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Greetings. It's time for this quarter's feedback thread. Here you are encouraged to tell us your thoughts on how D&D is going. Whether you're a lurker or a poster, who reads one thread or many, we'd like to hear from you. As always, you can give feedback by posting in the thread, PMing me, or you may post in the thread anonymously by PMing me the post and I'll make it for you. D&D rules will be relaxed here somewhat, since we're talking about the forums rather than educational subjects, so citations will be less valuable than normal, and personal opinions will be more valuable. All I ask is that you continue to present your ideas with honesty as you would in normal D&D, be respectful to other users, and don't spam the thread, by which I mean posting the same thing repeatedly to increase its exposure at the expense of other posters. Unfortunately, you must refrain from posting here if you're forumbanned, and refrain from giving feedback about threads in which you're threadbanned. You can however PM me if you think it's been long enough and you'd like to appeal either one.
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Nov 3, 2023 22:30
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POSSIBLE FEEDBACK TOPICS Here are some things that are particularly relevant, and you're encouraged to share feedback on if you have any. Election Season Because we have no major competitive primaries this cycle, things will probably be heating up later than usual. However, I'd still like to hear anyone's thoughts on how to deal with the increased contention that will inevitably come from an election. I think the D&D rules and moderation policies should be able to handle this as-is, but would still like to hear about what areas might need to be emphasized or what considerations we may have missed. I might, in particular, more strictly enforce the rule against arguments that aren't fresh or falsifiable to avoid going in circles or excessive posting of talking points and rhetoric. Violent Content While this seems to happen more in places other than D&D from what I can tell, there's been discussion of how to deal with media showing violence, death or gore, particularly related to wars. D&D's currently policy is as follows: inline material that some might see while scrolling is a ban, and has an additional +30 days if it was done intentionally to troll or shock. Material that is properly tagged and linked but is posted gratuitously, without a legitimate purpose in discussion, receives a major punishment at mods' discretion. Material that in some way serves D&D's educational purpose, such as a CNN article that includes photos of dead bodies, is allowed, though should still have a warning if one might find it disturbing. If you feel that policy should be more strict or more lenient, or is good as-is, please let me know. The one part that can't change (and I would not change it anyway) is banning for inline gore, as that is a general grey forums policy put down by the admins.
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Nov 3, 2023 22:31
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Mischievous Mink posted:A weekend is too short for a feedback thread. What do you feel would be a more appropriate length of time?
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Nov 3, 2023 22:35
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Mischievous Mink posted:I think if it has to be a temporary thing then a week or two gives more time for people to respond to each other and build a better consensus on what issues are considered pressing and how people feel about them . Victar posted:I second this. The feedback thread needs to stay open for at least one week, please. Some people have to work on weekends and might not see the feedback thread until too late. Fister Roboto posted:At least a week. But this is also something that gets brought up in every single feedback thread in the past, so it doesn't really give anyone the impression that the feedback is being listened to at all. Alright, I'll try leaving it open longer than usual this time. Maybe not an entire week, but into the middle of the next work week so those who are busy on the weekends still have a chance. Gumball Gumption posted:Is D&D a modern data driven operation? The current moderation experiment has been going on long enough that we should have data on if it has increased or decreased the number of posters regularly posting in d&d As far as I know the forums software doesn't record that sort of thing for individual boards, just the forums as a whole. Though the primary goal of the current moderation regime isn't to maximize engagement, but to have the highest possible quality of posts. And, secondarily, to avoid mod burnout like was happening right before I came on.
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Nov 4, 2023 01:54
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Discendo Vox posted:1. What you are telling us by this statement is that you and other mods have chosen not to enforce the existing rules on fresh and falsifiable claims, which is why USCE has been repeatedly driven into a ditch for extended periods for entirely predictable reasons, by entirely predictable users, including across the past week with the electoralism bullshit. I have a crazy idea: stop coming up with excuses to stop enforcing the rules. Nothing, nothing else matters if you're still unwilling to enforce the rules, no matter how many of them you make up. This is especially visible in the I/P thread, where the entire ruleset is routinely thrown out the window. "Martial law" should not be a euphemism for "most of the rules don't apply, and we're going to randomly sprinkle day probes in response to posts that feel offensive or angry". The reason I said that is because the "fresh" part of fresh and falsifiable is somewhat subjective. It's based on what we see around the internet or the forums to the point that it has become tiresome, but everyone gets political arguments from different places and some people spend much more time reading these sorts of things, so what might be stale for one would be fresh for another. Enforcing that rule more strictly would mean both having less hesitation to punish, and doing more research such as asking a specialist in a particular thread or skimming a thread to see whether something has been said to death. There's also the rule's exception to consider, which is when something that isn't necessarily fresh but DOES directly refute another argument might be permitted. Discendo Vox posted:2. Stop making up ad hoc policies of not enforcing the rules. For the love of god, it's the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There is probably no single subject on earth more prone to deflecting arguments and discussion of factual claims with recriminating reversals. Declaring (in the middle of the thread, no less) that the most routine way to poo poo up discussion is fair game has the effect of maximizing the amount of conflict, reports, and moderation burden the thread generates. I agree that this was something of a mistake and will speak to Rigel about it, and clarify what whataboutism is for the purpose of D&D rules to the thread. Discendo Vox posted:You are wrong. There is no general policy on this from the admins. One admin declared at the end of one SAD thread that it was their personal policy. It has then continued to fail to be enforced, because like the DnD mods, the admins are apparently genetically averse to reaching a consensus and stating policy and loving sticking to that policy. That's a bit outside my purview. All I can do is tell you what the policy I've devised for D&D is. I've spoken to the admins and more than one seems to agree on that particular point mentioned; I also agree with it, and am unlikely to budge, so it's somewhat moot anyway. Rappaport posted:I actually can't remember what kind of Hindenburg-disaster ate the last one, but could we have a clancychat-type exclusive thread for electroralism for the election season? What does "clancychat-type" mean in this context?
