The Obligatory Rules Thread, Take Two

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Tue Jul 02, 2019 6:01 am

So quick question on the rules here. I know I don't usually see anything outside of the don't wish death upon people thing enforced but I have an open question about the no continuously bashing people rule. Ever since I've started posting here I've quickly gotten used to people calling me an idiot based on an argument I'm making and I really don't mind as long as the person explains themselves. However Frank in particular, though others have done it, have started a trend of openly telling 'other' people not to listen, engage with, or pay proper respect to other posters based on very dubious reasoning.

I find this personally irritating not because it is directed at me in particular but it really seems like an effort to avoid having conversations even be had. As I said I don't mind being called an idiot, ignorant, whatever so this isn't a question about tone policing but I find this repeated attack on character across multiple threads to be the kinf of troublesome behavior that I assume the 'no continuously bashing specific posters' was made for no?

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Tue Jul 02, 2019 9:33 am

fbmf wrote:I will lock/delete/whatever discussions about real world "flammable" topics (especially politics, religion, or old feuds) at the first sign of tempers flaring.

We should probably edit this blatant lie out.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Tue Jul 02, 2019 2:14 pm

Agreed with MGuy about how the bashing rule does not appear to be enforced and how I would like it to be enforced.

Post by **fbmf** » Wed Jul 03, 2019 2:05 pm

Chamomile wrote:
fbmf wrote:I will lock/delete/whatever discussions about real world "flammable" topics (especially politics, religion, or old feuds) at the first sign of tempers flaring.
We should probably edit this blatant lie out.

[The Great Fence Builder Speaks]

The rule stays. My tolerance for "flammable" topics and my definition of "tempers flaring" have shifted a lot in the last fifteen years, but the sentiment, at least to my mind, is still there.

*-*-*-*-*-

Now, then, MGuy, can you point me to an example of "very dubious reasoning" used to encourage others to "not to listen, engage with, or pay proper respect to other posters"?

I'd also like to take a moment to remind everyone that when I founded The Den I was a sophomore in college, single, and not a father (i.e.-I had a lot more free time on my hands). These days I'm married, have a full time job, a part time job, am married (Ramnza and I celebrated 11 years last week), and two daughters (one of which has special needs). While I spend as much time here as I can, that usually amounts to less than thirty minutes a day and I certainly don't read every word. If you see something you'd like me to review REPORT IT. My seeing this within 24 hours of you posting it was dumb luck. For the last eight years or so I've flown solo as far as Moderating, and I'm not complaining, but my life circumstances require a certain amount of community participation.

[/TGFBS]

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Jul 04, 2019 3:42 am

He's probably just referring to Frank's recent decisions to call out people he disagrees with as "thread shitters" and then beg everyone to stop talking to them and/or pretty please come to his special exclusion thread.

Since MGuy got on that list for both the recentish politics thread and got named again specifically (this time with Cham) in Frank's most recent call for everyone to ignore someone he doesn't like for "being a thread shitter" he somewhat correctly feels that this is a become somewhat common as an occurrence.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Thu Jul 04, 2019 8:48 am

Kaelik is correct. Technically Frank has done it multiple times over the years. I can recall certain instances off the top of my head if need be but the most recent cases have brought it into sharper focus for me. In the European thread in imho he name checked Cham and I because he believes we're "threadshitters". In the 2020 politics thread he name checked kaelik and I for similar reasons pointing toward our criticisms of his arguments. He was called out on it in that thread by DSM and that was his impetus to create the second election thread but he then returned to the 2020 thread to proclaim that the conversation that had continued without his presence wasn't good enough for him (I guess) and encouraged people to shift over to his thread.

Again this isn't a thing that is new and if asked I can go reference prior threads where this kind of thing has happened before. However I believe that even if this wasn't happening frequently discouraging people from posting in threads and insisting to other posters that people be shunned from a discussion altogether seems like it 'should' be against the rules.

