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So the actual guide for the section is: "Movies, TV, music, comics, novels, etc. If its media that appeals to geeks, this is the place to discuss it. "

Which would make me think that news related to movies, TV, music, comics, novels, etc would be the appropriate thing to post there.

But I often see topics that don't seem to have much of anything to do with "geek media". Currently on Page 1 are:

- Should the 2016 Olympics be moved
- Great Stories from Local Newspapers
- Celebrities that died
- NHL
- Live Tweeting of Old Battle
- NFL
- USS Enterprise Restoration
- Cool Nerf Gun
- UK coin worth more than the economy after Brexit
- Microsoft buys LinkedIn
- Largest Airplane

It seems like most, if not all, would be better suited for the OT section of the Forum.

Which makes me wonder, are there any actual guidelines to differentiate which threads go in Geek Media and which go into the Off-Topic? At this point it almost feels like Geek Media is just the collection of threads that Dakka thinks are worth saving when the OT section gets nuked from orbit

 d-usa wrote:
At this point it almost feels like Geek Media is just the collection of threads that Dakka thinks are worth saving when the OT section gets nuked from orbit

What? No, ridiculous, whatever gave you that idea

He knows too much

But no, it is a bit up to the moderator dealing with the thread when it gets flagged by someone as "shouldn't this be in geek media". To be fair, the stats and stuff that come out of sports are pretty appropriate for that thread. I mean I'm a geek but I love my sports, so it makes sense to me for it to be there. The Enterprise getting rebuilt seems...pretty geeky? To me? Live tweeting an old battle, again, bit geeky (but still cool!). I mean I didn't move any of those threads, but personally I can see why some of them ended up there and would have made the same move.

He must be silenced

IMO the thing that seems weird about it is that some of those things are certainly geeky, but they aren't media. They aren't movies, books, TV, etc, they're just random stuff that would work just as well in OT. Like, I was looking for the NFL thread in OT and I thought it had been deleted for some bizarre reason until I happened to see it in geek media, where I never would have expected it to be.

It's there because Alpharius is a MOD, and he likes the Patriots, and he wants to talk about them after the OT is removed from the board. It all makes sense!

Wake up sheeple!

Geek Media is supposed to be book and films, etc but online media fits equally well there too.

OT is politics and religion.

There is a gap between these two categories.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
There is a gap between these two categories.

And it's one that isn't really being followed right now. Of the list in the OP none of them have anything to do with "media", other than maybe the fact that some of the celebrity deaths were involved in movies/TV/etc.

I dunno, I'd say live tweeting a battle, kooky stories from newspapers, those sort of things definitely fall under media. Some of the others do more strongly fall under geek than media, it's true, perhaps we should look into clarifying the description a bit more/reshuffling threads.

'Maybe media discussed by geeks' or 'Geeky media' is a better title?
I'm often disappointed by what I find in there as a collection of not very geeky things.

Seems like sport is getting tossed into GM (I'd rather it didn't) most of the time so maybe adding that to the guide could make sense?

Also, despite England's performance, football is still a sport so this should maybe be moved from OT to GM?
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/692620.page

Edit
Media
noun: media; plural noun: media; noun: the media

1. the main means of mass communication (television, radio, and newspapers) regarded collectively.
"their demands were publicized by the media"

Should Internet be added to that list? Media covers pretty much everything, perhaps E-Media is something a little different?
Perhaps 'Printed/Published/Broadcast Geek Media'-PPBGM is a better title for the forum if the intentions are to discuss movies, TV, music, comics, novels, etc

Man, I have to say, the idea that "sports" is a traditional geek interest seems like a reach to me - quite the opposite. I don't begrudge those threads but they sure seem like pretty clear OT material to me. Same for the Olympics, the Brexit stuff, the largest airplane - interesting stories but nothing specifically to do with geekdom at all, let along geek media.

The problem is that the subforum probably shouldn't have been created in the first place, really. You tightly police the definition, not only do you create more needless work for the mods, but you wind up with like 8 threads that aren't about comic book movies - Dr. Who, Game of Thrones, Wheel of Time, maybe something about Firefly, and so on. You leave it loose, and then you functionally have two different OT forums, which will presumably then have all the same problems at the OT forum.

My unsolicited advice? Kill the geek media subforum, and issue a blanket ban political discussions in the OT. There are no shortage of places to talk about politics on the internet, and political discussions have generated a toxic atmosphere in the OT that I strongly suspect is what led to creating this new subforum in the first place: one where you can talk about OT stuff without it turning into the usual poop fling the OT often turns into, where most of the mods don't want to browse. Yes, some posters will leave Dakka, but at the end of the day none of that stuff has anything to do with the core mission of Dakka Dakka, which is to be the best wargaming website on the internet.