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Nov 4, 2023 04:14
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Giggle Goose posted:Speaking from the perspective of a mostly lurker in both D&D and CSPAM, the fact that a person in D&D can't post without CSPAMERS reposting and then mocking others for their thoughts (against the rules and creepy as gently caress) really pisses me off. Why would I post in threads I enjoy if there is a risk that a bunch of authoritarians are going to get weird about it? You realize that something could actually happen to someone IRL because of this right? This poo poo was supposed to stop and nothing is done about it. What occurs in C-SPAM is a C-SPAM issue that I do not have jurisdiction over. There is already a rule in D&D that one can't post here while posting about the conversation elsewhere, to avoid trolling or quote farming, and that rule is fully enforced as far as I know. In addition, in the several years that C-SPAM has been mocking D&D, it has never lead to anything happening to any D&D posters irl, and using the forums for doxxing or IRL harassment is already a permabannable offense. The Top G posted:I totally agree with the recent push to remove gore posting from these forums but if this is the desired end result I think it’s gone too far. Some freak going “check out this soldier catching a hot one Cpt_Obvious posted:The actual gore and death is what I don't want to see on the forums and imo the mod team has done a good job of keeping it off. Posters getting weird about said gore and death is just what happens when it's allowed to stay. I would not want any explicit imagery to appear inline even if it's part of a news article, and would want a warning included if linking to one. However, I'm unlikely to ever forbid linking a news article itself if properly tagged, because that would begin making us weird and isolated from what is, for better or worse, normal and common content, and most importantly it would get in the way of information and discussion.
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Nov 4, 2023 17:20
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” is the issue, not the photos that could accompany a news article.
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Reik posted:Why are people like Mister Fister allowed to post racist conspiracy theory level nonsense in the Palestine/Israel thread completely unpunished? You probe pro-Palestinian people for much less all the time in there. I would need to have examples of posts by Mister Fister that were reported but not probed to explain exactly why they weren't. There is no policy that pro-Palestinian people are treated any differently than pro-Israeli people, though because pro-Palestinian is something like a 90-10 majority, it would make sense that there would be more probations of that side overall even if the rates are the same.
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Nov 4, 2023 23:15
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Reik posted:Sure! It appears that post was handled by a different mod, and no explanation was given for not acting on the report (this is normal due to the high number of reports we receive). MEMRI had not been discussed during the course of the current conflict as being unreliable until after Mister Fister posted it, so that can be considered an honest mistake, and now that the truth has come to light others who post it without explaining themselves will be probed for not acknowledging rebuttals/ongoing debate. His second source does clearly seem to violate the rule against Twitter randos, so I will consider your posting of it here an appeal and punish it accordingly, with a warning to use better sources in general. Reik posted:Of course there isn't a written down D&D rule for explicit bias against pro-Palestinian posters, if that was the case this thread would look very different I imagine, but I don't know how else to explain this post making through administration when someone got probed for posting a tweet from a Democracy Now journalist citing the Gaza Ministry of Health that got overturned after people called it out. That isn't a numbers issue. That actually could be considered a numbers issue, as it was caused by myself rushing through the large volume of reports, and the people who make up the bulk of the thread and are therefore there bulk of reports often are more likely to be victims of that sort of arbitrary error. Mid-Life Crisis posted:Is d&d supposed to be a leftist safe space or a place to discuss and debate? If you dare to disrupt the status quo you will get a glut of posters throwing themselves at you until you either get probed for not responding to them, or get probed for responding to their attacks of bad faith that lead to no room for substantive response. A sizable portion of which who retreat to cspam. If mods are only judging on reports and not the thread that’s going to benefit those participating in the group think. Thought d&d was the place where that isn’t what is accepted, or is the leftist cultivated community more important? D&D is intended as a place where people of any political or philosophical persuasion can discuss and debate. If a large number of posters disagree with you, that is not a moderation issue unless they are insulting you, acting in bad faith or repeating each others' points, all of which should be reported.
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Nov 5, 2023 00:24
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Reik posted:You say MEMRI had not been discussed as being unreliable so it could be an honest mistake, had there been previous discussions of the Democracy Now journalist as being unreliable? Probably not, since that journalist was reliable. 16-bit Butt-Head posted:shove the rules up your rear end uwhahaha I... must decline.
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Nov 5, 2023 01:47
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Kchama posted:I feel like having one-sided rules of "you can't mock them but they can mock you" is only going to breed extra resentment instead of defuse it like the rule was originally intended when it was implemented. Since it was, well, intended to be mirrored in C-SPAM, but they've dropped the rule. Well, having mockery of another board here is very much against my intent, which is for D&D to be educational, with information you can use everywhere, not just on SA. That's why there's the rule against posting about forums. So if you see it as unfair you would need to convince them not to do it in C-SPAM.
