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My experience with good gaming stores though is that the gatekeeper both keeps the riff-raff (people who are just there to cause trouble) out and is helpful and welcoming to new customers. The ones who just function as a bouncer are the negative gatekeepers, in my experience.
My current local store has some very effective gatekeepers, like one of the two owners and his wife: they are very good at helping you figure out if you'd like a new board game or not, or if an RPG would cater to your tastes or not. They know this by talking to you and getting to know you. THAT's what the gatekeeper is supposed to be.
I don't disagree with you that there's been systemic issues. I don't disagree that gatekeeping CAN BE USED as a negative. Check back on my initial post. I took umbrage with an un-nuanced universal statement.
But I do disagree that it isn't gatekeeping to gatekeep the gatekeepers. That's like saying it isn't harassment to harass people who are harassing people. No... it is harassment, and it's dishonest to think it isn't. We could follow this idea, if you want (serious; I like philosophy and applied philosophy... it's why I'm an old fart in law school and have worked for the government throughout most of the Bush administration and the Obama administration, only to recently join private industry). But that's probably way off topic... so... happy to go to another thread with you on it?
Yes, you are correct. That was an assumption on my part from the earlier part of the discussion from another poster and I apologize if it was incorrect to apply the same thought to your reasoning (as it seems it was, if I'm reading into your words correctly).
You are using 'gatekeeper' differently from almost everybody in this thread, and Mike Mearles.
In the context everybody but you is using it, it doesn't mean to keep out disruptive troublemakers. It means to keep out people deemed "unworthy" in order to reinforce a (delusional) sense of elitism.