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 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Overread wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
The thing with "mean words hurt nobody" is that it's demonstrably false. We know people get worked up over insults and "mean words". Sure, you might not, and I might not, but some people will.

Do I need to point out the flaw with this line of reasoning or can you work it out without me needing to spell it out?

You're going to need to point it out. Discussion generally works better that way. Also, you may want to read my quote in the full context of the rest of the post it appeared in.

You can use that argument to justify anything. I could claim that "Not being able to discuss politics on Dakka hurts nobody" is "demonstrably false", therefore if you're going to forbid Mean Words On Internet, I can just as validly argue that you can't forbid Political Discussion on Dakka. You can't have it both ways, so which one is it?

Except we saw that when politics was being spoken about users were getting insulted; users were getting suspended/banned/talked to by mods; threads were being locked and there were fights. There was ample proof and reason that political discussion was resulting in problems.

Similarly since the ban on political discussion we've not seen a resurgence of that same behaviour. It didn't just transfer to a new topic focus. So thus far I'd argue that we can prove that not allowing political discussion did result in a reduction in negative social behaviour and associated disciplinary actions being taken.

Yeah when you ban any dissent it becomes hard to argue against it.

But dissent isn't banned, the whole topic is banned. It's not one side its all sides.
Plus on a forum which focuses on miniature wargaming, lore, fluff, artwork and general geeky topics - basically a huge bulk of fiction - the rights of a person to uphold and air their political views isn't really important at all.

It's a pain to lose something, but in the great scheme of things its not a huge thing. If it was we'd be having topics like this one all the time, yet they honestly only rear their head every so often.



Dakka isn't the only one, one of the most level headed, polite and friendly forums I know also banned politics because it was getting heated after having years of allowing it.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
The thing with "mean words hurt nobody" is that it's demonstrably false. We know people get worked up over insults and "mean words". Sure, you might not, and I might not, but some people will.

Do I need to point out the flaw with this line of reasoning or can you work it out without me needing to spell it out?

You're going to need to point it out. Discussion generally works better that way. Also, you may want to read my quote in the full context of the rest of the post it appeared in.

You can use that argument to justify anything. I could claim that "Not being able to discuss politics on Dakka hurts nobody" is "demonstrably false", therefore if you're going to forbid Mean Words On Internet, I can just as validly argue that you can't forbid Political Discussion on Dakka. You can't have it both ways, so which one is it?

You didn't read the rest of my post did you? We have seen the effect allowing discussions of politics has on this board and, as I specifically stated in the post you took that quote from, the purpose of this board is to discuss toy soldiers and the owners/mods need to make a judgement about what things should and shouldn't be allowed to best facilitate that discussion. Part of facilitating discussion is making the board a place people want to post and having subject matter allowed that frequently spills out of its latrine - as you put it - and into other parts of the site doesn't help with that goal.

When I spoke about the appropriateness of banning "mean words" I specifically called out that it's a subjective judgement and that heavily implies it's also not a binary choice - there's a spectrum of possible restrictions you could put in place. You'll note I never said not being able to discuss politics hurts nobody. I'm sure there are probably people that it annoys or even hurts in some way. It's possible to accept both may be true while still deciding one course of action is better than the other. What you've set up is a classic false dichotomy.

So we know political discussions cause problems - it's why they're banned. Do you have any proof that forbidding it somehow inhibits the fruitful discussion of toy soldiers on this board? If so, you'd then need to weigh up which of those two options best accomplishes the goal of the board. Which is what I pointed out in my original post.

I don't think this is about banning dissent either. Dakka's politics ban should be equally applied to all sides of any political discussion and the essence of the ban certainly achieves that: everything is banned so there's no dissenting position to crush here. Do the Mods sometimes leave political discussion in some threads and ban other threads with it in? Probably. You can choose to believe there's some agenda to that, I guess, or accept it's the consequence of having human beings making judgement calls.

 insaniak wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
For a long time, it was one poster who singlehandedly sabotaged political discussion here. Just like it was one bad faith poster who got the coronavirus thread here locked and the topic banned.

It's almost never one poster who gets threads locked.

No, it's a group effort. One bad faith poster continuously posts outlandish assertions and trollbait, they suck out of the air out of the room, the mods ignore it (or tell everyone to ignore that person, which is a pretty galling admittance that one person is successfully trolling, btw), everyone responds to the same bad-faith poster, now the thread is the bad faith poster thread, and then the mods throw their hands up and lock it.