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Nov 5, 2023 02:27
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Discendo Vox posted:You know what would help with this difficult problem of knowing what’s “fresh,” Koos? Reading the loving subforum. The issue is that you're talking about a position, regarding the utility of different sorts of political action. You do in fact need to say what rule someone is breaking, not just that they have some sort of viewpoint that makes them likely to break rules. The freshness rule is also not applied abstractly, where anyone arguing for the same thing must be guilty, it's about specific arguments and the exception of direct responses applies. Discendo Vox posted:You know that your decision to facilitate this backbiting harassment drives SMEs off the subforum- that they would rather post anywhere else, because by not enforcing the rules, you obligate them to entertain their attackers. Their expertise makes them a target under the system of not-moderation you have established. People who post about this problem are the easiest, lowest "research" probations for you to issue; and they just leave, because they recognize how this approach stacks the deck in favor of the people who don't care about probations. I am as sad as you to see any expert go, as it hurts D&D's ability to be informative, which is one of its top goals. If someone has a wealth of knowledge or expertise they're sharing, I try to be especially lenient toward them and harsh toward anyone who breaks a rule in a way targeting them. I'm not sure what else I can do, and it's not helpful for you to say "enforce the rules" because I already believe I am doing so. I wrote all of them my dang self with the intent of being enforced. Discendo Vox posted:But what message are your moderation decisions sending to everyone else? To the people who just want to learn or communicate? What should they have to tolerate? Well, thankfully we have a recent case where all the implicit elements of the trolling you don’t punish have spelled out for you. The poster Xiahou Dun is responding to did not say it doesn't matter whether they live or die, and it's not clear from that post that they knew this part of Xiahou Dun's history.
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Nov 5, 2023 03:28
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TheDisreputableDog posted:Can you please clarify this idea - how much racism is allowed in a good post without punishment? How much white noise cheerleading? Perhaps you can update the rules to asterisk the rules which you’ll waive because the post is “good”. No amount of rulebreaking is allowed in a good post. But a high quality post does lead to enforcement being more lenient, starting with a warning. If someone is posting well but absolutely insists on breaking some rule, they will have to be punished after a warning. I didn't make that clear in the example you provided, which is my fault. The reason for this policy is that D&D's primary goal is to create good posts and enforcement must serve that goal, even over forum justice. TheDisreputableDog posted:Second, it’s impossible to extricate the concept of a “good” post from “a post I personally agree with”. Even if you want to argue that the post was objectively well-cited, you’ve personally bent over backwards to punish a cited post of mine that didn’t contain a personal attack, but did stir up the anthill. It’s almost like the term “good post” is inherently subjective and biased by our own beliefs, so enforcing the rules as-written is the best way to operate? I disagree that it's impossible to extricate the concept of a good post from one you agree with. I define a good D&D post as one that is well cited, contains relevant and useful but uncommon knowledge, is creative in a sophisticated manner, or is otherwise edifying. This is true even if the post is making an overall point that I disagree with. I suppose there is an exception in posts that are funny, as I'm more likely to find them funny if I agree, but this rarely comes up as there are few funny posts in D&D. TheDisreputableDog posted:And it this doesn’t just involve me - anyone sufficiently outside the accepted center-left spectrum has to deal with this inconsistent and piss-poor moderation. Let’s look at a different example. Whatever you think about the OPs post, they felt strongly about it, and took the time to write up their thoughts, only to face low-effort snark in return. Absolutely the opposite of what you claim to stand for. This post was reported, why wasn’t it punished? Because the target’s positions don’t fall in line with the general thread’s. But if I responded in-kind to one of the many leftist effortpost/meltdowns here, I’d be punished faster than it takes to type ‘snowflake’. Not even the ‘zero tolerance’ I/P thread is immune from bullshit snark going unpunished. Your first example does appear to have been a mistake. I assume it was not me who handled it, as I would have probed the poster, but it is old enough that it would be difficult to find the mod who handled it or their reasoning at this point (we have a poorly implemented report system). The second one also probably should have been probed, though the mod handling it might have found it clever and amusing enough not to do so. I actually tried searching for that one in the reports but couldn't find it. TheDisreputableDog posted:I was really hopeful when you took over, but this is way worse than before. You routinely subject out-of-band political posts to the highest level of scrutiny, while people in line with your beliefs get away with whatever they want. At least FoS and crew wore their biases in their sleeves, you collectively just hide behind the “WE DONT MODERATE POSITIONS THOUGH” lie. Whether you’re lying to yourselves, doing it intentionally, or just not wanting to deal with the blowback, I can’t say. But you need to decide if you want to be in charge of a real venue for discussion where the rules are equally applied, or just run a cool kids lunch table. The assertion that I allow people in line with my beliefs to get away with whatever they want is categorically untrue. The majority of posters I punish have similar beliefs to me, because the majority of posters on the board in general do. On the flip side, there are reports I have handled just recently regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict by posters whose beliefs on the subject make my skin crawl, yet I marked them as miscellaneous (the term for a report that is not acted on) when they were not breaking rules. Zachack posted:Feedback that I haven't really thought through: Every active thread in D&D needs an IK (active being, I guess, two pages back?). From PMs Koos has indicated that some threads have relaxed rules, and some of those threads also don't have IKs, which means they have a higher chance of permanent degradation because there's no one ostensibly responsible for keeping the thread "functioning". Obviously some relaxed-rules threads work fine as they are, in which case I don't think having an IK would cause any problems (up until they finally go insane from other causes). Other threads, though, IMO really have a degraded discussion because it's too easy to shitpost and be hostile. Not