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 Manfred von Drakken wrote:
Wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait.

Wait.

A group of people who didn't like the rules here decided to go elsewhere, this topic came up there, they decided to come here and kick a hornets' nest, and now they're upset the mods aren't catering to their wishes... do I have that right?

You guys know the mods don't work for you, right?

Not quite. A group of active members* on here who liked talking about politics and stuff had to find a new forum to talk about politics and stuff after Dakka mods banned it instead of moderating it properly. The initial problem was polarizing politics and people reporting stuff they don't like, so instead of telling off the report spammers and dealing with them, they banned politics across the entire site which makes talking about more or less anything current affairs or economic impossible.

Many of them are still active on here, they just talk about the stuff they can't on here, over there. Dakka rarely comes up over there, there was a single thread created to stop a small tangent on this subject but that's it.

The Vinni thing comes up regularly but seems especially pertinent now that Vinni's home country, where he was at the time the mini was released even if he's since moved, invaded the country of the real life person that's depicted in the mini.


*Many with post counts far in excess of yours. I haven't posted on here much since the politics ban and I'm still at 4,400. There are others on 10k+ so to pretend that the other forum has nothing to do with here is disingenuous.

And it's funny that you complain about gossip because I'm sure seeing a lot of gossip about this other forum, who might have other accounts there, etc.

("You" being Grimskul, since someone split my auto-append.)

Sorry, I'm good at getting in the way

Aecus Decimus wrote:
And it's funny that you complain about gossip because I'm sure seeing a lot of gossip about this other forum, who might have other accounts there, etc.

("You" being Grimskul, since someone split my auto-append.)

Yes because a few complaints when a bunch of congregated other forum members are trying to push their will onto another forum is certainly comparable.

I must say that I find the reluctance of the mods to actually moderate what and who they allow to advertise on the site to be quite confusing.

Like, let's create a hypothetical miniature maker who makes 28mm soldier minis with a certain mid 20th century european aesthetic. They post images of those minis and links to their external store. On that external store there are miniatures called things like "globalist banker", and "subhuman" which are physical miniature depictions of specific propagandistic depictions of certain groups of people.

Is it Dakka's policy that the miniature maker is fine to advertise their products and their store so long as they don't post those specific miniatures to Dakka itself, that as long as the only images they post to dakka are their soldiers and they don't specifically reference the other minis it is fine for them to advertise their store on the site? Even though anybody going to that site from Dakka will then be exposed to those other miniatures?

Surely it is literally the job of the moderators to decide who they allow to use Dakka as an advertising tool, and a part of that is not only deciding what is allowed to be posted to Dakka itself, but also determining whether certain sites should not be linked to due to the content of those sites? They already do this with regards to, say, recasters or piracy sites.

How can they ever check that every site linked aren't recasters or pirates? It's almost like... they don't need to and a report button exists to report said sites that violate the rules...

The problem is you can ban accounts, but it's much harder to ban people. Even banning an IP is a relatively trivial thing to bypass, and it's precisely the sort of person you'd want to do that to that would be the most motivated to do so.

It's already against the rules to operate multiple accounts, but that's super hard to enforce. There's a few things that raise red flags, but it's often quite difficult to make a conclusive link unless someone's vernacular is distinct or they make the same distinctive spelling errors or similar.

Herzlos wrote:

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:
Wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait.

Wait.

A group of people who didn't like the rules here decided to go elsewhere, this topic came up there, they decided to come here and kick a hornets' nest, and now they're upset the mods aren't catering to their wishes... do I have that right?

You guys know the mods don't work for you, right?

Not quite. A group of active members* on here who liked talking about politics and stuff had to find a new forum to talk about politics and stuff after Dakka mods banned it instead of moderating it properly. The initial problem was polarizing politics and people reporting stuff they don't like, so instead of telling off the report spammers and dealing with them, they banned politics across the entire site which makes talking about more or less anything current affairs or economic impossible.

