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There's no arguing that social media platforms - chiefly facebook and instagram - have become the primary way of interacting with the wargaming hobby for a lot of folk, but I've had several interactions recently that have left me concerned and I can't really think of a way to address that concern.

Forums, for all their faults, have tended to be fairly open places. There are rules of civility and content(which could often stand to be a little bit more explicit...), but with a few game or faction specific exceptions they have in my experience tended to be more interested in facilitating discussion and sharing of hobby content than with attempting to influence what discussions are had and and what content is shared. With the shift to social media - Groups on facebook more specifically - however, that seems very much to be changing. The more focused nature of many groups has resulted in a tendency for there to only be one or two active ones for a given area of interest, and the more niche that interest the more likely there will only be a single one. That has given a fairly substantial amount of power and influence to the admin teams of those groups, and frankly in my view it is often being abused.

When a particular Group is the major or even only hub for a section of the community, I'd contend the people running that group have a responsibility to the community, but while many of the individuals and teams running these groups will claim they are of and for the community, more and more the reality is that they are trying to shape the community to fit their own personal preferences and opinions. Groups who's admins have appointed themselves as corporate guardians which ban fanart, scratchbuilds, or third party miniatures. Groups that arbitrarily exclude certain content because it doesn't fit within the narrow conception of a system held by the admin team. Given many of these Groups are serving a niche of a niche, I think the people running them appointing themselves as arbiters of what content is acceptable - not on the basis of civility or to preserve focus, but whim and personal preference - is genuinely damaging.

The problem is what can you actually do about it? Raising concerns politely and in private is, in my experience, met with dismissal and even outright hostility. Some will say "just start a rival Group", but due to the way social media works that's a losing proposition; when someone searches for the topic they're interested in and they see a Group with thousands of members and one with whatever handful of people are willing to put in some effort to get a new one going, they follow the numbers. The bigger a group gets, the more likely it will become the home of any given new person who goes looking for a group. For more active subjects you can sometimes get a handful of groups going if they each have their own "hook", but for niche-of-a-niche subjects it's rare to see more than one active one and attempting to rival that won't get you far unless the admins of the big group(who are often big not based on any merit but simply due to having been first to set one up and get the membership snowball rolling) do something truly egregious. Raising specific concerns publicly is pointless, since the way Groups are set up those in charge have absolute control and can simply prevent any attempt to start a debate or voice a complaint, and as a result if someone falls foul of these self-appointed arbiters of the hobby they remain isolated and may not even be aware that others also disagree with the way things are being done.

And that question is not rhetorical - what, if anything, can be done about it?

When the terms of a group I belong to were recently rewritten to include this..

5) Constant complaint threads will be removed, for any Issues contact ..... (Link at the bottom of the thread)

It was a bit of a red flag for me, and for a few others.

The facts are that the company in question aren't currently known for red hot response times since their dedicated CSR left over 12 months ago, and staff, right up to and including the founders, frequently post and comment. Most grievances were real, as opposed to just whining, and therefore an attempt to catch their attention was understandable if not always justified. Complaining on FB isn't likely to get your missing component any quicker, but when you've waited three weeks for a response, the need to vent can be seen as reasonable.

Now, a few members did perhaps take it too far, crossing the line into disruptive behavior, but my question was if this was (as admitted by admins) a minority, why not deal with the minority rather than artificially restrict discussion on what could be a genuine issue? (It's not been a good year for production issues and delays, there's grounds for a great deal of legitimate discussion there.)

Ultimately though, I think social media is perhaps one of the most direct democracies we have, if the admins of a group to the point where it cause people enough issues, then those people will turn away and seek out a new place to communicate, and the internet will allow them to find each other.

In my opinion, if someone has a problem with Group X because they aren't letting people address Topic Y, there's one thing that has to be done if that person is serious about solving the problem: naming Group X and Topic Y.

I think in that case the best bet is to ignore the group and invest your efforts in building your local community.