Also the reason I posted this here is because I'm unsure if it is a reportable offense at all since I've never seen it enforced before. Part of this is to ask is this behavior a reportable offense in the first place.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Jul 04, 2019 12:55 pm

My opinion is that this isn't an rules issue. It makes perfect sense to say, tell people not to listen to Tussock because he is always wrong, or not to listen to Tzor about anything about politics because he's always wrong and frequently lying.

But just like shooting Hitler is good and shooting everyone you meet is bad, it's not the shooting that is the issue, it's the targets. I don't think Franks mostly mild requests for people to stop engaging with people are that big a deal as content, and that to the extent his actions are an issue at all it was the thread creation (which he hasn't done the second time).

I understand why you might be upset of course, but I don't think it is a rules issue, and I think your main problem is that it puts you head to head with Frank on a forum influence fight which is always going to be a problem.

But hey, those are not entirely unwinnable, exhibit A the democratic primary thread and the Tussock, Frank, and Praetor only democratic primary thread

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Thu Jul 04, 2019 5:05 pm

Sure. I like coming here because it is educational and at times entertaining. My concern is more that Frank is intruding on that for me because he is attempting to leverage his 'popularity' to make me have a worse time at on one of my favorite boards. I have absolutely no desire to increase my popularity. I just like to do things that interest me and that becomes a problem when I get the sense that someone is deliberately trying to make this a more uncomfortable place for me to exist in. That reaches beyond being critical of what I have to say and 'feels' like bullying to me which, up until now I never sensed.

I can ignore Frank putting me on ignore, and I would love for him to stick to it, but I think taking a step beyond personally ignoring me or trashing shit I've said and explaining to the audience that its dumb because he thinks all amounts of money are the same or some other dumb shit is a step beyond the usual bullshit. I'd prefer to skip the substanceless personal attacks. Its a lot more irritating to deal with that then someone telling me my ideas are dumb.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Jul 04, 2019 6:28 pm

I made my position on that clear. I thought it was pretty shitty to try and take control of what was essentially a public discussion. It's a fundamentally different beast than soliciting input on a TTRPG diplomacy idea you had and not wanting PL to make it a "my version of diplomacy is the best so we're talking about that now" thread, or our brief stint with silva where he'd wander from thread to thread talking about *World because he was a one-note troll. It's just really not healthy for our tiny little community to use the rule to enforce clique-y bullshit on our 'general' threads.

Thankfully, it doesn't seem to have amounted to much. Last I checked the thread was basically Frank, Praetor, Maglag and Zinegata? You know, I think I'm willing to sacrifice Maglag and Zinegata's takes on U.S. politics. I can live with that. Unless he makes a further habit of it, I'm just rolling my eyes at the grown ass man with his Mean Girls bullshit.

Libertad · Post by **Libertad** » Fri Jul 05, 2019 4:01 am

Can I just say that I find it ironic how it's Independence Day where TGD posters are now beginning to see Frank Trollman the way the rest of the Internet has seen him for the past...10 or so years, and now rebelling against it?

Leress · Post by **Leress** » Fri Jul 05, 2019 5:28 am

Libertad wrote:Can I just say that I find it ironic how it's Independence Day where TGD posters are now beginning to see Frank Trollman the way the rest of the Internet has seen him for the past...10 or so years, and now rebelling against it?

It would be, if it had started today and not you know weeks...months ago. Honestly every time I've seen it happen I promptly ignored it, because I choose whom I interact with.

erik · Post by **erik** » Fri Jul 05, 2019 7:25 am

I was surprised at the time to see the thread fork due to irreconcilable differences, but I'd rather see issues discussed than cat fights as it really had turned to garbage before the fork. Now I'm reading both and getting something from each, so I think it was an improvement.

