1st quarter 2024 D&D Feedback: State of the Forum

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Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Koos Group posted:

I don't recall the specifics, as that was a few months ago, and I also don't think a list of issues or considerations that were already resolved would be informative on how to present new ones. Though there was a list like that posted toward the end of the previous thread, so one can go looking for that if they're curious.

It would be useful to hold you accountable for actually resolving the issues being repeatedly brought to your attention.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2024 03:28

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 07:12

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Koos Group posted:

I've had this complaint before, but I'm not sure how it's possible to get rid of posts that are excessively or uselessly cynical or despairing, because cynicism and despair must be a reasonable response to political developments in at least some cases.

Why.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2024 20:58

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Koos Group posted:

Well. There are surely political outcomes which are both undesirable and common to the point of being predictable, which would make cynicism a reasonable response. And there are surely ones which are undesirable and extraordinarily unlikely for you to be able to change, which would make despair a reasonable response.

No, not "surely", and not for the purposes of factual good faith educational discussion in this factual good faith discussion forum. Show your work. What is the contribution of despair and cynicism to factual good faith educational discussion? Why are you not enforcing the rules?

# ¿ Mar 10, 2024 21:36

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Koos Group posted:

Cynicism around a certain topic can be educational and good faith if you explain the model or historical precedents that inform your cynicism, and your cynicism's validity can be tested by the predictions you make. Likewise, well-founded despair around a certain topic can be an argument that one's efforts are best spent on something else.

Posting your cynicism is not actually posting explanation of models or historical precedents about an issue. Despair is similarly not an argument about resource allocation. Neither of these are actually educational or factual; they're a gloss on top of actual information.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2024 23:07

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Stringent posted:

I wouldn't describe the schism around media literacy/criticism so much as "baggage and grudges", but rather a sincere disagreement over what media literacy/criticism consists of. There seems to be roughly two major schools of thought in DnD, one which focuses on the vetting of sources, and another which places less emphasis on the source and instead focuses on a close read of the content.

Sorry to single DV out here, but they're probably the most vocal and coherent exponent of the "vetting the source" school of thought. For example, I was brought to task for posting a video from an Iranian state media aligned account which posted a video of the Houthi Prime Minister:

No. Your decision to refuse to consider the source of media when you find it rhetorically convenient to do so does not mean that I do not scrutinize the content of media. The "schism" is the degree of tolerance shown for your interest in making GBS threads up the forum, as demonstrated by your rapsheet.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2024 07:07

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

socialsecurity posted:

Yes patterns like this are quite obvious and intentional, the problem is when you don't have enough mods that are active in the thread/community to notice it, it's a very tuned form of trolling that has been working because people who engage with them end up getting probed.

To put this differently, the current moderation practices train and incentivize trolls to use these methods to sabotage discussion.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2024 19:38

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

As you can already see I am responding to and agreeing wuth extensively documented examples from Raenir Salazar. Also we can all still see y'all's rapsheets. The issue is not disagreement with consensus. The issue is making statements that are designed to sabotage discussion by shifting burdens, rendering falsification impossible, and repeatedly re-raising rebutted claims, actions that violate the rules and are not enforced on.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Mar 13, 2024

# ¿ Mar 13, 2024 20:17

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Probably Magic posted:

This does not address the very loaded term of "sabotage" at all, which implies you're embarking on a great project. You're not. You're posting in a politics forum. Posting with the same boring views I could get from the White House Press Secretary, no less. God forbid people make fun of you for pretending your cheerleading is not in fact serious philosopher-king discourse. Truly, this will derail.... something. Unclear as to what.

Whatever. This poo poo's depressing, and I already offered up the solution on my end in my very first post, time to pursue that matter further.

It's sabotage because it is specifically deleterious to a factual, educational, falsifiable discussion, basic good faith discussion, not "philosopher king discourse." Even if we weren't able to identify patterns in those posts themselves as Raenir identified and as I've already articulated, we can still see your rapsheets. We know you are doing this on purpose.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2024 20:26

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

socialsecurity posted:

Yeah and that's not the worst thing, probes aren't that big of a deal as long as they aren't like months long. Like I got probed yesterday or the day before for continuing a derail and I deserved it and probing me help get the thread back on track.

Conversely, for the users who are breaking the rules deliberately to sabotage discussion or harass other users (like B B as mentioned earlier), short probations are explicitly not a disincentive because their goals are still being accomplished.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2024 20:29

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

mawarannahr posted:

With this and other posts you are claiming there is a grand conspiracy to sabotage the subforum. I think you are getting a little heavy into the paranoid style:

More often I see you dragging the discussion down or trying to shut it down entirely. You can make interesting and informative posts -- I wish you would write more words about the FDA than chiding people.

