OK, we're gettng a little annoyed here!

[Dimwhit]

FWIW it is more often not a case of someone with thin skin telling the mods because they feel hurt, it is much more likely to be a bystander who can see something getting out of control

Regards,

Actually, if someones tattling to the mods, it's usually just diaglo.

 

[Spinachcat]

I like my rule: Before anyone is allowed on the internet, they must first live six months in either New York City or Los Angeles without a car. Those that survive will have developed a thick enough skin to remember to wear their asbestos underwear while carrying flamethrowers.

My suggestion is that YOU - the posters - put tags on your threads. Put [Hate 4e] or [Love 4e] and then your thread title. Then if you fall into one of these camps, you will know whether or not your nose is welcome there.

Honestly, I am confused how people can have such fiery emotion for something that has not even been published yet. NOBODY on this board even knows how this game plays! Once it comes out and you read the books and try it out, then decide if you love or hate the damn thing!

It's weirder than hating movies based on the trailer. You may not see a movie because of the trailer and that totally makes sense, but what kind of whackjob love or hates the final movie based only on the 2 minute trailer?

And for the record, my alignment is "interested in 4e, gonna buy it, can't make a decision about its worth as a game until I run it several times" so you know my bias in this post.

 

[Imp]

But I've found, over the last six months, much better discussion of 4e over at Circvs Maximvs, where Gramma's gone and it's no holds barred. And I think that's directly due to the fact that really, truly stupid stuff gets called out for ridicule, and quickly.

I think ENWorld's signature politeness -- normally, a wonderful thing -- can become a detriment during really uncertain periods like the one we're experiencing right now. The politeness allows some low-grade stupidity to perpetuate on and on and on and on. Individually, maybe none of these types of posts rise to bannable or even warnable offenses, but cumulatively it drags the whole discourse down.

Right, this is exactly how less "civilized" forums work, they're much quicker at dealing with opinions outside the conventional wisdom because they're not interested in sparing anyone's feelings. However, this sort of attitude can even in the best cases (lots of smart, articulate people) lead to a relentlessly negative and cynical community which can get pretty soul-crushing.

I guess I can't see a downgrade in discourse in this sub-forum to be a very bad thing, overall, because there isn't that much room for it to go up – you're still dealing with a bunch of disempowered people taking in spotty, questionable data and turning it into rampant speculation no matter what, it's a recipe for terrible arguments even if everybody were best friends.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

[POSTER IS FIRMLY AMBIVILENT ABOUT 4E]

...in no place anywhere does the "I am convinced by the logic of your statements, I am now a convert to your point of view, thanks you for this discussion" scenario happen except once in a blue moon....

There must be a blue moon reigning over the threads I visit in the Rules forum then.. I stay on these boards simply because logic is, IME, fairly common around here *.

Regarding the OP, this sticky could help somewhat.. but the biggest issue is poster response to a threadcrap. Just like back in grade school... threadcrapper are looking for a reaction. We just need more people willing to ignore rude posts. Part of the problem is with 4E, we have more people coming to the boards seeking news...people who haven't spent time lurking or posting in the 'normal' forums. In a forum based on speculation.. well, the worst will out.

I didn't catch a response... does the 3 day ban work? I often get the same effect of a 3-day ban simply by not having access to the 'net.. about once a month. I don't think it would bother me {Might even give me a reason to not procrastinate on my homework... }

I predict that the more crunch we see, the less doom-sayers will exist. Eventually this forum will be a nice place for debate.



* My experiences are framed by three things:
1 - I only post in threads I think I can add to
2 - I treat everyones posts as thier personal opinion
3 - I keep my screen name so others will think I am a total whack-job and not take offense at my posts...

 

[Piratecat]

I think ENWorld's signature politeness -- normally, a wonderful thing -- can become a detriment during really uncertain periods like the one we're experiencing right now. The politeness allows some low-grade stupidity to perpetuate on and on and on and on.

"I'm sorry, you're too stupid to post. Out of the thread!"

Maybe not polite, but I bet it's remarkably cathartic...

Over the years we've been really pleased that people take responsibility for their posts; the self-censor before they ever hit send. That's been suspended by some people, and we're seeing the results.

 

[Celebrim]

These two posts, in my mind, sum up the problem nicely. We have people (on both sides actually) making ad hominem attacks against large groups by inference. When a person in the attacked group eventually gets fed up and calls out the offending party, it seems they are the ones who get in trouble for it.

QFT. Because, you were like 'escalating'. Doesn't matter if they have made 50 nearly identical posts on the same theme. Doesn't matter if in edition to responding to the person, you are involved in a productive discussion on the topic, and they are not. Personal experience and observation, far too many times the original instigator gets off with either a verbal warning or nothing, while the person responding gets a more severe responce.

Granted, this has been improving - it isn't nearly as bad as it was a year ago or so - and I've seen some very positive behavior from mods lately where the are catching themselves and updating thier posts to reflect the fact that someone else was involved and they weren't exactly innocent.

It has not helped the situation to occasionally see moderators, who are entitled to have an opinion, not enforcing strict neutrality. To whit, a mod who is himself anti-4e seems more likely to penalize the pro-4e party than the anti-4e guy making the ad hominem attack. And vice versa.

