Regarding administration on MSB

[Tempest]

@thenomain said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@thatguythere

Except that this is not a job.

If the example that you can work with people who you don’t get along with, then that’s great and we could use more of that.

Solving this is kind of a community thing.

—

Edit:

You know, Tempest, for someone who says they’re not demonizing Faraday, you are using her as the straw man for things people have been saying about Wora for over a decade. That is a little demonizing. There are a lot of things that’s could be said about the logic without saying that her defending her viewpoints counts as dominating the thread, or mentioning her at all.

You’re tired of the discussion. We get it. Breathe.

It's not a straw man when she is literally saying it over and over and over across multiple pages of the thread.

You guys really need to lay off this "straw man that" "fallacy this". We get it. You went to college and took a Logic class.

[bored]

@thenomain On the other hand, there's a difference between expressing a viewpoint 'people have [held] about Wora for over a decade,' and somewhat passive-aggressively hammering on it while simultaneously claiming she's not actually trying to take away any of the toys. You can't bemoan toxicity existing and imply it's holding some vague population of presumably more enlightened folks (hah) from coming here, while also claiming that you're totally fine with the Hog Pit being a thing. It doesn't add up.

For me, I'm still personally not sure how we went from the original discussion about changes in the ad thread to where we are now. It feels like we weren't really consulted, like they assumed a lot more than they knew about the common opinion. And it feels like her nebulous complaints (and those of a like kind, I'm not claiming it's purely on one person) were a factor.

The current methodology, per as much as I can gather from @Ganymede's treatment of my suggestions, is 'If no person here find reason to object... then forever hold their peace.' IE, if your post gets 3 or 4 upvotes and no massive pusback, they just assume universal consent. So while there's no need to demonize, there is seemingly a procedural requirement for us to 'gang up' against her opinion, to prevent it from being assumed we share it.

[Arkandel]

@bored said in Regarding administration on MSB:

For me, I'm still personally not sure how we went from the original discussion about changes in the ad thread to where we are now. It feels like we weren't really consulted, like they assumed a lot more than they knew about the common opinion.

Where are we now? What has changed that you believe not all sides were listened to?

I don't mean to sound defensive but I don't see the fire so I can do something about it. What is the decision being protested?

[bored]

@arkandel That we have mods who are empowered to go out and proactively shut down discussion and an implicitly tighter rein on Mildly Constructive, versus the old standard of... 'lol this is a trash fire, can we move it to the Hog Pit?' That we're coming up with board-wide rules that are a lot more rules-y?

I fully admit, some of this is preemptive. But I think plenty of us have been on various games and forums to understand the tone shift and some of its implications, which is why you're seeing the level of raised hackles that you are.

[Arkandel]

@bored Then maybe there is a misunderstanding, because the first person who wanted to have no moderation anywhere was yours truly. That's how I was planning to run the forum when ES handed it over, barring only extreme cases of truly antisocial behavior.

I'm not taking a side, but if I had taken a side then what you are trying to preemptively support would have been it.

[Seraphim73]

@bored said in Regarding administration on MSB:

You can't bemoan toxicity existing and imply it's holding some vague population of presumably more enlightened folks (hah) from coming here, while also claiming that you're totally fine with the Hog Pit being a thing. It doesn't add up.

I disagree with this quite strongly. I think that you can think that having the Hog Pit is still alright -- or even valuable -- while wishing that the toxicity and vitriol was contained within it, rather than spilling out into other sections of the boards. From what I recall of Faraday's argument (sorry, distracted by Battlefront II), that's what she's saying. Whether or not it is, I certainly think it's possible, and would be beneficial for the forums in general.

[Ganymede]

@bored said in Regarding administration on MSB:

The current methodology, per as much as I can gather from @Ganymede's treatment of my suggestions, is 'If no person here find reason to object... then forever hold their peace.' IE, if your post gets 3 or 4 upvotes and no massive pusback, they just assume universal consent.

I'm not sure how you got this impression from my treatment of your suggestion. I explained why I thought it was interesting to me.

