Moderation Issues

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in some sense. Many of us came here because we were quite tired of tribes and alliances.
So a new tribe was made.....
They don't do that here though. Can you give an example of this happening?
I ask, not to be obtuse or cause friction, but because I honestly can't recall any time this has happened here.
Just read this thread. When someone brings up a perceived issue, "I wasn't doing that" "it was a joke" "just a bit of sarcasm" otherwise known as it gets explained away and that's that.
 
Just read this thread. When someone brings up a perceived issue, "I wasn't doing that" "it was a joke" "just a bit of sarcasm" otherwise known as it gets explained away and that's that.

Or we ask for actual examples.

Still waiting on those from the last round of chips on your shoulder, btw.
 
So a new tribe was made.....
Just read this thread. When someone brings up a perceived issue, "I wasn't doing that" "it was a joke" "just a bit of sarcasm" otherwise known as it gets explained away and that's that.

I certainly think the mods can be a little...prickly...sometimes. But I genuinely don't recall any instances of mods poking other posters and then using the proverbial "modhammer" on them. (But I also neither a) rabidly devour every thread, in fact I often duck out if it seems to be devolving into a pissing contest with anyone, b) follow any poster's activity around the board or c) keep any sort of "receipts" of what anyone says or does).

That said, I can see how posters might think they can't "poke back" because it's a mod.

Weird, to me, seeing as how so many of us came from TheRPGSite and, at least while I was a regular there, heavy handed moderation was never really a thing. (RPG.net, on the other hand...)
 
So a new tribe was made.....
Just read this thread. When someone brings up a perceived issue, "I wasn't doing that" "it was a joke" "just a bit of sarcasm" otherwise known as it gets explained away and that's that.
I've read every post on this thread. There have been no moderator actions even though war was declared against a Moderator.
Endless intervened on Silva in thread this spun from because he was going too far, but that was specifically because Silva was going postal and spewing personal attacks.
To that I say... if you shit on the rug, dont be mad if you are hit by a newspaper.
 
Silva would have only got a thread ban, which is kind a slap on the hand. We’ve only had to ban maybe five people here in three years, and many here know who some of those were. It’s not a decision we take lightly.
 
Silva would have only got a thread ban, which is kind a slap on the hand. We’ve only had to ban maybe five people here in three years, and many here know who some of those were. It’s not a decision we take lightly.
Considering the amount of rope you gave one of them to hang themselves with... yeah.
 
I don't want to see us divide in narrative vs traditional gamer camps here anymore than I want political tribalism to infect the board.

Everyone's had bad experiences with zealots and bad faith actors on both sides of that spectrum in the past, but the less we hold onto those grudges and carry them over to The Pub, the better.

Because it really is a spectrum that's represented here at The Pub, and that's the way I like it.
Yeah I think all this polarised views about different types of rpgs is a load of bollocks.
It seems like people expect you to sit in certain camps or something, rather than just playing the systems you like.

As an example, my favourite systems are BRP (RQG, CoC, Mythras, OQ), and Fate Core.
Then after this, for better or worse, I find myself in various flavours of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D 5E, AiME, DCC, LFG, 13A, S&W)
Then this is followed by a long list of other cool rpgs, such as WoD, TOR, GURPS, HARP/RM, WEG SW, HQ, Sav W, AFF, SR, Traveler, TSL, Conan 2D20, FitD, PbtA, RISUS, PDQ, etc etc.

Some of those fit into different styles and whatnot, yet I'm not sitting in one camp whilst throwing bad vibes out at the others.
They are all part of this great hobby that I have been so lucky to find myself in. The way I see it, this hobby has been one of the best inovations of our lifetime

The other forums tend to encourage this polarising thing in a big way. You open your mouth in the wrong place, and it suddenly feels like Melbourne on the AFL Grand Final Night, and you just wandered into a pub full of drunk hooligans from the opposing team.

RPGPub has generally been pretty good avoiding too much of this, but there has been occasional occurances of it seeping through here and there. We're only human, but I hope it dies down. We don't want to see emerging polarised camps which are condecending towards each other - that's when the comradarie here will start to drop.

This is still the most casual rpg forum around, but I think we all need to be mindful of keeping it that way.
It's one hobby after all, and tribalisim just weakens it, rather than strengthens.

Ok that was just my two cents :thumbsup:
 
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Not really sure where else to post as there doesn't seem to be an avenue to talk to staff/mods without outright just PMing them.