I'm in the Necromunda 2017 and Adeptus Titanicus 2018 FB groups but they're irrelevant to my gaming. Most of the members are dozens if not hundreds of miles away, after all; what relevance is that to me? I'm only there to post and look at photos of minis.

I'd say that if a group is really squashing a bunch of discussions there will be enough disenchanted folk to make a new group that doesn't viable,

but of course setting up and running a group isn't an insignificant task, nor is policing it to keep out the bots selling fake sunglasses etc

that said i'm a member of a number of facebook groups related to minis and I've seen some change from relatively free and relaxed to much more likely to restrict discussions/stamp on complaints etc

and that's usually been because some users have started complaining about something (often legitimately) but started dragging it into almost every post about anything vaguely related which begins to make the group feel toxic and people start to leave

so the folk who run the group start to tighten the screw on the rules as an alternative to booting out members

I can understand why the "no complaining" rules come about. I used to be a member of a group for local 40k players, until it disintegrated over the course of a weekend because one member took offence and it devolved into him issuing threats of physical violence and/or legal action against others. He got kicked out, but that wasn't what did for the group; it was some random hanger-on (who I wasn't aware even played 40k; I think he was just in the group to "build his brand") who started haranguing the mods the following day; "I didn't see the posts in question, but deleting posts and banning people is against free speech" was his argument, and the whole thing flared up again, to the point that the original group creator left. What was a fairly successful group for bringing together local players across the city for casual games and discussion dropped to two or three people having the same old conversations about "tournament meta" as every other forum and group.

Start your own group, with your rules (and restrictions). People over time do vote with their feet.

Stay in group toxic, with a link to your group in your sig (if allowed).

At the end of the day it's their group - they can run it how they like.

I am totally not accusing OP of anything, but MOST bannings I have seen on Facebook were over two reasons, either narcissists stirring up drama repeatedly over some perceived slight, or alt right troglodytes complaining about how there are too many wamens and minorities in their games nowadays.

Honestly, forums only stopped being exactly what you describe after their back was broken by social media's relative ubiquity. Now you can have all your little manipulative cliques in one app, so much more effective at garnering the attention you desire. But that's old resentments of mine speaking, no idea what the general facebook community is like as I don't bother with it.

That said, I'll absolutely go with AndrewGPaul and say focus local if you can. Folks who actually have the chance of playing the game with you are generally far kinder than people interested in maintaining their online community. The only facebook community I'm part of is the one for my local store, it's a handy way to keep tabs on events and see who wants to play what, or occasionally show some stuff off. It does suck when you can't get the game your looking for locally, but honestly I'm realizing I'll play a lot of things if there's a local community for them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Now, a few members did perhaps take it too far, crossing the line into disruptive behavior, but my question was if this was (as admitted by admins) a minority, why not deal with the minority rather than artificially restrict discussion on what could be a genuine issue?

Hey, a use for my resentment!

Because that minority has friends, lots of them or a couple very loud ones who will constantly complain, threaten to leave and generally cause havoc in the community until they're let back unless you can conclusively point to a rule that you booted their disruptive friend over. And will do so to a lesser extent even if you do, but if you give them a rule, particularly one about complaining about the rules, you direct them out the door on their own. And get called a jackbooted fascist because you didn't want to read yet another tirade on a topic that has been rendered horse mist months prior.

And frankly, when your community starts spending a certain amount of time being completely negative things just start to spiral into a social drama hellscape no one wishes to engage in and ultimately you're at the mercy of moderators being willing to put up with the crap. Most would rather avoid that even if it means cutting off some viable discussion, because at some points a community is not really capable of having that discussion without imploding and leaving you to clean up yet another mess. Give it a few weeks or months, let the screamers leave, and then ask if you can broach the topic again in a constructive manner, preferably specifically limiting it to identification of problems discussions of solutions a solution rather than pointless complaining. Take some ownership of the discussion and let the complainers know you want to take it seriously rather than just vent. That's the only way you can take some of this and make it constructive. And if you want to identify the complainers, wait for the folks who immediately start complaining that you're constraining their ability to speak about the topic with your constructive limitations. There'll be plenty.

