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 insaniak wrote:
For sure. Speaking as a moderator on a forum primarily devoted to the discussion of games involving toy soldiers, I can't think of anything I would rather do with my free time than fact-check every post in the Off-topic section to determine whether or not the poster is factually correct.

Oh, wait... yes, I can. Like, practically anything else would be a more productive and more enjoyable use of my time.

Yes, because fact checking literally every post is an accurate portrayal of what would be required and not a blatant straw man.

PS: if moderating properly is too difficult you're always free to stop being a moderator.

As has been pointed out to you on numerous occasions, you always have the option to just not respond when you are sick of the other party in a discussion refusing to acknowledge your clearly superior and inherently correct stance on the issue.

And this is why the rule is a problem: your best solution is to ignore the problem post/poster, which means that the conversation is dominated by low-quality posts from dishonest/ignorant/etc posters and the signal to noise ratio gets worse and worse. That may be a useful approach to not getting banned but it sure as hell doesn't lead to a well-run forum.

You can stick your nose up at Dakka's primary rule all you want, but the simple fact is that expecting polite behaviour from members is hardly a revolutionary concept. Common courtesy is a pretty fundamental underpinning of the society we live in, and is what makes social groups of any kind actually function.

The point is that superficial politeness is not real politeness. Lying, bad-faith arguments, parroting partisan clickbait, drive-by rants, etc, are all rude behavior. But if they don't contain the word they don't get banned, because the only thing superficial politeness cares about is that you don't use any bad words. And you end up building a toxic community where bad behavior is tolerated as long as the problem people can hide behind a superficial shield of not using the word .

Facilitating your penchant for correcting people you think are wrong doesn't inherently make for a better community, particularly when the issues you're correcting them on have nothing to do with the primary purpose of this site, and when the bad blood resulting from that sort of nonsense spills over into other areas of the site.

http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html

You're making the mistake of assuming that the most important thing is to avoid divisions in a group. In reality having some "bad blood" between people is a healthy state, it means that it's more likely that you have honest relationships with other people instead of this shallow nonsense where people that would passionately dislike each other pretend to be best friends. And if that honesty means that people I disagree with on some of these issues feel unwelcome and leave the community? Good. They don't belong in my community, and I won't miss them one bit.

 Peregrine wrote:

And this is why the rule is a problem: your best solution is to ignore the problem post/poster, which means that the conversation is dominated by low-quality posts from dishonest/ignorant/etc posters and the signal to noise ratio gets worse and worse.

Your alternative, to insult the person you disagree with, doesn't actually improve the situation. You call them names, they call you names, and it goes from a discussion to mud-flinging.

So yes, if you have reached the point where you are unable to carry on a civil discussion, leaving the discussion is the best recourse.


If that means that someone you disagree with gets the last word, that doesn't actually bring about the end of civilisation as we know it.

But if they don't contain the word they don't get banned, because the only thing superficial politeness cares about is that you don't use any bad words.

You keep repeating this as if it's actually true. 'Did they use rude words' is not our sole criteria for determining whether or not a post is rude.

What isn't a deciding factor, though, is 'Does peregrine think this statement is factually correct?'

And if that honesty means that people I disagree with on some of these issues feel unwelcome and leave the community? Good. They don't belong in my community, and I won't miss them one bit.

And this is really what it comes down to. You're not actually interested in what's best for the Dakka community, you're interested in what's best for you.

Frankly, it sounds like you would be far better off with a personal blog, where you can keep things confined to what you agree with, rather than continually tilting at this particular windmill.

 insaniak wrote:
Your alternative, to insult the person you disagree with, doesn't actually improve the situation.

That's not the point. You have two choices: engage with the conversation even though you may get frustrated and slip in one too many, or step away and ignore it. Ignoring it may be the best choice if you don't want to risk a two-day vacation from the forum, but when people are consistently stepping away from certain topics/posters because they don't want to risk having the conversation turn too hostile you get a terrible signal to noise ratio. And sure, you can talk about some fantasy world where people never get frustrated and always obey the rules, but in the real world dealing with a person who is infuriatingly dishonest and stubbornly immune to facts leads to hostility.

