post there, and I’m the mod clearing the queue at that moment.

Discendo Vox posted:

At this juncture, one of the actions needed is to actively re-solicit the groups of educated users that were driven out of the forum over the past 6 or so years.

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

I strongly agree with this.

Josef bugman posted:

The China thread is also rarely posted in and frequently it is just one poster for weeks at a time.

Heck Yes! Loam! posted:

It should be completely fine to have casual discourse in D&D.

silence_kit posted:

Pretty obvious example: if you read USPol, it is loaded with low content rants and posts about how Republicans, rich people, corporations are evil, and so on. The rants aren't really made against any particular thing someone has said, are often loaded with exaggerations and falsehoods, etc. No one enforces the forum rules here because huge numbers of posters in USPol use the thread as an outlet to vent about how much they hate The Bad Men.

HOWEVER:

If you were to direct a similar style of post towards a thread consensus opinion, belief, sacred cow, etc. you would be met with swift justice.

silence_kit posted:

TheDisreputableDog posted:

As one of the few right-leaning posters here, I feel this problem is better than I ever remember it being. Obviously you shouldn’t go out of your way to poke the beehive, but I feel like I have leeway to make unpopular points without waiting for the other shoe to drop. Mod activism seems to be at an all time low, and I want to say I appreciate that.

I honestly think leftists used to have a makeshift alliance with liberals here when there was a stronger right wing or libertarian presence, and now that everyone else left, they’ve become the minority. It’s not perfect, but nowhere near as bad as it used to be.

One suggestion, especially for threads where mods/IKs participate, there should be a clear “I’m wearing my mod hat” delineation from regular posts. Honestly I feel like bolding those posts would be helpful as well, since they’d call attention to a single “move on from this topic” post if someone’s kinda skimming a busy thread.

The other suggestion is probably USCE-specific, but people tend to take a developing incident and fill in the unknowns in a way that supports their own worldview. At best this doesn’t set the table for a real discussion, and at worst it’s just a mix of wish fulfillment and fan fiction. I’d love to see that kind of knee-jerk speculation curtailed.

Heck Yes! Loam! posted:

It should be completely fine to have casual discourse in D&D.

Heck Yes! Loam! posted:

Please purge cinci from moderation as he has no understanding of how people communicate and stifles anything that he deems unworthy.

Between him and Vox this place is an evaporating puddle that gets saltier and saltier with each passing day.

Loosen the rules, let people post and discuss. Moderation should be loose guard rails to prevent people from being too big of an rear end in a top hat, not because you don't like what they are saying. Stop trying to have a space where only the Poindexterest Poindexters get to determine what is discussed and how.

Nelson Mandingo posted:

Edit: https://forums.somethingawful.com/banlist.php?userid=230261#frompost530754006 Though this seems like an example of....not? I'd have to be explained to how it's a bad faith post.

fez_machine posted:

Yeah bad shoot on that one Cinci

edit: Especially as it seems the poster was going from exactly the type of words words in quotes as news updates you've said you want to discourage to a more analytical and asking questions way of sharing notable events

Heck Yes! Loam! posted:

Please purge cinci from moderation as he has no understanding of how people communicate and stifles anything that he deems unworthy.

Between him and Vox this place is an evaporating puddle that gets saltier and saltier with each passing day.

Loosen the rules, let people post and discuss. Moderation should be loose guard rails to prevent people from being too big of an rear end in a top hat, not because you don't like what they are saying. Stop trying to have a space where only the Poindexterest Poindexters get to determine what is discussed and how.

Judgy Fucker posted:

Agreed with this, notably purging Cinci. They are not good at moderating. They are needlessly antagonistic and do not handle criticism well (at all, really). They are good at being in charge of messy poo poo the other mods don't want to deal with, which is why they're a mod. But if the ostensible purpose of a feedback thread is to solicit user ideas on how to improve DnD: remove cinci's star.

fez_machine posted:

There are many places that do have more casual discourse in D&D like the country threads, the chat thread (and maybe USCE? I don't know I don't read it).

Can you make a compelling argument why D&D needs to be a place like GBS or CSPAM? And why posting in those places is less preferable than D&D for casually discussing politics?

Aegis posted:

In the interests of giving feedback, I disagree. Cinci's approach has worked well in the D&D Ukraine thread and before that in the Eastern Europe thread. I especially appreciate this given how much of a drama trap discussion of the war in Ukraine has been on the other subforums.

Maybe it doesn't work so well elsewhere, but I personally haven't seen him be particularly of line.

socialsecurity posted:

Some of the China posting died down due to accusations of racism if one questioned the official Chinese Government line on things.

quote:

Essentially, the Chinese government wants all of their citizens abroad to act as agents of China. A Chinese citizen is a soldier for the Chinese nation. That sounds like it could backfire in dangerous ways.

Even if a Chinese citizen is opposed to the CCP, they are still spreading their language and culture and promoting tolerance of Chinese people. If you so tightly bind Chinese identity to obedience to the state, it could lead to hostility against Chinese citizens abroad when Western countries are in conflict with China because racists will have a justification for their racism.

E: this relates to a general concern I have that the CCP seems to care more about preserving itself than the safety and security of its own people.

Judgy Fucker posted:

Agreed with this, notably purging Cinci. They are not good at moderating. They are needlessly antagonistic and do not handle criticism well (at all, really). They are good at being in charge of messy poo poo the other mods don't want to deal with, which is why they're a mod. But if the ostensible purpose of a feedback thread is to solicit user ideas on how to improve DnD: remove cinci's star.

cinci zoo sniper posted:

The fact that a crazy person could have a crazy take on statistics isn't really adding legitimacy to the angle of refusing to understand how the thing works. While I cannot stop such a crazy person from having such a crazy take, I can and will stop them from platforming it in D&D as an idea with an implicit educational value.

cinci zoo sniper posted:

(...) we will not be having a general purpose thread about ChatGPT engaging in substantial anthropomorphization of the software. If you want to make such posts in D&D, you will need to create a thread that leaves no doubt that the thread is about some system of belief, or to debate you personally, rather than about the factual nature of ChatGPT.

Judgy Fucker posted:

The way they've handled the thread from becoming a drama trap is to forbid discussion of certain topics that are absolutely relevant to discussing the War that Cinci and most thread regulars don't want to read about. MikeC upthread, for example, mentioned how IR theory is verboten--I would figure academic discussions as to the causes of war would be germane to talking about a given war. There's a list of other, purportedly "boring" topics that are off-limits, including the "History of NATO, its relationship with the USSR and the ex-USSR states up until February 24, 2022." That topic isn't boring, it's just something cinci and some others don't want to talk about (I have my beliefs on why that is, but will refrain from elaborating here to keep this from being too much posting about posters). There's nothing left to debate or discuss in the thread, it's essentially an RSS of the war.

I also understand I'm impotently pissing in the wind on this. I'm just sore because not one, but two posters told me to die back when the war started over this post I made, both of whom received whopping 6ers for doing so. The mod responsible for those is no longer a DnD mod, thankfully, but the whole experience surrounding discussing the war in DnD has been pretty foul.

But as you mentioned, Aegis, the War thread is drama-free, even if it's a terrible space to actually discuss the War.

Aegis posted:

I'm sorry you've had bad experiences, but I strongly disagree. The D&D Ukraine thread is generally quite active and has been kept very readable. I am not aware of anything stopping you from posting a new thread if you want to talk about things that are out-of-bounds.