Where do we go from here?

[Mistborn]

Let's all get real here the Den is in a deathspiral. First we just lost one of our most prominent content producers and now an entire fbmf has been badgered to the point he feels the need to nuke an entire subform.

I think we all at some level know what the problems are, but for the life of me I don't see any path forward.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I dunno, produce new content?

[MGuy]

The only person who knows what the real issue is, is the owner of the forum. A poster leaving, no matter how prominent is just the loss of a poster. Whether or not the board dies is and will always be at the whim of the person who owns it. Where do you go from here? Well other than whatever changes the person running the place decides on you continue or start producing the posts you want.

[Koumei]

Pivot back to being about gaming, with the unspoken understanding that you must be at least this --> communist. I'd actually say that of those who left, CeilingCat was my favourite poster here and Frank was part of the reasoning for her leaving. We can still create gaming content, which once upon a time was the main reason people came here.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Are we... not about gaming?

[Prak]

Ostensibly, yes, The Adventurer's Almanac, but in reality, a lot of people here have been posting about gaming less and less and just being raging assholes to one another more and more. And even when they're ostensibly posting about gaming, mostly they're actually being a raging asshole.

I get that for a lot of us, the freedom to be assholes is what attracted us to this forum, but that's become the raison d'etre of this forum for some posters and... it's just fucking exhausting. Instead of, say, "Well, I can see the appeal of this, but it runs into (problem)" people go immediately to "Your idea is dumb, you're an idiot, fuck off and never write game material again." And it's even worse in MPSIMS, and especially when the topic is politics. In those instances, nuance is dead and its grave has been shat in, and you'll be called a fucking idiot for just asking a simple question like "My political leaning is X, but it's hard for me to believe people can really be non-assholish enough to make it work."

There are a lot of potential answers for fbmf, and I think a certain portion of people here will attack them regardless of what they choose, but in my complete armchair opinion it may be time to instate a more.... "if you're actively making this forum toxic, fuck off" policy, and to fuck what certain people may think about it (tho, since I certainly don't think I'm completely safe, maybe don't just immediately ban everyone who fits into that category, maybe just the worst examples)

[DSMatticus]

Alright, so I nearly made a thread about this after the first wave of thread locks, but then Frank left and I figured it was kinda pointless. Then we had the latest wave of thread locks and I mulled over sending it to fbmf as a PM of "hey, here's why I think you're having problems, here's what I think you can do about them to make your life easier," but here we are, so...

1) At this point, there's a fuckton of bad blood between certain users, and Frank leaving has probably made it worse if anything because it's a tangible loss resulting from the inability to settle our differences. There are some users who are just plain fed-up with eachother and don't wanna deal anymore.

2) I don't think everyone agrees on what constitutes acceptable discourse around here, or at least, not everyone agrees that it's something that can be fairly/easily fixed, so there are different standards of behavior floating around in everyone's heads.

And the end result is that there are a number of users who want fbmf to do "something" and whose patience has worn so thin that every conflict is frustrating enough to drive them to report in the hopes that he finally will. I mean, MPSIMS has been outright fucking boring for the past few weeks. We picked up a conspiracy theorist that no one takes seriously who is more disruptive than toxic and people occasionally butt heads for like 4-posts deep and then it goes back to silence. That's it. How is fbmf still getting tons of reports? How? Nothing's happening!

That isn't a call-out or an attempt to shame or an accusation that certain posters are being deliberately manipulative - I understand where they're coming from. But the problem clearly isn't sustained, open toxicity - it's just baggage. We're carrying grudges into eveything and as a result we're a stiff breeze away from our tipping points, and if you're a user who thinks fbmf needs to do something you respond to your tipping point by hitting the report button, and if you're a user who doesn't think fbmf should step in you respond to your tipping point by... arguing more.

If you want a weird example of what I'm talking about, there was a bizarre MPSIMS exchange where Kaelik made a vague post alluding to something that happened in the news that day, and angelfromanotherpin asked him to explain what the fuck he was talking about, which is a totally reasonable request... except he did it in this bizarrely mildly confrontational way, and Kaelik returned angel's combativeness, and it was just this super weird and petty and unnecessary exchange. But because (I'm guessing) angelfromanotherpin fucking hates Kaelik for other shit that's happened and Kaelik wouldn't let that shit pass, the exchange went like "ARGLE BLARGLE" "BLARGLE ARGLE" instead of "what do you mean?" "This. [LINK]".

