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 RiTides wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
I'm fine with whatever rules Dakka and the mods want to have for the OT and the US Politics thread it's your website. If the US Politics ban came back into force tomorrow it wouldn't be a big deal to me because it wouldn't impact the utility and enjoyment of the site for me.

I do think that you guys should revisit the current policy. If you want to make one giant thread to be a dumping ground for every controversial political topic that involves the US in some way then it's going to get locked a lot. All kinds of stuff is going to come up in it, it's going to be difficult to maintain cohesive discussion about any particular topic because new unrelated stuff will constantly get posted creating a lot of simultaneous discussion.

Given the breadth of topics, opinions and viewpoints that will come up things will get heated and alerts will go out and moderation will be needed and we'll have a cycle of thread locks. It's also pretty clear that regardless of what gets discussed in the thread that feuds between certain posters are just going to keep coming up and getting rehashed over and over again which is only going to make Rule #1 violations more prevalent. While I've found the thread to be entertaining and informative at times I'm not sure how worthwhile it is to have the thread when everybody knows it's constantly only a few posts away from being locked again.

Hi Prestor Jon,

I appreciate this view (as well as Vaktathi's), and am actually going to bring this up in the mod forum for a renewed discussion on the policy.

Obviously, if folks were watching just now they saw that I had to lock the thread, remove / edit most of a page of discussion (and follow up with posters via PM), and just now re-opened it. However, here's my questions for you guys to consider:

1. Would the heated topics necessarily get less heated in having their own threads - if anything, then wouldn't they be more highlighted, and thus attract more fire-balling back and forth? As Vaktathi says, things just kind of move along now, to the next hot topic in the big thread. This makes for less in-depth discussion, but also reduces the possible "flame points" by having it all in one place (there's only so much that can go wrong in one thread, and it can always be locked while it's dealt with, as I just did). What are your thoughts on this?

2. Do we really benefit from having these politics thread? Would OT have enough content to function if politics and religion were removed, and would the site (intended for discussing wargaming) be better off overall?

I personally am genuinely starting to wonder about option #2, given what a charged political climate we find ourselves in, and also just Dakka's role in general. As a miniatures discussion site, we can all agree on talking about wargaming, and can good naturedly debate things like whether TLJ movie is completely awesome or an aberration on the franchise. Do we need to continue bashing each other over politics here, when we can do that literally anywhere else?

Thoughts appreciated!

@1: In-depth can in fact cool threads down as it rises entry level point if there is a valuable back-and-forth going on. This happened before in various politics related threads. And today's story in "US&NA" shows that current policy does not stop bans or locks...

@2: the longer I think about it the more I'm inclined that it would indeed be a good idea. I mean - those thread are monopolized by relatively small group of very vocal people anyway.

 RiTides wrote:
1. Would the heated topics necessarily get less heated in having their own threads - if anything, then wouldn't they be more highlighted, and thus attract more fire-balling back and forth? As Vaktathi says, things just kind of move along now, to the next hot topic in the big thread. This makes for less in-depth discussion, but also reduces the possible "flame points" by having it all in one place (there's only so much that can go wrong in one thread, and it can always be locked while it's dealt with, as I just did). What are your thoughts on this?

A particular discussion might get more heated because it's actually possible to have a discussion without the thread moving on and burying it several pages back because you stepped away for a few minutes. But separation would have three advantages:

1) The flame war is limited to the people interested in that specific sub-topic. If you aren't interested you don't click on the thread and you never have to see any of the drama. If, to use the example that started this thread, you aren't interested in Jordan Peterson and the associated issues you don't click the Jordan Peterson thread. You don't have to see it just because you want to comment on the latest news about the Trump/Russia investigation.

2) If/when an argument gets out of control (and we'll have to agree to disagree on what that point is, for now) it doesn't take the rest of the thread down with it. One US politics thread means that any discussion even tangentially related to US politics getting out of control means locking the single thread, disrupting every other parallel discussion happening next to it, and frustrating everyone else in the thread who had no part in the flame war. It's the same general problem of punishing non-involved people whenever a thread is locked because of specific people, but now it covers more sub-threads at once.