Many of them are still active on here, they just talk about the stuff they can't on here, over there. Dakka rarely comes up over there, there was a single thread created to stop a small tangent on this subject but that's it.

The Vinni thing comes up regularly but seems especially pertinent now that Vinni's home country, where he was at the time the mini was released even if he's since moved, invaded the country of the real life person that's depicted in the mini.


*Many with post counts far in excess of yours. I haven't posted on here much since the politics ban and I'm still at 4,400. There are others on 10k+ so to pretend that the other forum has nothing to do with here is disingenuous.

You bring up post count like it has some bearing on quality or validity. There's a saying about people who speak because they have something to say and those who speak because they have to say something; I'm among the former. I've been around long enough that Dakka Dakka was my first FLGS. I choose to speak infrequently.

I have said it before, and will do so again: I find that the mini in question crosses the line, but only because it is modeled on a real person and is still identified with a tone-deaf label. I have no issue with the rest of his work; it's just not my personal cup of tea in most cases.

My main concern now is the baying mob that - in my opinion and view - is harassing the mods for not wholly capitulating to their demands.

In what way are we harassing the mods?

*gestures vaguely at this thread*

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:
*gestures vaguely at this thread*

No, specifics. How does this count as harassment?

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:
*gestures vaguely at this thread*

No, specifics. How does this count as harassment?

Look up brigading.

Because this is what it looks like.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:
*gestures vaguely at this thread*

No, specifics. How does this count as harassment?

Look up brigading.

Because this is what it looks like.

"When people from one group, organization, fandom, forum, server, etc. aggressively infiltrates, usually spontaneously, a rival forum, server, or stream; negative criticism is usually given to the victim of a brigade (the event itself sometimes being called a raid), with insults and counter-signaling common. Usually used in the past participle ("brigaded"). Brigades can be done in good humor, but are usually antagonistic in nature."
1) The people commenting are members of this forum already, there was no infiltration.
2) There was also no call to action to participate in this thread or the other. They were shared and commented on but there was never any call for participation by anyone involved.
3) There have not, largely, been any insults thrown about. I certainly have not insulted anyone and have tried to keep my criticism focused onto a matter that I feel is worth discussion.
4) Dakka is not a rival, due to the very actions of the moderation team in banning political discussion.

I feel that what has happened is missing a lot of key features of a brigade. For one, usually the actions in a brigade are quite indiscriminate, based around blanketing the forum/server/stream in noise to effectively shut down all discussion by the members of said forum/etc. (and remember, all this discussion is being done by existing and in many cases long-term dakka members, so it is already missing the "outside infiltrating force" aspect of a brigade), even if it is limited to a specific discussion topic. That has definitely not happened. Discussion about this issue has been restricted to the thread which caused it, this thread, and the thread wolfblade made.
Do you disagree?

 Azreal13 wrote:
The problem is you can ban accounts, but it's much harder to ban people. Even banning an IP is a relatively trivial thing to bypass, and it's precisely the sort of person you'd want to do that to that would be the most motivated to do so.

It's already against the rules to operate multiple accounts, but that's super hard to enforce. There's a few things that raise red flags, but it's often quite difficult to make a conclusive link unless someone's vernacular is distinct or they make the same distinctive spelling errors or similar.

I'm not sure what that has to do with the topic here? Someone can make a ban evasion account but you have to at least pretend to not be the same person. As soon as they post another link to their store it will immediately reveal that it's the same person on a new account and the new account can also be banned. I bet you could even add the link to their store to the word filter so that it just auto-deletes the links.

It was in response to a post about how mods should be controlling who posts here, it's subsequently been edited, so either I misread it or the edit has revised it to be clearer that it was talking about retailers.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

"When people from one group, organization, fandom, forum, server, etc. aggressively infiltrates, usually spontaneously, a rival forum, server, or stream; negative criticism is usually given to the victim of a brigade (the event itself sometimes being called a raid), with insults and counter-signaling common. Usually used in the past participle ("brigaded"). Brigades can be done in good humor, but are usually antagonistic in nature."
1) The people commenting are members of this forum already, there was no infiltration.
2) There was also no call to action to participate in this thread or the other. They were shared and commented on but there was never any call for participation by anyone involved.
3) There have not, largely, been any insults thrown about. I certainly have not insulted anyone and have tried to keep my criticism focused onto a matter that I feel is worth discussion.
4) Dakka is not a rival, due to the very actions of the moderation team in banning political discussion.