Otherwise you'll just be stuck with what the mods are willing to tolerate. It's really, really depressing to wake up to 20 pages of unrestrained drama and a pile of reports telling you to read the entire thing.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I am totally not accusing OP of anything, but MOST bannings I have seen on Facebook were over two reasons, either narcissists stirring up drama repeatedly over some perceived slight, or alt right troglodytes complaining about how there are too many wamens and minorities in their games nowadays.

Well, I'm not going to name any names because then the topic just becomes a mudslinging match between pro and anti that group/person, but I will say I actually wasn't so much talking about the recent trend towards "no complaints/negativity" diktats(which, personally, I dislike and think are counter-productive - there's a reason it's called "venting", pent up frustrations tend to explode and create a much bigger mess than an occasional thread of complaining - but can at least see the reasoning for), or political stuff, I was genuinely referring to hobby-related gatekeeping. I'm not even referring to bannings, per se(both of the incidents that prompted this line of thought were thread locks intended to shut down a subject, not outright bannings - another thing that makes forming alternative groups difficult, in that admins have largely twigged to the fact that being too heavy-handed will drive people away and so use other tools unless & until someone gives them a plausible excuse to resort to banning).

I'll lay out a fictional scenario to illustrate the kinds of things I'm talking about:

One day the DakkaDakka admin & mod team wake up and decide, collectively(and, they stress, after a thorough and fair - internal only - debate) that in their view, the Tau don't fit the lore and tone and themes of 40K. Discussion of Tau is prohibited as off-topic, threads that mention Tau are locked, anyone who questions this new policy or urges they reconsider it is rebuffed with platitudes and, eventually, threats of banning.

The next day, the team wake up and decide - again collectively and after a spirited internal debate - that poor Company X is being taken advantage of by the meanie-weenie community, and they are no longer going to limit themselves to prohibiting outright and demonstrable copyright infringement as they are legally required to do to indemnify themselves: Third party miniatures that too closely approach the aesthetic popularised by Company X are banned(what, exactly, constitutes "too close" is of course ill-defined, nebulous, and seemingly down to how bad of a mood a given mod is in when they see it). Drawn, sculpted, or digitally sculpted fanart relating to Company X's IPs are banned. Scratchbuilds of models that Company X sells are banned. Anyone posting them will be given one warning/threadlock, and then banned.

Now - would Dakka be within its rights to do those things? Yes, the people who run it are, ultimately, the only ones who get to decide what it's used for. They may well find a portion of the userbase firmly agree with their own personal interpretations of 40K lore and of what constitutes an unfair usage of an IP you don't yourself own. But frankly I think it's unquestionable that exercising their rights in such an arbitrary and petty way is a detriment to the community and should be opposed - via reasonable and polite means only - if possible.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
I think in that case the best bet is to ignore the group and invest your efforts in building your local community.

I'm in the Necromunda 2017 and Adeptus Titanicus 2018 FB groups but they're irrelevant to my gaming. Most of the members are dozens if not hundreds of miles away, after all; what relevance is that to me? I'm only there to post and look at photos of minis.

I'm with AGP on this, most of the FB groups I belong to are just to pick up theory and look at nice paintjobs, my local community is fairly small so if you're the only player for a faction you are sort of limited to self theorycrafted trial and error

Lurking for a while without posting can help as shirt-klaxons and attention addicts are easy to spot and mentally filter out

This is honestly no different to forums, its just people.

The only difference is that its on Facebook instead of being on Probards/VB/Reddit or any other forum or social media site. In fact one big bonus of being on Facebook is that you can remain a member of the site itself and just shift to another group effortlessly. This, of course, does take the sting of out of many bans and thus can increase the chances of trolling; but by and large it can work.