a terrible idea, though I'm not sure it would be practical to find a new IK for every new thread. It takes time for mods to clear an IK and for the admins to actually add them. A better system would be to have IKs who handle particular areas, such as world history, US politics, science, et cetera, and for them to handle new threads in their domain. socialsecurity posted:I think the whole "we don't moderate positions" is pointless, because even if that is/was true (maybe) the people who complained endlessly about it in the first place that ended us with Koos still complain about it so it really isn't working. The point of it isn't to stop complaining. I'm fully aware that there is a large contingent of people who will feel that fair rule enforcement is unfair and only rule enforcement unfairly in their favor is fair. I believe this is not limited to any political persuasion and is simply human nature, as you can also see it in sports quite often. Rather, the point is, in a nutshell, that debate is more vibrant when all viewpoints are allowed, and mods shouldn't be arbiters of what is good and right on every issue in the world. socialsecurity posted:One of the core issues is we have a group of people that really aren't here to post with anyone, they are here to post at people to tell them off because they think D&D is full of evil libs or fascist or whatever, then everyone else is meant to pretend that this person that has been farming you for SYQ for 10 years is posting earnestly. Farming SYQ is explicitly against the rules. If you see someone sharing your quotes, or even posting about their conversation with you in general, on a different board, please report their posts here. socialsecurity posted:At the very least the electorialism poo poo needs it's containment zone or it is going to endlessly dominate every single thread even remotely tied to US politics. We're on the same page on the mod team that we need to keep that sort of thing from becoming tedious. We still aren't certain whether the best way to do that is with strict enforcement or having a thread for it, but we will take action either way. The Top G posted:This. DV seems to have a clear idea of what the current problems with D&D are and how they can be solved, why not give him a chance to put his money where his mouth his? I agree, but if he doesn't want to be an IK I'm not going to force him. Though I do relish the fact that he complains about rule enforcement while being completely unwilling to enforce any himself.  Victar posted:My understanding is D&D's current strategy to deal with the paradox of tolerance is "Though positions are not moderated in D&D, all SA rules such as those regarding bigotry apply fully. If you see something you believe has no place on the site, this is a sitewide issue rather than merely a D&D one, and you should contact the admins at forumadmins@somethingawful.com". I disagree. For a full explanation why, search my username for "moderate positions," "moderating positions" etc. It's a conversation that's been had a few times. To address the paradox of tolerance specifically, in short, one is not allowed to engage in intolerant behavior toward other D&D users, such as threatening or denigrating, or otherwise being hostile. OwlFancier posted:I would say this seems slightly odd to me. I agree that disturbing content should not be posted inline, it should be up to people whether or not they want to engage with that. But I would also suggest that wars by their nature are extremely bloody and cruel things, and particularly when a major subject of discussion is the extraordinary brutality of the conduct in the war and the deliberate targeting of civilians, it does seem odd to ban exposition of that? Thank you, that is something to consider. My intent here is simply to avoid glorifying violence or promoting desensitization to it. It can be difficult to judge whether someone is posting something violent to remind us of the horror of war, or because they enjoy sharing something sickening. But your reasoning is part of why violent content isn't banned completely, which some people in SAD have strongly promoted. Jakabite posted:See I had no idea and generally don’t vibe with CSPAM’s whole edgy terminally online thing, but I thought it was pretty drat apt. Also what the gently caress I was making fun of the meme/myself and that post was not meant to be taken seriously. Staluigi posted:You gotta get real comfortable using way longer probations more often and sooner in the cycle of having determined that someone is a toxic idiot or a safari provocateer (or both) like I'm no stranger to it cause of all sorts of things in my dumbshit past but here the major issue is that it doesn't take much to derail some threads into pages of flaming poo poo where i could a been learning something but now it's repeatedly having an epistemologically closed position jackhammered at it by newly resident obsessives This may be true. I do get in the habit of starting at 6 for a new type of offense and might need to more carefully consider how intentionally naughty someone is being and how much damage it does to a thread. Victar posted:I absolutely need the Ukraine thread's rules that demand spoilering links to horrible photos/videos, and NMS warning tags, for the sake of mental health. Without those rules I couldn't read the thread. I'll take a look and do that if it seems necessary, though the rule on the first page of I/P seemed explicit enough.
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Nov 5, 2023 20:05
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Mid-Life Crisis posted:Again, issue of leftists refusing any nuance to exist and trivializing everything into correct or subhuman is the conundrum at hand. You can’t reason with leftists, it’s all about supreme power or bust for them. If being centrist is a slur, the rot runs deep. Bel Shazar posted:Hah, show me a leftist who's all about power and I'll show you a statist pretending to be a leftist. I would prefer if we keep discussion here about D&D rather than politics in general. Baronash posted:I don't think anything about the policy Koos just listed there, or how it has generally been enforced, could be fairly characterized as a blanket ban on expositing on the brutality of war. Yes, it is explicitly not that.
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Nov 5, 2023 20:07
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Again, I would prefer we focus on our positive or negative opinions of current D&D policies or occurrences, not politics, other forums, or old drama.
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Nov 5, 2023 22:30
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Jakabite posted:It is a position. No one’s mind has ever been changed by participating in an internet debate anyway, its only utility is to convince spectators. And to be honest I do find it a bit gross that people are so intent on spending their time discussing this conflict but absolutely refuse to even be on the same page as a link to the reality of it. No one’s forcing anyone to look but this is over-sanitisation of a horrible subject. To be clear, believing this material should be linked in this context, as you do, is a position. Doing so is an action.