3) A single fast-moving thread encourages sniping at political enemies instead of constructive discussion. If you know the thread is going to be 5 pages longer by the time you get back to continue the discussion then why bother posting a detailed reply to someone and expecting to read their responses? Just drop Your Team's talking points and maybe some thinly-veiled insults about Their Team, and a few pages later you can do it again. Obviously not everyone does this or the thread would be gone by now, but it's bad behavior that is encouraged by the format. And when you get that kind of hit-and-run partisan sniping it's more likely to generate angry and frustrated responses that lead to escalating the argument. As we saw around the election the thing that got the thread locked most frequently wasn't people arguing over beliefs, it was over a perception (an accurate one IMO) that certain posters were just dropping Their Team's statement into the thread over and over again while ignoring any responses or explanations of why they were wrong.

2. Do we really benefit from having these politics thread? Would OT have enough content to function if politics and religion were removed, and would the site (intended for discussing wargaming) be better off overall?

Of course we benefit. What exactly is the point of having a forum at all? To discuss things that people in the community want to discuss. If people want to discuss politics and religion then the function of the site is to have those discussions. If people don't want to discuss politics and religion then there is no need for a rule against it because nobody will make posts about those subjects. Banning discussion of particular subjects only "improves" a site if you only consider improvement from the point of view of one particular person and their individual interests, not the collective desires of the community. Moderators exist to allow the conversation the community desires by handling spam removal/banning trolls/etc, not to script out the acceptable conversations and decide that only the things they want to read are allowed.

They kind of do have that exact power, though. It is their sandbox. We get to play in it, so long as we don't get kicked out. Kicked out being a nebulous term that could encompass warnings to suspensions to banning.

If you want to start Porcupine's Forum devoted to Political discussion, and whatever else I'm interested in... go do that. Be the site owner, appoint minions, set your own rules. Be king of your own castle. Attract your own crowd of devoted peasants.

I'm certain that your charming personality will woo many suitors to your forum, wherein you may put your money where your voice hole is. You can take the glory, the gold, the dragon's scale, as well as the responsibility, the misery, the putting up with gak from people that you don't owe a thing to. It can all be yours!

And if that happens to take up all your forum time, and you're unable to post on Dakka, due to your responsibilities as Regent of www.percivalspoliticalpodium.com , we'll all have to soldier on, ignorant of how terribly we understand life, the universe, 40k, and the intricacies of scatapulting the opposing side in a political "debate".

 greatbigtree wrote:
They kind of do have that exact power, though. It is their sandbox. We get to play in it, so long as we don't get kicked out. Kicked out being a nebulous term that could encompass warnings to suspensions to banning.

If you want to start Porcupine's Forum devoted to Political discussion, and whatever else I'm interested in... go do that. Be the site owner, appoint minions, set your own rules. Be king of your own castle. Attract your own crowd of devoted peasants.

I'm certain that your charming personality will woo many suitors to your forum, wherein you may put your money where your voice hole is. You can take the glory, the gold, the dragon's scale, as well as the responsibility, the misery, the putting up with gak from people that you don't owe a thing to. It can all be yours!

And if that happens to take up all your forum time, and you're unable to post on Dakka, due to your responsibilities as Regent of www.percivalspoliticalpodium.com , we'll all have to soldier on, ignorant of how terribly we understand life, the universe, 40k, and the intricacies of scatapulting the opposing side in a political "debate".

You made me spit out my tea... you owe me a new cup good sir!

 greatbigtree wrote:
They kind of do have that exact power, though. It is their sandbox. We get to play in it, so long as we don't get kicked out. Kicked out being a nebulous term that could encompass warnings to suspensions to banning.

If you want to start Porcupine's Forum devoted to Political discussion, and whatever else I'm interested in... go do that. Be the site owner, appoint minions, set your own rules. Be king of your own castle. Attract your own crowd of devoted peasants.

I'm certain that your charming personality will woo many suitors to your forum, wherein you may put your money where your voice hole is. You can take the glory, the gold, the dragon's scale, as well as the responsibility, the misery, the putting up with gak from people that you don't owe a thing to. It can all be yours!

And if that happens to take up all your forum time, and you're unable to post on Dakka, due to your responsibilities as Regent of www.percivalspoliticalpodium.com , we'll all have to soldier on, ignorant of how terribly we understand life, the universe, 40k, and the intricacies of scatapulting the opposing side in a political "debate".

It's a sandbox...run on ad revenue and member contributions. If the mods remove enough of the parts of the sandbox that they don't like but others do, soon they will find that the sandbox is losing customers. If the mods run the website strictly to benefit their own tastes, they will be the only ones using it before long.