I don't think "the exclusion rule" (as I dub it) is out of hand, but if it happened a lot then would be a symptom of total dysfunction and a sign that something needs done.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Fri Jul 05, 2019 12:22 pm

Given that both of Frank's recent attempts to try and ban someone from a discussion were unmitigated failures, I'm not super concerned and don't think we particularly need a new rule for it. Especially since directing people away from posters like silva, shadzar, and Psychic Robot is perfectly valid.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Jul 05, 2019 5:38 pm

DSM wrote:Unless he makes a further habit of it, I'm just rolling my eyes at the grown ass man with his Mean Girls bullshit.

Do you have no sense of irony while you are contributing to a "whining to daddy" thread derail about an event that happened months ago organized by a clique whose only point here is that they are angry about me not wanting to sit with them? This entire page is exactly the juvenile cliquish bullshit you pretend to be against, except you're one of the main contributors because you aren't actually against that kind of behavior, you're just mad that people don't want to sit with people you want to sit with.

-Username17

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sat Jul 06, 2019 2:23 am

Ultimately I want clarity if Frank's toxic behavior will be accepted going forward. Don't want to waste time attempting to report behavior that's completely acceptable. I'm not sure what level of personal attacks are acceptable and that's why I'm asking now. For clarity. If fbmf decides that Frank is allowed to be exactly this level of toxic then I'll just have to accept that verdict.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Jul 06, 2019 8:07 am

Without any judgment on toxicity of any individuals...

If you're at this forum to avoid toxic behavior, then boy-oh-boy do I have bad news for you.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sat Jul 06, 2019 9:30 am

That is an odd takeaway from what I said. I thought I'd been pretty specific.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Jul 06, 2019 3:49 pm

Is it though? You're clearly wanting someone to change their behavior which you deem toxic. You're investigating if you can get someone to apply pressure on that individual to make them change or leave, or not. If one of your goals wasn't to avoid toxic behavior then your motivations are suspect.

The only thing that remotely seems like you could complain about as a rule violation is if someone is continually bashing another poster. And I sure don't see evidence that that's the case here. I think forking that thread was a positive change, so quite the opposite of toxic.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sat Jul 06, 2019 6:01 pm

Well yes. I didn't say anything that hinted that I came to this forum to avoid toxic behavior.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sun Jul 07, 2019 1:58 am

I am not particularly concerned about the community culture. I've also never particularly liked getting fbmf involved. It always seemed to me that, at least by the time I showed up, he kept the lights on around here less as a personal hobby and more as a kindness to us. Anything we can solve on our own, we just should. We really ought to be capable of the minimum necessary civility and self-organization to split a discussion into its own goddamn thread without declaring war on one another.

That said, it's abso-fucking-lutely obvious where the yellow brick road of "Frank gets pissed off and splits threads and tells everyone the old thread is totes lame and all the kids who want to be cool need to ditch those losers and come hang with him" goes, and it's not great. We have a 559 page U.S. News thread. If some jackass had split that and tried to get people kicked out everytime they were 'irreconcilably pissed off' at a 'seemingly irresolvable argument,' we would have 559 different U.S. News threads about a page each and most of them would just be arguments about whose thread was shittier. Mild hyperbole aside, this is a kind of disruptive toxicity we actually haven't had to deal with before. It's a blatantly unacceptable forum norm because it's so obviously disruptive to our ability to have any public discussions at all. It's not like we're not going to stop having long, protracted arguments and getting pissed at eachother in politics threads anytime soon.

The consensus seems to be "Frank didn't quite get what he wanted out of it, and both threads seem productive enough, so wait and see, I guess," with a bunch of nervous eyes on Frank, which, fine.

