The Last Moderation Discussion thread of 2023

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Brock Savage said:
Thank you for the explanation. It feels like passive-aggressive censure when one of my posts gets removed without notice simply because it was part of a discussion where people got overstimulated and attacked each other. This sort of thing has happened to me a few times here so I hope you can appreciate my position. A brief DM from the Mods to the effect of "heads up, this was part of a conversation that blew up and we're sorting this out" would go a long way.
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That seems like a lot of work on the mods to send DMs to every participant on the thread
 
Brock Savage said:
This place isn't that active. I doubt there were more than a dozen posts removed.
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You can go look at the thread under construction, well I guess not as i can’t see it now, but it appeared more than that to me. The mods would have to give you the length.
 
Brock Savage said:
This place isn't that active. I doubt there were more than a dozen posts removed.
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Almost twice that (22). On top of that, there's pruning them for the new thread, working out rules, discussing any necessary action backstage etc. I'm obviously not saying any of us are doing 8 hour shifts but yeah, this has been taking up 90% of the mod time for more than day.

Honestly, if this was the case I'd mostly just close threads, not reopen them and ban discussion of whatever led to the issue in full rather than just the parts that caused the issue. Much less work than letting you all have a mod+ thread on the topic.

That said, I agree we could probably do with some more visibility on this kind of thing. (It was mentioned earlier in this thread but I accept this thread is high traffic and gets swamped).

Maybe a locked post where we mention any board wide actions like this? It would require people to check that thread now and again but might help let people know what's going on without tripling our workload.
 
Um, we could have a parallel ongoing "mod announcement" thread, where whenever we make a mod announcement, it also get's posted to that thread. Then anyone could just look there to see what's going on if they missed the discussion.
 
TristramEvans said:
Um, we could have a parallel ongoing "mod announcement" thread, where whenever we make a mod announcement, it also get's posted to that thread. Then anyone could just look there to see what's going on if they missed the discussion.
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Yeah, that's what I meant I'm just more verbose than you. :p
 
Fenris-77 said:
If we tag all the posters involved in a post in this thread (or that other thread) then everyone gets notified without the pain in the ass of sending 22 different PMs. That might work.
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Unless we have notifications turned off for that thread, although god like mods may have a way around that.
 
It still means making a list and then people getting upset if we accidentally miss one of them out. (I don't think there's a way to automate that process).
 
A Fiery Flying Roll said:
Almost twice that (22). On top of that, there's pruning them for the new thread, working out rules, discussing any necessary action backstage etc. I'm obviously not saying any of us are doing 8 hour shifts but yeah, this has been taking up 90% of the mod time for more than day.
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Interesting. Thanks for explaining the process and work involved. Still, 20 'no-reply' notifications or DMs with a brief cut and paste explanation isn't that time consuming.

A Fiery Flying Roll said:
Maybe a locked post where we mention any board wide actions like this? It would require people to check that thread now and again but might help let people know what's going on without tripling our workload.
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Well, like I said, removing people's posts without a comment feels like passive-aggressive censure so some kind of explanation would go a long way.
 
Brock Savage said:
Well, like I said, removing people's posts without a comment feels like passive-aggressive censure so some kind of explanation would go a long way.
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There was an explanation. https://www.rpgpub.com/threads/the-...ssion-thread-of-2023.8585/page-28#post-482690 Two pages back. As I said, I agree annoucements should probably be separated off but it was there and not way back in the thread.
Brock Savage said:
More passive-aggressiveness. Just say "we don't give a fuck about your concern, it would take too much time to address"
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But your concern has been addressed with the idea of a separate thread. Just not the way you wanted which you've already been told is too much work.

And it's that what people are reacting to. You're telling us we're lying about how much work it involves, when we know fully well this would be a massive load to organise.
 
Fenris-77 said:
If we tag all the posters involved in a post in this thread (or that other thread) then everyone gets notified without the pain in the ass of sending 22 different PMs. That might work.
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That only works if a poster hasn't turned off notifications for tagging, like I have done.

I also had a couple of posts disappear, only one of which mentioned the racial modifier thing. The other had nothing to do with it, (it didn't have anything directly to do with D&DOne either).
But I saw a Mod+ thread was being made, so I just shrugged and moved on. I have only once deliberately, to my knowledge, broken the "No politics" rule. That post was removed and I got a notification about it.
 
Brock Savage said:
More passive-aggressiveness. Just say "we don't give a fuck about your concern, it would take too much time to address"
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I don't understand your concern, or the assumption. But a compromise was proposed that may be slightly less convenient, but is a more practical way for us to address your concern.