TLDR: you wanna get Warseer? 'Cause that's how you get Warseer.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
TLDR: you wanna get Warseer? 'Cause that's how you get Warseer.

At some point, at your convenience- you're going to have to explain this issue with 'Warseer' to me. I'm not familiar at all, my first foray into the online community of 40k wasn't until a few years ago, and I never went to this site at all. I hear a few things here and there, but I'm interested in knowing what the big deal about this is.

I'd prefer you PM it to me, though- just to keep things like that from clogging other topics.

Warseer was a heavily moderated 40k/GW site. I don't know about their policies on OT/politics stuff, but they'd ban people for being anything less than 100% positive towards 40k/GW or anything else that went against the script for how the moderators wanted the discussion to go. "Banned from Warseer" was an expected status for most people in the community, followed shortly after by moving to a different site. The end result, helped by some poor handling of server failures, was that Warseer lost a ton of its members and descended into irrelevancy (if it still exists at all?).

Now, banning politics is short of Warseer's sins, of course, but it's an example of how the mindset of "the forum is for what the moderators want, not what the community wants" leads to people leaving for a place that treats them better.

 greatbigtree wrote:
They kind of do have that exact power, though. It is their sandbox. We get to play in it, so long as we don't get kicked out. Kicked out being a nebulous term that could encompass warnings to suspensions to banning.

If you want to start Porcupine's Forum devoted to Political discussion, and whatever else I'm interested in... go do that. Be the site owner, appoint minions, set your own rules. Be king of your own castle. Attract your own crowd of devoted peasants.

I'm certain that your charming personality will woo many suitors to your forum, wherein you may put your money where your voice hole is. You can take the glory, the gold, the dragon's scale, as well as the responsibility, the misery, the putting up with gak from people that you don't owe a thing to. It can all be yours!

And if that happens to take up all your forum time, and you're unable to post on Dakka, due to your responsibilities as Regent of www.percivalspoliticalpodium.com , we'll all have to soldier on, ignorant of how terribly we understand life, the universe, 40k, and the intricacies of scatapulting the opposing side in a political "debate".

Here you go dear sir, have an exalt

Peregrine, you make some great points, I just wanted to clarify one thing about why I was asking for feedback:

I would never want to stop political discussion because it's what "the moderators want", but was wondering if this might actually result in a better environment for discussing everything else / be what the community (overall) wants. It would basically be the next step after restricting political discussion to just a few threads, as we are currently.

I definitely appreciate the multiple views posted here, they are all helpful! We're having quite the lively debate about it in the mod forum, ourselves

So thanks for the feedback so far everyone!

*flourishes a bow*

Thank you, please remember to tip your waitress.

I check in on the US Politics thread, and see nothing but bitterness and blind anger... both sides. I see that develop in any thread with any kind of left / right potential. I'm so many ways, the civil war never really ended. US politics is not politics, it's warfare. It doesn't matter what's right, or wrong, or anything. It's "I want to win and I want the other to lose."

And it's frankly off putting. "If you don't like it, don't look." Fair enough, that works for me. But if we want to hang ourselves on crosses over defending the "public interest" then I'll say this part of the public would prefer that this place be for gaming.

I don't ask a homeless guy for financial advice. I don't ask a Catholic priest for sex advice. I don't ask a Prohibitionist about whiskey. I don't ask my Dad about weed. (I don't smoke it, but the point stands.) I don't ask a gaming forum for their thoughts on politics.

Why not?

Because they don't have experience. All they have are half-baked opinions tainted by whatever idiocy they believe. If we want to hold some kind of "quality" in the posting content, then this place is just not the right place. The US politics thread generates misery and discontent that flows over into unrelated threads. It worsens the site experience of anyone that posts, reads, or in any way interacts with that thread.

So... I think getting rid of Politics threads in their entirety would be in the benefit of the site. It would be like removing an unsightly but benign tumour.

What makes you think it spills out into other threads?

 greatbigtree wrote:
So... I think getting rid of Politics threads in their entirety would be in the benefit of the site. It would be like removing an unsightly but benign tumour.

I can't even manifest a reason to argue against this. I don't see it as a bad idea at all.

Regardless of what it is, any time political discussion is involved, the bitter fruit of that weed will poison an entire community. I can open up my social media page and see plenty of non-stop political mudslinging. At this point in my life, it amounts to little more than tribalism at best... very few people are genuinely concerned about these issues, they're just choosing them as a battleground. At this point, I visualize these people as primitive cave-people, howling and throwing rocks. "My politics man better than your politics man! You wrong, me right. Me smart, you dumb! My politics man tell me so!"

