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I have just excepted that fact that no matter what my view is on a topic, I am 100% wrong if I dont agree with a certain group that trolls YMDC......many times it will be explained to me that because I dont follow a RAW view point that borders on being ludicrous and enjoy a little RAI, that I will never understand the game.
example....

Me - The sun is yellow and the sky is blue

Them - There is nothing in the BRB or any codex to support your claim that there is any color at all. Since there is no exact ruling on what color the sky and sun are I must insist that you are completely wrong.

Me - Common sense would tell us.......

Them - Common sense, FAQs, Real World, and logic have no place in this game....... there is only the RAW. You are 100% wrong.

Me - but....

Them - You are wrong!



Continue this for another 5 pages and you begin to see why nobody can have a decent debate.......

Oh Mauleed, where has though gone?

Edit: Because I can't type.

whitedragon wrote:

willydstyle wrote:In a recent thread in YMDC about certain Necron wargear (and I've observed this phenomenon in other threads as well) the original poster bowed out of the argument by admitting, albeit with some caveats, that he was wrong.

However, the thread continued with new posters continuing to refute the opinions that the OP had already admitted were wrong.

In my mind, a person on Dakka actually admitting that they were wrong and may have "lost" a rules debate is so vanishingly rare that when a person does it, it really needs to be respected. Most of the time it seems like a poster will simply disappear from the thread if they were "proven" wrong. However, in this case, and many others, I've seen someone actually admit that they were wrong, and then the literary beat-down simply continues.

And then people complain that nobody will admit their errors on YMDC...

So, when people are actually man (or woman!) enough to admit their errors... lets give them some respect and recognition.

I agree willyd, but, the OP in the Necron thread in question hardly bowed out gracefully, which probably spurned on the extra comments.

From ajfirecracker:

"So to all of you who made any arguments not based on fluff or comparisons to PF/DCCW, congrats, you won an argument on the internet.

To those of you who solely made arguments based on fluff or comparison: shame on you! You didn't actually contribute anything to the rules discussion! Try harder next time."

Kinda looks like he's pourin' gas on the fire as he's running out the door. Not cool and not worthy of giving credit for "graciously bowing out".

I agree with whitedragon . Which is why i trust experienced mods like KK and fraz , they can pick up on well hidden things ( not necessarily related to this case , but they are good )

LunaHound wrote:
I agree with whitedragon . Which is why i trust experienced mods like KK and fraz , they can pick up on well hidden things ( not necessarily related to this case , but they are good )

Indeed.
Like them noticing you refer to the OP as That fething Guy, fully 5 more posts by you and a page of other posts after you had announced you were bowing out of the thread?

Nice attitude mate.

Now now, let's not start the MeanGreen vs Luna grudge match again.

/snarls and goes back under his rock, muttering about never being allowed any fun...

I never said that he bowed out "graciously." I said he did so with some caveats. But, since simply admitting that you're wrong is so vanishingly rare on Dakka that it should be respected.

willydstyle wrote:I never said that he bowed out "graciously." I said he did so with some caveats. But, since simply admitting that you're wrong is so vanishingly rare on Dakka that it should be respected.

My point is that he really didn't admit that he was wrong, and his perceived snarky attitude and "bow out" were hardly about saving face and graciously accepting defeat as it was about him getting one last jab at those he disagreed with before unsubscribing to the thread.

No respect from me on that one.

willydstyle wrote:I never said that he bowed out "graciously." I said he did so with some caveats. But, since simply admitting that you're wrong is so vanishingly rare on Dakka that it should be respected.

Did he ever admit he was wrong? I thought he merely acquiesed to play it RaI? (not that I think it was RaI, it was RaW)

Nurglitch wrote:The idea of a bunch of rules-squatters in YMDC is one reason why I originally proposed limiting people to one post per thread: so that people with lots of time to carry on a discussion couldn't marginalize those who don't. Think of it as one poster, one vote.

I think that this ia an idea certainly worth trying out. Prehaps people who would like to try it could use polls to give it a go in the YMDC? That way, the blowhards who want to rant and rave and expend their excess of time in out-typing the competing viewpoints could have their say, but at the end of the day everyone only gets one vote on the poll. It actually gives you the best of both worlds; on the one hand you have the one poster one vote effect catered to (yes, there are end runs around this, but find me something that there isn't), on the other hand, you still maintain the option of discussion, along with the other benefits of actually having a forum. It would take some careful crafting of questions, with prior knowledge of some of the possible answers (posting a poll having no idea as to an answer whatsoever would be exceedingly difficult).

solkan wrote:Nurglitch, your argument is roughly "The fighting which married couples do is a problem, and that fighting is facilitated by their ability to talk to each other. Therefore, we should prevent married couples from talking so that we can eliminate arguments and increase happiness in marriages."

