Edition wars ban extension?

[drothgery]

@Kheti: It's not censorship. It's improving the signal to noise ratio.
-blarg

Of course it's not censorship. This is a privately owned and operated web site. Morrus (and anyone he delegates authority to) can ban whatever kinds of discussion he wants to here, and it wouldn't be censorship, because Morrus is not the government.

 

[jdrakeh]

Some excessively large proportion of the population either
1. can't really draw a clear difference between a distinction/criticism and well, complaining
2. don't really want to -- they want to have sides, with a winner and a loser, and they want to be the winner

Actually, with the ban in place there are still a number of threads discussing differences between editions and such. Most of the people therein seem to be doing just fine insofar as distinguishing between productive discussion and deliberately offensive trolling. I think somebody else (over on Circvs) nailed it. . .

Said person basically pointed out that the edition wars ban doesn't stifle discussion about different editions, so much as it stifles stuff like the one line "4 is New Coke" trolling attempts and similar flame baiting (behavior that has never been allowed here anyhow, but is always especially prolific whenever a new edition of D&D is churned out).

Starting threads with single-line posts that essentially read "4e is crap!" (or "3e is crap!" for that matter) isn't productive by any stretch of the imagination, and that is the kind of thing that the edition wars ban is supposed to stop, if I understand the intent correctly. So far, it seems to be working with the few exceptions of folks who don't care if they get banned.

 

[blargney the second]

Of course it's not censorship. This is a privately owned and operated web site. Morrus (and anyone he delegates authority to) can ban whatever kinds of discussion he wants to here, and it wouldn't be censorship, because Morrus is not the government.

Yup, there's that too. I was hoping to nudge the conversation away from the political aspect of all that.
-blarg

 

[pawsplay]

Well, technically, since Morrus has opened these fora to the public, you could make the argument that it is possible to exercise censorship. ENWorld is more like a "place of business" than it is a "private club."

But I hope that's a moot point. I haven't seen anything like censorship around here and I don't expect to.

I do find the ban stifling on principle... whether or not it forbids anything that wasn't already forbidden, it does create an aura of wariness. I personally think the ban has served its purpose, but it's not my site and that's not my judgment to make. It's a signal to noise question. The way the ban was implemented is not a matter of censorship so much as the kinds of discussion that are considered topical.

The reason we have the ban is because a thread on the topic "4e is New Coke" or whatever is a lot more inflammatory than someone posting, "Champions: The New Millenium was Crystal Pepsi." While I'm not a big fan of "your game sucks/no it rocks" arguments, I think the ban is a problem for discussions in which someone wants to be evaluative about a game. In theory, "4e is the New Coke" is an invitation for people to comment on the metaphor. As a practical matter, the mods shouldn't have to deal with the inevitible dogpiles.

Obviously, I can't speak for the mods, but that's basically how I see this situation.