I've said it before but I'll say it again: some of the best and most constructive discussion I've seen has been on forums where superficial politeness is irrelevant and dishonesty/posting factually incorrect statements after they've been shown to be wrong/etc are ban-worthy offenses. They recognize that lying, thinly-veiled personal attacks, etc, are worse than the word and deal with the problem appropriately.

You keep repeating this as if it's actually true. 'Did they use rude words' is not our sole criteria for determining whether or not a post is rude.

That's sure a surprise, given the number of blatantly rude/dishonest/etc posts I've seen (and even reported) that got zero moderator attention. If the millionth variation of "Peregrine sucks" is rude even if it doesn't contain the word then you sure aren't doing a good job of acting like it. And going back to the politics threads it was well known, to the point of people saying "don't engage with {poster}, they're not arguing in good faith", that certain people were behaving poorly even if they never used the word but their posts were left untouched and the only people who ever got moderator attention were the people who finally got sick of the rude behavior and said .

And this is really what it comes down to. You're not actually interested in what's best for the Dakka community, you're interested in what's best for you

What's best for me is what's best for the dakka community. You can disagree that those things are in fact best, but please don't post rude accusations of dishonesty.

If you fundamentally can't argue with someone on a forum about toy soldiers and be polite, maybe the forum isn't for you.

Frankly, it sounds like you would be far better off with a personal blog, where you can keep things confined to what you agree with, rather than continually tilting at this particular windmill.

Now whilest i can agree with your sentiment, this here easily is also the perfect exemple of a covert rule 1 break, peregrine dislikes so much.

You know what you could've done? You could've made an clearly unsupervised / moderated off topic place for politics.
Probably better a minimalistic moderated one to get rid of extremists conspiracy, etc.

Also considering that 40k as a satirical setting is always political Constantly leads to fringe cases where you have to constantly decide.

The problem with it being unmoderated is it will quickly turn I to 4chan lvls of discussion. Not fun 4chan with all the gifs, but 4chan with racism, sexism and alot of stuff

Not Online!!! wrote:
You know what you could've done? You could've made an clearly unsupervised / moderated off topic place for politics.

No, nonononono, nope. It will spill over to the regular forums, as some people cannot keep the politics and the poster separated from one another, dragging it out of OT into other places of the forums. It happened in the past when we still had political discussion and if one is to remove the rules from the equation, it'll only get worse.

If one wants to discuss politics in an unsupervised environment, go to the Wasteland, plenty of Dakkanauts have taken root there to discuss these things.

 BrookM wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
You know what you could've done? You could've made an clearly unsupervised / moderated off topic place for politics.

No, nonononono, nope. It will spill over to the regular forums, as some people cannot keep the politics and the poster separated from one another, dragging it out of OT into other places of the forums. It happened in the past when we still had political discussion and if one is to remove the rules from the equation, it'll only get worse.

If one wants to discuss politics in an unsupervised environment, go to the Wasteland, plenty of Dakkanauts have taken root there to discuss these things.

Fair enough, however this wasn't my only suggestion.
Also what about the highlighted Post, or is gaining free passes a privilege of mods?
Because i find it highly impolite to Attest someone Don quichote syndrom.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Fair enough, however this wasn't my only suggestion.
Also what about the highlighted Post, or is gaining free passes a privilege of mods?
Because i find it highly impolite to Attest someone Don quichote syndrom.

Just let it drop. The mods are never wrong, the mods are never rude, and the mods have never, ever, EVER broken their own rules and pointing out evidence to the contrary is a bannable offense.

They don't just like 40k, they live it!

 BaronIveagh wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

Fair enough, however this wasn't my only suggestion.
Also what about the highlighted Post, or is gaining free passes a privilege of mods?
Because i find it highly impolite to Attest someone Don quichote syndrom.

Just let it drop. The mods are never wrong, the mods are never rude, and the mods have never, ever, EVER broken their own rules and pointing out evidence to the contrary is a bannable offense.

They don't just like 40k, they live it!

Reminds me off "Geistige Landesverteidigung".........

 Peregrine wrote:
And if that honesty means that people I disagree with on some of these issues feel unwelcome and leave the community? Good. They don't belong in my community, and I won't miss them one bit.