In some marriages, this would be one ideal of perfection. also, I hardly think a rules debate (or flamewar as YMDC allows and therefore encourages) is really comperable to marriage.

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:I think the problem is that by page 4 or 5 new posters read the first few posts, skip to the end and add their bit, missing most of the thread.

DING DING DING, we have a winner.

I think anyone who refers/calls themself or openly admits that they are trolling on these forums should be auto banned on the spot.

This would solve alot of dakkas current problems in areas such as this.

Call me crazy but since when is trolling a good thing? Any other forum that I visit if somebody pulled this they would be banned on the spot... espically if they were known trolls and have trolled in the past like certain people on here.

My 2 cents.

Well jp400, I think they would just stop advertising and just make their trolls more sophisticated and there fore harder to detect or "prove". Sure, you peel some of them off, but unless they REALLY caused some obvious hate and discontent (thereby obtaining some sort of permaban on their IP addy or some such) they would just respawn a different ID and try again, trolling deeper.

This way, at least, the culprits try a lot less, if indeed at all, to mask their trolling; thereby keeping themselves more in plain site. This leaves it up to the individual more to determine when they are being trolled; encourages them to handle things a bit more themselves.

Seriously, where are all the asian schoolgirl pics coming from? They are pure win.

Those aren't schoolgirls, they are all professional models over the age of 18.

Here are four young Japanese birds.

If I had to guess, I would say they came either from Asia or the internet.

MeanGreenStompa wrote:

LunaHound wrote:
I agree with whitedragon . Which is why i trust experienced mods like KK and fraz , they can pick up on well hidden things ( not necessarily related to this case , but they are good )

Indeed.
Like them noticing you refer to the OP as That fething Guy, fully 5 more posts by you and a page of other posts after you had announced you were bowing out of the thread?

Nice attitude mate.

ajfirecracker wrote:I would rather stick to what exactly the rules say rather than what is intended (or at least be able to do so), even if this doesn't always match common sense
lunahound wrote: Then mister , You Are the TFG .

If someone plays that way , if thats not TFG then i dont know what TFG is. And as you can tell , i never call anyone TFG until that thread .
Why is it that i suddenly felt it was appropriate? because the discussion WAS about TFG: see below quote

ajfirecracker wrote: Maybe not the best for friendly play, but when you want to shut up TFG/powergamer, this might be the way to go.

His argument while understandable , but if everyone plays like him , wargamming would fall apart in a day. Thus what can i do other then give up trying to reason with him?
If you want to call it "bowing out of the thread" , sure?

Why you bring that up here , gee i dunno , but you sure do this type of things OFTEN . Im just glad this time mods are able to spot that .
I dont have interest in arguing with you , but i find it only fair to explain the thing you accused me of. To respect the mod's effort and wishes , i'll stop here . Feel free to use PM if you wish to throw anymore garbage at me.

*Edit wait i almost forgot , *huggles

MeanGreenStompa wrote:

ArbitorIan wrote:

1. Rename the forum 'What is the RAW'
2. Keep the forum name but actually make sure people say HOW THEY WOULD LIKE TO PLAY IT rather than what the minutae of the rules say.

Or it becomes necessary to post two answers to the raised question:

1. What you are reading in the books, pages, reference etc and how you believe that works in combination.
"I read, cross referencing the codex, page ... against the rulebook, page ... that this is the RAW"
2. What you believe is the best form of resolution for the raised question in terms of actual workability, logic and good form.
"If we take the cross reference as it is being indicated above, we would be making a change due to an omission in the new codex...I believe it's fair to retain..."

But you're right, You Make Da Call, as a name, seems to be asking us to make a judgement, to fashion a solution.

Agree with the above. Isn't the real thing people want to know is "What is the best way to play this"? Don't we all know of at least a few instances where Rules As Written lead to situations that offend logic (ala Terminators that don't have Terminator armor) and want a reasonable and well thought out solution?

For me, the Yak style "How would you play this?" poll is much more *useful* than 5 pages of arguments about language parsing.

Really? Because whenever I post a "How Will You Play It" poll/thread, it inevitably turns into several pages of "The rules don't say that!!!" when in fact they actually do.