Because God forbid we take a minute and actually acknowledge the fact that these problems are concerns for both sides of the fence and the key difference for people who do care about the issue is just the manner in which we want to solve them, that's all. The fact that we all want to fix our problems and make our society better should be at least something to work with, but at this point I'm convinced too many people are too far gone within their brand of political hysteria.

FFS, some of these people need to find a sports team to root for or something. Because that's really all they're doing. It's not about the issue, it's about whatever tribe stroked their ego a little bit and made them feel like they needed to defend it.

I'm disgusted with seeing this kinda stuff poison literally every single aspect of life. A lot of people don't have opinions, their opinions have them. I'd like to enjoy some things without this sort of bickering being crammed into it and used to kick off witch hunts and attempts to disrupt one another's recreational time.

FFS, I'm not asking everyone to be friends... but this is supposed to be dedicated to a pastime we enjoy, and it's flat-out poisoned. Like literally everything else. We can't enjoy a damned thing without people trying to stake their claim on what political cult should be able to enjoy it with impunity and which political cult should be ran out of it. And I mean that because I've seen attempts to do that to both left and right wingers, and I've seen it stated openly that those people shouldn't be tolerated in the gaming communities. At the point where people got the idea that it was acceptable to openly say we should keep left or right wing people out of gaming and gaming discussions, we've crossed a line of decency that is by all reasonable standards, abhorrent.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
What makes you think it spills out into other threads?

I'm not trying to be rude or insult you when I ask you this.

But you're joking, right?

@ Bob:

If you're asking a serious question, I've experienced loss of respect for other posters, related to their activities in Political threads. It's hard to take someone's opinion on matters of gaming seriously, when you can see their "logic" on display in a Political thread. It has absolutely tarnished my opinions of people, that bleeds over into other threads. It is ugly. It does nothing positive, and I experience a net negative from its inclusion on this site. I doubt I'm the only one.

The question is whether the net positive (Is there ever a positive from those threads? Really?) of including / allowing Political discussion is greater than the net negative of including / allowing political discussion on a gaming forum.

- In they eyes of the Owner / Mods -

These people don't owe us anything. We aren't consumers that have paid for a service... at least I haven't. I guess there are DCM but their paid service is to be allowed access to the members only board, from what I understand. Probably a *wee* bit of extra leniency, because this place is run by humans and not robots. I don't think.

My vote, not that it counts or means anything at all, would be to be rid of the toxicity. Good fences make for good neighbours, and that's a fence I'd like to see put up. "Here be Dragons. Stay out!" There are other places for the age old pastime of primates flinging feces at each other. Go to those places for that. I'd prefer if the guano stayed on the ground around here.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
What makes you think it spills out into other threads?

When the politics was banned... it certainly did spill over to other threads as posters where *tip toeing* right at the edge. Furthermore, it does spill over in other threads a bit, which is counter-intuitive in those threads.

At least the OT Politics thread exists to keep the other thread from being... what's the word... infected.

 greatbigtree wrote:
If you're asking a serious question, I've experienced loss of respect for other posters, related to their activities in Political threads. It's hard to take someone's opinion on matters of gaming seriously, when you can see their "logic" on display in a Political thread. It has absolutely tarnished my opinions of people, that bleeds over into other threads. It is ugly. It does nothing positive, and I experience a net negative from its inclusion on this site. I doubt I'm the only one.

So, let me get this straight: you know that reading politics threads makes you lose respect for people, you consider your experience with those threads a net negative, and yet you keep doing it. It sounds like the issue here is your lack of self control, not the politics threads. Stop reading them and all of your problems here go away.

(Is there ever a positive from those threads? Really?)

The net positive is that some of us enjoy political discussion. You don't have to understand it, if you don't like political discussion then don't click on the clearly labeled politics threads.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 RiTides wrote:
I would never want to stop political discussion because it's what "the moderators want", but was wondering if this might actually result in a better environment for discussing everything else / be what the community (overall) wants. It would basically be the next step after restricting political discussion to just a few threads, as we are currently.

If it isn't about what the moderators want then why does there need to be a rule? If it's what the community wants then the community can choose not to click on politics threads, nobody is forcing anybody to participate in them. If a sufficiently large majority of the community doesn't want to participate in politics discussions then few people will post in them and they'll get buried by all of the other, more active threads or even disappear entirely. The only reason to have a rule banning them is if the community wants to discuss politics but the moderators don't want to allow them to do it.

