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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mistwell" data-source="post: 8944304" data-attributes="member: 2525">I am moving this reply I had from the other thread here, so I don't threadcrap that other thread:I mean, it's easy to not slide down until it isn't. Hyperbolic example to follow, which I apologize for and I am not trying to say or imply this topic can lead to actual horrible harms. See less hyperbolic example at end for more realistic potential harms.Mao never intended for the Struggle Sessions to be the reality of China. They started from a premise of "whatever feels right or good enough...it won't get out of control right?" and it got out of control way faster than anyone expected and resulted in Mao sending the youth to farms to get them away from cities so they didn't kill every perceived intellectual in the nation. Many who supported those new ethics ended up on the wrong end of those Sessions. Similar events happened in Cambodia. I mean, name a horrible event in history and there are decent odds it started with your premise that "whatever feels right or good enough....it won't get out of control right?"Now of course I don't think "expunge the history of D&D racism" will lead to Maoist struggle sessions and mass death. But I am saying I think it's a falsehood to claim it's "actually super easy to not slide down the slippery slope into ridiculous extremes." History is full of people saying that only to see events rapidly escalate out of control far faster than anyone expected. Unintended consequences is a thing us humans should be wary of more often than we are. I don't know why we constantly make the error to trust to our fellow humans to not take things too far, but we keep making that mistake.And, because I am uncomfortable comparing these mild issues to horrible historical examples (because it doesn't warrant that hyperbole - even though it makes the point) I will bring it back closer to home with RPG issues, and one raised already in this thread. The use of "A-Game Threads" were never intended to become what they've become at some places around the net (and I don't mean to pick on any particular other forum - this is more a general problem found at more than one place around the Internet). Those who use them had good intentions, they were doing what they felt was right and good.It doesn't take long however for that good intended tool to up the quality of posts about sensitive topics to rapidly devolve into the weaponization of conversations where such a tool is used, far more often than not (which is why I much prefer the policies here for these kinds of topics). With those types of thread labels, people frequently angle to get their perceived foes tricked into a perma ban, moderators often are lured into excessive penalties to try and maintain a sense of equality and equity if someone else was ever banned for something which could be compared to that event. Meanwhile a meaningful portion of the poster population sees all this happen and become afraid they might make a misstep with a comment which might accidentally be perceived as wrong-think and get them banned.This results in dissent becoming nearly nonexistent in an atmosphere of fear as everyone bends over backwards to state just how much they agree with the premise of the thread, and often tries to one-up each other in their agreement and take that premise one step further, and then a step further than that, until the very kind of escalation we're discussing can easily happen because all the carrot and stick social pressure is on escalating things.All of which is particularly harmful if the topic was one intended to inform a future policy decision because dissent is often warranted to help avoid unintended consequences from policy decisions about those topics. Like this one - a thread about the policy decision to get WOTC to re-write or ban 30 year old books for reasons we all agree are good intended.</blockquote>

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