Roflmao. Your community? Okay I'll humour you and ask...How is this YOUR community? You own this site? You pay the bills and set the policy? Obviously not but if you aren't owner of this it isn't your community any more than it's mine. If it would be mine I could say you don't belong in it so off you go. See how ridiculous that claim is?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Not Online!!! wrote:
You know what you could've done? You could've made an clearly unsupervised / moderated off topic place for politics.
Probably better a minimalistic moderated one to get rid of extremists conspiracy, etc.

Where though? Inside dakka? What that helps when it damages whole dakka community then though? It wouldn't be just left in that area but damage community outside that unmoderated area.

Where though? Inside dakka? What that helps when it damages whole dakka community then though? It wouldn't be just left in that area but damage community outside that unmoderated area.

A read both suggestions, B that is not a fact

You know what I want to talk about photography I might throw a thread up here in general off-topic and it might get a little attention here and there.

However its never really that hot a topic here and if I really want to talk about it I go to a photography forum where there are others really keen to talk about photography and we can all talk about apertures and stuff till the cows come home.



Dakka is about wargames and miniature model hobbies, its not a political forum. Politics has been proven to cause strife and trouble and division within the community and isn't its primary focus. I fail to see why some people are so against it being a banned topic; why they can't just go register on a politics forum (such as one suggested earlier in this thread) and take it over there to a separate community with its own mods, rules and policies and members all setup and focused round that topic and prepared to deal with it.


Also when members start to stamp about saying how they don't want "certain people" in a forum or those who "don't agree with them" - in my experience this is often a sign that those members have outgrown the forum and need to at least move on and try another community or hobby for a while. In general once you're at the point where you don't like a community and are aggressive or hostile or negative in your means to desiring to change it then it means its time to step away from that community and get a breather. Because that's a very negative association to have with a community and if its your outlook then you're only reinforcing the negative by being active within the community - which only reinforces all the negativity the person feels which normally build and builds and then boils over one day and they get banned.


I've seen it happen dozens of times to really nice people who have nothing wrong with them save that they and the site community changed and took different pathways and they cannot see a positive way to change the path so they fight against it.

The net is huge there's always another home to find to chatter. Plus sometimes all you need is a break and coming back weeks/months later things feel all the better

Not Online!!! wrote:

Where though? Inside dakka? What that helps when it damages whole dakka community then though? It wouldn't be just left in that area but damage community outside that unmoderated area.

A read both suggestions, B that is not a fact

Not fact based on what? We have actual evidence of it happening. What evidence you have AGAINST it?

Actual in practice evidence>theoryhammering.

Minimalist moderating isn't viable either. You need to stamp down on the offensive behaviour. That's not minimalist moderation. It's actually what there was. Which was still not enough.

tneva82 wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

Where though? Inside dakka? What that helps when it damages whole dakka community then though? It wouldn't be just left in that area but damage community outside that unmoderated area.

A read both suggestions, B that is not a fact

Not fact based on what? We have actual evidence of it happening. What evidence you have AGAINST it?

Actual in practice evidence>theoryhammering.

Minimalist moderating isn't viable either. You need to stamp down on the offensive behaviour. That's not minimalist moderation. It's actually what there was. Which was still not enough.

Have you actual evidence, please enlighten me then, if not then i stand by my point.
Because you saying it happened is neither valuable for statistics nor correct in a perspective of the philosophy of running a Forum.

I love discussing politics. But, like Dakka, I have found over the last several years it has become impossible to do so in the US. So I continue to support the ban and our mods.

EDIT: Banning our mods is a completely different topic...

As far as I can tell, it's only a few vocal members that want Politics back.

Not Online!!! wrote:

A read both suggestions, B that is not a fact

No, it's a fact. It's one of the reasons we instituted the ban.


Allowing unmoderated discussion would have made the situation worse, not better.

 insaniak wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

A read both suggestions, B that is not a fact

No, it's a fact. It's one of the reasons we instituted the ban.


Allowing unmoderated discussion would have made the situation worse, not better.

Proof it then, show me, also still condescending and still missing the second suggestion.

Anyways i am done, there's no reason in discussing this with someone attesting Don quichote syndrom to others.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

A read both suggestions, B that is not a fact

No, it's a fact. It's one of the reasons we instituted the ban.


Allowing unmoderated discussion would have made the situation worse, not better.