I'm a curious cat. Also, I sometimes smoke cigarettes. Sometimes, I drink alcohol. Sometimes, I eat at a fast food restaurant. Sometimes, I do something I know is bad for me, because I disregard the known negatives and think, "You know what, this seems like a good idea at the moment."

And just like feeding birds, I usually feel like I've wasted my time afterwards. It's not just me that's having a net negative. It's on the front page. People are gonna click on it. People may come to Dakka (Won't somebody Please! think of the children!) see that, click it, determine that this site is just another backwater and move on.

If you want to have a circle jerk, and I'm not saying you do, but hypothetically if you wanted to have a circle jerk, you could do that. But it doesn't help the community here, if you were to do that *here*. Same deal with political threads. I'm not saying you want to have a political discussion, but hypothetically if you wanted to have a political discussion, it doesn't help the community *here* when that happens.

Take that stuff to a seedier part of the internet. Let us clean living folk live our lives in peace and less sticky / politically ragey times.


[Yes, I am equating the US political thread as a giant circle jerk in which opposite sides try to tear off their opponents' rage boners, only to find the action is simply encouraging the rage boners, and the random flailings of their opponents are further engorging their own rage boners. Until the only thing that can stop the ripping and tearing is someone releasing the tension... by closing the thread. Yes, political discussion here is nothing more than frustrated people trying to get off on each other's hate. This seems like a good idea at this moment.]

If people who dislike politics so strongly and still click on a thread that is clearly labeled "US politics" get mad about it and ragequit they have only themselves to blame. I fail to see why the rest of us who do want to have that discussion have to give up our conversation to protect you from your own poor impulse control. If you don't like politics then don't click the thread. Or just accept that, like getting lung cancer if you're dumb enough to smoke, you will pay a price for your poor decisions.

 Peregrine wrote:
If people who dislike politics so strongly and still click on a thread that is clearly labeled "US politics" get mad about it and ragequit they have only themselves to blame. I fail to see why the rest of us who do want to have that discussion have to give up our conversation to protect you from your own poor impulse control. If you don't like politics then don't click the thread. Or just accept that, like getting lung cancer if you're dumb enough to smoke, you will pay a price for your poor decisions.

Me and peregrine very rarely agree on anything, but we agree on this, yes the politics thread gets heated and needs a cool off every now and then, but by god it’s informative, I can stir up the hornets nest every now and then and just see what people ACTUALLY think on a subject in a way that the media refuses to give me, sure there are a couple of extremists in there but even some of the things they say can be useful.


So while I don’t agree the talk on media bias and jordon Peterson should have been moved to the US thread, I can understand why it was done.

I think you guys overstate how much "people" (in the collective) want to talk about politics on Dakka. I know there'd be a subset of folks who do, but as a percentage of the wider Dakka community. Politics threads tend to consist of the same handful of folks and if you follow the politics thread for a few days you'll know who those posters are, what their stance is and probably guess with reasonable accuracy what they're going to say about a given topic before they've even said it.

With multiple threads you'll have the same people saying the same or similar things in different discussions which clogs up the forum more and is harder to moderate because they inevitably devolve in to unfriendly exchanges.

Keeping it one thread leaves things cleaner for all the other folk who are happy to avoid politics in the OT forum and is easier to moderate.

If political discussion was completely banned I think it'd have very little effect on the wider dakka community.

On the flip side I think if political discussion were freely allowed with no moderation it would bring down the tone of the place.

At the end of the day it is a forum about toy soldiers, if you are unhappy that you can't discuss politics in the way you'de like in a forum that is not about politics, go somewhere else. It'd be more of an issue if discussion of, for example, a particular war game were limited to a single thread, because that is the actual purpose of the site, to discuss war games.

The politics discussion being limited to one thread, I interpret that as the thread owners saying "we tolerate but do not encourage this discussion on our site".

I know I wouldn't be here without the politics thread. I've lost interest in warhammer after they changed the rules to make it less fun for me. I find the politics thread a useful source for current events and insights into them.