The subforum was created to allow the Great Wen that is the OT Forum of Politics and Religion to fester by itself without contaminating interesting stories and discussion that aren't politics and religion.

I don't really see why people are so concerned about this. It's not like you have to cite these forums for you PH.D dissertation.

Because the one consistent and always present reason given for creating any additional sub-forum is this: fracturing a sub-forum is bad and shall be avoided at any cost unless there is a clear reason for creating the sub-forum.

Has there been an absence of SJW and femenazi arguments in the new sub forum when it comes to women ghostbusters? What about the Captain America Hail Hydra thread?

This really seems contradictory to the precedent set on Dakka. Especially with the lack of actual distinction of what is and isn't "geek media". Are we honestly going to pretend that someone new to the forum is going to think "I want to talk about the NFL, let me check out the comic book section to see what the draft results are"? It doesn't happen, and we would be silly to pretend it does.

If we are honest then we should just admit that Geek Media and Off Topic are really just two separate Off Topic sections, one with crap posting and one without. So maybe Dakka needs to just grow a pair and put their foot down and say "no more crap posting, keep politics/religion/guns/abortion" out of Dakka.

My understanding is that the OT was originally created to keep the cancer contained and to keep it from spreading to the rest of the board. If we now have to excise cancer free sections out of the OT to keep those special OT topics free of disease then we should admit defeat and just ban those topics all together.

I think it would make Dakka better and more user friendly than having two off-topic sections that are functionally the same with no clear distinction between the topics other than "this one probably won't draw as many crap posters as that other topic".

I crap post on occasion, but I wouldn't miss the OT if we cures the cancer in return.

 d-usa wrote:

- Should the 2016 Olympics be moved

I wasn't sure where to put that one. I went with media with the assumption that the Olympics were a month-long media event. OT would also make sense.

 d-usa wrote:
Because the one consistent and always present reason given for creating any additional sub-forum is this: fracturing a sub-forum is bad and shall be avoided at any cost unless there is a clear reason for creating the sub-forum.

Has there been an absence of SJW and femenazi arguments in the new sub forum when it comes to women ghostbusters? What about the Captain America Hail Hydra thread?

This really seems contradictory to the precedent set on Dakka. Especially with the lack of actual distinction of what is and isn't "geek media". Are we honestly going to pretend that someone new to the forum is going to think "I want to talk about the NFL, let me check out the comic book section to see what the draft results are"? It doesn't happen, and we would be silly to pretend it does.

If we are honest then we should just admit that Geek Media and Off Topic are really just two separate Off Topic sections, one with crap posting and one without. So maybe Dakka needs to just grow a pair and put their foot down and say "no more crap posting, keep politics/religion/guns/abortion" out of Dakka.

My understanding is that the OT was originally created to keep the cancer contained and to keep it from spreading to the rest of the board. If we now have to excise cancer free sections out of the OT to keep those special OT topics free of disease then we should admit defeat and just ban those topics all together.

I think it would make Dakka better and more user friendly than having two off-topic sections that are functionally the same with no clear distinction between the topics other than "this one probably won't draw as many crap posters as that other topic".

I crap post on occasion, but I wouldn't miss the OT if we cures the cancer in return.

That's the point of the two separate sections.

 kronk wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

- Should the 2016 Olympics be moved

I wasn't sure where to put that one. I went with media with the assumption that the Olympics were a month-long media event. OT would also make sense.

It's a great example of the confusion created by the two sections.

Are the olympics media because they are televised? Are they geek because there are people designing swimsuits that are 0.1 seconds faster? Are they geek because records and number crunching? Is it politics because socialism? Is it politics because poverty? Is it off-topic because of the risk that Zika poses? Is it off-topic because the criminal gangs? Is it politics because of the sociatal impacts the construction of facilities had on the neighborhoods?

But it turns out that the reason for keeping it in the Geek Media is a not-so-implied rule of "don't crap post in the Olympic thread".

Which honestly is a horribly impractical solution to a problem than Dakka created to begin with. Stop creating confusing sub-forums and just make a blanket "stop the crap posting" rule, hand out warnings and bane until it is followed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

That's the point of the two separate sections.

So only one forum will have a "no crap posting" rule?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Edit, because I felt that my "no crap posting" rule post comes across more harsh than I wanted it to:

- My main concern is that having two functionally similar Off-Topic secions fractures the forum and makes it more difficult to navigate for no real clear benefit. There is no real distinguishing factor for someone to figure out what is in Geek Media and what isn't, especially since there is no clear guidelines for Geek Media.

- NFL, NHL, Olympics are Geek Media, but the EURO 2016 tournament is Off-Topic. Looking at "Off-Topic" and "Geek Media" and their descriptions, where would someone expect them to be, and why are similar threads in two different sections?