We could always go back to the 'lol trash fire' standard for things. But, here, I think it's good to promote discussion. And this means, in my opinion, that people ought to speak up if they have something to say.

[bored]

@arkandel I'm not casting you as the villain, I just don't particularly know how it went from 'maybe we shouldn't let people be mean in ad threads' (although that's an idea I'm not even on board with because of how it makes it hard to get information) to anything else.

@Seraphim73 The Hog Pit is already opt-in, completely invisible to non-registered users (casual readers) and registered ones who don't go through a (somewhat not obvious) method to gain access to it. It's pretty contained.

The only way for there to be more containment, obviously, is acting much more quickly/aggressively/with a lower threshold to shunt 'negative' content into the Hog Pit to make it invisible. That's also part of what I'm concerned with.

@ganymede said in Regarding administration on MSB:

I'm not sure how you got this impression from my treatment of your suggestion. I explained why I thought it was interesting to me.

From:

@ganymede said in Regarding administration on MSB:

I don't hear a lot of disagreement with your idea, so I can only presume that it is well-supported.

And also from how we went from ad thread rules to active mods.

[Collective]

This is just my two cents, but hey, I'm not shy.

We're all here because we love MUs and MUing. Or at least that's the healthiest reason to be here. So fostering an environment where we can have constructive, positive discussions about the thing we love is a good thing.

The Hog Pit and general nerd negativity is, well, it's a nasty side effect of nerd culture. Not pleasant, but not exactly without use, either. I rather like the approach of having a board that is generally expected to be constructive and thoughtful and being able to commute to Mos Eisley for my daily dose of scum and villainy.

What can I say? I read BBC World News and TMZ and I think there is a place under the same banner for both ends of the spectrum.

My thought is moderate the rest of MSB to the same degree as any nerd-focused fansite. Not quite to professional standards, but not anarchy either and let the Hog Pit be. And stop worrying about precedents and bylaws and pleasing a bunch of grumbling gamers. Because it's not going to happen. Make common sense rulings, rather than iron-clad rules, let context be key and ignore people who demand a pseudo-legal system for a site where we talk about pretending to be sexy undead teenagers with rainbow hair.

[ThatGuyThere]

@thenomain
Except that to me this place is not a community, any more than the classifieds of a paper would be or any other messaging service.

[Roz]

@thatguythere I'm just gonna say that I think you're going to be in the minority on this one. I mean, your comparisons don't even make sense to me, but that's neither here nor there. I think that most of the regular posters on this board are going to say there's a community aspect to it. The classifieds are not about having an actual conversation. If we were nothing but ad posts with no replies, we'd be the classifieds.

[Wolfs]

@thatguythere This place is certainly not the equivalent of newspaper classifieds.

[ThatGuyThere]

to me it comes down to what is the primary purpose of the thing.
That is something that really only @Arkandel can decides since he is the one in charge.
If it is to discuss games or be a community, you can try for both but one will have to the the primary concern.
My suggestion now would be start whatever process with a mission statement, decide what you want to be and move towards it.
If the goal of this place is community building place that up front, so those that have no interest in community know this.
The reason I compared the board to ads is that both are mediums with the same basic goal. Spread information in public manner. Another example would me going into a coffee shop or bar and having a random conversation, it can be a pleasant way to spend time but it don't make me friends with that other person.

[surreality]

@thatguythere I think that's a completely valid use and function of the forums, but it isn't their only valid use and function.

As in, I would like to see the forums work effectively for someone who wants to use them for that reason even if that's the only reason they're really interested, but I don't think that's the only purpose we should be tailoring content around.