It's nice that the OT exists and I enjoy the one stop shop kind of convenience that Dakka provides with the opportunity to discuss hobby stuff and non hobby stuff. In theory we should be able to discuss politics in the OT. However, it does seem difficult for everyone to do so. I'd be curious to know just how the amount of mod alerts, warnings, thread locks and subforum bans generated by the US Politics thread compares to the rest of Dakka. If the OT generally and the US politics thread specifically is generating a significant portion of the mod work for the site then that problem is on us not the mods.

It feels like in a different subforum we could have a discussion about opinions/views like KoW vs WHFB or KoW vs AOS and opposing views would be better respected and acknowledged than the old (R) vs (D) fights in the US politics thread. Too often disagreements become focused on posters not just having different subjective viewpoints but being wrong and not just wrong but intolerably wrong, intolerably wrong to the extant that they need to be repeatedly chastised until they recognize just how horribly wrong they are and agree to adopt a more correct opinion/position. It typically escalates into some kind of sado masochistic roleplay of the Chain of Command episodes of ST:TNG with posters metaphorically poking each other with cattle prods until they agree on how many lights there are but the thread will usually get locked before a consensus can be reached.

I'd like to do a social experiment and get a bunch of Dakkaites from the US Politics thread together for a game, a board game (definitely NOT Munchkin) or an RPG session or a big game of 40k or KoW or whatever. Let everybody play and likely have fun, I know I'm confident I could have a fun time playing a game IRL with anybody from Dakka. Would the vibe changed if at the end everybody revealed their Dakka usernames? Would it become awkward? It would honestly bum me out if it did.

Prestor Jon wrote:
It's nice that the OT exists and I enjoy the one stop shop kind of convenience that Dakka provides with the opportunity to discuss hobby stuff and non hobby stuff. In theory we should be able to discuss politics in the OT. However, it does seem difficult for everyone to do so. I'd be curious to know just how the amount of mod alerts, warnings, thread locks and subforum bans generated by the US Politics thread compares to the rest of Dakka. If the OT generally and the US politics thread specifically is generating a significant portion of the mod work for the site then that problem is on us not the mods.

It feels like in a different subforum we could have a discussion about opinions/views like KoW vs WHFB or KoW vs AOS and opposing views would be better respected and acknowledged than the old (R) vs (D) fights in the US politics thread. Too often disagreements become focused on posters not just having different subjective viewpoints but being wrong and not just wrong but intolerably wrong, intolerably wrong to the extant that they need to be repeatedly chastised until they recognize just how horribly wrong they are and agree to adopt a more correct opinion/position. It typically escalates into some kind of sado masochistic roleplay of the Chain of Command episodes of ST:TNG with posters metaphorically poking each other with cattle prods until they agree on how many lights there are but the thread will usually get locked before a consensus can be reached.

I'd like to do a social experiment and get a bunch of Dakkaites from the US Politics thread together for a game, a board game (definitely NOT Munchkin) or an RPG session or a big game of 40k or KoW or whatever. Let everybody play and likely have fun, I know I'm confident I could have a fun time playing a game IRL with anybody from Dakka. Would the vibe changed if at the end everybody revealed their Dakka usernames? Would it become awkward? It would honestly bum me out if it did.

To be fair I've already seen this 'experiment' performed in reverse. One of the more satellite communties I game at had a pretty solid group of 10 or so routine players. Than one day one of the younger players comments on how 'republicans are a dead party ruled by nazis'.

Someone took exception and dropped the word 'social justice warriors'

In the end two people were banned from the store. Someone pointed out that the two people were from the same side of the political divide and then the inevitable boycott started. Now a once healthy playgroup is near death because some young gun forgot one of the key rules of FLGS etiquette - never, ever, mention politics.

 ChargerIIC wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
It's nice that the OT exists and I enjoy the one stop shop kind of convenience that Dakka provides with the opportunity to discuss hobby stuff and non hobby stuff. In theory we should be able to discuss politics in the OT. However, it does seem difficult for everyone to do so. I'd be curious to know just how the amount of mod alerts, warnings, thread locks and subforum bans generated by the US Politics thread compares to the rest of Dakka. If the OT generally and the US politics thread specifically is generating a significant portion of the mod work for the site then that problem is on us not the mods.