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Nov 5, 2023 22:45
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VitalSigns posted:Objectively it is bizarre that if you show someone a picture of the aftermath of airstriking an ambulance full of kids you get banned but advocating airstriking the ambulance in the first place is perfectly acceptable. Clearly, actually bombing kids is more harmful than simply showing people the real human cost of what they support, especially if the latter is done to try to convince people to stop supporting mass murder. This is part of why I've not taken the hardline stance against any violent material being linked which is advocated in SAD. It is also true that bombing children is more harmful than anything one could post, but this is irrelevant as bombing children is already against the general rules of SA. socialsecurity posted:If you feel you should be able to link people dying there is an active SAD thread about the topic that will probably supersede any decision Koos makes about the topic. It is true that if the SAD discussion leads to an admin decision that differs from what I'm currently doing, then the admin decision will take priority. VitalSigns posted:See also how supporting violence is treated. Automatic ban, unless it's an agent of the state shooting someone for jaywalking or something and then not only is there inevitably someone to say "good shoot", but their pro-violence opinion must be treated as respectable and it's the people telling them to gently caress off who get punished. Neither my nor the admins' policy include any provisions for who is perpetrating violence. It's based on whether it's graphic (if posted inline) and whether it is cheering it on or otherwise ghoulish (if linked). And though it's not my business, if a Gibbisser linked a video of the police shooting someone and said "serves them right" I would hope they'd be banned. OwlFancier posted:Showing evidence of things is a tactic, but it is a tactic that preferences some positions over others. There are some positions which are more sustainable in the absence of evidence than in the presence of it. If there is a debate over whether something happened and someone posted video evidence that included violence that would be allowed under my current policy, as it is part of discussion. World Famous W posted:im always sincere, but ill drop the jokes for this. several of the us politic threads have people that have been posting together for years. we are all human and will build and keep grudges. hell, ive got plenty of grudges from 2020 and posters about reade. now, ive mostly been civil to them, but it's there. just don't think you're going to get what you want here at all I'm not asking anyone to drop all their grudges, just not to post about them in this thread for feedback to inform policy. Panzeh posted:I will say this- i think it would cut down on a lot of the talking past each other if people only attributed positions to specific posters or people, and actually had to quote the post in question rather than vague swipes. Agreed.
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Nov 5, 2023 23:59
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Ither posted:I only read the USCE, 2024 GOP Primary, and Trump Legal Troubles threads. Might have a reckoning if it starts taking over the thread whilst going nowhere again.
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Nov 6, 2023 02:03
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Discendo Vox posted:Why do you need a bad thing to happen again before you prevent the bad thing from happening? I already issued the thread a warning about it, which is the only preventative measure we're sure we want to take at this time.
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Nov 6, 2023 02:37
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Gumball Gumption posted:I don't mean for it to be a red herring, just my own experience around trolls and D&D. There is a war being fought in the heads of a handful of posters and then a lot of people who This is why I have the rule against assumptions of bad faith.
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Nov 6, 2023 19:32
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Main Paineframe posted:One thing I will say is that if someone has a history of breaking the D&D rules, then that tends to not be taken into account at all in their probes unless the person typing the report adds "and this person has like thirty probes already for this exact same thing" to the end of a report. If they don't add that line, it's usually just a sixer, but adding that set of magic words seems to fairly consistently elevate the probe length to days or more. So the mods probably aren't looking at rapsheets enough when handling reports. I always try to look at the rap sheet for the same or similar offenses when deciding punishment severity, and this is part of the D&D mod handbook as well. So if that isn't occurring it's because we're doing a poor job. Discendo Vox posted:Koos has a policy of not reading rapsheets, like he doesn't read the forum he moderates. It's another way to justify not acting on bad users, even when their methodology is extremely predictable and longstanding. That is false. I've explained to you on multiple occasions that rap sheets are used to determine punishments but not (necessarily) to determine whether an offense was committed, because that is prejudicial.
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Nov 6, 2023 19:49
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Kalit posted:You know what, you've convinced me that SYQ is fine. No.
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Nov 6, 2023 20:47
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Gumball Gumption posted:Give d&d posters an embassy in your FYAD homeland to let them post SYQ. That is impossible, as I have no control over FYAD, and FYAD thinks C-SPAM and D&D are both, erm... various words I ought not say.
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Nov 6, 2023 20:55
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Nix Panicus posted:Its worth noting that the D&D discord did have a goon mock channel that became so toxic it had to be shut down, and also the D&D discord plotted to remove mods they didnt like. I must reiterate that I would like feedback to be about current issues and not old drama.
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Nov 6, 2023 23:16
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Homeless Friend posted:A common misconception, anybody can post in any forum. Different forums have different standards of behavior, the solution to users who want to do that xyz behavior isn’t to change their homeforum. It’s go to the appropriate forum, otherwise you are just diluting the spirit of each forum.
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Nov 6, 2023 23:45
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Maera Sior posted:Koos, you seem to be replying to most suggestions with "No," "Not my area," or "We totally do that." If you're not going to accept anything people are saying, why ask for feedback? What actionable feedback have you accepted from past posts? It is not accurate that I don't accept (here meaning agree with, consider, or act on) anything people are saying. Here is a sampling of times I have done so in this thread. Koos Group posted:Alright, I'll try leaving it open longer than usual this time. Maybe not an entire week, but into the middle of the next work week so those who are busy on the weekends still have a chance. Koos Group posted:I agree that this was something of a mistake and will speak to Rigel about it, and clarify what whataboutism is for the purpose of D&D rules to the thread. Koos Group posted:It appears that post was handled by a different mod, and no explanation was given for not acting on the report (this is normal due to the high number of reports we receive). MEMRI had not been discussed during the course of the current conflict as being unreliable until after Mister Fister posted it, so that can be considered an honest mistake, and now that the truth has come to light others who post it without explaining themselves will be probed