There's another angle I think we are missing, that's degrees of extremity. There is a portrayal of the RAI camp as not adhering to what's in the rules and there is a portrayal of the RAW camp as clearly using what's written down to answer the question. What we often seem to find in the YMDC threads is that the Clear Cut rules are something all agree on, that the problems arise in areas of open interpretation or contradiction. We therefore see a clash occurring when the wording is used as evidence, often citing across books, to a level of minutiae that I really don't think GW produces rulesets to, against what others have looked at and arrived at what they perceive as the logical outcome based on the usual pattern for similar rules and using 'fair play'.

Further, I've seen now that we are to take FAQs as non-gospel due to the caveat that is written about them by GW as being 'their own house rules', I would simply remind people that the rulebook it's self tells us under The Most Important Rule on page 2 "the rules are just a framework to create an enjoyable game", so the GW FAQs, used by the creators of the game in the instances they have come across or been presented with, carry as much weight as that 'framework' if you are going to use the letter of the law in your games. The written in allowance of roll D6 or create a house rule in the rulebook hold the same literate ground as the caveat that FAQs are GWs own house rules and you don't have to use them if you don't want to. If you take the stance that the rulebook is law, you accept that the FAQs are of that same law.

I think talking about how you would play a situation is pretty irrelevant unless you're talking about how it would be played in a tournament. It's purely subjective and circumstantial. The particular players involved know best about how they should play it. If they can't resolve how to play it in five minutes or less, then their problem isn't the rules, it's sportsmanship.

So there's a reason why YMDC threads about how people actually play it turn into discussions of how people play it deviates from the rules: how people play it is only meaningful in terms of something objective, like what the rules actually say. Otherwise it's like having a thread about your favourite colour: maybe it's nice, but no-one really cares.

What the rules actually say, on the other hand, is actually something that can be discussed at leisure outside of a game situation, given that YMDC is a discussion forum. Given that we can conduct such discussions at our leisure, without interrupting games, and with access to things like the rulebooks, we have plenty of time to go into the nitty-gritty of the exact semantics of the rules.

So there's also a reason why disputes over the rules come down to semantics: because semantics, the meaning of things, determines what the rules are! I can understand why people might not want to get into discussion of semantics, but it's absolutely necessary if you want to discuss rules in a constructive and objective fashion, and not like comparing favourite colours.

jp400 wrote:I think anyone who refers/calls themself or openly admits that they are trolling on these forums should be auto banned on the spot.

This would solve alot of dakkas current problems in areas such as this.

Call me crazy but since when is trolling a good thing? Any other forum that I visit if somebody pulled this they would be banned on the spot... espically if they were known trolls and have trolled in the past like certain people on here.

My 2 cents.

A couple things...

First of all, from what I can tell it seems a lot of people have their own ideas about what constitutes "trolling". According to some, a troll is simply someone with an opposing viewpoint (not necessarily what I think you think, just saying that there are people out there who think this way). If you disagree with them and try to argue, you're a troll just trying to stir up trouble.

Second, just because it's mostly a bad thing, doesn't mean you should play iron fist and ban everyone who does it on the spot. For example, flaming is also obviously a bad thing, but if you were to ban every single person who has ever flamed someone then Dakka and every forum like it would be pretty fething empty. Sometimes people have bad days, sometimes people genuinely misunderstand what's been said and take it the wrong way (common on the internet), and getting trigger happy with the banhammer is a definite overreaction.

Needless to say, banning people on the spot for a single offense is a bad idea and I don't support it.

Sidstyler wrote:
Second, just because it's mostly a bad thing, doesn't mean you should play iron fist and ban everyone who does it on the spot. For example, flaming is also obviously a bad thing, but if you were to ban every single person who has ever flamed someone then Dakka and every forum like it would be pretty fething empty. Sometimes people have bad days, sometimes people genuinely misunderstand what's been said and take it the wrong way (common on the internet), and getting trigger happy with the banhammer is a definite overreaction.

This.

The thing is trolling can be constructive because its pretty effective at shining some light on the overall demeanor of other posters. Fraz and I troll each other in the OT all the time, and some of our most interesting exchanges have risen from that dynamic.

Sidstyler wrote:Second, just because it's mostly a bad thing, doesn't mean you should play iron fist and ban everyone who does it on the spot. For example, flaming is also obviously a bad thing, but if you were to ban every single person who has ever flamed someone then Dakka and every forum like it would be pretty fething empty.

Actually, Dakka would be exactly like another forum, where expressing dissent is a bannable offense...

