[+] Plus Threads

[Umbran]

I would characterize it differently

That's your prerogative.

....given the thread started with:
"What I think 5E is lacking the most at this point in time are two things:

....

And *then* said, "What I would LOVE to see is one or two official hardcovers that remedies this."

So, yeah, totally about personal preference. He's a fan of certain kinds of game elements.

And didn't have any "plus thread" rules. and there wasn't any support for it, and no one else really knows what + threads are.

Yes, as I've already noted and critiqued. His approach was flawed, we all know that.

and the issue is whether or not a person, by starting a thread, gets to control/police it or not.

That issue has already been answered. He gets to make polite requests that folks stick by his rules. If he becomes a jerk about it, he's apt to not like the results. While we aren't going to hammer on people to stick by his rules, being contrarian to a jerkish level isn't allowed on this site in general, so folks strongly opposing the thread are also apt to not be happy with the results.

You are making this more complicated than it needs to be, as we see next....

I know that I, for example, start my regular "survivor threads" that depend on the community doing the right thing- if people wanted to screw with those, it would be pretty easy to do so.

And they don't, right? You ask folks to take those threads a certain way, and they generally do! While he was clumsy about it, the concept here is no different - be nice to your fellow EN Worlder's when they ask for a thread to go a certain way. Your Survivor threads are a fine example that extra moderation rules or outright software feature support should not be unnecessary.

 

[CapnZapp]

I'm not sure it's appropriate for me to say anything more. Yet, I'm talked about in the third person, so I'll simply leave you with this:

Threads I start are visited by a small group of posters that uniformly have nothing constructive to say, and appear only interested in derailing the topic at hand. Being able to designate these threads as plus threads and have moderation clean out any such attempts at thread-wrecking would have been a godsend.

I also decline to engage Mistwell in discussion other than to note he doesn't really seem interested in discussing plus threads - as far as I can see, he ignored my links and Morrus definitions.

Instead he seems more interested in chastising my way of trying to survive a hostile discussion environment.

As you probably realize, I could have said more, but I won't. Hereby ends my participation in this thread.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Morrus]

Fair enough! I often do that.

I am still unclear on whether or not "+" threads are an "official" thing (aka, supported by the forum rules), a "semi-official" thing (IOW, the OP can demarcate them as such, and it is the nice and respectful thing to pay attention to the "+"), or not a thing.

They're not really a thing (yet) as only one person uses them; they could potential organically turn into the "semi-official" (i.e. polite) option of people used them, but that wouldn't be a "rule" as such.

 

[CapnZapp]

[MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION]: no worries

 

[MNblockhead]

Huh, never heard of plus threads. Learned something new. If it caught on, I could see it being a nice option. But it will take a LOT of education and moderation involvement to work. Many (most?) users are going to have trouble understanding the concept.

Is it that hard to ignore responses that don't answer your question or attempt to start an argument you are not interested in?

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Morrus]

So, to expand on what I just wrote....

Imagine you wanted to create a thread where people help create ... oh ... sane magic item pricing per level.

Now, imagine that after you post it, people start debating (1) whether or not there are already sufficient rules in the DMG for this, and (2) whether or not 5e should even have magic item prices, and (3) whether or not magic item shoppes* or a good idea, or the worst, Diablo/3e idea ever.

And so instead of any constructive feedback for *your* idea, it's just pages of debate. And whenever someone new joins the thread, they join the debate instead of the original post.

There's the opposite line of thinking, though. If you start a conversation with some friends about X, and the conversation naturally drifts to Y, rebuking them and demanding they stay on topic is unusual behaviour. That's just how conversations work; people don't own them.

The idea of the + threads is that CapnZapp wants to be able to change that dynamic and say "I own this conversation, and I require that it stay on topic". Now, that's not a bad thing in general - people do that all the time on Facebook, for example - but it is a different dynamic to a traditional forum.

Like I said earlier, I'm not super opposed to the concept, but neither do I want to be moderating it. So folks (but we're only talking about one person really) are welcome to use the "+" symbol, and maybe it will catch on as a general politeness thing, but not to the level of a moderator enforced rule. It'd basically just be a kindly request of participant, rather than a demand.

The thing we'd need to watch out for is that if somebody doesn't accede to that kindly request, the OP getting angry about it. That's not really on.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*