The problem really is that any single poster can utterly destroy any thread they want to with impunity as long as they don't use swear words or be overtly rude. It's not even a "politics thread" problem, it is that rules and how they are enforced allow for almost endless working of the refs. There is now not only a heckler's veto on politics, but also Coronavirus due to this.


There should only only not be a return of the politics thread, it would be the height of silliness to start another politics board elsewhere under the same rules and enforcement that make them totally unworkable here.


7 sentences, infinite typos

 Ouze wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
For a long time, it was one poster who singlehandedly sabotaged political discussion here. Just like it was one bad faith poster who got the coronavirus thread here locked and the topic banned.

It's almost never one poster who gets threads locked.

No, it's a group effort. One bad faith poster continuously posts outlandish assertions and trollbait, they suck out of the air out of the room, the mods ignore it (or tell everyone to ignore that person, which is a pretty galling admittance that one person is successfully trolling, btw), everyone responds to the same bad-faith poster, now the thread is the bad faith poster thread, and then the mods throw their hands up and lock it.


The problem really is that any single poster can utterly destroy any thread they want to with impunity as long as they don't use swear words or be overtly rude. It's not even a "politics thread" problem, it is that rules and how they are enforced allow for almost endless working of the refs. There is now not only a heckler's veto on politics, but also Coronavirus due to this.


There should only only not be a return of the politics thread, it would be the height of silliness to start another politics board elsewhere under the same rules and enforcement that make them totally unworkable here.


7 sentences, infinite typos

Sometimes i wonder how you (not you ouze sorry, wrongly written i meant people nothing against you) People claim to be able to have a democracy when you can't blurr out the heckler and administer a modicum of enlightenment values, including empirical evidence. Individual responsibility applies torwards interaction with collectives just as much as it bears between people afterall.

And yes i go fully into baseline politics here.
How the feth do you think a society determines the way it want's to go, what it's morals standards should be, etc.? With flowers and ample hand holding (occaisionaly it can happen but mostly there are discussion more often debates)? You have to bear the heckler, because everyone can be one for issues they hold dear, and that doesn't say anything about their position beeing right or wrong.

What is an issue is, the more polarized a system gets and the fewer options there are for the citizens to actually be relevant in the system and to connect with each other over the policymaking itself, the more these demagogical behaviours become commonplace, untill even "mainline" parties get highjacked. It's one of the reasons as to why the US politics thread was comparatively to the somewhat lively Europe one, a complete shitshow.

You don't however solve the polarisation by further clamping down and just remove the political sphere out of everything by threat of ban, to the contrary, the only thing that will lead to is further segregation of the corresponding sides. Places like dakka, which these normally opposing sides meet, serve as a plattform where the opponent get's an actual human face and ceases to just be another "enemy".
Just clamping down to avoid actually talking about the issue at hand won't solve anything, you'll end instead like Switzerland before 1874 and 1918, where the lines were drawn and the rifles loaded for no apparent reason other then the gain of some elites which put the lines there in the first place.

Now you can argue that, a model forum doesn't offer the right place for that, but doesn't the common connection over the love of a hobby ( a huge one considering how emotional we get about rules alone ) offer not a better baseline?
Frankly the best indicator is how Dakka itself politics wise, whilest rough still was vastly better in behaviour then purely political forums, preciscly because it still had a bigger part of normalicy attributable to people of the opposing side via the hobby mainline.


I don't know if it would be handleable for dakka, but the fact remains the ban itself is the Hecklers veto and the further garant for their power to achieve over their little bubbles.

 Ouze wrote:
No, it's a group effort. One bad faith poster continuously posts outlandish assertions and trollbait, they suck out of the air out of the room, the mods ignore it (or tell everyone to ignore that person, which is a pretty galling admittance that one person is successfully trolling, btw), everyone responds to the same bad-faith poster, now the thread is the bad faith poster thread, and then the mods throw their hands up and lock it.

That may be how you see it, sure. But here's how it generally looks from our side: One poster posts something that is borderline - quite often it's a comment that could be read as trolling, or just ignorant, or even just poorly worded. But either way, it's not, in itself, worthy of moderator attention. (If it had been, it would likely be removed at that point to avoid the thread derailing). If that comment was responded to politely, or just ignored, the thread would continue, and there's no drama. Sometimes, when that happens, the dissenting poster might even continue to disagree with the opinion of other people. This is also not in itself worthy of moderator attention. People are entitled to disagree. But what was consistently happening instead in politics threads was that people would either assume that the different opinion was 'clearly' trolling, or would simply be annoyed by that opinion, and a shouting match would ensue. By the time a moderator sees the thread, it's spiraled into three pages of back and forth, and it's just too much work to go through it all and try to clean it up.