for not acknowledging rebuttals/ongoing debate. His second source does clearly seem to violate the rule against Twitter randos, so I will consider your posting of it here an appeal and punish it accordingly, with a warning to use better sources in general. Koos Group posted:I'll take a look and do that if it seems necessary, though the rule on the first page of I/P seemed explicit enough. Koos Group posted:This may be true. I do get in the habit of starting at 6 for a new type of offense and might need to more carefully consider how intentionally naughty someone is being and how much damage it does to a thread. Koos Group posted:Thank you, that is something to consider. My intent here is simply to avoid glorifying violence or promoting desensitization to it. It can be difficult to judge whether someone is posting something violent to remind us of the horror of war, or because they enjoy sharing something sickening. But your reasoning is part of why violent content isn't banned completely, which some people in SAD have strongly promoted. Koos Group posted:We're on the same page on the mod team that we need to keep that sort of thing from becoming tedious. We still aren't certain whether the best way to do that is with strict enforcement or having a thread for it, but we will take action either way. Koos Group posted:Not a terrible idea, though I'm not sure it would be practical to find a new IK for every new thread. It takes time for mods to clear an IK and for the admins to actually add them. A better system would be to have IKs who handle particular areas, such as world history, US politics, science, et cetera, and for them to handle new threads in their domain. When I say something is not my area, it's because it's because it is about another board I have no power over. That is not a matter of choosing not to accept feedback, as I do not have a choice in the matter. When I say we are already do something, I mean that I agree with the user about what outcome is desirable, and it is already D&D policy and mod intent to reach it. If we come short it is our failure, and in those cases we require specific examples to consider and improve, which is to say, feedback. Maera Sior posted:My feedback: There's too much leniency for users that are trolling, whether they're posting in good faith or not. They know there's been a reaction in the past, they know there will be a reaction in the future, and they don't care. And it leads to endless derails as people take the bait or try to refute it. selec posted:I can’t reconcile “trolling” and “posting in good faith” here, I kinda thought definitionally those two things are mutually exclusive. As defined in D&D rules, trolling does not mean specifically that a user does not believe what they're saying, but is instead about wanting to inflame rather than have a debate. So, if someone were to post something using the phrasing most likely to cause rancor, then leave, that would be considered trolling regardless of whether they believe the thing. Though it's grouped under bad faith even if they do believe it, as the dishonesty is not in presenting an idea they don't believe, but the implicit and false assertion that they are posting it to have a dialogue.
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Nov 7, 2023 02:19
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Nix Panicus posted:How often do you think a person should be required to continue posting in order to not qualify as having 'left'? Should I block out a few hours ahead of time? Can I get official Koos feedback on that? If all you were going to post was that you agreed that would be white noise cheerleading. But determining if someone is trolling is not just based on whether they make another post, it's a combination of all the things I said. Though even a single follow up post doesn't hurt. Cpt_Obvious posted:It seems like trolling is defined not by the intention of the poster but by the reception of his post. Interesting. As you can see in my previous post, it is not. The rules also acknowledge that having a controversial opinion should not be prima facie evidence that someone is trolling: Koos Group posted:Enforcement of this rule errs on the side of leniency so that posters do not fear they'll be considered trolls just for having a controversial opinion.
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Nov 7, 2023 02:30
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Nix Panicus posted:As a worked example for the class, what would be the correct response you would give that indicates that, after consideration, I fully agree with the arguments made in response to my question so as to avoid white noise cheerleading? To avoid being probed for white noise cheerleading, you must offer more than simple agreement or disagreement, as per the rules. To be clear, you leaving had nothing to do with why you were probed. I wasn't aware that you had. It was because you were obfuscating your arguments and seemingly doing so to get people's goat, hence the probation reason.
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Nov 7, 2023 03:04
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Nix Panicus posted:"Unwillingness to directly defend or concede point, general bad faith." Ah, I thought you were talking about your more recent probation. I don't remember the exact circumstances of the other one, but I think the "directly" part was key, as you were doing the satire on third parties or what have you.
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Nov 7, 2023 03:31
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Nix Panicus posted:I was not doing a satire, I was sincere posting. I was *accused* of doing a satire, in bad faith, by other posters in the thread. I don't position myself as "better" than C-SPAM. I'm also not sure exactly what you mean by vibes. Moderating bad faith means intuiting users' motivations sometimes, because it's about whether they're being dishonest (satirical, in this case). My understanding was that that was what you were doing. To be honest, that still appears to me to be what you were doing, particularly given the wording used in the two posts you were probated for, such as "quixotic" and "protest vote," how you didn't have any other candidates in mind, or how you did it during an ongoing discussion of voting strategies. But to be clear, you are telling me that making this point was not your intent?
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Nov 7, 2023 04:15
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Nix Panicus posted:Would you describe voting for Hakeem Jeffries to become Speaker of the House as anything except quixotic? It was quite literally adhering to idealism while being impractical and unrealistic. You enjoy words Koos, surely this doesnt elude you. And what else would a vote for a candidate who can't possibly win *be* except for a protest against the alternatives presented? Its a concise and accurate description of events. If it *also* seems satirical, I feel that says more about your interpretation of events than anything else. Did you, personally, find the arguments presented to be an obvious satire? Do you believe that I coordinated their responses ahead of time to concoct the perfect farce? It genuinely seems to me as though you set out to make that point, yes. My intuition was not informed by other posters' reactions (you will notice that, in fact, I probed other posters for accusing you of trolling), but rather what I felt was the most reasonable interpretation given all of the context I had. You have stated in the past that you hold strategic voting in contempt, and during the course of a discussion about the utility of voting you came in and reversed that position, using common arguments of your opponents (with on-the-nose wording), in a way that demonstrates their hypocrisy, and does not really make much sense if taken at face value. I further believe you are lying to my face, and that this is not only a repeat of that sort of bad faith behavior, but an indication that intend to continue. As such, I am now going to forumban you. If I have read you wrongly, and you were sincere the whole time, may God have mercy on my soul, but I'm confident that is not the case.