I feel that what has happened is missing a lot of key features of a brigade. For one, usually the actions in a brigade are quite indiscriminate, based around blanketing the forum/server/stream in noise to effectively shut down all discussion by the members of said forum/etc. (and remember, all this discussion is being done by existing and in many cases long-term dakka members, so it is already missing the "outside infiltrating force" aspect of a brigade), even if it is limited to a specific discussion topic. That has definitely not happened. Discussion about this issue has been restricted to the thread which caused it, this thread, and the thread wolfblade made.
Do you disagree?

What it looks like.

And frankly Nr 2 is implied in the other thread.
Nr 3 Is frankly untrue considering the parent thread on the other forum.

Can someone either post a link to this supposed "other forum" with specific examples to support the accusations being made here or just stop gossiping about what some other forum thinks? The question here is what policies this site should have regarding offensive and/or pornographic content, not who is having drama with who on some other unrelated forum.

Not Online!!! wrote:


What it looks like.

And frankly Nr 2 is implied in the other thread.
Nr 3 Is frankly untrue considering the parent thread on the other forum.

So, it isn't brigading then. Which brings us back to how is anything being done here harassment of the mods? I feel that if the mods were being harassed they would have banned the members doing so, yes? Harassment is definitely against dakka's rules. So, either the mods are being harassed and doing nothing about it, or some users are trying to deflect from criticism of the dakka moderation approach regarding a specific circumstance by accusing those raising the issue of harassment. Which is it?

And hang on, your definition of brigading includes people apparently insulting the site being brigaded on a site which is not the one being brigaded? That is a ludicrous attempt to try and shift the goalposts. By that logic all criticism or insults of any platform on another platform is brigading.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

So, it isn't brigading then. Which brings us back to how is anything being done here harassment of the mods? I feel that if the mods were being harassed they would have banned the members doing so, yes? Harassment is definitely against dakka's rules. So, either the mods are being harassed and doing nothing about it, or some users are trying to deflect from criticism of the dakka moderation approach regarding a specific circumstance by accusing those raising the issue of harassment. Which is it?

And hang on, your definition of brigading includes people apparently insulting the site being brigaded on a site which is not the one being brigaded? That is a ludicrous attempt to try and shift the goalposts. By that logic all criticism or insults of any platform on another platform is brigading.

Let's not pretend that it didn't ammount to a mob of people now having successfully instigated a ban of an completly unreleated thread, and got multiple threads locked.

Let's also not pretend that i claimed harrassement but that is not important. Familiar behaviour. Really , frankly I merely brought up how it looks.

Lastly on one hand some claim, that the other forum is merely an offshoot because dakka decided to ban politics and yet on the other hand somehow it isn't?
What is it?

Let's also not pretend that drama related to some other forum has anything to do with the question of whether this site should allow rape fetish models, graphic depictions of war crimes, and blatantly pornographic material. Regardless of whether or not this particular round of complaints had its origin in some other forum the primary target of the complaints has been an ongoing and notorious problem for a long time and it's well past overdue that something has finally been done about it.

Is the naming of this "other forum" somehow verboten according to Dakka Rules or something?

I've never seen this level of talking around a name, nor have I seen any issue with naming other forums in the past, whether it to praise them or gak on them.

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:


You bring up post count like it has some bearing on quality or validity. There's a saying about people who speak because they have something to say and those who speak because they have to say something; I'm among the former. I've been around long enough that Dakka Dakka was my first FLGS. I choose to speak infrequently.