You can not have sensible discussion when people persist in escalating drama when they see something potentially problematic instead of just reporting it and moving on. An argument requires at least two people.


Edit - also worth pointing out that we were always an awful long way away from the mods just ignoring what was going on. When politics was allowed, OT kept the mods busier than most of the rest of the forum combined.

so basically, it's a manpower issue in regards to the politcs thread.
simply because people haven't yet learnt to propperly have a disagreement and get so annoyed with each other that they shout up a storm...

Not Online!!! wrote:
so basically, it's a manpower issue in regards to the politcs thread.
simply because people haven't yet learnt to propperly have a disagreement and get so annoyed with each other that they shout up a storm...

See my edit. It's not just manpower, it's down to whether or not it's actually worth the effort. At one point there, we effectively needed a full time moderator solely watching OT. Which is absurd.

 insaniak wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
so basically, it's a manpower issue in regards to the politcs thread.
simply because people haven't yet learnt to propperly have a disagreement and get so annoyed with each other that they shout up a storm...

See my edit. It's not just manpower, it's down to whether or not it's actually worth the effort. At one point there, we effectively needed a full time moderator solely watching OT. Which is absurd.

Well we also have a swapshop mod, so yes it's primarily a manpower issue.
regretable but understandable still.

Yes, we have Swapshop mods. We also have a gallery mod. These are things that are directly linked to the actual purpose of the site. Politics is not.

Not Online!!! wrote:
You have to bear the heckler, because everyone can be one for issues they hold dear, and that doesn't say anything about their position beeing right or wrong.

The issue was that some posters would repeatedly make the same claims, over and over again, with no new argument or evidence to refute from when it was refuted 3 pages back. Their position was demonstrably wrong and shown to be so. Yet they would come back again. And again. And again.

This isn't someone being really passionate about an issue, it is them being passionate about an argument.

 insaniak wrote:
Yes, we have Swapshop mods. We also have a gallery mod. These are things that are directly linked to the actual purpose of the site. Politics is not.

But you have an OT section. Why not have an OT mod. Infact i'd go sofar since you have explicitly an OT forum suppart which you may expect issues due to the OT nature having not a separate one for it seems a bit counterproductive.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
You have to bear the heckler, because everyone can be one for issues they hold dear, and that doesn't say anything about their position beeing right or wrong.

The issue was that some posters would repeatedly make the same claims, over and over again, with no new argument or evidence to refute from when it was refuted 3 pages back. Their position was demonstrably wrong and shown to be so. Yet they would come back again. And again. And again.

This isn't someone being really passionate about an issue, it is them being passionate about an argument.

Refutation of a political issue is difficult, as a lot of it is upon a ideological basis.

Granted the covid thread is the parade exemple of the issue you raise. And if an argument has allready been refuted 3 pages back you'd think someone would've had an easy time to just link back to that state off afair and just not engage.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Sometimes i wonder how you (not you ouze sorry, wrongly written i meant people nothing against you)

I knew what you meant, no worries.

Ouze, I'm genuinely curious what you think the solution to the scenario you mention is. Ban that other person, or have the mods step in and basically say they can't post that view?

I'm genuinely thinking of starting an alternative board just for this, so obviously the answer would be helpful to know. But if the goal of such a board is to have people of all political stripes participate, I can't see how the approach you allude to would accomplish that. And that would certainly be the goal - otherwise, there's no one to debate with and reading a news article would be more appropriate.

Thoughts appreciated!! And thanks for the support, BaronIveagh

So, talking past Dakka here, since politics adds little value to the forum and much resources: You have to be willing to moderate bad faith. I can't just concisely express all that bad faith entrails: much like obscenity, you know it when you see it.

The most clear and recent example would be from the covid thread, when someone was willing to post something incorrect, have multiple posters debunk it, and just keep repeating it over and over again. Since it was on dakka, and it was neither profanity nor rude; it was allowed to continue disrupting the thread until the thread was no longer workable. You see this sort of behavior time and time again here, whether it be female space marines or Anita Sarkeesian or any number of a bevy of topics that expose what is functionally a structural problem in the forum and it's weakness to a heckler's veto when that heckler doesn't cross some specific, clear lines.