And I'm 100% positive angelfromanotherpin didn't get reported for that exchange (why would he? He was mildly rude, who fucking cares), but I wouldn't actually be surprised if Kaelik did. Because Kaelik is (presumably) mostly okay with board discourse is and doesn't think people being any degree of incivil to him is a reportable offense - he'll just be rude back at them... but a bunch of people who already really don't like Kaelik aren't okay with that level of discourse so they report him. Again, not accusing anyone of bad faith, just pointing out that that is clearly how they perceive things.

So, what's the solution here?

Well, the short answer is... set some public standards that are as well-defined as we can and then tell people to stick to them - both with their behavior and their reports. And I don't super care what those standards are?

If we agree "hey, we should be nicer," fuck it, I'll be nicer. There are other communities I'm in where I have to pretend to be civil to proto-fascists while trying to publicly tear them apart, and I do okay. And we don't even have that many proto-fascists around here! All we have around here are a couple left-ish types who are, what, mildly uncomfortable acknowledging that actually living in the United States is still going to really, really suck compared to virtually all of the developed world even if Biden wins and gets everything on his Christmas wishlist?

And if we agree "hey, no, we can keep being assholes," that's fine, too, but it means... not reporting people for being assholes anymore, because being an asshole isn't actionable, and you're just depleting the limited resource that is fbmf's patience over nothing.

We need a standard, and we need to follow that standard as best we can with both our behavior and the behavior we report. That's what would make fbmf's life easy that maybe he'd consider giving us our toys back.

EDIT: hahaha I was a bit late with this, wasn't I?

[Grek]

I personally think the problems with this forum are unsolvable.

Fundamentally, fbmf does not have the patience and free time required to moderate this forum; will not be able to find moderators willing to moderate this forum without either asking to be paid or asking to be allowed to ban people for having awful opinions; and is not willing to put up with the legal liabilities inherent to running an un-moderated forum. The only plan that satisfies those conditions is not having a forum.

I personally would like there to continue being a The Gaming Den. I enjoyed this place in its hay day and have yet to find any other TTRPG forum like it. But I also recognize that there isn't always an answer and sometimes good things end for no good reason. If I end up being proven wrong here, I'll be overjoyed, but I honestly don't think that is in the cards.

[violence in the media]

Are we... not about gaming?

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not anymore. At least, not really. I haven't played a TTRPG in any meaningful capacity in about 6 or 7 years, and it's been 3 or 4 years since I was part of a regular board game meetup. The only gaming I've been doing lately is of the solo computer variety (shoutout to Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup and my GOG library!) Making gaming content is great, and I am happy for those who enjoy creating and using it; but I just don't have a table for it to hit right now.

It feels weird to say it, but I've mostly been coming here to see people review stuff and argue about mechanics and political news.

[Thaluikhain]

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not anymore. At least, not really. I haven't played a TTRPG in any meaningful capacity in about 6 or 7 years, and it's been 3 or 4 years since I was part of a regular board game meetup. The only gaming I've been doing lately is of the solo computer variety (shoutout to Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup and my GOG library!) Making gaming content is great, and I am happy for those who enjoy creating and using it; but I just don't have a table for it to hit right now.

It feels weird to say it, but I've mostly been coming here to see people review stuff and argue about mechanics and political news.

Yeah, I'm not here much for gaming, but rather for the worldbuilding attached to games, and also being nostalgic about games and franchises I used to play or at least know about way back when.

Personally, I'm not seeing the forum as being very toxic, but then again in a lot of contentious threads I've got no idea what people are talking about (probably due to being relatively new to the site).

[MisterDee]

IMO, we need a "no politics, period" rule, at least for now. And zero tolerance on sneaking in politics in other subjects.

I kind of think a MPSIMS forum is nice for community building, but right now it's one or two new topics per month (which is fine), some media discussion (fine also), and the Raging Perpetual Hatefire of Politics threads.

Because seriously, at this point it's not even hyperbole that we're having blood feuds over slight technical differences in health care proposals.

We probably need a slightly tighter standard of personal interactions too - I'm super wary of civility rules in forums, because we really don't fucking need another RPG forum that's just passive-aggressive sniping, but a basic "don't bring old dirty laundry into new threads" rule would maybe be okay?