The mob mentality in YMDC doesn't surprise me. I posted in a thread about peoples opinions about obama and damned if by page 20 it had devolved into dakkaites literally discussing the RAW of the 2nd amendment in the US Constitution.

The fact that YMDC turns into RAW SAYS YOU CANT DO THAT AND WE'LL SHOUT AT YOU IF YOU TRY EVEN FATHOM RAI is no surprise to me really.

Since dl'ing and printing the INAT faq I don't feel the need to post in YMDC. Anything not already covered we'll just settle in our group.

The problem you run into in YMDC is one of advocacy. It's basically run as an adversarial system, where everybody presents their evidence and arguments to prove one point or another. Some posters are a little more inquistive, but the bulk of posts are meant to "prove a point." That's not necessarily bad, as having sides presented vigorously can lead to those points being really well researched. The downside is that the posters become attached to their sides, and begin to advocate for them. They're no longer as interested in what's correct and are simply trying to "win." Recognizing this and backing out are one of the better ways to say sane in YMDC.

Nurglich's idea of the single post sounds good, and it would force the dynamic more towards an inquisitive approach, but it simply goes against human nature. We want to argue our points, we want to respond, and we want people to respond to us. I don't really have a horse in this race, but I don't like it.

Nurglitch's suggestion would reduce YMDC to an essay contest.

I wonder if some of the entries might be somewhat vague, or the participants might be unclear about which answer would be the best. Perhaps they would want to discuss the various possibilities in an interactive manner. Perhaps we could construct a forum so that people could discuss the various entries in the essay contents? We could even call it the "YMDC Forum"...

I prefer to think of it as promoting YMDC to the status of a resource or journal... To my mind a YMDC thread should be able to be posted as an article, one that sums up the various positions that were represented and the arguments for and against them.

But on topic: Part of the mob mentality is human nature, people defining in-groups and out-groups, setting themselves up as experts and authorities, and taking exception to similar behaviour on the part of others.

After all, as Polonius points out YMDC is currently more about the posters than about the rules or the game, thanks to its adversarial nature. If we make the content more important that the content providers, much of the ego and the nastiness should disappear.

The problem isn't human nature so much as the way in which it is moderated (not the forum moderating, I hasten to add) and channeled. There's a reason the scholarly approach has been adopted in academia; it keeps the worst at bay (less successfully than one might think though...).

Clearly there will still be conversations in YMDC if the administration institutes the limit I propose. These conversations will just be conducted by many people about a topic, rather than a few people about each other.

This might encourage participation from all those people that otherwise avoid YMDC.

If, like Solkan, you worry about whether your entry might be vague, or unconvincing, simply leave it a day or two and go back to it before posting. If you think that it is unclear which answer is best, write about which one you think is best, explain your reasoning, and post it. After all, once all perspectives have been presented, what's left is deciding which perspective is least wrong.

I think encouraging forethought, as well as afterthought, is a good idea where rules discussion are concerned. We will still have the rest of the forums to indulge in our textual Tourette's or electronic Aspergers, after all.

Nurglitch, I must be unclear about what your current proposal. By my understanding, there was no provision in your proposal for conversation unless one attempted to subvert the proposed mechanics in some way (editing posts to address later comments, the use of alternate accounts, etc.) How is one supposed to have a meaningful conversation when limited to either an original post or an original post and a followup?

Please note that I would not be opposed to the idea of adding a Google Expert/Yahoo Answers/etc. style 'ask questions and vote on the results' mechanism, despite any skepticism which I feel about anonymous voting on the Internet to determine results. What I'm opposed to is the lobotomization of a forum for rules discussions into a crude approximation of such a system.

I also believe that discussion must take place. Lets look at the current alleged 'circle jerk' taking place in the YMDC hot-tub, if one on those people posts their view, you post yours, then another of them posts deconstructing your view and reinforcing the first post, then what? Your left with your point of view 'done down' because there aren't enough people backing you up. Ergo popularity contest and we're still left with the problem we have there now.

YMDC has always been a bit of a shark pool. I don't know if it's got worse. We (the Moderators) don't keep stats on rules arguments so we have to go by our general feeling for how things are going. That is subject to error, of course. IMO people rarely use the formal argument process like they did a few years ago. Perhaps that kept things a bit calmer.

I can understand people get annoyed by the bitching that sometimes goes on. Reading YMDC threads isn't compulsory, however, and it isn't the only source of answers to rules questions.

The INAT document is a good resource. You can see there is a sticky thread from Yakface asking for submissions for more queries. That might be a better way of registering genuine queries without the result being a huge flame-fest.