If you're not willing to moderate bad faith arguments, you are doomed to fail in this hypothetical venture. The road to that failure begins with deciding every view/opinion has equal value to a discussion on a topic.

That's my 2 cents, anyway.

What you would want to achieve probably is a common basis for discussion and to foster a discussion and debate culture that is on an honest basis.

(the later means that people that realise that they are maybee wrong admit that, which is in certian polarising themes a real issue. And or are big enough to agree to disagree and let the other person have his opinion)

How you get to that state though...
Curation of participants? Contrary to the vision of an open debate now isn't it?
Absolute enforcement of an Equivalent of Rule 1? Considering the themes will turn emotionally sooner or later quite difficult and probably requiring more then strictly necessary ammount of babysitters depending upon IRL situation. Not to mention that any action taken on a purely political forum might get accused (maybee rightfully or not) hypocrisy...

 insaniak wrote:
Yes, we have Swapshop mods. We also have a gallery mod. These are things that are directly linked to the actual purpose of the site. Politics is not.

But, politics is now directly impacting this hobby. To the degree that GW is putting out offical press statements because of it, and some lines are not being renewed.

It's like the line in Anno Dracula about the Diogenes club. If the place were to catch fire, the members would stay stubbornly silent about it even as they burn.

Some of the comments in this thread are a perfect example of why we don't/cant have a political OT section. Unneeded snide comments about people with different political orthodoxy just sliding on through. If I say anyone who plays space marines is a WAAC poopyhead, Id prolly get called on it but if I say anyone who believes XYZ should be is a &^*&^ and should be banned from the public square, nada.

As for RITides questions about setting up a site to talk politics, there's basically two options.

Moderate the discussion which will inevitably lead to an echo chamber that fits the mods (sorry you're human) or

Let the discussion flow and the moderators only job is to facilitate that flow (clear spam, NSFW pics and similar)

So the gist we can mostly agree on is politics has no reason to be part of *this* site.

We could redirect anyone with a desire for political conversation to a different site, but we'd like that site to be "suitable" for recommending.

Someone could create such a place, but (GBT ad libs) the maintenance on it would be a Sisyphean task and really, 95% of people that talk politics just want to make someone else look like an imbecile so they can feel better about themselves. Proper discourse, as in a debate, is nigh impossible via this medium.

Does that sum up the results somewhat succinctly?

meh, the later part is an overestimation the vast majority did indeed have interest in atleast wanting to interact with good manners.

until they snapped.

It'd be interesting to toy arround with an time gated response system Basically you post once and then get a 10 min timeout so to speak, the slower response is the longer a debate goes on and the less livid people tend to be.

 greatbigtree wrote:
So the gist we can mostly agree on is politics has no reason to be part of *this* site.

Not even close, but we can agree that Dakka's mods and owner's want to steer clear of the issue, despite the fact it has been impacting the hobby, and that it's understandable.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
Yes, we have Swapshop mods. We also have a gallery mod. These are things that are directly linked to the actual purpose of the site. Politics is not.

But, politics is now directly impacting this hobby. To the degree that GW is putting out offical press statements because of it, and some lines are not being renewed.

It's like the line in Anno Dracula about the Diogenes club. If the place were to catch fire, the members would stay stubbornly silent about it even as they burn.

Woe be upon those now impacted by as petty things as their civilian duty.
The whole mobilisation and outrange mentality is only a symptom not an issue in itself.

Jerram wrote:
As for RITides questions about setting up a site to talk politics, there's basically two options.

Moderate the discussion which will inevitably lead to an echo chamber that fits the mods (sorry you're human) or

Let the discussion flow and the moderators only job is to facilitate that flow (clear spam, NSFW pics and similar)

I think you're right that those are, basically, the two options.

Ouze, while I appreciate your answer above, I think the in-practice application of an admin deciding what is / isn't a "good faith" argument would be pretty terrible for discussion.

I'm much more interested in having an open discussion area that is, basically, kept civil. The more I've thought about it, the more sure I am that any admin would need to abstain from any discussion outside of just keeping civility - i.e. the role of a debate moderator at most.

Thanks for the helpful input on this so far guys!

I'm going to be exceedingly blunt here. It's fairly easy to spot a "bad faith" post, especially when it was the same people constantly trotting the same arguments out over and over again.

