Ok. Fair enough.
Now, in your judgement, what, if anything should be done about Oriental Adventures? And, can you please explain how you arrived at that judgement?
What, in your judgement, if anything, should be done about the description of Vistani? And can you please explain how you arrived at that judgement?
See, it's all very easy when we keep things vague and make statements like " we still have a responsibility to form our own judgment. " No one disagrees with that. But, at some point you have to actually tell people what that judgement is and how you got there.
I have expressed my views on this over the course of the threads. I will try to do so again. It is late though and I am not sure how well I will express myself. But I am not going to take you through each step of my logic to "explain how arrived at that judgement". That seems like venturing back into the territory where you are insisting I answer your series of questions.
I think OA should remain up for sale (which I believe you have said, you think it should as well). If they want to put up a warning, I think that is fine. I am not sure it really does much (I think I just have a much different view on how we should approach media from many posters here). My sense is that most people should understand that this was made in the mid-80s and going to reflect the sensibilities and language of that time. The "O" part of OA is offensive by today's standards in the states. I don't know how you fix that, because changing it erases it, it also would lead to confusion, and at the time it was made, that wouldn't have registered with most people as offensive. That part, more than anything else, probably deserves an explanation, but I think the explanation should be fair to the writers in order to contextualize things and not give the false impression they were being deliberately offensive or something. Personally if I was in charge of the line at WOTC, I would change the title of the line going forward (probably with a note in the introduction explaining it is part of the same series but that "Oriental" was removed to avoid offense). My wife is Thai and the term Oriental is not one I am personally comfortable with using (I've heard it used as a pejorative and it can be quite ugly when used in that type of way). But I wouldn't want to alter content of books from the TSR era, or make them unavailable.
Just as a side note, as someone who has made pretty extensive use of both editions of OA (I do think they still both have plenty of valuable content), I feel third edition was actually more offensive for content. The first edition wasn't especially bad in that respect, in my opinion (especially for its time). But I still remember feeling like the WOTC version of OA was a kind of step backwards when I first read. It just seemed more stereotypical to me at the time. I liked how it handled martial arts if I recall. I remember using portions of it (among other splat books from the era) for a wuxia campaign (had to reskin a lot of the material of course).
Honestly the best thing I think is for there to be conversations about it. I don't know that there is anything WOTC can really do aside from put a warning on it. This is why I said, I was fine with the podcast. I didn't agree with all their criticisms, but I think they should have expressed those criticisms if that is how they felt. I did listen to the podcast. Where I take issue, is in calls to take the book down (and initially that was what was being asked for on twitter when these threads started). That is where my disagreement began with this. I also take issue with posters how have said we have to accept each criticism automatically, because of identity issues. I think that is misguided.
I don't have the best answer here of what ought to be done. And I a not pretending to. Much of my response here has been to ideas that I think bring us too close to censorship, or move us in a direction of more pablum content. I weigh in because I am a publisher and I have seen the shift over time. People are of course free to disagree with me. I am just making sure my vote is counted because we are collectively making a decision as a hobby about where we want to go in terms of what kinds of things are permissible, how writing should be vetted etc. And I worry about where we are going, however well intentioned, for the reasons I've given.
In terms of the Vistani. Ravenloft was my favorite setting. I grew up in an era when the gypsy trope was pretty normal, and people living in the states had no direct experience with Roma. I think I am probably a generation apart on this issue. I don't even know what the current controversy is surrounding them (I don't play 5th edition). I know I like the Vistani as they were used in Ravenloft, and I thought most people who liked them, did so because they found them admirable. I doubt they were accurate. And I am sure there could have been stereotypes in there. But I also think there were a lot of interesting things being done in the Ravenloft line around the Vistani. For example in the Van Richten books, Van Richten has a recurring bigotry against the Vistani, and this was used quite cleverly at times almost as a form of satire. It was an interesting flaw to give to the most heroic character in the setting.
What I will say is today I think people often mistake content for message. And the two are not the same. And I think we often leap to conclusions about what someone is trying to say with their content, and that we can be especially unforgiving in this era anytime a creator is perceived to have mistepped. I don't know that any of that has made people more tolerant or empathetic.
Not sure if that answers you questions. That is about as much specifics as I can give on those two questions at his hour.
