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Koos Group posted:Violent Content 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? If content is properly tagged so people can know what they're clicking on, I would personally suggest that simply demonstrating the brutality of the war is a sufficient point in and of itself? A lot of the people in governments around the world are trying to sanitize the war by framing it in terms of "self defence" and deliberately refusing to engage with the abject cruelty of it, I would personally suggest that the strongest argument against that is documenting the actual horror of it. If people want to justify it then make them justify the reality of it. I suspect this is probably the motivation for a lot of people posting horrific things. Discussion of war without a focus on the human cost is inherently inaccurate, in a way which I think inherently favours its perpetuation, i.e the "it's impossible to make an anti-war war movie" argument. I think this unavoidably comes down to "moderating positions" in practice and I think the position being moderated in favour of is a very bad one.
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Nov 5, 2023 18:15
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I feel like the first and second halves of that post contradict each other.
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Nov 5, 2023 20:01
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My contention would be that for the purposes of:quote:Material that is properly tagged and linked but is posted gratuitously, without a legitimate purpose in discussion, receives a major punishment at mods' discretion. "I find this viscerally disgusting and it makes me angry that people are looking to gloss over it in favour of defending the policies which produce it" is a legitimate discursive purpose. I don't think discussion of war can or should be cool and calm from all participants. Being able to do that is indicative of already being very desensitized to violence. That is why I can do it and I think that having strong emotional reactions is indicative of a far better state of mind. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Nov 5, 2023 |
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Nov 5, 2023 20:11
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Baronash posted:I think the argument you outlined in your second sentence is made regularly in the thread. I fundamentally disagree that it would improve that discussion to have everyone linking to gory content to support their point. It probably wouldn't for people who are more comfortable discussing the subject dispassionately, or who are capable of framing their arguments in more florid terms. And you are of course butting up against the entire conceit of D&D as a forum at this point. I don't share the general view that arguments made with the right language are inherently more worthy of consideration than ones made crudely. I again think this is fundamentally a matter of moderating positions. If it is an argument that is made frequently I would suggest that this indicates that there exists a set of people whose method of discussion and therefore whose positions are excluded. Presumably their ability to discuss would be improved by permitting it.
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Nov 5, 2023 20:42
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And that's a value judgement that you can make, I merely point out that in doing that you also end up selectively moderating for positions which can dispassionately observe the horrific cruelty of war and give a lot of structural favour to the exact kind of rhetoric which is being used by the people in power who are supporting it. And it is exactly those positions which we are seeing popular protest the world over in opposition to. The desire for civlity in the face of brutality creates its own opposition which will select for people who are blunt and angry about their positions because those are the ones excluded from the civil discourse. In this position it is impossible to achieve value neutral moderation, only to pick sides.
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Nov 5, 2023 20:56
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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. Yes, this, basically. I find the former far more represhensible than the latter, but I am not aware of any policy to ban people for the former? Especially if it is worded abstractly, indefinitely. I find it impossible to imagine that this does not constitute de-facto moderating positions.
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Nov 5, 2023 22:53
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Baronash posted:Again, it's not a position, it is a tactic. You can't argue the facts of "I want you to see this." You can certainly form a position of "I think this tactic should/should not be allowed," but that is not the same thing. 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. I don't think tactics and positions are especially separable.
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Nov 5, 2023 23:15
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Which is why I would favour the approach of permitting linking to disturbing content with a clear indication of what it contains, and challenging posters to defend it if necessary, you don't have to click on it if you don't want to, but I think that would serve both the end of deterring making excuses for, or seeking to abstract barbarism into detatched terms, while also preventing people from being exposed to essentially shock images without knowing about it. If someone consistently refuses to engage with the reality of their position then I think that would just make them a bad faith poster or whatever. Someone you can't really have a conversation with however you want to phrase it.
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Nov 6, 2023 02:02
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Koos Group posted: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. In that instance the only two responses I felt would be appropriate would either be a ban, if they're actually a nazi rather than making an extremely stupid "joke", 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. If you get a report for something like that and you want to ban them for it I would hardly argue against it for jurisdictional reasons? Like yeah I don't think we need any of the daft procedural stuff enforcing but if you see a report for someone making a joke about maybe hitler was right and you want to just ban them for it rather than asking them what the gently caress first, fair enough? I would simply not make jokes about hitler being right if I didn't want to be banned. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Nov 8, 2023 |
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Nov 8, 2023 18:54
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I do not personally think that if you would consider something to be a "site wide issue" as in:quote: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. That which thread it is in would greatly matter? My response is probably always going to be to ask people what the gently caress they're doing before using buttons, as the poster in question made one monumentally stupid post and then apparently cringed themselves out of existence that, to me, achieves the same thing as anything I can do to keep them out of the thread. They are not continuing to cause problems and I assume they understand that nobody in UKMT is going to want to give them the time of day and that seems to be enough to make them not post there any more. But if you would like to take a site-wide or even forum-wide position that that sort of thing is bannable (which I don't honestly know if it even is, I don't run the forum, I have no idea what its stance on "maybe hitler was right" is) I don't see why the specific thread would make a difference? I assume you got reports about it, it's entirely up to you if you want to do that.
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Nov 8, 2023 19:48
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 05:38 |
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Koos Group posted:It's the same as the benefit of having any position argued by its actual adherents rather than only summarized or analyzed by others. Getting it straight from the horse's mouth means it is more likely to be similar to what you'll encounter in the real world, and you can see what sort of things they might say in response to criticisms. I feel like the logical extension of this argument is that it is better to learn to be a doctor by discovering it from first principles rather than going to a school where they teach you the collected body of knowledge already available on the subject. I don't think the best way to learn about fascism is by taking fascists at their word about it.
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Nov 8, 2023 20:56
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