The Last Moderation Discussion thread of 2023

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I think every mod action should be explained in three page thread which highlights:

- why the action was taken.
- why it's a personal and moral failing of the perpetrator
- how the poster should have known better
- a vague admonishment telling the poster to learn from their mistakes and,
- a ban from that topic and similar topics so even if they have learnt from their mistakes, they can never again risk offending the marginalised, downtrodden and hard done by.

Oh yeah, and couch it all in a patronising, sanctimonious tone. Bonus points if you can do all that in rhyme.

You forgot one: Everything's gotta be in purple.
 
i went and looked at the purple pillory for the first time in about two months because of this thread, and see they've been on another of their periodic purges.

i feel like the last ten years we've been watching an online version of the Stanford Prison Experiment play out
 
Nail. Head.

But I think the Pub does just fine with "here's what we did and why", omitting the pompous and dishonest sermons.
In fairness to arr pee gee dot net : we don't get folk coming here specifically to troll or sTiCk iT tO tHe mOdS. They have more users, more friction between them, and more people just wanting to try and hurt them out of anger, grievances, "grievances", or just generally being a twat; they also have more history and a distinctly different site culture to us. Being small and weird keeps us safe from a lot of awful internet things.

That said, I still think that both purple and brown are fundamentally more similar than either site's admins would like.
 
I could be wrong but I don't see us ever going the route of explaining every time why this or that got deleted. We aren't that consistent first of all. I don't think we pretend to be either.

I personally probably mod based on the overall atmosphere at the time so maybe something that is borderline political will get silently deleted to keep the overall tone pleasant because the air is currently leaning towards folks looking for a conflict. Sometimes things will slip through and not get modded and going back and modding it would just up the attention it receives. If it dies a silent death then I'm not likely to bring it back up with a moderation. I fine value in having the line blurry as it encourages folks to think for themselves and decide where they feel the line they don't want to cross.
A downside to that is it can appear I/we are tolerant of things I probably don't like or want to see more of to a casual reader. I suppose I'm more concerned with the people here on a regular basis than how someone driving by perceives us.
That brings up something I do like about Xenforo abd how we have the "like" feature enabled. It does give some feedback to readers and posters how posts are received. It's not perfect but it's not bad as a signal.
 
In fairness to arr pee gee dot net : we don't get folk coming here specifically to troll or sTiCk iT tO tHe mOdS. They have more users, more friction between them, and more people just wanting to try and hurt them out of anger, grievances, "grievances", or just generally being a twat; they also have more history and a distinctly different site culture to us. Being small and weird keeps us safe from a lot of awful internet things.

That said, I still think that both purple and brown are fundamentally more similar than either site's admins would like.

Sure. There's no doubt that they deal with spammers, drive-by trolls spewing offensive whaarrgarble from the opposite end of the political spectrum, ding dongs needling each other over grudges in some cases two decades old, and people being superficially civil while also being deliberately insulting and snide like they're in a comedy of manners. I'm sure that all gets very tedious and frustrating, and it's likely our mods don't have to deal with that crap on anywhere near that kind of scale. But for the latter problem, if the Umbridges don't want to deal with smarmy line-dancing they shouldn't nurture a culture of it. And none of this excuses their tendency to deliberately misconstrue what people are saying just so they can lay down some more mendacious preaching about their target's numerous mental and moral deficiencies- because it's bullying and nowhere near as funny as they think. Punching down seldom is.

I could be wrong but I don't see us ever going the route of explaining every time why this or that got deleted. We aren't that consistent first of all. I don't think we pretend to be either.

I have no problem with that. As long as people feel like they're allowed to ask and get a sensible answer we're all good, and that's always been the case as long as I've been here.
 
