Well...Let's Talk About This

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It's all the same boring tribalism, and it's inevitable that one side or the other "wins" the forum. Based on the constant brigading by the same people in every thread, as well as the increasingly active moderation, it's pretty clear the direction the Pub will go. You win by attrition as the opposing views lose the energy to keep arguing, and then there's no one left to argue with, and you get the same echo chamber as elsewhere but get to tell yourselves you did it without banning everyone.
 
As for my own experience: Generally, despite what I believe about "no politics." I think the site and mods enacted it in good faith, and try their best to keep the site as neutral and positive as possible. I think that is the spirit of the rule. I think most poster abide by the spirit of the rule, and that's what makes this a good place to chat about RPGS.

I think Krueger is aggressively and apparently conservative. I think they agressively do what they can to disrupt discussion that is not conservative, or disrupt discussion about products made by openly progressive authors. I've reported their behavior, and they are the only person I have blocked. My view is that "No Politics" as a rule is actually biased towards conservative politics, and Krueger takes advantage to get away gross negativity while abiding by the letter of the rule. I think Krueger regularly run afoul of the spirit of the rule.

Even though I have them blocked, the disruption remains, as I have to scroll through other posters contending with the same behavior.

Anyways, this is a pickle for moderation.
Well, that’s the funny part. Since I was specifically called out, I’ll respond. Pick an actual government policy, you’ll find me quite liberal if not outright progressive. However, Culture War, Totalitarianism, Rule of the Mob, not of Law is where I get off the bus.
 
I just want civility.
Which is a desirable goal up to a point. It possible to civil and still be a troll or sabotaging a conversation. The overall goal should what TristramEvans TristramEvans been outlining in the rules for Mod+ threads. My own take is state a premise and clearly connect your observation and conclusion to that premise, ignore personal jabs as much as possible.
 
Which is a desirable goal up to a point. It possible to civil and still be a troll or sabotaging a conversation. The overall goal should what TristramEvans TristramEvans been outlining in the rules for Mod+ threads. My own take is state a premise and clearly connect your observation and conclusion to that premise, ignore personal jabs as much as possible.
That's the ideal, of course.

And even in the most contentious threads, there were good parts as well. It's about how to lean things towards what you outline here and away from the pointless aggro.
 
Which is a desirable goal up to a point. It possible to civil and still be a troll or sabotaging a conversation. The overall goal should what TristramEvans TristramEvans been outlining in the rules for Mod+ threads. My own take is state a premise and clearly connect your observation and conclusion to that premise, ignore personal jabs as much as possible.
I think it comes down to an old statement that turns out to be the best way to avoid personal conflict - attack the argument, not the arguer. There's few outright attacks, which is a good thing. But passive aggressiveness is a skill that I see exercised many times in these threads.
 
Which is a desirable goal up to a point. It possible to civil and still be a troll or sabotaging a conversation.

With the greatest possible respect, any Brit who doesn't know how to be civil and incredibly insulting at the same time is going to have trouble at the country club.
 
I'm all the way down with British country club being the default behavior expectation here.
 
Actually, I think Krueger is an example of how the "No Politics" rule isn't innately conservative, as Krueger is the most frequent person to go over the line. If there was a conservative bias, he wouldn't need to cross it so much.

On top of that, he's made it clear he has no interest in even attempting to follow the rules or spirit at the Pub. When he was asked to ignore Norton, he refused to do it. When I asked people to stop the safety tools discussion in the Moderation Thread, he kept going. Unfortunately, I was too busy with work that day to notice things had carried on until much later.

To give some transparency, I made the decision when I became a mod to avoid moderating Krueger as we have a contentious history, and I didn't want my personal dislike of him to affect the moderation of the forum. I felt it would be better to allow other mods to deal with him to avoid the appearance. I'm done with that now, as Krueger regularly makes comments about how if he does some particular thing "Baulderstone will threadban him". I guess he wants to cultivate an image of being the tough guy standing up to the mods, but it just looks absurd as until the last month, I have never moderated him at all.

This kind of manipulative dishonesty bothers me. It says a lot that so many posters here see him as getting special favor to do as he pleases while he acts as if he is the victim of mod persecution. I'm frankly tired of the mod team trying to accommodate him only for him to spit in everyone's face. It's reached a point where I feel its gone far beyond my personal dislike of the guy into him being a detriment to the whole forum.

Over the last month, I've reached the conclusion that he has no interest in following the rules of the Pub or the spirit it was founded on. I don't see much reason he should be posting here anymore. We've given him increasing run of the place by setting up special threads on his pet obsessions like "RPGs vs. Story Games" and the more he gets, the more unhappy he seems. I'm just tired of it.

This is a public personal attack carried by a moderator against a forum user. Nothing less, nothing more.
 
This is a public personal attack carried by a moderator against a forum user. Nothing less, nothing more.
Seems like something more- perhaps a declaration of intent.
 
Or possibly just an honest assessment of what that posters posting activity looks like from the other side of the counter. Framing is key.

Or possibly an attempt to elicit responses just like these and get public support to finally be able to do what he has been hoping to do for a long time now.
 