[Koumei]

IMO, we need a "no politics, period" rule, at least for now. And zero tolerance on sneaking in politics in other subjects.

I think it needs more specific wording - "no talking about current politicians and elections and policies". Allowing debates on currencies and how rulership works for different empires in your game setting should be a thing, providing you don't have the United Realms of Elfistan with Donualdinne Tearumphaerinn, or whatever - probably even including basically any discussion on changing the funding of medical gear in Shadowrun. And there are still people who feel "including gay people" or "including black people" is "being too political" but obviously they should feel free to slam their genitals in a car door, not have their opinions listened to.

but a basic "don't bring old dirty laundry into new threads" rule would maybe be okay?

That's probably a good thing too - even in "only talking about gaming", there have been people feeling the need to shit in each others' threads about things like dice methods, Wheel of Fate, Bear World vs Games That Make Any Sense etc.

[fbmf]

IMO, we need a "no politics, period" rule, at least for now. And zero tolerance on sneaking in politics in other subjects.

Not feasible to enforce with the amount of time/energy I have to moderate these days.

I think it needs more specific wording - "no talking about current politicians and elections and policies".

Even harder to enforce. I just can't be that vigilant at this time. Haven't been able to for a while.

Are we... not about gaming?

You should know better than most that we are not.

And the end result is that there are a number of users who want fbmf to do "something" and whose patience has worn so thin that every conflict is frustrating enough to drive them to report in the hopes that he finally will.

Yeah, no. The majority of the reports aren't offended posters but third party observers reporting threadshitting via hate speech. The conspiracy theorist has generated exactly 1 report in the month of July.

I personally would like there to continue being a The Gaming Den.

[The Great Fence Builder Speaks]

I have no plan to shut down the board at this time, but I am aware shutting down MPSIMS may be the death knell for TGDMB. I have considered making MPSIMS READ ONLY but leaving the content viewable, but the rhetoric has gotten so out there that I don't I want my name associated with it.

You guys can call each other assholes to your hearts' content. (It is a source of pride for me that TGDMB popularized "suck a barrel of cocks" in the gaming community) That has never bothered me. It is the hate speech and vitriol that has ramped up steadily since 2015 or so that I don't have the energy for anymore. I don't attend the family Thanksgiving because of I have multiple [MAGA Texas should secede from the union if it ain't white it ain't right] relatives, and to me "a vote for either major candidate will kill all of human civilization" and "if you don't support 100% universal healthcare RIGHT NOW you're a murderer" is just as emotionally draining. It's polarizing in a way that isn't helpful (i.e.-you're not winning hearts and minds and therefore votes) and in fact drives people further away from your ideaology. Posts get reported for hate speech and vitriol...and the posters doing the reporting aren't wrong.

[/The Great Fence Builder Speaks]

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I feel called out, but I'm not really sure why.

[deaddmwalking]

[Posts get reported for hate speech and vitriol...and the posters doing the reporting aren't wrong.

[/The Great Fence Builder Speaks]

Perhaps if someone is reported for a post that you feel is inappropriate (as you have indicated here), a 10-day or 30-day ban would be appropriate. While it's possible some posters won't care where the line is, I imagine most people would be able to curtail their initial response after they've been directly called out a time or two.

[TiaC]

I'm sad about the non-political MPSIMS threads that are getting caught up in this. The "It's Personal" thread is a great part of the community and the only place certain users post anymore. It's probably the most positive thread on the site, with everyone being supportive of people they've known for a long time. The "Moments when a piece of entertainment.." and image sharing threads are friendly chats.

Could some of these non-political threads be moved to other forums? "It's Personal" could maybe go in this forum? The "Moments when a piece of entertainment.." and image sharing threads could maybe be folded into "I Gave the Mouse a Cookie..."?

[fbmf]

I'm sad about the non-political MPSIMS threads that are getting caught up in this. The "It's Personal" thread is a great part of the community and the only place certain users post anymore. It's probably the most positive thread on the site, with everyone being supportive of people they've known for a long time. The "Moments when a piece of entertainment.." and image sharing threads are friendly chats.

Could some of these non-political threads be moved to other forums? "It's Personal" could maybe go in this forum? The "Moments when a piece of entertainment.." and image sharing threads could maybe be folded into "I Gave the Mouse a Cookie..."?

Not a bad idea. Will seriously consider.