I'm sorry if you felt that there was some maliciousness in the mod action that was specifically targeting you for some reason, but I assure you that is not the case.
 
Shipyard Locked said:
Don't sweat it. Like I said, I'm pretty conflicted about my reactions as well.

Maybe my frustrations are bubbling up from other non-gaming aspects of my life where I currently feel powerless.
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Sorry to hear that I hope things get better for you in the future. :gooselove:

And for what it's worth, I thought you did well at staying respectful, even if post hoc we know we should have kept that debate for somewhere else.
 
Urdlen's best boy said:
I hope things get better for you in the future.
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Unlikely. :sad: The issue is my anxiety has been chained to geopolitics since the cold war restarted in earnest, completely beyond my control. I only get respite when I hear an expert confidently say no one's going to escalate to WW3. Then I can successfully tune in all out for a few weeks, until I accidentally spot a scary news story and the stupid cycle repeats.

In the depths of it, I fear I'll never be able to make mid-range plans untainted by fear again, never mind long-range ones.
 
Afterburner said:
A few years back, there was a thread on TBP about the propriety of killing sentient, sapient beings in D&D simply because they had been designated as "innately evil". There was a great deal of hand-wringing about Gygaxian Paladins and "orc genocide fuck yeah!" players and philosophical dilemmas involving lone mind flayers sitting peacefully on a hillside watching the sunset.

And as it turned out, nobody in the thread was actually experiencing the problems the thread sought to solve. None of the DMs were having to deal with "orc genocide fuck yeah!" players. None of the players were involved with games featuring monoculturally evil orcs where such genocide would be theoretically justified. Nobody's games involved thorny moral quandaries involving serene, isolated illithids. The whole thread was a solution in search of a problem.
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I remember that thread! :grin:

FWIW, I was one of those people that had rproblems with the Paladin/Orc thing.

As a kid, bout 4 decades back.:hehe:
 
Shipyard Locked said:
Unlikely. :sad: The issue is my anxiety has been chained to geopolitics since the cold war restarted in earnest, completely beyond my control. I only get respite when I hear an expert confidently say no one's going to escalate to WW3. Then I can successfully tune in all out for a few weeks, until I accidentally spot a scary news story and the stupid cycle repeats.

In the depths of it, I fear I'll never be able to make mid-range plans untainted by fear again, never mind long-range ones.
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My sympathies. I don't follow the news anymore either. Though it's not because it gives me anxiety exactly, but it gives me excessive thoughts. Basically I have problems turning my brain off.
It's also why I have stopped following the "What is happening in real-life" thread. It affects me too much, when I hear about bad things happening to people that I like.
I have learned some mindfullness exercises that sometimes help. But they only help, if I'm not stressed out in other ways.
 
When we "delete" a post, it is just hidden, not erased. That's mostly because it allows us to keep track of what happened in an incident. I bring it up to point out that if you see a post of yours deleted, it can potentially be brought back. You can always contact a mod about it.
 
The Mad Hatter said:
My sympathies. I don't follow the news anymore either. Though it's not because it gives me anxiety exactly, but it gives me excessive thoughts. Basically I have problems turning my brain off.
It's also why I have stopped following the "What is happening in real-life" thread. It affects me too much, when I hear about bad things happening to people that I like.
I have learned some mindfullness exercises that sometimes help. But they only help, if I'm not stressed out in other ways.
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I also have an issue in general with my mind not shutting off or getting "stuck" on something.

I don't feel like I have full control over it. The solution that works best for me is to try to get it stuck on a game or TV show or craft project or book.

And that is part of what annoys me when people want to bring real world issues into my hobby. I only want fictional politics such as who will inherit the throne of this fictional country.
 
Patchwork Dragon said:
And that is part of what annoys me when people want to bring real world issues into my hobby. I only want fictional politics such as who will inherit the throne of this fictional country.
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I fine when someone puts obvious political allegory into a game, it can wreck immersion. If every player immediately gets what is being alluded to, they are know thinking about that and not the setting of the game. While I think you can get a lot of good adventure inspiration from political events, you really need to sand them down to the their essence before using them.

For example, you could have a good adventure plot where people are trying to get their hands on evidence of a ruler's infidelity, either for blackmail or to cover it up. However, if you make the evidence a stained dress, you've now pulled everyone out of the game taken them back to the '90s.
 
Afterburner said:
Only if they're old farts like you. ;-)
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True. If you want to use overt politics in your game, they need to be from before the timeframe of your players. You can probably get away with using the Ghelfs and Ghibilines in a game without provoking a fistfight at the table. Probably.
 
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