In the end, I do think that's the wrong call, but I also suspect it'll basically kind-of-sort-of work out, simply because no one else here is a big enough asshole to think this is healthy behavior for the forum and so they won't do it, and Frank alone can't end up in enough heated arguments to torch the forums single-handedly. I'm surprised there's not an expression for how the unilateral violation of norms is way, way less catastrophic than the mutual violation of norms than proportion alone would suggest. It would be very appropriate given the current political climate. Anyway, I would probably be next on his shitlist these days after Kaelik and MGuy, but I think I'm done engaging with him, so I doubt I'll ever piss him off enough for him to try and oust me from any discussions, so... fuck it? And that is probably a safe policy for anyone who thinks they might be close to whatever the threshold for Frank acting on his grudges is. Which is kind of fucked, now that I think about it? But whatever.

tl;dr this was an obviously unhealthy way to resolve the matter (just imagine what an unsalvageable clusterfuck this forum would be if we'd ended every heated argument over the past five years this way). But Frank alone can't do enough damage to the forum that he forces us to address it, so we won't. If you're worried about being subject to Frank's newfound weapon of mild inconvenience, you can't set him off if you just ignore him.

TiaC · Post by **TiaC** » Sun Jul 07, 2019 4:48 am

However, fbmh has already been brought into this, because Frank is using the rules to win arguments. If Kaelik and MGuy ignored Frank and posted in his clubhouse, Frank would be relying on fbmh to kick them out. To me, this suggests that the change in the rules that most respects fbmh's limited time is removing the "Keep out of threads that tell you to stay out" rule.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Jul 07, 2019 7:27 am

TiaC wrote:However, fbmh has already been brought into this, because Frank is using the rules to win arguments. If Kaelik and MGuy ignored Frank and posted in his clubhouse, Frank would be relying on fbmh to kick them out. To me, this suggests that the change in the rules that most respects fbmh's limited time is removing the "Keep out of threads that tell you to stay out" rule.

I think it's important to remember that walking away and not talking to those assholes was the mature and adult course of action. Kaelik really didn't have anything he wanted to say about unemployment insurance. He was just being an argumentative asshole and spamming the thread because he's an argumentative asshole. When people tried to fork that conversation onto its own thread, that thread died because it was never sincere.

MGuy is just a thread shitting asshole. I've had him on ignore for months because he never contributes to anything. He's Tussock levels of wrong with Shadzar levels of aggressiveness and all his contributions to any thread are just spamming hatemail at me.

Since I walked away, the Democratic Primary thread has filled up with weird bullshit conspiracy theories. Yes, Kaelik can natter on about his weird dirtbag left conspiracy theories that Nancy Pelosi is single handedly stopping the revolution and Lago can compete in the motivated reasoning Olympics to suggest that Bush Sr. had a difficult time in the 1988 primary where he won the first contest and also 42 out 51 of the total number of contests.

Anyone who hasn't walked away from that shitshow of a thread is contributing to the shit show.

-Username17

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Jul 07, 2019 10:59 am

Hey I ONLY decided to go somewhere else I definitely didn't spend time telling everyone on the forum that they should also join me in excluding people. But also I just want everyone to know that if you still post in the actual democractic primary thread because your name isn't Tussock or Dr Praetor, that you are a bad person for doing that.

FYI my conspiracy theory that Nancy Pelosi is engaged in the activities that she has openly stated multiple times she is engaged in was posted in the US News thread, not the dem primary thread, so you could always just respond to it with your really good proof that Nancy Pelosi was actually lying all the times she said that.

Post by **fbmf** » Wed Jul 10, 2019 6:11 pm

[The Great Fence Builder Speaks]
Thank you for your patience as I travel during the July 4th week.

Now then, for the most part I agree that this issue will sort itself out, but I did make the following change to the EXCLUDE A POSTER rule:

If you are asked by the Original Poster to stay out of a thread in the Title of the thread, then stay out of the thread. If you do not want a particular poster in your thread, include "(Name), please stay out." in the thread title. EDITED 10 July 2019: Management reserves the right to overrule your excluding other posters. Shit talking a poster in a thread you've excluded them from (i.e.-in a thread they're not supposed to reply in) is a good way to get me (or my associates) to overrule you.

Going forward, if you feel this applies to you, please report the thread.

[/TGFBS]

The Gaming Den

The Obligatory Rules Thread, Take Two

Re: The Obligatory Rules Thread, Take Two

Re: The Obligatory Rules Thread, Take Two