In general I agree with the above that if a group starts to police itself into the extreme it will eventually kill itself and create enough of a vacuum of members and disgruntled people that another group can start up on its own. Of course a new group requires advertising, policing, moderating, work and such to form so its never a simple thing.

Another avenue is open discussion. Sometimes you've got to send the organiser a private message and just have a chat with them. Sometimes people don't realise the full impact of their rules or statements; or they can't see the damage they are doing. Or sometimes you might see damage being caused because, for example, all your friends are being banned, but a chat with the group organiser might reveal to you that its just coincidence that your friends on that group were also trolling it and destroying it and that the group was, in other ways, improving quite significantly.

Of course diplomacy is a skill, charging in and slinging insults or accusations or "if you don't I'll leave and I'll take loads of people with me" only makes it into a fight. Calm honest and non combative comments and questions will oft get a better reply and you've far more chance to change someone's opinion; esp online where physical and body language cannot take place.

And frankly, when your community starts spending a certain amount of time being completely negative things just start to spiral into a social drama hellscape no one wishes to engage in and ultimately you're at the mercy of moderators being willing to put up with the crap. Most would rather avoid that even if it means cutting off some viable discussion, because at some points a community is not really capable of having that discussion without imploding and leaving you to clean up yet another mess.

This, so much.

I used to moderate a large kings of war group and the topic of multibasing, namely model counts, was a nightmare. Mantic put up some extremely lax rules for unit model counts; a unit's has to have over 50% of the "correct" models, preferably more. So a unit of 20 had to have at least 11 models on the base.

Very reasonable.

But not to a vocal few.

This required endless thread upon thread about how requiring 50% model counts was just like Nazi Germany. Mantic had become (peak anti-consumer) GW. Mantic was pure evil.

It wasn't just their own threads, every single thread needed at least a dozen comments about how awful these minimum model rules were. If someone posted a thread asking what the minimum models are for x unit, that thread needed to be turned into an extended toxic argument about how authoritarian these minimum model counts are and how anyone answering the question is pure evil.

So, the admin team decided to ban the topic.

If someone asks a question about what the rules on model counts are, answer them. We don't care if you think a 50% required model count is literally Nazi Germany, rant about it elsewhere.

Someone, naturally, started a separate group where people could discuss anything and us Nazi moderators couldn't ban topics of conversation.

Within a couple of months they admitted that it was better for the health of the group if such topics were banned discussion and toxic little trolls weren't allowed to drag the group down with their ridiculous crusades.

Many forums ban politics and religion discussions for the very same reason of avoiding building toxic atmosphere within a community.

Photography forums around the time when digital started to change the landscape form film into digital also banned Digital VS Film debates for the same reason that it could so easily end up in a fight.


In my experience stopping it before it becomes an issue is far better than wading into fights all the time. Once people get fixated on a topic they are not changing nor sharing views but trying to impose theirs on others. Get a handful like that and peopel who otherwise get on well with each other, will be at each other's throats the whole time. It will lose members both new and old; it will make the site nasty to be on and it can pull a site apart. Far better that the topic is banned (forever or just for a period of time - eg most photo forums now don't have the ban or if its there in the rules its not enforced) - and perhaps one or two people are lost over that; than the whole site is torn to bits.


I must say many times when I see people who complain of being banned or being regularly banned from forums there is often (not always) more of an issue with them and the way they conduct themselves; than with moderators. Yes there are bad mods out there, and there are mods out there who have a very blinkered view or who are very specific with enforcing rules etc... Ergo yes there are bad mods; but in general most larger communities tend to have fairly capable mods and the issues are oftne user rather than mod based (broadly speaking)

 Daedleh wrote:

It wasn't just their own threads, every single thread needed at least a dozen comments about how awful these minimum model rules were. If someone posted a thread asking what the minimum models are for x unit, that thread needed to be turned into an extended toxic argument about how authoritarian these minimum model counts are and how anyone answering the question is pure evil.