It's all the same boring tribalism, and it's inevitable that one side or the other "wins" the forum. Based on the constant brigading by the same people in every thread, as well as the increasingly active moderation, it's pretty clear the direction the Pub will go. You win by attrition as the opposing views lose the energy to keep arguing, and then there's no one left to argue with, and you get the same echo chamber as elsewhere but get to tell yourselves you did it without banning everyone.

I think that's maybe more pessimistic than necessary.

For one, I don't think we've moderated more than usual recently, except for the unusual cases of Mod+ threads, which were specifically creatted as the exception to the standard.

Secondly, I don't think whatever "side" there might be is going to find the Moderators on it.
 
Or possibly an attempt to elicit responses just like these and get public support to finally be able to do what he has been hoping to do for a long time now.

Adam can defend his post for himself, he doesn't need me to do that, but what I will say as someone with a view of what goes on backstage, he has definitely not been leading a longtime campaign against Krueger. It's completely true that he's recursed himself from moderating him for as long as I can remember and has effectively pretty much ignored him until just recently. So I don't think his opinion can be dismissed as just an ongoing vendetta, even if we all know there's no love lost between the two of them.
 
This is a public personal attack carried by a moderator against a forum user. Nothing less, nothing more.
How would you describe Krueger repeatedly claiming that Adam will take moderator action against him when that hasn't happened?

Or do you think mods should take it but not respond?

(Stuff like Krueger being told to ignore Norton and refusing is just a factual statement. You may think he was justified in ignoring mod instructions, but it happened).
 
Or possibly an attempt to elicit responses just like these and get public support to finally be able to do what he has been hoping to do for a long time now.

I don't think what's holding the mods back from wielding the banhammer is a lack of public support. More that they are trying to respect everyone's right to enjoy the pub and its mission statement of chilled discussion.
 
I think that's maybe more pessimistic than necessary.

For one, I don't think we've moderated more than usual recently, except for the unusual cases of Mod+ threads, which were specifically creatted as the exception to the standard.

Secondly, I don't think whatever "side" there might be is going to find the Moderators on it.
It's a numbers thing. CK's not usually arguing with one person, he's usually arguing with a dozen posters, each with their own tactics. Taking instant offense to anything that doesn't validate them, insisting there is no difference between anything, inserting pedophilia and beastiality into discussions to draw some weird ass equivalence (seriously, some of you people are absolute creeps). It's no wonder hostilities flare up.
Sure, on the other side you've got tenbones sometimes mixing it up, but he's as likely to hurt feelings as CK. I think Asen is sometimes in agreement with CK, but who can decipher his emoji-laden ramblings? Tristram,you do your best to get an even-headed argument in, but disagreeing with the Brigade leads to Silva and Steve calling for your termination as mod. And as for moderating going towards a side, Baulderstone is always ready to run defense for the Brigade. At least there's Rob, God bless him, always willing to engage with just about anyone. The day this forum exceeds his patience limit, Apparition ought to just spill coffee on the server and call it.
 
(Stuff like Krueger being told to ignore Norton and refusing is just a factual statement. You may think he was justified in ignoring mod instructions, but it happened).
On this subject, I'll say the number of actual arguments I've gotten into since ignoring Krueger has dropped pretty much to zero. From the other direction, considering I can still see people's replies to him... I do not think the same is happening from the other side.
 
It's a numbers thing. CK's not usually arguing with one person, he's usually arguing with a dozen posters, each with their own tactics. Taking instant offense to anything that doesn't validate them, insisting there is no difference between anything, inserting pedophilia and beastiality into discussions to draw some weird ass equivalence (seriously, some of you people are absolute creeps). It's no wonder hostilities flare up.
Sure, on the other side you've got tenbones sometimes mixing it up, but he's as likely to hurt feelings as CK. I think Asen is sometimes in agreement with CK, but who can decipher his emoji-laden ramblings? Tristram,you do your best to get an even-headed argument in, but disagreeing with the Brigade leads to Silva and Steve calling for your termination as mod. And as for moderating going towards a side, Baulderstone is always ready to run defense for the Brigade. At least there's Rob, God bless him, always willing to engage with just about anyone. The day this forum exceeds his patience limit, Apparition ought to just spill coffee on the server and call it.
Who's the Brigade?
 
I don't think what's holding the mods back from wielding the banhammer is a lack of public support. More that they are trying to respect everyone's right to enjoy the pub and its mission statement of chilled discussion.
I can confirm that this is the case. The reason is that we really don't like banning people, hence the tiny number of bannings so far.
 
Who's the Brigade?
Open any thread that's more than 10 pages deep and count participants per issue. It's impossible to debate something with one person without everyone else coming to the rescue.

And my pessimism aside, I do think the dogpiling is more of a problem than any particular poster. Rather than a Garbage Dump subforum or the increasing Mod+ threads, maybe a 1 vs 1 debate thread for contentious issues. Elect your representatives, let them argue it out. Maybe allow a rep to tag in someone else if losing steam, but once you've tagged out you're out for good.
 
Open any thread that's more than 10 pages deep and count participants per issue. It's impossible to debate something with one person without everyone else coming to the rescue.