You are misrepresenting my position; there doesn't have to be a grand conspiracy for there to be a group of users who enjoy Sartre's right to play. To wit, I am confident you know that I can't post more words about the FDA without being specifically harassed for doing so.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2024 20:46

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Moderators are in fact supposed to take a user's history of probations and practices into account. In practice this does not reliably happen, because the moderators do not read the forum, because some of them are resistant to applying punishments at all, because there may be some sort of higher obstacle to bans and forumbans, and because there is such heavy turnover among DnD moderators (a self-perpetuating problem).

# ¿ Mar 14, 2024 00:13

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Please do not create a permanent less moderated space for moderation feedback when you are already unable to moderate the existing set of reports in a near-timely fashion.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2024 20:21

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

One fundamental fault of current enforcement policy, among others, is that punishments not only arrive late, but a) rule violations intended to sabotage discussion and b) rule violations for objectively correctly identifying these efforts are treated equally harshly. If anything the latter are more commonly and more harshly punished, as Raenir Salazar has documented. This documentation shouldn't be necessary to get you to enforce the rules on users who are not participating in good faith.

Koos Group posted:

The only higher obstacle to bans would be admin denial, which is very rare, and the highest obstacle to forumbans would be me, and I am almost always in favor of them.

The idea that you are "almost always in favor of forumbans" is also contradicted by the above, and the rapsheets involved.

If you want to reduce the number of reports, if you want to simplify the moderation burden, then one of the many ways you could do so productively is by recognizing that you will reduce the number of reports by removing the people who are the root cause, the ones you have already acknowledged are deliberately sabotaging discussion. This reduces the number of reports of the users in a) because they are no longer breaking the rules, and it reduces the number of reports in b) because there is no longer trolling for these users to correctly identify.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Mar 15, 2024

# ¿ Mar 15, 2024 23:14

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Esran posted:

I think you are misusing "objectively correct". It doesn't mean "I agree with".

Correct as in the same users were punished for trolling. Again, we do not have to deny the content or existence of these users' rapsheets in considering whether or not Koos group almost always applies forumbans, or recognizes the motivations of the users with a long history of violating the rules in established ways. Repeatedly denying Raenir's detailed explanations does not actually shift the associated burdens.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Mar 16, 2024

# ¿ Mar 16, 2024 01:01

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 07:12

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

1st Quarter feedback thread 2023:

Rosalind posted:

I am going to be so egotistical as to assume that I might be one of the people you're referencing here. To be honest, I am not going to return to posting in D&D probably ever. It's not fulfilling.

At the start of the pandemic, it felt good to be helpful with my small amount of insight as an epidemiologist. I was also glad to recruit so many goons into our COVID study we were running! Your data were super helpful. It was also great to have a group of educated laypeople to talk through the pandemic with early on--it was not a perspective I was getting at work.

But it's also exhausting to have every single word of my posts nitpicked and taken in the worst bad faith angle possible. Man I just want a place to relax and talk about health news and politics with people I mostly agree with but the amount of vitriol I would get for some of my posts was too much for me to handle. People questioned my professional judgment and called me bad at my job. I got anonymous emails questioning whether I actually was an epidemiologist (which made me afraid I was going to get doxxed). At least one person (who was also an educated user who no longer posts, ironically) wrote me like a thousand word essay PM about how na�ve and wrong I am.

I am a scientist. I know we're well-reputed for being terrible communicators and I'm probably not an exception to that. I'm aware that I've said some stupid things or presented an argument horribly or even got into a little heated feud on a bad day. But people here are just so mean.

I recognize it's the internet--people can be mean. I can handle it, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't want to have to handle it. There are other spaces now where I can have these sorts of conversations (Discords, subreddits, etc.) without feeling it being quite so mean.

Rosalind posted:

See this is exactly it! This post perfectly encapsulates why I don't post here any more.

It calls me names, it interprets what I posted (which was basically just "I'd post here more if people are nicer") in the most bad faith way possible (suggesting I only want people to post adhering to some sort of corporate capitalist orthodoxy), and suggests that I made some sort of outrageous request (that people post with a level of academic study rigor).

And it's written so perfectly too for plausible deniability because I'm not mentioned by name of course. You can't call me "terminally academia-brained" to my face because that would get you in trouble.

This is exactly why I don't put in D&D any more. Thank you for proving my point in a thread about feedback about why people don't post in D&D any more.

2nd Quarter feedback thread 2023:

Discendo Vox posted:

You've not responded to most of the feedback from the previous feedback thread. The primary difference since the latest round of mod turnover has been even less enforcement of the rules than before, meaning even more trolling and circular arguments in all the major threads.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2024 02:42

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