I haven't observed that sort of direct bias myself, and personally I'd credit this moderator staff with being above that. However, I did observe that the moderator staff preemptively deligitimized criticism of 4e and enforced that and that that tone only changed only after some of the moderators began to adopt a critical view of 4e after which time criticism again became acceptable. So maybe there isn't individual bias, but there does seem to have been a sort of institutional bias resulting from what the mods were saying to each other in private. Since that time, IME, a large part of the problem is that they've been trying to pick up the peices from that.

Public shame is usually a pretty good control mechanism.

Frankly, I have the opposite opinion. Public shame rarely works on the internet, and can really only be counted on within closed communities. Trolls can't be shamed. The attention - positive or negative - and the passion it instills, whether pride or anger or even shame - is what is driving them. I personally think moderators themselves do themselves no favors by publicly shaming anyone. They do themselves no favors by explaining thier actions publicly. The red letters have been used alot less sparingly than strictly necessary the last two or three years. They should act as clinicly, and as minimally, as possible. Privately is a different matter.

Of course, I don't think temporary bans do much good anyway, so there is that. IME, people's behavior won't change, and it just makes for drama. If you temp ban them, then it is the same as saying 'We think you are valuable enough to stay', and in which case the temp ban is pointless. 99 times in 100, whenever a poster with more than a 3 digit post count is temp banned they are carrying on several perfectly reasonable discussions in other threads at the exact same time. So, it isn't like the person generally is having a bad day, its that they are having a bad thread or that there is some particular poster that for whatever reason drives them nuts. A three day ban means exactly what? And if you don't think that they are valuable enough to keep around, then what's the point of a temp ban?

Of course, this perspective is from someone that normally moderates political websites. There is a whole different level of animosity that is generally tolerated there, which I wouldn't want to see tolerated here. YMMV.

While I'm putting coals under the pot, speaking as a person whose been and is a moderator on other large forums, its rather bizarre that the public persona of the moderator is also the moderator. In my experience, elsewhere, you aren't allowed to post opinions as a moderator, and you aren't even supposed to reveal that you are a moderator. I think its way too late for EnWorld to change, and I don't think many of us that have been with EnWorld for years would want it to, but the divide between community member and moderator is unusually thin here.

 

[Celebrim]

Over the years we've been really pleased that people take responsibility for their posts; the self-censor before they ever hit send. That's been suspended by some people, and we're seeing the results.

This is my observation on self-censorship. It is true that I conduct a conversation differently in person than I do over the internet. This is because whenever I discover that the person holds a completely radically different opinion than myself IRL, I self-censor myself and take great pains to conceal my real feelings and opinions. I do this because if I said what I really believed, it might make the person uncomfortable (and I'm not a small guy, so there is a physical aspect as well) or angry and would interfere with future relationships with that person. I usually don't do that because I respect the person or thier opinion. I do that because it isn't worthwhile to potentially create that animosity when all I really want to do is relate to them along some strictly defined social structure - like professional colleague or hair styist.

Only after I believe the person worthy of respect am I going to be completely honest with them. I'm not going to bother having a bitter argument with someone I don't mutually respect. For example, I'd argue politics and religion more passionately with my family and feel freer to dissent than I would in virtually any other face to face social situation. Why? Because we know that it isn't personal, and we know each other aren't idiots.

I'm not normally prone to either coarseness in real life or on the internet, but I do enjoy being able to state my opinion in a forum where I think there is a reasonable expectation that because of the lack of physical proximity, the lack of verbal intonation, the lack of facial expressions and so forth, and the lack of any other social context that people can be reaonably expected to consider your opinion logically, rationally, and with proper emotional distance for having a dialogue. I can short cut the whole feeling out whether the person is mature, intelligent, and reasonable and just make the assumption of the other person's matuity, intelligence, and reasonableness. Most of the time, at least at EnWorld, those assumptions are borne out. A few cases, they aren't, and I try to avoid having prolonged discussions with those people.

Anyway, which is more likely? That the group dynamics of the EnWorld community as a whole have changed, resulting in a community that is harder to moderate. That a fairly large number of disconnected posters have suddenly stopped being who they've always been, and changed thier personality in the same way at the same time? Or that the moderator culture itself has changed, tolerating and encouraging things it might not have tolerated before, while discouraging or deligitimatizing things it might have previously tolerated, resulting in a community that is more annoying to moderate?

Those posters. Things would be so much easier if they just stopped posting? Why won't they ever learn to take responcibility for thier actions, eh?

 

[Charwoman Gene]

FWIW it is more often not a case of someone with thin skin telling the mods because they feel hurt, it is much more likely to be a bystander who can see something getting out of control

Regards,

Or those who have strongly held opinions in politics and such and see an opposing opinion.

I can't very well argue against it as it breaks forum rules, but I can report it.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

Anyway, which is more likely?

The posters HAVE changed.

People's posting habits went BERSERK in August. Most of the people getting modded or low-post count lurkers or old-timers coming out of retirement.

 

[Piratecat]

Those posters. Things would be so much easier if they just stopped posting? Why won't they ever learn to take responcibility for thier actions, eh?

Goodness! Your sarcasm is incisive and biting!

In fact, it's a combination of several factors. The personal need for worried people to vent has continued to be a large portion of the ongoing issue.