Sure. There's no doubt that they deal with spammers, drive-by trolls spewing offensive whaarrgarble from the opposite end of the political spectrum, ding dongs needling each other over grudges in some cases two decades old, and people being superficially civil while also being deliberately insulting and snide like they're in a comedy of manners. I'm sure that all gets very tedious and frustrating, and it's likely our mods don't have to deal with that crap on anywhere near that kind of scale. But for the latter problem, if the Umbridges don't want to deal with smarmy line-dancing they shouldn't nurture a culture of it. And none of this excuses their tendency to deliberately misconstrue what people are saying just so they can lay down some more mendacious preaching about their target's numerous mental and moral deficiencies- because it's bullying and nowhere near as funny as they think. Punching down seldom is.



I have no problem with that. As long as people feel like they're allowed to ask and get a sensible answer we're all good, and that's always been the case as long as I've been here.

Yeah they definitely attract a lot of the flotsam and detrius of the net but as you say they also come down hard on harmless, off-topic jokes and are inconsistent in applying their supposed rules, allowing rudeness and dog-piling for certain posters and not for others.

Moding isn't easy but I've been on a lot of forums over the years and both they and the other site are prime examples of how to not run one.
 
Don’t you mean small and sane?
This is a forum where we deal with trolls by turning threads into discussions of food, geese, or beer; sometimes it feels like thread derailment to actually discuss what's in the title. General thread derailment is accepted as long as it's fairly organic rather than sudden. Most of us know pretty well how to avoid being baited when folks try, and the simple nature of the rules sees most of us stepping back rather than risking breaking them, such as they are.

We're not untrollable, but you have to work damn hard to troll more than some of the folk here already are.
Sure. There's no doubt that they deal with spammers, drive-by trolls spewing offensive whaarrgarble from the opposite end of the political spectrum, ding dongs needling each other over grudges in some cases two decades old, and people being superficially civil while also being deliberately insulting and snide like they're in a comedy of manners. I'm sure that all gets very tedious and frustrating, and it's likely our mods don't have to deal with that crap on anywhere near that kind of scale. But for the latter problem, if the Umbridges don't want to deal with smarmy line-dancing they shouldn't nurture a culture of it. And none of this excuses their tendency to deliberately misconstrue what people are saying just so they can lay down some more mendacious preaching about their target's numerous mental and moral deficiencies- because it's bullying and nowhere near as funny as they think. Punching down seldom is.
Oh absolutely - I'm no fan of the place, having been ran off (Along with my friends) for not sucking up hard enough during their equivalent of this thread.
 
Wait I missed that one, what happened? I can't find any link about that and I need it for cathartic purposes.

Shared via DM for laughs, don't want to give Jennifer Anniston too much oxygen, they desperately want attention as they try to use culture war politics to drive their sales.
 
We could call it the Pub Pillory but do the opposite where we site awesome posts and give numerous reasons why. The only downside to that is that staff would be overworked because of all the great posts that we would have to choose from.
Also, I'd just choose my own and we'd get complaints.
 
Not sure where to ask this:

We have 3 or so active discussions about PbtA games going on right now, and all three include positives and negatives.

Can we just merge them or something?

What do you like about PbtA?
What do you dislike about PbtA?
What do you HATE about PbtA?
 
Those threads might be messy enough already, IDK. That said, I'm down to posting memes and yanking Tristram's chain, so they may have run their course. As I'm obviously the arbiter of such things. :grin:
 
I was on a forum once, where they had “megathreada” which were all about a specific topic, however, posts within that thread that got enough reactions (eg likes) got tagged as “highlighted” and a reader could skim the thread for the “best” posts via this highlight system. Eg one click go to the next or previous etc…

Might be cool someday to have a “Mythras” megathread, a D&D 5e one, a PbtA etc
 
I was on a forum once, where they had “megathreada” which were all about a specific topic, however, posts within that thread that got enough reactions (eg likes) got tagged as “highlighted” and a reader could skim the thread for the “best” posts via this highlight system. Eg one click go to the next or previous etc…

Might be cool someday to have a “Mythras” megathread, a D&D 5e one, a PbtA etc
And the Amazing Engine megathread. Why does everyone always forget Amazing Engine?
 
