What happened to the days of people just talking about topics? Seems like whenever someone's logical problems are pointed out it's "hostile" and "disrespectful".
You cannot have serious debates without them getting heated. You cannot be shown that you were wrong about something you were passionate about without that making you feel bad.
Calm civil discussion is fine, but that should not be a reason to subtract all heat from the conversation. It is such cop-out to derail a thread with tone complaint. Complaining about someone's tone is a personal attack. Their tone is not always a personal attack. Flag and move on people.
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I dont like your trebble
Ow ow ow kidding ouch...
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I agree, talking about tone is unproductive.
It's even got its own RationalWiki entry!
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Does anyone else see the irony in this thread?
I think one of the main reasons it gets pointed out is that certain "tones" bring the modhammer down and then a bunch of posts get indiscriminately wiped.
Personally, I'm not a fan of flagging posts unless they're really bad. Nudging people towards being courteous seems to work better.
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You cannot have serious debates without them getting heated. You cannot be shown that you were wrong about something you were passionate about without that making you feel bad.
You can. One just needs to quit acting like if his/her house got burned down when some aspect of his/her favorite game of pretend-to-be-an-elf goes some other way than wished for.
It's thaaat easy.
"Don't be a dick" always applies, even in forum arguments. It is quite possible to chat about a serious topic without getting catty.
Could you provide examples, though? It's all well and good to make vague threads about how people are being "disrespectful" or "oversensitive", but we all know that specific incidents spur these metathreads on, so why not be up-front about it from the get-go?
Could you provide examples, though? It's all well and good to make vague threads about how people are being "disrespectful" or "oversensitive", but we all know that specific incidents spur these metathreads on, so why not be up-front about it from the get-go?
Actually, I think that would fall under "Calling people out" and then be subject to mod locking.
On a more serious note, tone is a little subjective and vague to level as a criticism.
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Then it's almost like these threads are entirely without purpose.
Can we just make a "A thread I posted on didn't go the way I wanted it to go" venting thread already?
Then it's almost like these threads are entirely without purpose.
Can we just make a "A thread I posted on didn't go the way I wanted it to go" venting thread already?
My problem is when I am just reading a random thread and every line of discussion gets derailed by tone complaints. Hence a separate thread just about this nonsense.
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My problem is when I am just reading a random thread and every line of discussion gets derailed by tone complaints. Hence a separate thread just about this nonsense.Then it's almost like these threads are entirely without purpose.
Can we just make a "A thread I posted on didn't go the way I wanted it to go" venting thread already?
Your tone is really problematic and I think you should step away from the keyboard and check your blood pressure.
Out of curiosity, is this thread referring to the general trend of moderation in threads like "How do you handle homosexuality and transgenderism in your games?"
I ask because I've seen a lot of people complaining about it lately, and it would shed some light on this thread's origins. :P
Or are we just talking rules debates and such where one person has a "rude" tone and is told to dial it back?
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Your tone is really problematic and I think you should step away from the keyboard and check your blood pressure.My problem is when I am just reading a random thread and every line of discussion gets derailed by tone complaints. Hence a separate thread just about this nonsense.Then it's almost like these threads are entirely without purpose.
Can we just make a "A thread I posted on didn't go the way I wanted it to go" venting thread already?
Please calm down, Gorbacz. Your patronizing tone is not conducive to a healthy discussion and is indicative of a deep-seated emotional complex related to one of your great-aunts.
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Your tone is really problematic and I think you should step away from the keyboard and check your blood pressure.
Favorited because it made me laugh - no reflection on OP. :)
Out of curiosity, is this thread referring to the general trend of moderation in threads like "How do you handle homosexuality and transgenderism in your games?"
I ask because I've seen a lot of people complaining about it lately, and it would shed some light on this thread's origins. :P
Or are we just talking rules debates and such where one person has a "rude" tone and is told to dial it back?
The latter. If this was about the former it would be in the gamer talk sub forum. Which I haven't been to those threads in a while so no comment on whatever is happening there.
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I'd be glad to stop talking about tone. I'll do that when people can address the topic without behaving that being told no, not being given a 100% info dump the millisecond they want it, not being given the answers the crave, and not having design go your way is a capital crime, and that's what several of these threads have digressed to.