I remember that. I was drifting away from KoW anyway, but that was the final straw that lead to me leaving the group. It seemed that MMC was literally all anybody discussed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:

and that's usually been because some users have started complaining about something (often legitimately) but started dragging it into almost every post about anything vaguely related which begins to make the group feel toxic and people start to leave

so the folk who run the group start to tighten the screw on the rules as an alternative to booting out members

Yeah, I've seen a few instances where people either kept flogging a dead horse, or kept bombarding the group with their super obscure pet projects. It's one thing to be obsessed with something ultra-niche, but its another to post daily or more, with very little content, about that obsession.

I mean, again, you're continuing to debate against something I'm not taking issue with.

I don't expect to go to a hobby FB group and discuss politics. I don't blame the volunteers running a FB group for trying to shut down "negativity" even if I think it's mostly a counter-productive response and is often used as a tool by people too invested in a brand who see fair & reasonably presented criticism of that brand as a personal assault on them. I do expect to go to a hobby FB group dedicated to a specific game system and be allowed to discuss and post about all the aspects and factions of that system, rather than having the admins arbitrarily declare things that are *in the rulebook* as off topic/barred because they don't fit with their own "grimdarkier than thou" outlook. I do expect to go to a hobby FB group that purports to promote and support the hobby and see them promote and support *all* aspects of it, not impose ludicrously narrow "official Company X miniatures or GTFO" constraints and see admins coming in to threads where someone has posted their work to actively gak on it because it's not an official model(even when said model is far enough outside even their ridiculous idea of "copyright infringement" that they can't ban it). I do expect to go to a hobby FB group and not see admins promoting or supporting the notion that if you're not playing the system in a certain way, you're playing it wrong.

If you ran into people doing this IRL you would surely consider them a colossal That Guy who was actively damaging the appeal of their community, but for some reason when that kind of person gets themselves an admin/mod badge on a FB page people start making excuses.

I think at this point, without tangible examples, it's going to be hard to continue the conversation.

Yeah, it is a tricky one.

I am in a facebook group with strict rules on IP infringement and in order to join it i had to read the rules (which stated these things) and then tick a box saying i have read all the rules and agree, so all these issues are well laid out BEFORE i even joined so i had a chance to see what would and would't be moderated/bannable before even considering to join.

If you don't like the rules join another group that has rules you do like, or start your own group thats what i think. In this day and age its easier than ever to start a facebook group or other social networking and make your own rules to cater to your views and outlooks

The real question this topic bring sup in my mind is the ongoing and always changing discussion of who "owns" a hobby?

Is it the manufacturers for it or the people who participate in it?

There is no good answer to this question and it is the heart of many issues we see arise such as Yodhrim is expressing. We know where the Manufacturers answer is, but as the participants should we settle for that answer?

Yep, signing up for any group or forum - you're agreeing to post by their rules. Simple as that - don't like it? Leave. I've left numerous forums and facebook groups because the tones took turns I didn't agree with.

A forum (moreso than a Facebook group) is someone else's property. A property they've put up to generate discussion - and it's not a matter of free speech, etc. It's a property I'm using and agree to its limitations and regulations set forth by the owners.

An "anything goes" atmosphere can be time-consuming for group admins, and even leave them open to claims of liability. At the least, it can get the group shut down and everyone's work on that group wasted. For that reason it's understandable that admins sometimes err on the side of caution in terms of any issue that might have legal implications.

Apart from those legitimate concerns, gatekeeping is just the way things are done, unfortunately. That is not by any means relegated to hobby related groups, it's the general rule. Practically all of Reddit is rife with it no matter what the topic of the subreddit. When human beings are running an online community, their personal opinions, politics and values are going to color the way they moderate that community. It's not fun if your views don't align with theirs, but your only recourse is to go somewhere else. If you want a more open hobby group that is accepting of things like proxies or scratch builds then starting one yourself may be your only option. However, you might be surprised how many people who share your opinions could join in if it's truly the only place for them to go.