The 'Tastes Less Gamey' section is, I think, useful and valid. I think it's also a lot more of a crap shoot in a sense. Someone made a good point earlier about RL Anger being there, and that things get snarly and heated in that thread more than a little at times -- though, I'll be honest... it's kinda right there on the tin, it's a thread specifically about things people are real world pissed off about, and I think any attempt to constrain language or grar factor there would be misplaced. I don't think personal attacks on each other are necessarily appropriate there (unless I guess you're roomies with someone here RL but then, jeez, yell at the person RL and leave us out of it, eee!) but getting snarly about shitweasels at work and calling them that, or going overboard on the adjectives describing a horrible situation isn't something I'd feel appropriate to stomp down on as 'not playing nice enough'. Again, it's kinda right there in the title, it's not even about things on games or in the hobby that people are (reasonably or otherwise) genuinely angry about, so trying to insist nobody post angrily about things in that thread seems, erm... not the best idea.

[Roz]

If a bunch of people start going to the same coffee shop to talk to each other on a regular basis -- like every day -- then yeah, it's a community. If there's a guy who goes in and just stops by long enough to say hi and put a poster up on the bulletin board, maybe he's not engaging in the community, but he'll clearly be able to see that it's the same people chatting there every day, so denying that a community of sorts exists seems pretty blind.

[Apos]

@thatguythere said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@thenomain
Except that to me this place is not a community, any more than the classifieds of a paper would be or any other messaging service.

You're very consistent in your philosophy regarding games, and have an extremely transactional approach to them that I consider the far opposite of my point of views generally. I don't think a transactional approach is intrinsically bad or anything like that, but I think it doesn't fit the format so great. Having a, 'Everyone should get in, get what they are looking for, and get out' approach really works best when you can't expect reciprocal behavior due to sheer size making it unlikely you'll meet the same people again. That makes sense to me in an MMO, but MUs are so much smaller than that. Since people play with each other over and over again, it's just natural that community starts to form because if we're going to be dealing with one another time and again, why not?

Like, at first it seems weird and maybe even a little over invested that people take their reputations on MUs so seriously, since hey we're anonymous people through the internet. But not so much, really. We collaborate with each other so often and so consistently, what people think of us can really matter. No one wants to devote a ton of effort into something to just see it explode in a profoundly unsatisfying way, and those kind of collaborative relationships that form are people buffering themselves from those disappointments. And that's why a community is natural for anyone wanting something long term and not willing to risk their work and effort on a spin of the wheel.

[ThatGuyThere]

@roz said in Regarding administration on MSB:

If a bunch of people start going to the same coffee shop to talk to each other on a regular basis -- like every day -- then yeah, it's a community. If there's a guy who goes in and just stops by long enough to say hi and put a poster up on the bulletin board, maybe he's not engaging in the community, but he'll clearly be able to see that it's the same people chatting there every day, so denying that a community of sorts exists seems pretty blind.

Fair point, though I am the guy who would stop in put up a poster then not realize it was the same people every day. (Yes this has totally happened in the past only with out the poster, to the point where I ran into one of the people out at a bar. They started talking like they knew me. I was confused, they got upset because I didn't recognize them from said coffee shop that i would stop into daily on the way to work and occasionally chat with the other folks waiting.) So I will freely admit I am likely in the minority but that in no way changes my opinion.

@Apos
To me is it less a transnational approach and more a purpose based one. On a game the goal is to have enjoyable rp. (At least to me.) So I do my best to make every scene I am in enjoyable and help every one have the most amount of fun possible. Even if things are contentious IC I try to be as friendly as possible OOCly and genuinely feel I have messed up if someone does not enjoy a scene I have with them. Granted not all play styles mess and sometimes the most enjoyable option for everyone is avoidance, but that is thankfully an uncommon occurrence. And yes I have made friends on games but that is also an uncommon occurrence as well.

[Roz]

@thatguythere So I think it's really about the fact that the community exists but you personally don't engage with it beyond the surface level. Which is fine! But it's really inaccurate to say that the community aspect isn't already going on. You're just not personally interested in it.

[Wolfs]

Yeah, you can't really say a place doesn't have a community feel to it when you're the one who's avoiding it or not really noticing it at all in the first place, and just coming around for other reasons.

[Faceless]

@thatguythere said in Regarding administration on MSB:

That is something that really only @Arkandel can decides since he is the one in charge.

@Arkandel