It feels like in a different subforum we could have a discussion about opinions/views like KoW vs WHFB or KoW vs AOS and opposing views would be better respected and acknowledged than the old (R) vs (D) fights in the US politics thread. Too often disagreements become focused on posters not just having different subjective viewpoints but being wrong and not just wrong but intolerably wrong, intolerably wrong to the extant that they need to be repeatedly chastised until they recognize just how horribly wrong they are and agree to adopt a more correct opinion/position. It typically escalates into some kind of sado masochistic roleplay of the Chain of Command episodes of ST:TNG with posters metaphorically poking each other with cattle prods until they agree on how many lights there are but the thread will usually get locked before a consensus can be reached.

I'd like to do a social experiment and get a bunch of Dakkaites from the US Politics thread together for a game, a board game (definitely NOT Munchkin) or an RPG session or a big game of 40k or KoW or whatever. Let everybody play and likely have fun, I know I'm confident I could have a fun time playing a game IRL with anybody from Dakka. Would the vibe changed if at the end everybody revealed their Dakka usernames? Would it become awkward? It would honestly bum me out if it did.

To be fair I've already seen this 'experiment' performed in reverse. One of the more satellite communties I game at had a pretty solid group of 10 or so routine players. Than one day one of the younger players comments on how 'republicans are a dead party ruled by nazis'.

Someone took exception and dropped the word 'social justice warriors'

In the end two people were banned from the store. Someone pointed out that the two people were from the same side of the political divide and then the inevitable boycott started. Now a once healthy playgroup is near death because some young gun forgot one of the key rules of FLGS etiquette - never, ever, mention politics.

Interesting, I must wonder if that would have eventually happened anyway, I have firmly stated many many times that "leave your politics at the door" when it comes to gaming, with the exception of online gaming, I find that a good place to hear others views in a relaxed manner.

So I agree with your FLGS etiquette.

@Adeptos Doritos,

I am serious. When the US politics thread was gone, there seemed to be just as many if not more threads hijacked by discussions on feminism, diversity, Trumpism, etc.. With the US politics, the discussion can be sent somewhere else instead of left stewing under the surface of threads for pages. It's the difference between telling someone "keep it in your pants" and "restroom's down the hall". One of those approaches leads to a big mess.

 greatbigtree wrote:
@ Bob:

If you're asking a serious question, I've experienced loss of respect for other posters, related to their activities in Political threads. It's hard to take someone's opinion on matters of gaming seriously, when you can see their "logic" on display in a Political thread. It has absolutely tarnished my opinions of people, that bleeds over into other threads. It is ugly. It does nothing positive, and I experience a net negative from its inclusion on this site. I doubt I'm the only one.

that happens over YMDC threads, recasting is/isn't a crime threads, pricing threads, and all other threads. The only way to keep a good opinion of everyone is to avoid talking to them. The whole internet has this problem.

it sounds like you might be happier at Warseer.

The question is whether the net positive (Is there ever a positive from those threads? Really?) of including / allowing Political discussion is greater than the net negative of including / allowing political discussion on a gaming forum.

- In they eyes of the Owner / Mods -

These people don't owe us anything. We aren't consumers that have paid for a service... at least I haven't. I guess there are DCM but their paid service is to be allowed access to the members only board, from what I understand. Probably a *wee* bit of extra leniency, because this place is run by humans and not robots. I don't think.

My vote, not that it counts or means anything at all, would be to be rid of the toxicity. Good fences make for good neighbours, and that's a fence I'd like to see put up. "Here be Dragons. Stay out!" There are other places for the age old pastime of primates flinging feces at each other. Go to those places for that. I'd prefer if the guano stayed on the ground around here.

We are consumers, and many of us have paid. Dakka is funded by ads that generate nothing without our attendance. For many of us, being able to discuss the issues of the day with people with whom we share at least one affiliation (gaming) is far more valuable than an echo chamber or an attempt to broach complex subjects on a site with no nonpolitical commonality or shared experience among the posters. For many gamers, ours is a social hobby, and discussing a wide range of topics, including controversial ones, is an important part of healthy social interaction.





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
What makes you think it spills out into other threads?

When the politics was banned... it certainly did spill over to other threads as posters where *tip toeing* right at the edge. Furthermore, it does spill over in other threads a bit, which is counter-intuitive in those threads.

At least the OT Politics thread exists to keep the other thread from being... what's the word... infected.

I'm with Whembly on this one. His recollection matches mine.

It's not really a good showing that there has to be a quarantine thread rather then dealing with the ones who are causing problems outside of it.

 ChargerIIC wrote:
In the end two people were banned from the store. Someone pointed out that the two people were from the same side of the political divide and then the inevitable boycott started. Now a once healthy playgroup is near death because some young gun forgot one of the key rules of FLGS etiquette - never, ever, mention politics.