Proof it then, show me, also still condescending and still missing the second suggestion.

Anyways i am done, there's no reason in discussing this with someone attesting Don quichote syndrom to others.

Its Don Quixote...

I prefer Napoleon Syndrome myself. Vive Le Emperor!

If the “discussion” of the P-word was ever a discussion, I wouldn’t be so adamantly opposed to it being here.

Instead, we get the left calling the right “Devils” and the right calling the left “Demons”. Any D&D geeks get the reference? Anyhow, when people reduce their opposition to irredeemable evil they give themselves a pass to treat the other terribly.

Discussion generally occurs due to disagreement, but can only exist while respecting the other as being capable of reason. When an arguer stops respecting the other, discussion ends.

And that’s what happens here. And then it bleeds over into all other parts of the site. Like Peridot (August’s sickly-green birthstone) proves again and again, lack of respect for the other just results in ongoing antagonism that, while occasionally entertaining, is generally a negative for the site’s general population. That generally doesn’t happen over liking one faction over another. It doesn’t usually happen over paint scheme preferences. People can “discuss” the merits of potential upgrades without calling each other Demons and Devils.

Again and again, Dakka can’t do that with politics. There are sooo many other places to talk about that. Drink your poison there. I don’t talk about the potential societal benefits that some users could create through vigorous auto-erotic stimulation using sand, salt, or pine cones. I want to, but it’s inappropriate for this forum. I don’t generate a thread every week to complain about not being allowed to do that. I can go elsewhere and discuss those things.

Be like Tree. Head elsewhere to perform vigorous auto-erotic activities, instead of requesting that politics return to Dakka.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Proof it then, show me,

The proof is in several years worth of interpersonal interaction on the forums. The moderation team saw the impact that politics discussion in OT was havng on the rest of the site, and we saw the difference it made during those periods were it had previously been temporarily banned. I'm not going to go digging up specific examples, because that would serve no purpose. If you can't take the word of the people who actually had to deal with the fall-out from it, then I'm really not sure what you are trying to achieve here.

also still condescending and still missing the second suggestion.

I suspect you're imbuing tone in my response that isn't actually intended, as my post was not intended to be condescending at all.

Your second suggestion was overlooked because it's essentially what we already had, just with less moderation. And as was already pointed out, less moderation is the opposite of what political discussion on this forum needed in order to not cause problems.

Dakka doesn't have a long history of discussion about the use of pine cones for auto-erotic purposes, but it does have a long history of pretty decent political debate, which went downhill and collapsed. As an example, I'd called for the Muslim population of the UK to be put in concentration campsback during the time period I first joined Dakka I would've been perma-banned faster than you could say "specific>general". From my perspective, what changed was an unwillingness or inability of the moderators to stop people dragging down threads with insane arguments, many times blatantly using the heckler's veto to shut down discussions they didn't want people having. Instead of permabanning repeat offenders, the mods axed politics as a subject.

 Frazzled wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

A read both suggestions, B that is not a fact

No, it's a fact. It's one of the reasons we instituted the ban.


Allowing unmoderated discussion would have made the situation worse, not better.

Proof it then, show me, also still condescending and still missing the second suggestion.

Anyways i am done, there's no reason in discussing this with someone attesting Don quichote syndrom to others.

Its Don Quixote...

I prefer Napoleon Syndrome myself. Vive Le Emperor!

Old man, if you want to be from the grammer gestapo, atleast write l'empereur and Napoléon.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 insaniak wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

Proof it then, show me,

The proof is in several years worth of interpersonal interaction on the forums. The moderation team saw the impact that politics discussion in OT was havng on the rest of the site, and we saw the difference it made during those periods were it had previously been temporarily banned. I'm not going to go digging up specific examples, because that would serve no purpose. If you can't take the word of the people who actually had to deal with the fall-out from it, then I'm really not sure what you are trying to achieve here.

also still condescending and still missing the second suggestion.

I suspect you're imbuing tone in my response that isn't actually intended, as my post was not intended to be condescending at all.

Your second suggestion was overlooked because it's essentially what we already had, just with less moderation. And as was already pointed out, less moderation is the opposite of what political discussion on this forum needed in order to not cause problems.