We had examples of them in the various threads about any mass shootings or gun control adjacent topics. It was only a matter of time before a specific individual came in ranting about drunk driving killing more people or another individual would come in to talk about how the libs didn't believe in the Constitution or another would post nonsense about a specific breed of pet.

That's acting in bad faith. And it never felt like those people were banned from engaging in those topics.

When people would do their signature swoop 'n' poop posts? You KNEW they were not engaging in actual discussion. They were there to dump their pet peeves into the thread and then scooch before they had to actually defend it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Jerram wrote:
Some of the comments in this thread are a perfect example of why we don't/cant have a political OT section. Unneeded snide comments about people with different political orthodoxy just sliding on through. If I say anyone who plays space marines is a WAAC poopyhead, Id prolly get called on it but if I say anyone who believes XYZ should be is a &^*&^ and should be banned from the public square, nada.

As for RITides questions about setting up a site to talk politics, there's basically two options.

Moderate the discussion which will inevitably lead to an echo chamber that fits the mods (sorry you're human) or

Let the discussion flow and the moderators only job is to facilitate that flow (clear spam, NSFW pics and similar)

This whole post, fyi, is a wonderful example of a bad faith argument.

"Moderating the discussion" does not automatically mean that it leads to an echo chamber...unless, in fact, one side of the discussion's position flatout does not have any value in being posted and they have zero intention to defend it or actually engage in a discussion.

Mods don't have to be factcheckers for a presidential debate, but dangit some of this stuff was just absurdly easy to spot.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
You have to bear the heckler, because everyone can be one for issues they hold dear, and that doesn't say anything about their position beeing right or wrong.

The issue was that some posters would repeatedly make the same claims, over and over again, with no new argument or evidence to refute from when it was refuted 3 pages back. Their position was demonstrably wrong and shown to be so. Yet they would come back again. And again. And again.

This isn't someone being really passionate about an issue, it is them being passionate about an argument.

And despite what Insaniak said, this actually is something moderators should deal with. It’s clearly a violation of rule 1.

The devolution into an echo-chamber is inevitable, because of how toxic (American) political discourse has become.

I mean even Twitter and Facebook, that have no moderation whatsoever, have developed their own echo chambers. The only difference is that such platforms are so massive that they can support countless echo chambers of different political preferences (not only the American two party line).

And good moderation, while unable to prevent a devolution into an echo-chamber that follows one of the two American party lines, can prevent such echo-chamber from further fragmenting into smaller ones. I mean, both the Republicans and specially the Democrats are coalitions of different political beliefs. E.g put a Blue Dog Democrat and a Social Democrat in the same room and they are going disagree on a lot of things. Good moderation can keep them in the same room, even if unable to do the same with a Democrat and a Republican.

Twitter has more moderation than Dakka, especially against spreaders of disinformation.

Twitter is too massive to have moderation.

When thousands of tweets are posted per second, and millions to billions each day, it is simply impossible to moderate.

There are moderator bots, but they are an ineffective tool.

 Tyran wrote:
Twitter is too massive to have moderation.

When thousands of tweets are posted per second, and millions to billions each day, it is simply impossible to moderate.

There are moderator bots, but they are an ineffective tool.

The difference is that the vast majority of those millions and billions of tweets are seen by, in terms of number of views relative to twitters total users, nobody. You actively moderate the people who do get seen by a large portion of people, and respond to reports of tweets which reach less people on the basis of the number of reports etc.

On dakka every single post in a thread has an equal reach, regardless of the poster. Well, unless said poster has alienated a lot of people and ended up on a lot of ignore lists.

Going by some posters here.. We should pretty much still continue to avoid having politics. I can see that some still are continuing to post their own little comments towards the other side despite things, and we had enough of that back when politics was around and people were being far more blatant in their attacks.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:


The difference is that the vast majority of those millions and billions of tweets are seen by, in terms of number of views relative to twitters total users, nobody. You actively moderate the people who do get seen by a large portion of people, and respond to reports of tweets which reach less people on the basis of the number of reports etc.

On dakka every single post in a thread has an equal reach, regardless of the poster. Well, unless said poster has alienated a lot of people and ended up on a lot of ignore lists.

But we are talking in the context of being a place for political debate, so those low profile posts "nobody" see are pretty much the equivalent of Dakkadakka posts, because Dakkadakka is a low profile site that nobody (except a very small demographic of tabletop gamers) sees.

Moreover dakka posts don't have equal reach, as dakka posters don't follow each thread or each sub forum equally.