Frankly if I post images of Heresy Trench Coat gangers in an official GW Necromunda Facebook thread or the new Delaque Gangers on Heresy Miniatures Facebook thread then yes I do feel they have a right to censor it. It's an advertising space for that company and a marketing tool for them. I would however be mildly miffed if I was banned from posting them on an independent Necromunda facebook group as that is not an official marketing tool but instead an unofficial place to discuss stuff.

 Easy E wrote:
The real question this topic bring sup in my mind is the ongoing and always changing discussion of who "owns" a hobby?

Is it the manufacturers for it or the people who participate in it?

There is no good answer to this question and it is the heart of many issues we see arise such as Yodhrim is expressing. We know where the Manufacturers answer is, but as the participants should we settle for that answer?

I assume we are talking about non-corporate groups here, rather than ones made for and expressly run by a company?

Well.. it should be obvious that if you want something properly open, with as much discussion as possible (so that it doesn't funnel or compress the discussion) then it needs to be as far away from the manufacturer as possible.

Anything (like this hobby) which is facilitated by artistic expression, by imagination, would suffer the more for having very strict rules on content. And would probably be quite a boring place to be.. (unless you want to just look at new releases from said manufacturer of course, in which cases there are few hobby companies these days that don't have some sort of FB, Twitter feed etc.).

I think the solution is to belong to more general purpose forums like Dakka rather than a closed group dedicated specifically to a single game. Since we are gathered here together based on our collective interest in miniature gaming (in general) rather than in a specific game, if we have anything negative to say about a specific game, generally people don't go, "If you don't like it, why are you here?" and then ban you.

This does have the effect of making Dakka a more generally negative place, since we don't all like the same things or the same games, but it makes certain conversations possible that you can't have in a place where conformity of opinion is more expected. For instance, I've seen (and been a part of a few) conversations about boob armor here that have allowed both sides of the issue to make their points and have a real conversation about it. The conversation eventually devolves once the discussion has run out and only emotions remain, but at least the conversation was had.

You couldn't have that kind of discussion over on the Pathfinder boards - you'd get the thread locked because it wasn't relevant or because the discussion must necessarily relate to how Pathfinder deals with the issue, which is not community led but instead dictated from on high (so why bother discussing it, not being able to affect the outcome?).

I'm also against Facebook groups in general because they tend to be walled gardens, which doesn't make a community seem welcoming or open. For instance, Monsterpocalypse's premier community, where developers are admins and post frequently, is a Facebook community that you must belong to in order to see any of the content. And apparently (I don't have Facebook), the breadth of discussions is very limited there, with lots of threads closed before they even start. That community has a 0% chance of promoting interest in MonPoc, and comes across as more of a masturbatory exercise than a community.

So, it's common to assume that allowing everybody to say everything allows for the best conversations. That's true in the marco sense, meaning that society needs to allow all conversations, but rarely true in a micro sense.

A forum or FB group is really just a series of conversations, and if the conversations are monopolized or diverted by certain actions, it really can be for the good of the overall discussion to squash those actions. Yes, in a perfect world, everybody would be a wise adult and not respond to trolling or simply ignore things they do not like. But that's not realistic. Time, and more critically, attention, is a finite resource. Pruning discussion so that the fruits can grow, not the weeds, is a sad fact of life.

 Easy E wrote:
The real question this topic bring sup in my mind is the ongoing and always changing discussion of who "owns" a hobby?

Is it the manufacturers for it or the people who participate in it?

That's easy. Just look at the comic book industry right before its big crash (or now, before the impending next one) to see what a hobby looks like where the manufacturers own it and the people have left.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Polonius wrote:
Pruning discussion so that the fruits can grow, not the weeds, is a sad fact of life.

Nobody is arguing against this, just that maybe certain communities are using a criteria for pruning that selfishly favors appearances over the health of the plant.