- Life tweeting a historical battle and talking about the USS Enterprise is in Geek Media, but the Battle of the Somme is in the Off Topic. Again, looking at the sub-forum titles and descriptions, how would someone know where to look for those threads or where to start them?

- "sports" and "history" simply isn't "Geek Media" and by throwing them into the same mix, it makes it hard to navigate the board and fractures it for no reason and without any clear system to indicate which section is which. This goes against every argument that Yakface, Lego, the MODS, and even myself have made everytime someone wants to know "why doesn't [whatever I like] have a sub-forum on this board".

- It really just feels like Geek Media is simply "We got tired of having to go into the OT to look at stuff we like, so we made our own forum", which is really a horrible reason to create it.

- If there is a want for a cancer-free OT section, then there should be a better distinction between the boards. Make the OT the "Politics and Religion" section and change Geek Media to "Other Hobbies and Interests". Then at least it would make more sense to see History and Sports in there. And honestly, I would even argue that at this point the Firearm thread in the OT would be a better fit in Geek Media simply because it's firearm geeks talking about firearms and not about politics.

- It honestly feels like moderation in the OT has gone downhill, especially since the creation of the Geek Media split. I don't think that MODS have suddenly become worse than usual or that you guys stopped caring as much about the board, but I think that is just the natural side effect from creating a sub-forum that isolates you from the worst part of Dakka. I think we have a mix of MODs that actively participate in OT threads, and they might not want to go back and forth between white and red text to avoid being accused of abusing their MOD powers. Then I think we have MODs that don't go into the OT because they might think "the MODs that are down there will handle it". And then we end up with anti-semitism that gets flagged by many people and which doesn't get addressed for a week when it comes to the attention of a MOD via a separate discussion. That's just not healthy for the board. And again, I don't think it's because MODs have gone crappy or stopped caring, I think that's an unintended side effect of fracturing the Off-Topic section.

I think folks are getting a bit too hung up on the name of the sub-forum. As Kilkrazy explained, the main goal was to separate the non-wargaming conversation that is not about "politics & religion" away from the "politics & religion" discussions. There will be some overlap, of course, because the trend in trans-Atlantic culture is to politicize everything.

As for moderation in the OT subforum - please keep in mind that just because you flag something doesn't mean it is against forum rules. Please PM me if you want to discuss further.

Maybe OT just needs a five post rule. You can only post 5 replies per week, and only 5 non-reply posts per week in any given thread in OT.


Or just ban any bigot who posts garbage every hour on the hour. That might help.

 Manchu wrote:
I think folks are getting a bit too hung up on the name of the sub-forum. As Kilkrazy explained, the main goal was to separate the non-wargaming conversation that is not about "politics & religion" away from the "politics & religion" discussions.

Geek Media
Movies, TV, music, comics, novels, etc. If its media that appeals to geeks, this is the place to discuss it.

Off-Topic Forum
Go wild with topics not covered by any of our other forums. WARNING: discussion in this forum gets quite heated, however, be advised that site rules do still apply.

Neither forum makes it clear that one is the "Politics & Religion" forum and that one isn't. And reading the descriptions, half the threads in Geek Media should be in the Off Topic because they are not about "movies, TV, mucis, comics, novels, and other media that appeals to geeks". Many of the posts in the Off-Topic should be in the Geek Media section because they are not about politics & religion.

If the goal was to create a Politics & Religion subforum and a separate Off-Topic free of Politics & Religion, then we did a horrible job marking the sub-forums as such and communicating that this was the intend. Rename the forums and make it clear that this is the purpose of the split, that might help lessen the confusion.

Your main complaint seems to be that you are confused as to where you should post (or look for) a thread on XYZ topic. TBH it's not that big of a deal if someone starts a thread in one that could also go in the other. If you think one should be moved to the other, please hit the yellow triangle.

The only real problem here would be if "Politics & Religion" threads end up in Geek Media. I haven't seen that happen yet, so the distinction seems to be working pretty well from that perspective.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I moved some of the threads you mentioned over to OT. I think the issue of Sport is the biggest sticking point. I agree that this is not generally thought of as "geeky" and so users are more likely to look for it in the OT. So I have moved the NHL, NFL, etc threads.

I must admit I don't really understand where some threads belong either. I'm also curious about how much time is spent moderating OT in comparison to anywhere else.

While we're here though... Where would a topic about historical figures with activist or interesting backgrounds go? Say a celebration of those people, and looking at what they did, but that could potentially garner some political commentary.
Say, someone really wanted to discuss Stephen Fry and his LGBT documentaries.

That's not really what DakkaDakka is for, though it's an interesting topic.