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Nov 7, 2023 05:11
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Stringent posted:I have some actual feedback to ask about! Yes, that sounds like a good idea. Will make a post about it in the mod forum if I remember. Anyway, that post was made while I was asleep but I've been probing fewer posts than normal in this thread due to the relaxed rules. Sometimes posting about posters can actually be relevant here because poster credibility is a factor due to these being personal opinions. But I also would like to avoid getting deep into grudges and whatnot. koolkal posted:2. Requiring an assumption of "good faith posting" is dumb, some people are just there to troll and everyone knows it. I don't mean instances where people have dumb opinions they truly believe but instead the ones where they're clearly playing stupid I've considered changing the assumption of good faith rule so that someone is not punished if the post about which they assumed bad faith is punished. So making the accusation is a gamble. However, this still essentially means that people will be reporting in the middle of the thread where everyone else has to read it instead of interesting material, going against the spirit of the forum. Stringent posted:3. Requiring mods to understand what "good faith posting" is versus trolling without posting examples is, "dumb". I do wonder about whether the trolling rule should be changed in its wording. Firstly because posting falsely or pretentiously seems to be a part of the definition most of the time, rather than simply with the intent to upset, and also because of the perennial difficulty in distinguishing between a message meant to be inflammatory vs. one that simply is inflammatory due to their beliefs. I might look at some sociological studies of trolling, as well as do some trolling myself, to help figure out what would be best. Blue Footed Booby posted:Sufficiently advanced lack of self awareness is indistinguishable from bad faith. The difference is whether they're lying to themselves and working from that premise, or just directly lying to others. I feel like sometimes people get overly fixated on whether a post is sincere rather than whether it's poo poo. If it's impossible to tell whether a person is bullshitting, or if they really do radically change their positions day to day with no reflection, or are just literally incapable of communicating through in any form besides hyperbole and sarcasm, the conclusion is still the same: it's a bad post. Hyperbole and sarcasm are both against the rules under imprecision, insinuation and hostility. Though this may be one of those we need to enforce more. Blue Footed Booby posted:The electoralism debate is a great example of this: sincere or not, it's not just the same arguments every time, but pretty much entirely the same people. It's never novel or interesting except to newcomers and actively disrupts other conversations because you have to scroll past so much boring crap that people just check out of the thread for a while. The last iteration in USCE went on for nineteen pages before a mod shut it down. It could have been stopped after two without losing any actual positions. I don't care whether the posters are being sincere. That is, indeed, why good faith is not the only rule, and we have others regarding material that is simply not interesting. Bar Ran Dun posted:A poo poo show of an election is coming are you planning on more mods for it? We would like more mods, but finding those who are willing and able is difficult. I'm strongly considering including mod nominations (public or private messaged) in the next feedback thread. Mooseontheloose posted:My only concrete solution to offer is to start off probes at 12 hours instead of 6? That is an interesting idea. I'll think about it, and ask the mods if I remember to. Gripweed posted:Koos you have repeatedly demonstrated an inability to tell the difference between "bad faith" posting and sincerely held heterodox beliefs. Here you have confused someone actually willing to stick around and defend their positions as a "pattern of dishonest trolling". I'm not sure what you can do about that, since bad faith posting is a problem, as demonstrated by how long people have been allowed to get away with just asking questions in the Palestine thread. But your bad shoots are a problem and something has gotta be figured out to make them happen less often I always attempt to give the benefit of the doubt for sincere but unusual or unpopular beliefs. It's why I included that clause in the rule about trolling. I did not ban out of dislike for his feedback (you may notice there has been feedback that is much more unkind to me than his, and I did not do anything about it because I want all feedback, positive or negative), but because I truly believe he was being insincere then and did it again in this thread while talking about it. I would encourage anyone who is curious or skeptical about this to look at his last two probations and the general conversation that was going on in the thread at the time. Baronash posted:I don't really agree about the frequency, but poorly communicated thread rules (or forum-wide rules that are highlighted in specific threads) that boil down to "didn't you see my proclamation on page 352 that we will be judging the use of argument Y harshly? It's all clearly explained in this other thread's OP." are annoying and we need to get better about making sure people have a reasonable chance to see those. I agree and will try to abide by that.
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Nov 7, 2023 19:39
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Freakazoid_ posted:Koos iirc you buried a comment about ramping probations in one of your longer posts, something about a ramp cap? I think that's a bad idea, there should be no cap on ramps. Unless you intend to suddenly jump to a forum ban or something. Otherwise you're just giving 3 day probes to the same people over and over with no real resolution. 3 day is a soft cap (mods can always go beyond it according to their judgement) and reaching that point does indeed indicate there should be discussion of a forumban. The three day time is based on a best practice mods have found in general, which is that probations around there are effective at discouraging behaviors without being significant events that create drama or imply animosity.
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Nov 7, 2023 20:16
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mawarannahr posted:I feel like pretentiousness could be harmful as a criterion. I have gotten valuable information and worthwhile perspectives from posts written in a way I would deem pretentious. Some people are just temperamentally like that, and may have a hard time turning it off even if they try (in some cases these can be related to factors not fully in their control, e.g. certain types of neurodivergence -- even just being from a different culture can predispose someone to sounding awkward while writing English). I don't think it's a big issue in posts that don't otherwise inflame. Agreed, but by pretentious I didn't mean haughty, as it's sometimes used, but rather literally operating under some pretense, which is the premise of the trolling.