I had a forum thread I created deleted/removed but no indication as to why it was removed. I'd like to hear some reasoning, at least.

EDIT - To be clear, I am not sure which rule I broke (and I can't find a list of them anywhere) so I feel in the dark as to what line I crossed.
 
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Not really sure where else to post as there doesn't seem to be an avenue to talk to staff/mods without outright just PMing them.

I had a forum thread I created deleted/removed but no indication as to why it was removed. I'd like to hear some reasoning, at least.

EDIT - To be clear, I am not sure which rule I broke (and I can't find a list of them anywhere) so I feel in the dark as to what line I crossed.

Hi Smith, it was removed as political, which is our only real rule here at The Pub - no political discussions, which includes identity politics.

Just so you know, we don't consider such removals infractions or anything that you've done wrong, per se.

@Endless - at one point we were talking about a stickied introductory post for The Pub, Smith makes a point that we don't actually explicitly state our No Politics rule or what that potentially covers anywhere and really provide no frame of reference for new posters except absorbing by osmosis , which is less likely the bigger The Pub gets. Maybe one of us, or collaboratively, we can draft something.
 
To this end, I think you also need to state what politics encompasses. A great deal of posters will try and wiggle around it by claiming that xyz is not politics because it does not discuss political parties or governments.

So, as was stated, this also covers identity politics.
I think we can also include tribalism and group think activities, or polarizing discussions of real world issues, such as the obvious (Gun control, abortion, etc...) and the less obvious (divisions within the LGBTQ community and definitions of terrorist organizations)

Should you maybe open a thread on it for feedback? If so, that thread will probably need to be exempt from the no politics rule for the purpose of identifying politics (Which itself could be inflammatory).
 
A statement is a good idea I think, but there's the issue that we've pretty much thrashed this out through edge cases and precedent.
 
How we have always done it is "we know it when we see it". We have never looked at a list of topics. Originally, I said no current politically charged issues, meaning that if you wanted to talk about politics in the Middle Ages for your RPG session, that was fine.
 
A statement is a good idea I think, but there's the issue that we've pretty much thrashed this out through edge cases and precedent.
I'd personally like to know what people think on this too though. It's a hard one to lock down what "No politics" means because, as I said, people do like to line dance and skirt the issue.

I've wanted to post on theoretical reasons for non authoritarian gun control in a dangerous society for a while but haven't dared because it would be political even though it's meant to hammer out an idea for a fictional world.
 
I also said originally that if you get that gut feeling that your post may be tagged as political, it almost assuredly is. It was suggested that if you still had the idea to post, to please send one of the mods your idea and we would let you know if it would be OK or not.
 
I think we can go halfway by providing a few examples, but while specifically stating that it's ultimately anything that will cause disruption
 
I also said originally that if you get that gut feeling that your post may be tagged as political, it almost assuredly is. It was suggested that if you still had the idea to post, to please send one of the mods your idea and we would let you know if it would be OK or not.


Yeah, some edge cases have ended up being OK if a mod steps in at the beginning and states the limits
 
I've wanted to post on theoretical reasons for non authoritarian gun control in a dangerous society for a while but haven't dared because it would be political even though it's meant to hammer out an idea for a fictional world.
I think sometimes you just can't have every conversation everywhere, and that's the price we pay for a generally less contentious forum. A thread about "violence around the world" and how that would impact a modern-day game, for example, would be really interesting and useful, but would end up on shaky political ground fast.
 
I also said originally that if you get that gut feeling that your post may be tagged as political, it almost assuredly is. It was suggested that if you still had the idea to post, to please send one of the mods your idea and we would let you know if it would be OK or not.
Honestly its been hard to frame.
It should have nothing to do with real world gun control debates, but it could trigger an injection of some.
In all, I moved on to something else and decided that if I were to revisit it at a later date I'd talk to you. I sincerely am not sure if it would be line dancing or not, but input could help with this writer's block on it.
 
I think sometimes you just can't have every conversation everywhere, and that's the price we pay for a generally less contentious forum. A thread about "violence around the world" and how that would impact a modern-day game, for example, would be really interesting and useful, but would end up on shaky political ground fast.
Indeed, which is why I ultimately walked away from posting it.
The rub is that this is the perfect forum for it as there are not any charged political views at play.... which is also due to the fact that posts like this don't exist here.