I've gotten as handful of requests to archive anything remotely political in MPSIMS but leaving MPSIMS open and banning discussion of politics and current events outside gaming/entertainment related content.

To me, this is the best chicken salad out of chicken shit solution, as nobody ever reports the e.g. Entertainment Rocked You/Lost You threads, but I am wary of policing the ban and splitting hairs as far as what counts as political/current events.

Additionally, it has been pointed out some folks get their news from TGDMB and don't want to lose these boards as a resource. I sympathize; I've changed my outlook a lot since these boards opened just from being forced to read the content over the years (I sat out the election of 2008 for the first time in my life because I couldn't bring myself to vote for McCain but was too set in my ways to vote for Obama and then voted blue for the first time in 2012) but these past 5 years have been so polarizing that discussing politics openly without shouting about it isn't a thing anymore.

I'm open to hearing thoughts on this.

[/TGFBS]

Game On,
fbmf

[Stahlseele]

Yees, more power to mice and cookies!

[Prak]

It would be really nice to still have threads like "It's Personal," "Annoying Questions," "Medical Questions," and the Entertainment Moments threads. I'm usually not super fond of "Can we not with politics" rules, but.... I'm also incredibly goddamned tired of people shouting at and insulting each other over politics in MPSIMS.

[MisterDee]

The one issue I can see with keeping the news discussions is that it'll inevitably drag in the political content. Like, coronavirus shouldn't be a political issue, but it is, and it is the major news topic at the moment. And then you're right back to splitting hairs over what's acceptable or not.

Maybe having a "News Report, no commentary allowed" thread could be a workable compromise for that particular aspect?


Definitely, if there's a solution that could save the community aspect of MPSIMS it'd be great.

[MGuy]

Everything is politics. Nothing that happens in the wider world isn't effected in one way or another by it. Pubic health policy is something set through political processes. The mild back and forth taking place in mpsims isn't different from political discourse from before. Including people leaving the boards over differences on those political opinions. If fbmf doesn't have the time resources/energy to regulate then a solid ban on topics specifically involving elected officials and policy would be necessary. It would be the easiest line to put down and enforce. You can talk about covid, the stats, and the public response but speaking about the elected officials and/or legislation would be off the table. I think that's a clear line one could set without much issue.

I personally prefer solid rules that I can read and follow without having to guess at what the lines are. From my pov the level of vitriol in mpsims is less than what was directed at people like OccludedSun so I am left to guess at where the line is. Things like the "no wishing death" edict are clear cut to me and would be much preferred over trying to figure out what wouldn't offend a shadow group of non posters.

[Grek]

I don't know which threads you've been reading Mguy, or who you have on ignore that lets you think that but the 2020 General Election thread was in no way a 'mild back and forth'. We had a QAnon guy. We had a guy saying all Democrats were White Supremacists and that the only reason he wasn't a Pizzagater was that he didn't think people would take him seriously. We had more than one person arguing the pro-murder viewpoint. The dynamic Frank pointed out in his farewell post:

"Their way of doing things is to stake out completely unreasonable positions and give unforgivable insults to anyone who disagrees even mildly with them."

...is very real and is not limited to any one part of the political spectrum. Some people on this forum just want to yell at people and say whatever the most insulting thing they think they can get away with by using a political banner as a fig leaf. Maybe on some level it is also about politics, sure. But a bigger part of it is about finding someone they can feel justified in hating and venting their pent up frustrations with how fucked the world is right now by declaring everyone who disagrees with them a child molesting crypto-fascist dog rapist.

[MGuy]

Likely I looked at the same threads you have been. I've also posted here for about the same amount of time you have so it is interesting that you look at that thread and come away thinking it's 'particularly' bad. It seems as though the disconnect here might be that you view the content of the thread as unique where I'm looking at it through a different lens. People come in and share a lot of different ideas. There are good ideas and there are very bad ideas. A Qanon person showing up isn't that interesting to me because people here regularly shit on shitty ideas. Lago or kaelik wishing death upon people? 2016 came and went and there was more talk about killing then. One or two people still murmuring about it now is an actual improvement. So yea, I expect bad ideas to be met with criticism just like they always have been and I don't think it's particularly out of the ordinary to see it still happening. I don't think political ideas are at all special as you can find multiple threads with people who have come here with very bad ideas and got shit on for it.