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Nov 7, 2023 23:20
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Tesseraction posted:It's an interesting one because that was in the UKMT where we are allowed to C-SPAM post as well as D&D post and the general rule is only our IKs are allowed to mete out punishment. Jose Valasquez posted:My feedback is that saying hitler had a point about the jews should be more than a 1 day probe This one would normally be up to the UKMT IKs, as it's a regional thread where D&D's generally mods don't normally step in. I'm not sure why GJB probed it instead of them. Gumball Gumption posted:Honestly looks like an extra-judicial shot since at worst it's white noise posting, 2.b I believe. Good probe under common sense but goes against how D&D is supposed to operate. They obviously are not trolling, they lack the rap sheet and have posters saying they're generally a good poster in that thread. It's in good faith and it doesn't seem like they expected the response or were intentionally poo poo stirring. VitalSigns posted:Skimming their post history they do not seem to be a Nazi (I realize I am risking savage mockery if my skimming was too brief and I missed a bunch of Nazi posts), and it was just a *very* tasteless joke, so maybe they dont need to be punished like an actual Nazi, but looking at what other people have gotten for much less, it should probably be more than a day to joke that doing the Holocaust was a good idea. Tesseraction posted:Yeah FWIW I don't think they're a nazi I think it was a joke that misfired badly, so I don't think a permaban is necessarily warranted, but certainly some kind of bad joke tax sure. Some days you miss but there's missing and hitting the wall and there's missing and somehow painting a swastika on the wall. That was my impression as well, that the user was trying to make a joke but isn't very smart.
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Nov 8, 2023 17:47
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Mid-Life Crisis posted:No, opinions you don’t like don’t deserve bans if they are articulated with arguments. Thats the whole idea here. You retort with flaws in the points and then leave it be. If their arguments don’t have any basis, then you probe for not bringing anything to the table other than hateful, exclusionary feelings. But not until that’s made abundantly clear. The reality is there’s always some misunderstanding in-between, the gray area. Some folk’s method of getting to that may be making an outlandish claim and waiting for the entire internet to tell them why they’re wrong-they are just less empathic, not necessarily bad faith or trolling. But only if they tackle the points brought forward. That’s D&D I'd like to use this post as an example of why rule I.B.1 (respond only to what was said) exists. You'll notice Mr. Crisis' points do not make sense as a response to calls for action against the unintelligent UKMT poster, because the latter was not serious, not articulated with arguments, and if taken at face value was unambiguously pro-Nazi. If I may be so bold as to take a guess at another user's motivation, this is because Mr. Crisis has been dying to make the argument you see above for quite some time, and is using this poor fit as the opportunity. And this is unfortunately common in online discourse. There are a large number of people who want badly to have a specific argument, even when no one is making the opposing argument. They may have seen it elsewhere, or even merely heard about it from a pundit/podcast/tweet, but it isn't occurring currently. It also sometimes involves talking about an ideology in general, or a thread consensus, with nothing specific quoted, which Mr. Crisis did as well, not quoting any specific posts but beginning his post as if he is talking to someone. This of course leads to demands on someone that they defend something they didn't actually say, or ambiguity about whether someone is being called out, and is not productive.
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Nov 8, 2023 18:09
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Jakabite posted:I’m not even sure UKMT discussion belongs in this thread. I know it’s technically in D&D but it’s pretty much its own thing AND THATS HOW WE LIKE IT LOCAL THREADS FOR LOCAL PEOPLE etc. (this is a joke come post with us) Yes, it's probably not the ideal place. If one wants to resolve a UKMT issue, the best way would be to PM one of the IKs or if they feel it necessary, email the admins.
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Nov 8, 2023 18:33
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mutata posted:Ah, so the unironic fash-posting has been traced to the UKMT thread and ultimately determined that it's not D&D mods' problem. I don't believe it's unironic, and yes, our policy is that we allow UKMT to handle its own affairs. OwlFancier posted:In that instance the only two responses I felt would be appropriate would either be a ban, if they're actually a nazi, or something more serious than just giving them a sixer, which I think is the only thing I can actually give as an IK? So I told them directly that if they ever posted anything like that again I would do my utmost to have them banned. As an IK, a sixer is the only thing that goes through instantly, but you can queue anything and it's likely to be approved.
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Nov 8, 2023 19:19
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mutata posted:What's the logical fallacy where someone presents a point, introduces an example, then the opponent only argues semantics of the example and purposefully avoids the actual point? Pretty sure that's in the list somewhere. I was not purposely avoiding your point. I understood it to be that there is a post in the UKMT thread you find objectionable and feel D&D mods should do something about it, and I attempted to address that directly.
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Nov 8, 2023 19:37
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OwlFancier posted:I do not personally think that if you would consider something to be a "site wide issue" as in: Yes, if someone deems something worthy of admin attention they can take it to the admins regardless of what thread it's in (or even which forum). It is not, however, up to us (meaning D&D mods) what to do with posts in your thread, even if we get reports about it, due to the arrangement we've had for some time where you are self-governed. mutata posted:Ah, my mistake. The point is this one: Yes, positions aren't moderated in D&D, even the worst ones, though that post also would have been hit in D&D proper for other reasons. This is because doing so makes moderators arbiters of what's good and right, which in turn makes moderation much more difficult, makes rule enforcement issues into political issues, and stifles debate. For a more in-depth explanation of my reasoning, I would recommend using search to find my posts which say "moderate positions" or variations thereof. Because this policy has been debated extensively it is unlikely to change.
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Nov 8, 2023 20:26
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VitalSigns posted:So the problem with joking that the Holocaust was a good idea is the "joking" part? If it had occurred in UKMT, I don't know, but in D&D proper, yes. Seeing Nazi or antisemitic arguments and their refutations could be quite informative, particularly with the outbreak of this ideology in the past decade, as it would help people not only recognize them but argue against them elsewhere. VitalSigns posted:And if so, why was the "mods enjoy eating their own feces" thread closed, that is certainly a position which is open to falsification and therefore possible for reasonable people to debate, yet you seemed to have no trouble determining what is right or wrong to argue there That thread was closed because it was done in bad faith. The user did not believe mods eat feces, or that productive discussion could be had on the matter. Its intent was only to demonstrate hypocrisy regarding D&D moderation.
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Nov 8, 2023 20:41
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