FML :tongue:
 
I think sometimes you just can't have every conversation everywhere, and that's the price we pay for a generally less contentious forum. A thread about "violence around the world" and how that would impact a modern-day game, for example, would be really interesting and useful, but would end up on shaky political ground fast.
Yeah, I think we also have to recognise that political tensions are running pretty high at the moment, especially for our American posters. Because of that something that might have flown in the past (there's actually a Heroes Unlimited supplement that lists what where then modern hotspots) is just too risky at the moment if we want to keep the laidback vibe here.
 
We aren't ever going to be x-acto with the political do nots, because that creates possible areas of infiltration. We like that fuzzy grey area to remain intact. I'd just rather have people ask us in advance instead of posting away and then we get reports sometimes seconds later.
 
I'd personally like to know what people think on this too though. It's a hard one to lock down what "No politics" means because, as I said, people do like to line dance and skirt the issue.

I've wanted to post on theoretical reasons for non authoritarian gun control in a dangerous society for a while but haven't dared because it would be political even though it's meant to hammer out an idea for a fictional world.

While, others will try to broaden the definition of politics to include just about anything in any game they don't like.
 
We aren't ever going to be x-acto with the political do nots, because that creates possible areas of infiltration. We like that fuzzy grey area to remain intact. I'd just rather have people ask us in advance instead of posting away and then we get reports sometimes seconds later.
I agree, and I appreciated your call on that back when I first contacted the mods about it.
 
The Pub has been really good about self-moderating in the three years of its existence. Most of the folks here don't have any kind of appetite for politics mixed in with their gaming space, either in real life or online. We like to be that little oasis, or as Tristram once called it, "the shrine to escapism".
 
While, others will try to broaden the definition of politics to include just about anything in any game they don't like.

I run a forum with a no politics rule. We had people try to report a post because someone mentioned in passing that they were LGBT. Like no comment on anything beyond their own sexual preference in relation to a conversation that was going on about I think significant others (where mentioning that you are gay would make sense if you were going to talk about your significant other).

It is ridiculous what some people will try to call politics to get it banned.
 
Totally unrelated to modding, but I was thinking of the “real life” vs “online” lives and I think I’m kind of still stuck in the old school way of thinking about our identities. They aren’t really as separate as they used to be especially with social media now. Maybe I should just say “lives” period from now on. Just a thought that popped in my head the other day.
 
Hi Smith, it was removed as political, which is our only real rule here at The Pub - no political discussions, which includes identity politics.
I appreciate getting an answer but I 100% disagree that race and gender are political. You can choose your political alignment, for a start.
 
My take on it is this. If the goal posting here is to change the larger society then it is political.

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And that goes both ways. If someone is trying to stop the world from changing and coming here to talk about how to keep things from changing that's politics too.
 
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How we have always done it is "we know it when we see it". We have never looked at a list of topics. Originally, I said no current politically charged issues, meaning that if you wanted to talk about politics in the Middle Ages for your RPG session, that was fine.

Personally, I think this is the best approach. As soon as you codify it, you get people posting regarding the letter, rather than the spirit of the rules.
 
I appreciate getting an answer but I 100% disagree that race and gender are political. You can choose your political alignment, for a start.
Race and Gender are very much political hot topics. I didn't see your post, but I trust the mods here, they don't ban/delete posts lightly. We have the no politics rule for a very good reason as the posts since yours discusses.
 
Personally, I think this is the best approach. As soon as you codify it, you get people posting regarding the letter, rather than the spirit of the rules.
I'd agree with that. At the end of the day, we're a forum full of gamers. Looking for interesting ways to twist rules is what a lot of us do and we really don't need this particular subject rules lawyered.
 
I'd agree with that. At the end of the day, we're a forum full of gamers. Looking for interesting ways to twist rules is what a lot of us do and we really don't need this particular subject rules lawyered.
We also have a huge subset of the hobby that LOVE to come along and stir the pot using politics as a weapon to do so. We don't need taht either. The posts today helped clarify things for me. I think we just need to find a way to put that out there so it can be understood. That we are non political and the Mods have authority to decide on what crosses the line for this forum.
 
We also have a huge subset of the hobby that LOVE to come along and stir the pot using politics as a weapon to do so. We don't need taht either. The posts today helped clarify things for me. I think we just need to find a way to put that out there so it can be understood. That we are non political and the Mods have authority to decide on what crosses the line for this forum.

And one thing that probably needs to be in that- the limits for questioning. I appreciate that there are threads like this that you can ask questions in. But from moderating myself, I know that it can get tiring.
 
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