I wouldn't have gone as far as banning them. I'd have gone as far as pulling them both aside, together- and letting them know what the establishment is dedicated to and what kind of environment we're looking for. A policy at the place I play at and work at from time to time is that if you can't speak without bringing up something that is obviously divisive or disagreeable, then only speak about games and stuff. If that's too hard, we're more than happy to ask you to leave the gaming area. We're not keen on refusing to sell products to people, but using the gaming area is a privilege to our customers and it can be removed- it's not a free service.

One of the flaws we've developed with the internet era is that we've created pockets of people who think that spewing hateful rhetoric about other political ideologies is just perfectly acceptable and normal, simply because they've spent so much time in areas where 'the opposition' is unwelcome or forbidden. I've encountered individuals that appeared to be confused when I explained that being "right wing" or "left wing" isn't a justification to mistreat someone openly. And please note that I said "confused", because this individual couldn't understand how it was possibly a bad thing to openly declare their hatred for the _____ wing. To them, it was as normal as saying "terrorists and child molesters aren't welcome here". That's the sort of mindset they'd developed. And you can see it when they finally do cross paths sometimes, because if you take a step back you'll see people arguing, but they're not even having the same argument at all. As if they've expected something completely different- and it's funny to watch them keep going with it sometimes, too.

On the internet, we can all create little echo chambers. You can click a little button and never have to deal with someone again. You can lock yourself down and shut out different opinions and well-reasoned arguments, isolating yourself in a little bubble of people just like you and easily forget that "those ____-wingers" are people, too- and almost reduce them to some kind of stereotypical caricature or faceless villain.

And then, suddenly, you find yourself in a social environment with other human beings. Right wing. Left wing. Chicken wings. Lo and behold, you will quickly discover that this 'real world' outside the internet does not have a mob of people you can tag to come to your aid, or an 'ignore user' feature, or a clever meme you can throw in front of you. And you will quickly realize that not everyone thinks like you do, and you will be shocked to discover that they are another person very much like you and now you have to deal with that. So you either need to grow up and maybe accept that the politics and ideology don't need to be broached in an environment of recreation, or you can take the idiot's approach and piss off the entire local community- including the ones that share your beliefs- and be labeled as a disruptive child that couldn't keep their opinions to themselves.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
It's not really a good showing that there has to be a quarantine thread rather then dealing with the ones who are causing problems outside of it.

It really is educational, though. Many of the posters bring reasoning and information sources that you might never see in an echo chamber. For the most part, the thread goes through cycles of productive discussion and heated arguing. I find the former is worth the latter.

Along with a heavy dose of sarcastic insults, passive aggressive insults, overall insults, and other things that if it were to occur in any other section would result in a topic lock.

My point is that a few tended to be the ones who spread politics outside of politics when the US politics thread was prohibited. They should have clamped down on those posters rather then given them a free pass.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Along with a heavy dose of sarcastic insults, passive aggressive insults, overall insults, and other things that if it were to occur in any other section would result in a topic lock.

My point is that a few tended to be the ones who spread politics outside of politics when the US politics thread was prohibited. They should have clamped down on those posters rather then given them a free pass.

Got to be real careful here as I dont want to actually start an argument, but would that include all the thinly veiled feminist comments that always turn up during "female marines" threads, basically I am saying if we should stop all political comments happening outside of the OT forum, then all of those threads needs to go straight to that forum.

And yep that would include the posters of those threads.

 Formosa wrote:
And yep that would include the posters of those threads.

Certainly, without really trying to stoke the fires- and I can say with absolute certainty that I'm not the only one to have noticed this... but many of those posts almost seem like deliberate 'baiting' for a forum-fight. It can be no mystery that many people disagree on the topic, and it seems that without failing, every time- the topic is posted deliberately to see who will disagree, so that the inevitable name-calling and thinly-veiled accusations can begin- and some believe this behavior is entirely justified. While I can't completely confirm it's just a baiting topic, it's too common for it to be dismissed as a possibility.

And I say this knowing that I've been no saint in the past, either.

But this ties directly back to people suddenly realizing that not everyone thinks the same way they do, and coming to the realization that despite what ideas they've formulated in their own little isolated internet bubbles, that you can't simply treat someone like they're 'evil' because you believe that your ideas are objectively and universally righteous.

This kinda nonsense has to stop.