 Polonius wrote:
So, it's common to assume that allowing everybody to say everything allows for the best conversations. That's true in the marco sense, meaning that society needs to allow all conversations, but rarely true in a micro sense.

A forum or FB group is really just a series of conversations, and if the conversations are monopolized or diverted by certain actions, it really can be for the good of the overall discussion to squash those actions. Yes, in a perfect world, everybody would be a wise adult and not respond to trolling or simply ignore things they do not like. But that's not realistic. Time, and more critically, attention, is a finite resource. Pruning discussion so that the fruits can grow, not the weeds, is a sad fact of life.

Even assuming there are no bad actors involved, a group or community could still end up with a headache if anything goes. A tech company like Facebook is much more likely to humor the complaints of a major corporation than it is the interests of a small group of its users.

 Luciferian wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
So, it's common to assume that allowing everybody to say everything allows for the best conversations. That's true in the marco sense, meaning that society needs to allow all conversations, but rarely true in a micro sense.

A forum or FB group is really just a series of conversations, and if the conversations are monopolized or diverted by certain actions, it really can be for the good of the overall discussion to squash those actions. Yes, in a perfect world, everybody would be a wise adult and not respond to trolling or simply ignore things they do not like. But that's not realistic. Time, and more critically, attention, is a finite resource. Pruning discussion so that the fruits can grow, not the weeds, is a sad fact of life.

Even assuming there are no bad actors involved, a group or community could still end up with a headache if anything goes. A tech company like Facebook is much more likely to humor the complaints of a major corporation than it is the interests of a small group of its users.

Right. I was careful to avoid ascribing motive or normative value. A person might just be overenthusiastic, and lead to a low signal to noise ratio. Or they may have genuine beliefs, and not enough self regulation or social awareness to separate those beliefs from unrelated topics. The point is, it doesn't take bad people, or even bad actions, to derail productive conversation.

 Yodhrin wrote:


I'll lay out a fictional scenario to illustrate the kinds of things I'm talking about:

One day the DakkaDakka admin & mod team wake up and decide, collectively(and, they stress, after a thorough and fair - internal only - debate) that in their view, the Tau don't fit the lore and tone and themes of 40K. Discussion of Tau is prohibited as off-topic, threads that mention Tau are locked, anyone who questions this new policy or urges they reconsider it is rebuffed with platitudes and, eventually, threats of banning.

The next day, the team wake up and decide - again collectively and after a spirited internal debate - that poor Company X is being taken advantage of by the meanie-weenie community, and they are no longer going to limit themselves to prohibiting outright and demonstrable copyright infringement as they are legally required to do to indemnify themselves: Third party miniatures that too closely approach the aesthetic popularised by Company X are banned(what, exactly, constitutes "too close" is of course ill-defined, nebulous, and seemingly down to how bad of a mood a given mod is in when they see it). Drawn, sculpted, or digitally sculpted fanart relating to Company X's IPs are banned. Scratchbuilds of models that Company X sells are banned. Anyone posting them will be given one warning/threadlock, and then banned.

Now - would Dakka be within its rights to do those things? Yes, the people who run it are, ultimately, the only ones who get to decide what it's used for. They may well find a portion of the userbase firmly agree with their own personal interpretations of 40K lore and of what constitutes an unfair usage of an IP you don't yourself own. But frankly I think it's unquestionable that exercising their rights in such an arbitrary and petty way is a detriment to the community and should be opposed - via reasonable and polite means only - if possible.

On the IP issue it could be that the group organiser has had a 'legal' letter from the company in question (or even a warning from the social media site). If they're not a lawyer, and don't know any lawyers who can objectively look at the letter and say it's safe to ignore it they may well feel it's safer to follow whatever it says they need to do (and quite possibly go further just in case), after all this is meant to be fun for them, they're not making any money from the group (probably) so why take any risk?

now I'm not saying this is what's happened, they may indeed just be following their own biases, but it wouldn't surprise me if the process started with some sort of warning or legal threat