Aw man, I remember playing Dangerous Journeys. I was given a multi-page hand-scribbled character sheet. The chacter sheet page count was higher than that of some games I play. My armour alone had a couple of pages.
There's a copy of it sitting unread and unloved in our communal pile of 'books we have but will never use, except as an improvised table'. Skimming it made my eyes bleed. I've never read Lejendary Adventures, though.
 
Dangerous Journeys isn't really all that complex. It's just Gygax felt the need to write a master's thesis to justify every last rule, have it translates it to Finnish and have it translated back again by Sprague DeCamp.

In essence, you roll the base stats and total them to get the higher values until you reach the Physical, Mental, or Spiritual Level. You roll your social class and birth order and if I remember right birth sign. Then you pick a career you qualify for and it's just stat + bonus for the skills. Then, on the rare chance that you made a full practicioner, you pick about 200 spells for your spell book. Combat's mostly roll percent to hit, roll for damage, subtract DR. it's just that the DR is a table. It's reading the thing that's a chore.
 
Not sure where to ask this:

We have 3 or so active discussions about PbtA games going on right now, and all three include positives and negatives.

Can we just merge them or something?

What do you like about PbtA?
What do you dislike about PbtA?
What do you HATE about PbtA?

Given that people can get polarized on PbtA, just as a lurker in those threads, I think I am finding the division useful as it both seems to be reducing flame war potential while also keeping each one focused (so even the negative one is focused on a specific type of criticism). I am not participating in those threads actively though so take my vote here with a grain of salt
 
Given that people can get polarized on PbtA, just as a lurker in those threads, I think I am finding the division useful as it both seems to be reducing flame war potential while also keeping each one focused (so even the negative one is focused on a specific type of criticism). I am not participating in those threads actively though so take my vote here with a grain of salt
They were all blurring together to me. There's positives and negatives in each, but okay.

Wasn't it on Big Purple where you'd have a [+] Game system thread and a [-] Game thread, specifically for positive only and negative only or something? Having two threads being "what do you dislike about PbtA seems wasteful but whatever.
 
They were all blurring together to me. There's positives and negatives in each, but okay.

Wasn't it on Big Purple where you'd have a [+] Game system thread and a [-] Game thread, specifically for positive only and negative only or something? Having two threads being "what do you dislike about PbtA seems wasteful but whatever.
I admit, I lose track which thread I am post in as respond to posts where I was quoted.

PS - But apologies to all if I have come across as negative in the + thread, or postive on the - thread.
 
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There's a copy of it sitting unread and unloved in our communal pile of 'books we have but will never use, except as an improvised table'. Skimming it made my eyes bleed. I've never read Lejendary Adventures, though.
One of my earlier posts here was a walkthrough of character generation for L.A.
Overall it was fine if a little unclear but equipment turned out to be oddly annoying to determine what you started with.
 
I admit, I lose track which thread I am post in as respond to posts where I was quoted.
Yeah, that's about how it is for me too. I see reaction, I respond to it and don't pay attention to the thread name.
 

Did someone edit my post here? I asked at the end "Isn't anyone else tired of everything being a culture war?".

You realize culture war in regards to "narrative games versus trad games" isn't political right?
 

Did someone edit my post here? I asked at the end "Isn't anyone else tired of everything being a culture war?".

You realize culture war in regards to "narrative games versus trad games" isn't political right?
It wasn't me modding it, but generally I do sometimes mod the term "culture war" simply because it risks leading to "is this a culture war term?" tangents regardless of the poster's intention. And that often does end up with political linedancing.
 
It wasn't me modding it, but generally I do sometimes mod the term "culture war" simply because it risks leading to "is this a culture war term?" tangents regardless of the poster's intention. And that often does end up with political linedancing.
Fair enough, it cool to just put something like "Isn't anyone else tired of everything being about Narrative vs Trad?"
 
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