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 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.


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

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.

 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:


It's definitely not that, the group in question's admin team seem to consider it a moral issue, ie any use of Company X's IP by anyone other than Company X, for any reason, in any context, is tantamount to recasting in their eyes, even things that most normal and reasonable people would consider fair use, fanart, or utterly harmless.

Similarly, the group that bars things they don't consider "appropriate" for their vision of the setting are not acting to any rational or objective standard, they just don't like the thing they've barred. Frankly this latter one is more of an issue, in the other case there's a wider community that predates the new group even though it is the largest, in this there is only this one group and no reasonable prospect of founding an alternative.

Really, until you stop being coy and just lay out the actual facts, it's going to be hard to have any sympathy. All you keep doing is restating these very vague transgressions, like "they just don't like the thing they've barred." Well, that presumes that we trust you implicitly to understand their thought process, as well as the appropriateness of whatever the barred.

In short, your complaint boils down to "some people are doing something I don't like. I won't say what, but you don't you all agree that it's terrible?"

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:
How dare the owner of a group run the group how they want!

Common misconception and likely the source of all the issues here. As someone with some experience running a rather large forum (300,000 registered users), I can say with absolute certainty that the owner of the forums is not the owner of the community, and any attempt by them to force their will upon that community will create disastrous drama.

But as groups expand, you eventually have to make decisions that will upset some members. Some things are really zero sum. So, a decision might alienate a few people, like the OP, but be very welcome by a majority of members.

Even a decision that is made to benefit a small handful of influential members can be for the benefit of the group. Say, banning discussion that a small elite finds distasteful might benefit the community, if the admin figures that allowing the discussion to continue will fracture the group anyway. In short, piss off the malcontents that can't really hurt the community by leaving, not the influencers that could cause a genuine split.

Outright abuse of power will generally grind a group to a halt. Which is why that doesn't seem to be what's happening here.

 Sqorgar wrote:

A better approach is to create a sort of forum philosophy that this is a forum for discussions, and as long as the discussions don't become mean, exhausting, or off topic, they are allowed and anyone who has a problem with a particular discussion should just not join it.

I think we're broadly in agreement on the theory of the manner. The question is, when do things get mean or exhausting? That's a question up to the community, but really means the most influential members, starting with the admins/owners.

For instance, Dakka banning general politics discussions is fine because Dakka is not a political forum, but it should allow discussion where politics overlaps with Dakka's subject matter (like censorship, Brexit's effect on GW, or ideological denunciations of boob armor or Slaanesh). Where those discussions happen, they should be in the appropriate location, conducted with dignity and respect. When the discussion starts to go astray, the moderators should attempt to steer the discussion back on course with appropriate warnings, and then if the posters don't heed the warnings, enact punitive measures. There are some forums where you are banned without warning, sometimes permanently, for an on-topic post that the moderators have deemed too "alt-right" based on a very unfavorable interpretation of your words.

I think that there are some conversations with so little value, with such passionate views, that simply "banning" them, either explicitly or implicitly, is for the best. The classic conversation in a 40k forum are female space marines, although the ethics of recasting is a more modern twist. (BTW, this is documented in the flame warrior taxonomy of record: http://www.flamewarriorsguide.com/warriorshtm/howlers.htm)

]I'm not sure what you mean by this. Can you give me an example of a discussion that should be banned purely because of the discussion itself (and not because it is off topic)?

Absolutely. A topic such as the fluff/lore behind female space marines. While there is some new hints in BL sources about this, for years this would reignite, with the same tired arguments. Of course, the parties aligned themselves mostly (although not fully) on political partisan lines, and it just got nasty for a discussion that always, always ended with the same conclusion: there is no evidence for them in the official canon, but it's a big universe and anything is possible.

Another example might be an banning "joke" or non-narrative army models. things like the Hello Kitty army, or MLP space marines. Enough people get upset, and after the first chuckle there's not much merit to it.

Basically, what makes people mad out of proportion to the valuable discourse it creates.

Keep in mind, I'm not advocating for banning topics. I just think it could be good for the health of a community in certain cases.

In my opinion, far too many communities try to dictate the opinions of the people who post in them, and when those bastards refuse to be enlightened, they get excommunicated and unpersoned - and I think this has an overwhelmingly negative effect on the community, individually, and society, as a whole.

So this all sounds great. I mean, we all want to be inclusive, and open, and all that. But being told that you can't discuss third party components in a forum about Titanicus Adepticus is not, by any stretch of the imagination, being "unpersoned." Let's keep some perspective here.

Now, I don't know what's in that book, but I've always been really wary of people who say management is like herding cats.

As a rule, the more educated and professional your workforce is, the more it becomes like herding cats. When you're supervising relatively low skill employees, you can tell them the correct way to do things. Even high skill workers can have strict protocols for huge chunks of their work. But when you have employees that have to use their judgment and experience, you have to allow them to use those skills. Even if I know how to do their work (and know how to do it better than they do), they need to work their own way. Computer developers certainly fall into that.

Sqorgar: you're making valid points, and from an ideal standpoint, I agree with you.

I think that in practice, most Facebook groups are run by a small team of very part time admins, and the discussions can escalate very quickly.

All I'm saying is that while I've never moderated a discussion group, I've inherited enough responsibility in my life to not immediately second guess every decision that's made. There's simply a finite amount of time, energy, and willpower to manage discussions, and sometimes just cutting them off is the only way to stay sane.

I'll be honest, I've dipped my toe in a few of the bigger, general interest 40k FB groups, and they're pretty unpleasant. It's a lot of gakposting and just really nasty behavior.