I wasn't the one talking about windmills here.
You tell me.
And whilest i can understand your frustration with peregrine, that still doesn't give you the right point to rule 1 when your answer also can be interpreted as a rule 1 problem, this is the issue i wanted to point at.

But if this here:

Dakka doesn't have a long history of discussion about the use of pine cones for auto-erotic purposes, but it does have a long history of pretty decent political debate, which went downhill and collapsed. As an example, I'd called for the Muslim population of the UK to be put in concentration campsback during the time period I first joined Dakka I would've been perma-banned faster than you could say "specific>general". From my perspective, what changed was an unwillingness or inability of the moderators to stop people dragging down threads with insane arguments, many times blatantly using the heckler's veto to shut down discussions they didn't want people having. Instead of permabanning repeat offenders, the mods axed politics as a subject.

Is the case then i don't know.

@mods

I've been here a long time...and I've never seen a hot OT forum discussion spill over to the other forums really. Hell, me and Peregrine/Ouze/dusa would butt heads in OT, but then have cordial conversations about the hobby in the hobby subforums or PMs.

I'm not saying I don't believe you... I just find it a strange justification to kill politics/religion topics, as to me allowing it only in the OT forum would effectively quarantine these discussions from the rest of the sections.

HOWEVER, I can totally see killing these topics due to disproportionate modding needs over the OT subforum where your energies ought to be used on the actually hobby subforums.

In the end, this is yakface's house and he has laid down the law. The mods are following his directives, so any desires to re-open these topics would need to come from him. Until then... we'll need to get our political discussion fix elsewhere.

Or... just PM me.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

A read both suggestions, B that is not a fact

No, it's a fact. It's one of the reasons we instituted the ban.


Allowing unmoderated discussion would have made the situation worse, not better.

Proof it then, show me, also still condescending and still missing the second suggestion.

Anyways i am done, there's no reason in discussing this with someone attesting Don quichote syndrom to others.

Its Don Quixote...

I prefer Napoleon Syndrome myself. Vive Le Emperor!

Old man, if you want to be from the grammer gestapo, atleast write l'empereur and Napoléon.

heh heh, touche'.

Touché indeed monsieur.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Dakka doesn't have a long history of discussion about the use of pine cones for auto-erotic purposes, but it does have a long history of pretty decent political debate, which went downhill and collapsed. As an example, I'd called for the Muslim population of the UK to be put in concentration campsback during the time period I first joined Dakka I would've been perma-banned faster than you could say "specific>general". From my perspective, what changed was an unwillingness or inability of the moderators to stop people dragging down threads with insane arguments, many times blatantly using the heckler's veto to shut down discussions they didn't want people having. Instead of permabanning repeat offenders, the mods axed politics as a subject.

That's often because the list of members to be perma banned often starts to become quite a significant list of very active members of the site who; outside of the politics chat; put in good advice and content and help along newbies and the like. Ergo yes they can perma ban everyone with an ego problem; then also deal with the fallout of banning a significant number of active and popular members; and then also deal with the fallout of losing active contributors. It's not as simple as banning spambots which no one likes - banning members can always run the risk of fallout and banning a significant number due to arguments in one single topic, that isn't the primary focus of the site (and isn't even needed on site); its just adding problems

Also many times the arguments get nightmarish to moderate - you quickly end up with the facts and discussion wrapped up in posts with the insults all in one. So to remove the insult you have to either dump the whole post; which by the time a mod appears might then be part of a long discussion; or you have to try and edit it out. In my experience neither works and once your'e editing lareg content out of a thread the thread either turns utterly hostile to everyone including the mods; or it just up and dies because the discussion got gutted (locking is actually just quicker and gets to the same end result).

Plsu don't forget whilst many mods can be objective many in heated arguments can't be; BOTH sides think the other is in the wrong; both think the other should be punished (banned) and both won't be happy unless its done without being punished themselves.

It's just a ball of stress, anger and problems that serves no purpose other than entertaining a few who want political discussion; who can quite freely take it to other sites dedicated to it .

This thread is not for discussion of moderation policies, it is for the site management to state the policy regarding this section.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
This thread is not for discussion of moderation policies, it is for the site management to state the policy regarding this section.

Where then?

In the nuts and blocked Departement?