And my pessimism aside, I do think the dogpiling is more of a problem than any particular poster. Rather than a Garbage Dump subforum or the increasing Mod+ threads, maybe a 1 vs 1 debate thread for contentious issues. Elect your representatives, let them argue it out. Maybe allow a rep to tag in someone else if losing steam, but once you've tagged out you're out for good.
As someone you probably consider the "brigade" I guarantee that your perception that only one side dogpiles doesn't match my perspectives. There have been several threads where my posts are picked apart by CK, Tenbones, Tristram, Rob, and AsenG all at the same time. Now, not all of them are rude about it (Rob is generally not, AsenG is pretty genial), but bouncing around trying to respond to 5 people all going back and forth on different points is exhausting for anyone.

Actually, just as a whole your post reminds me that even my perceptions are often just that, perceptions. Cause I've often felt like you feel... except I'm 99% of the time on the other side of the side you think are being "oppressed".
 
I said the above as someone who sometimes has real trouble not replying. It is the best answer.

It absolutely is, but I'm not sure with a thread of any size expecting everyone to do it is a practical answer. If it only takes a couple people firing back to get a thread closed, it still ends up the same.
 
And my pessimism aside, I do think the dogpiling is more of a problem than any particular poster. Rather than a Garbage Dump subforum or the increasing Mod+ threads, maybe a 1 vs 1 debate thread for contentious issues. Elect your representatives, let them argue it out. Maybe allow a rep to tag in someone else if losing steam, but once you've tagged out you're out for good.
Did you just suggest that the "no politics" forum elect representatives and have debates?
 
I dunno what there is to be done from a Mod perspective. I do think that some behavior others see as troll-ish is not necessarily intended to be, but can nonetheless be frustrating. An example I think I've seen a few times goes something like this: "Here is a thread about a thing, I'd like to talk about this thing" Someone replying asks for clarification on the definition of the thing. The question, though... is this person asking for clarification on the definition of the thing because they want to get on the same page as the OP and get to talking about the thing? Or, do they enjoy debating the definitions of things as an entertaining activity in itself, or think it leads to a rewarding end? If it is the latter, and posters end up replying and going all in on the latter "let's talk definitions" tangent, then I can see how that is a frustrating derail for an OP, as their topic never get discussed in the thread they created to talk about it, it get hung up in this preliminary "let's talk about definitions" hell that may go on for pages. As a forum poster, I think it's a polite thing to try to check yourself on.

There's also a third case; where people aren't actively trying to troll but are obsessive about definitions and will drag the thread off onto that because they just can't let it go. The intent isn't malignant, but the result is still pretty destructive (especially since its easy to get into dueling definitions where both have some support).
 
One problem with the idea this is about sides is that those sides change depending on the topic.

Read back the Storygame vs RPG thread.

You will find that Krueger and I are in agreement on at least 90% of thread, to the point of using the same definitions.
 
As someone you probably consider the "brigade" I guarantee that your perception that only one side dogpiles doesn't match my perspectives. There have been several threads where my posts are picked apart by CK, Tenbones, Tristram, Rob, and AsenG all at the same time. Now, not all of them are rude about it (Rob is generally not, AsenG is pretty genial), but bouncing around trying to respond to 5 people all going back and forth on different points is exhausting for anyone.

Actually, just as a whole your post reminds me that even my perceptions are often just that, perceptions. Cause I've often felt like you feel... except I'm 99% of the time on the other side of the side you think are being "oppressed".
Funny, you didn't name anyone I hadn't already named.
 
To what extent is the assumption of bad faith the problem? That is to say, is the root of the problem the tendency to see bad faith in the things others say and then overreact? I think that's the heart of rpg.net's problem. The assumption of bad faith on the part of the poster is pretty much implict in the rules and moderation policies.

I'm not sure it really matters. In the end, whether someone is deliberately trolling or just has a tic about something and has to go at it aggressively any time it rears its head, the result is unlikely to be vastly different.
 
I think that goes back to self policing based on your own tolerance. I like it more laid back, so when it goes aggro, I just try to withdraw. Just not worth it, man. Of course, that has the problem of leading to a divided forum where like congregates towards like. Not ideal, but again, not worth it to me to unravel that.

It also means that if Topic A always goes aggro, you're functionally forced away from talking about it if you withdraw. There's some logical and likely undesirable evolutionary process at work there.
 
If someone wants to be the blunt and red-nosed Scot in our swanky British country club they are welcome to do so. I find it ever so tiresome when I don't have someone to politely snicker behind my hand at when they show off their lack of breeding.
 
Funny, you didn't name anyone I hadn't already named.
Except my point is that you talk about how CRK is getting dogpiled and apparently Baulderstone is coming in to "run interference" for one side.

I'll just say as someone who has been told by Baulderstone in private that he is tired of my shit, I really don't think he is as biased as you think.
 
The issue is really identifying this as a mod, and not coming across as constantly reading the worste possible interpretation into posts.

Especially since as far as I can tell distinguishing a troll with a somewhat subtle hand and someone with just a strong feeling on something can be next to impossible to do without engaging in Internet Telepathy.
 
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