Asking clarification regarding moderation

[James Gasik]

That's nuts. The moral panic was rooted partly in religious beliefs, but it was a sociological phenomenon.

The idea of being forbidden, in a D&D forum, from discussing a significant sociological phenomenon that impacted the growth, reputation and design (particularly 2nd ed) of the game (and is still impacting it today to a lesser extent!) seems bizarre to me.

Still- their forum, their rules.

Sounds like the moderator has approved using a euphemism. Maybe the more general "anti-D&D moral panic" would serve best.

Moral panic - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

You're probably right, but I think I'll just stop posting there, it's not a big deal anymore. I was just worried if I'd run into that issue here and would need to modify my references to real-world religions....

Which is difficult when you're talking about a game where real-world Gods have had stat blocks in the past!

 

[Rabulias]

I would ask the moderators of that other site how you should refer to that social phenomena that happened ("the moral panic about RPGs in the 1980s"?), or do they mean that the Satanic Panic itself cannot be mentioned/discussed? I mean, the Wikipedia page about it is titled "Satanic panic." And what forum site is this? I will want to stay away, and not talk about my recipe for devil's food cake.

 

[Umbran]

I would ask the moderators of that other site how you should refer to that social phenomena that happened ("the moral panic about RPGs in the 1980s"?), or do they mean that the Satanic Panic itself cannot be mentioned/discussed?

He already mentioned the response he got:
"No one's asking you pretend it didn't happen. That's not the thing. The rules say you can't discuss religion, and mentioning counts as discussion, and S_____ counts as religion. So if you need to refer to that time period, just find another way to do it."

 

[Hussar]

He already mentioned the response he got:
"No one's asking you pretend it didn't happen. That's not the thing. The rules say you can't discuss religion, and mentioning counts as discussion, and S_____ counts as religion. So if you need to refer to that time period, just find another way to do it."

Likely it's tripping some filter - using the word Satan for example. Which means the mod gets pinged and then the mod is obliged to do something about it because the mod isn't the board owner and the board owner has set that filter in place. It's not, "You must never talk about this", it's "Please don't talk about this using terms that trip the filter which means that we have to step in".

Granted, mods can't phrase it that way, but, that's certainly the "in between the lines" that I would see.

 

[James Gasik]

Maybe, but when I asked to appeal and the infraction stood, I was like, you know, I don't really need to post there anymore anyways. I'm sure they have good reasons to be worried about religion, and just on the off chance anyone here would be offended by that sort of thing, I'm perfectly happy to vaguely refer to things (I have a recent post where I discuss a "widely published book of mythology that we'll call B, and how in the book, a man named A makes a pact with a deity we'll call G").

But it still hit me out of left field because in 15 years of posting there on and off, nothing like this had happened before, and their issue wasn't the topic I was talking about- it was using the same name for the event that wikipedia uses.

I mean, if you wanted to look up this topic online, would "the sociological event that plagued early Dungeons and Dragons" be what you googled?

I checked by the way. Turns out that even if you did, you'd find relevant articles. Eh, far from the first or last time I've been wrong.

 

[Hussar]

Heh. Yeah, I just googled using your line: the sociological event that plagued early Dungeons and Dragons - and yup, it does actually come up with the relevant articles. Interesting.

 

[Umbran]

Likely it's tripping some filter - using the word Satan for example. Which means the mod gets pinged and then the mod is obliged to do something about it ....

I can't speak for them, but our language filter doesn't alert moderators.

 

[Hussar]

I can't speak for them, but our language filter doesn't alert moderators.

That's true. Could just be someone seeing the word Satan and reporting it too. That's plausible.

 

[James Gasik]

I would have been fine with that, except when I went to state my case, the mod was like "I understand, but you can't say the word, no matter the context" and let the infraction stand. Ah well. It's not a loss, I get more intelligent debate here anyways.