If it was a historical general, I might put it in one of the historical games forums and link it to a wargame.

At a stretch, Florence Nightingale could be shoe-horned into a Crimean War thread.

I don't see where a discussion about say David Riccardo (British political economist of the Georgian period) fits into a web site about toy soldier games.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
But to get back to the topic, if you see a thread you think is in the wrong forum, flag it. If the moderators agree they will move it.

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
I'm also curious about how much time is spent moderating OT in comparison to anywhere else.

Most moderation that involves giving warnings and suspensions is generated by the OT forum. I think most of the moderation in the OT is, in turn, the result of us responding to yellow triangle reporting. I would guess that N&R gets the most moderator attention, in terms of actually reading threads and trying to keep things on-topic.

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
Say, someone really wanted to discuss Stephen Fry and his LGBT documentaries.

Off-topic - while the format qualifies as "media," the content is political.

I was just pulling out someone with clear links to media as an actor, and clear links to something else.
I suppose I could just as easily have said "Christopher Lee and his links to WWII."

In cases where it's less clear, are we supposed to pre-emptively assess whether the thread will attract shitposting?
If you wanted to look at someone like the cartoonist Robert Crumb, for example, that could end up with tangential feminist discussion regarding his work. If not the aim of the topic, knowing it could happen, is that enough to warrant it being in OT or GM?

...my only 2016 OT contribution was about recycled pineapples, I'm just trying to assess where the line is.

Sure, I understand - but let me reiterate that finding the line is not important. There's no reason to play the "find a corner case" game here because if a thread that could go in one ends up in the other, no harm results. The only category discussed so far that I think could be troublesome is Sport, and I already moved those threads to OT. If someone finds a Sport thread in Geek Media, please just hit the yellow triangle. The real potential issue is "politics & religion" threads in Geek Media. And - again - there will be some political discussion in the Geek Media subforum just because everything is so politicized these days. It will remain a matter to be judged on a case by case basis rather than the subject of some bright lines rule.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I don't really see why people are so concerned about this. It's not like you have to cite these forums for you PH.D dissertation.

It's frustrating to me because geek media has very little I'm interested in if the sections are separated by their descriptions. I don't watch much tv or movies, and book discussion rarely goes anywhere beyond each person making a list of books they like. So normally I'd just skip looking the section entirely, but with the current way of handling it I have to keep looking in case an interesting OT thread that has nothing to do with tv/movies/etc randomly ends up in geek media. It just defeats the entire purpose of having separate forum sections in the first place, like if 40k threads were randomly put into AoS sections.

I am afraid that the forum cannot be all things to all people.

Hopefully you can manage with it as it is.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I am afraid that the forum cannot be all things to all people.

Hopefully you can manage with it as it is.

The fact that several other people have posted here with the exact same complaint would suggest that the forum, in this area, is being no things to all people. I don't see why you're being so stubborn about dismissing the entire idea that there could be something wrong.

Well, there it is and you must just deal with it as best you can.

I agree that the Geek Media section needs a look at. It is just confusing now.

Naturally, the staff has a much, much stronger interest in on-topic threads being in their proper place and each on-topic "place" (as it were) being suitably well-defined. Whether a thread about, say, stamp collecting is started under Geek Media or Off Topic simply doesn't merit much concern but feel free to hit the yellow triangle - it may indeed make sense to move it!

As I mentioned, the major issue here is keeping "politics & religion" threads (identified under a "know it when you see it" test) out of Geek Media. Aside from the specific issue about Sport, that's the closest thing to a bright line that is necessary.

If the major issue here is keeping "politics & religion" threads out of another section, then creating two sections that can both be the appropriate place for many seems to be a horrible way of fixing that problem.

The sub-forum title, as well as the sub-forum description, does not clearly indicate what the actual purpose of the sub-forum is. And pretty much all the MODs that have replied so far have made it clear that the purpose of the Geek Media section was something else besides what the Title and Description of the forum indicate.

You want to make an OT section that is free of the hate and bile that always rises when politics and religion are talked about in the OT? That's fine, more power to you all, it's an idea I will back 100% even though I am one of the people contributing to the cancer that is the OT. But then maybe we shouldn't create a new sub-forum, give it a confusing name and description, be vague about the true intention, only to act like it's our fault for not understanding that Geek Media is code for "Off Topic stuff that isn't cancer".

"How many times do I have to explain it to you. I deal with the cancer in the OT so that Geek Media doesn't have to!"

It seems that the least confusing solution would be to change "Geek Media" to "Other Hobbies & Interests: Movies, Comics, Sports, History, ETC" and "Off-Topic" to "Politics, Religion, and Current Events". It seems that this would create a system that is a lot less confusing to everybody and also contain the cancer to one sub-board.