I use post count to illustrate that these members aren't people who have appeared from another forum to complain; they've been active on Dakka for years. Far longer than the other forum even existed. The other forum is a red herring since the people complaining were members of this forum first; it's nothing but an excuse to discredit the argument after discrediting the original complainant (this time) because s/he wasn't a prominent enough member.

I have said it before, and will do so again: I find that the mini in question crosses the line, but only because it is modeled on a real person and is still identified with a tone-deaf label. I have no issue with the rest of his work; it's just not my personal cup of tea in most cases.

I largely agree, but then I'm not Ukranian, a woman, or a victim of sexual abuse, so I'm not sure how much of a say I have directly.

Indeed most of Vinnis sculpts are great, but some of them are definitely uncomfortable and not suitable for a family friendly site such as this.

My main concern now is the baying mob that - in my opinion and view - is harassing the mods for not wholly capitulating to their demands.

The baying mob, being a few members, have nudged the mods every few weeks to try and wheedle a conclusion out of them. I certainly don't see that as harassment. As far as I'm aware, no insults or threats have been used, and no mods are receiving PM's or having comments made outside of this thread.

If I recall, the discussion on the other forum started because of a post here, back when the war with Ukraine’s started, which was deleted. Someone went to vent about it somewhere where the post wouldn’t be deleted, like all of the other posts made over the years calling out the specific miniature in question.

Let’s not pretend everyone here was cool with the Ukrainian victim mini up until a mob of people* on another forum suddenly decided it was an issue.


*more like three people, five if you count Wolfblade thrice.

 Haighus wrote:

 AduroT wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
A small group of people with little interest in actually participating in this community, spurred on by discussions on another forum, decided that a model released a decade ago was suddenly a pressing issue that needed to be resolved immediately. While disagreeing with the way they went about presenting that case, the current mod team agreed that the model in question was in poor taste and reflected badly on the community at large, removed the 10-year-old thread, and initiated discussions internally on updating the content policy.

Another forum which only exists because you banned any talk of politics here. It’s not some other random forum, it’s a direct offshoot of this one and made up of members from here. Brother Vinni isn’t some random issue now after ten years, I’ve seen his thread complained about several times here off and on over the years with nothing being done about it before now. It only got brought up on the other forum as a response to the mod team deciding again that his post was to be free from criticism and it was not allowed to point out that he makes and sells slavery and abuse models based on real people. (I almost wish N&R topics were free from criticism so we didn’t get multipage tangents of people who don’t like Primaris clogging up every 40k thread…) And then you only deleted the thread after over a month, and apparently Then began discussion on rules updates?

I'd also like to add that several regular users of the other forum are also still active members of Dakka, like myself. I typically post more regularly here at the moment. It isn't just a disgruntled diaspora...

Here's the thing, though - There is a thread on that other forum that exists solely to complain about things that happen here. Everyone who participates in that thread is setting themselves as separate and superior to a community they seemingly see as worthy only of scorn. When those 'active Dakka community members' saw an issue here they felt needed to be addressed, they left it to a sock-puppeting serial troll and a poster who claims to have no actual interest in participating on Dakka to do so. And so we wound up with this mess, instead of a sensible and civil discussion.

Policies should absolutely be dusted off and examined periodically to see if they are still appropriate. Sometimes that can take a while, sometimes not everyone agrees when it is actually time to do so, and sometimes (often) discussion is needed to prompt a change in the status quo. That process can happen much more easily if it is approached in a sensible manner.

Right now, we're updating the content policies and the new prohibition on abuse content will be reflected in the site rules once the final wording is nailed down. Vinni and Manufaktura's more objectionable content has been removed, and due to Vinni's decision to thumb his nose at the new policy and make light of said objectionable content, his account has also been suspended. Moving forward, both posting and linking to content of this nature will not be allowed. Non-sexual, non-abusive, genre-appropriate nudity will continue to be allowed with appropriate tagging and spoilering so that it can be easily avoided by those who do not want to see it or are viewing the forums somewhere that sort of content would not be appropriate.

This thread would seem to have more than run its course, by this point.