How many people have been likely driven off of the den because of their political views? Because it became generally acceptable to call a particular person racist or 'horrible' etc? Do you think those were 'ok' because they didn't share your political views? What about the people who just have different views of gaming? How many do you think have been driven off because the den has a very particular view of how to approach content? The den has a reputation for being full of toxicity and it definitely isn't because of the political content here. I've mentioned before but people I know won't post here because of the vitriol. I'm not going to pretend that the den has somehow changed when really all that changed in the Election thread are the lines people decided to draw. You might think that talking about directly killing Republicans is somehow uniquely horrific but there are ideas far more objectionable to me that have been brought up in these threads. I find dumb ideas to be dumb but what 'really' gets me are ideas that demonstrably get people killed but are considered acceptable by the general public. It offends me on a very deep and very personal level and I've made sure I've explained at every step exactly how those ideas, made manifest in the real world, are harmful to people in my position. It is deeply offensive to me that this framing that 'everyone who disagrees is the most extreme wrong you can be' is being passed around because what the fuck did I spend all that time specifying my position for?

Frank is the worst case of all to hold up especially. I won't go over his parting speech only because I don't think fbmf wants people to so I won't but his name has been very specifically name dropped to me as a reason friends of mine have never wanted to post here. Not to mention the specific hill he decided to die on before leaving (if you want to talk about offensive ideas).

If fbmf has decided that the implications of the arguments over politics hit too close to home for his taste that's fine. I wouldn't question whatever new rule or new lines he wants to draw up in a space that exists at his whim. I just want the rules to be clear and easy to follow. I cannot understand or predict what arbitrary lines people who don't post decide to draw for what is 'acceptable den discourse' because clearly people decide how they feel about the arguments based on things that have nothing to do with the specific arguments being made.

[Grek]

You might think that talking about directly killing Republicans is somehow uniquely horrific but there are ideas far more objectionable to me that have been brought up in these threads.

Honestly, yes. Not because of the Republican thing (the pro-murder argument I was refering to was regarding rival Democrats), but because of the killing people thing. That is honestly a deal breaker for me, regardless of whose head is on the hypothetical chopping block. Once you get to the point where you're saying that the other side is so awful that they should die, there is no moving forward, no backing down, no sharing a forum.

The forum has never once in my memory gotten to the point where that level of hate has been thrown around over gaming discussion. Even when every regular poster was united in the opinion that the latest in the Tzor/Shadzar/Elennsar/Silva/etc. line of trolls was an idiot with nothing new to contribute, there was never the implication that responding to them made you evil, just too naive or stubborn to admit that responding to their posts is futile. That is a level of vitriol, a level of 'toxic' that I am happy with.

The stuff that's been going on in MPSIMS is different, and I think your point about people disregarding nuance is basically at the heart of it. There are forums where you can have a nuanced conversation about healthcare, about police racism, about wealth inequality or about any number of other political topics without it turning into the 2020 General Election thread. Even if those topics are life and death issues for the people posting, the discussion doesn't have to involve anyone accusing anyone else of being a child-murdering fascist. At least, as long as there's active moderation around to de-escalate the situation and get ban people who go past the rhetorical point of no return. We don't have that here, and it shows. People get into months- or years-long feuds with one another and continually escalate the hostilities until it gets to the point where neither can stand to be in a thread with the other without it turning into a pissing match over who gets to post there and who needs to shut up and stop posting.

I personally don't think that fbmf is likely to be able to find enough moderators to fix that problem. Even if he did, I don't think that the forum would survive the crackdowns required to ratchet things back down to a sustainable level of vitriol. Killing MPSIMS might keep things going for a couple years more, but long term I don't really see a solution here.

[fbmf]

Once you get to the point where you're saying that the other side is so awful that they should die, there is no moving forward, no backing down, no sharing a forum.
<SNIP>
Even if those topics are life and death issues for the people posting, the discussion doesn't have to involve anyone accusing anyone else of being a child-murdering fascist.

This is exactly what I'm getting at. It is exhausting. I'm tired of it. I'm done with it.

Killing MPSIMS might keep things going for a couple years more, but long term I don't really see a solution here.

Me neither, but we'll try it. I'm about done giving warnings about the "advocating death" rule. And I'm going to add "rapist" and "pedophile" to the list of forbidden things to call a poster.

Game On,
fbmf