It is entirely possible to interact, even on the Internet, in a respectful manner. A patient manner. To respect the people that produce the game as well as the other people that are interacting with you. There are posters who have said as recently as today that they treat people scornfully because they don't like the attitude they may believe they are seeing.
But until people can act a bit more like people and less like a pack of wild dogs fighting over a bone, I'll continue to point out that hey, behaving a bit better might be more beneficial to your cause. I'll continue to flag every single instance of attack I see. I'll try to guide the conversation away from another round of "This is why the devs suck" and more towards useful solution or discussion.
Sitting around waving torches and pitchforks doesn't help anyone. Being snide for the sake of being snide doesn't help anyone. Calling people "The Paizo Defense Force" because they don't agree that what you believe is wrong is wrong doesn't help.
tl;dr: People need to stop acting like this is 4chan.
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Please calm down, Gorbacz. Your patronizing tone is not conducive to a healthy discussion and is indicative of a deep-seated emotional complex related to one of your great-aunts.Your tone is really problematic and I think you should step away from the keyboard and check your blood pressure.My problem is when I am just reading a random thread and every line of discussion gets derailed by tone complaints. Hence a separate thread just about this nonsense.Then it's almost like these threads are entirely without purpose.
Can we just make a "A thread I posted on didn't go the way I wanted it to go" venting thread already?
Now you little scrampy Cleaver, you stop disrespectfully disregarding the traumatic wartime experiences of my great-aunt which left her with an intense phobia of communist kobolds overrunning her quarters. That's not conductive to anything and represents a typical display of Amurican ignorance as to complex Yurpeen history.
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Or are we just talking rules debates and such where one person has a "rude" tone and is told to dial it back?
To be fair, I have seen a lot of people mentioning getting discouraged from discussion on stuff like caster-martial disparity and whether Paizo has made some errors with how they are handling new game content because of posters who get way too aggressive in their debating style.
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I'd be glad to stop talking about tone. I'll do that when people can address the topic without behaving that being told no, not being given a 100% info dump the millisecond they want it, not being given the answers the crave, and not having design go your way is a capital crime, and that's what several of these threads have digressed to.
It is entirely possible to interact, even on the Internet, in a respectful manner. A patient manner. To respect the people that produce the game as well as the other people that are interacting with you. There are posters who have said as recently as today that they treat people scornfully because they don't like the attitude they may believe they are seeing.
But until people can act a bit more like people and less like a pack of wild dogs fighting over a bone, I'll continue to point out that hey, behaving a bit better might be more beneficial to your cause. I'll continue to flag every single instance of attack I see. I'll try to guide the conversation away from another round of "This is why the devs suck" and more towards useful solution or discussion.
Sitting around watching torches and pitchforks doesn't help anyone. Being snide for the sake of being snide doesn't help anyone. Calling people "The Paizo Defense Force" because they don't agree that what you believe is wrong is wrong doesn't help.
tl;dr: People need to stop acting like this is 4chan.
If this is any consolation, the tone here is generally better than, say League of Legends forums or some more ... notorious corners of other p'n'p RPG messageboards.
As long as you keep Pathfinder General forum hidden, that is. ;-P
Or are we just talking rules debates and such where one person has a "rude" tone and is told to dial it back?To be fair, I have seen a lot of people mentioning getting discouraged from discussion on stuff like caster-martial disparity and whether Paizo has made some errors with how they are handling new game content because of posters who get way too aggressive in their debating style.
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Or are we just talking rules debates and such where one person has a "rude" tone and is told to dial it back?To be fair, I have seen a lot of people mentioning getting discouraged from discussion on stuff like caster-martial disparity and whether Paizo has made some errors with how they are handling new game content because of posters who get way too aggressive in their debating style.
No, I actually agree. People need to chill out.
Personally, I find the people telling others they need to chill out far more annoying than the people who need to chill out.
Personally, I find the people telling others they need to chill out far more annoying than the people who need to chill out.
YES!
It adds nothing to the discussion and does not affect your target for scorn unless they were already being more or less pleasant.
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When you decide to start posting on the paizo.com forums, all your posts are subject to our Community Guidelines. In those guidelines, we put a call to action to encourage the members of our community to help us keep this environment friendly and fun. It is neither friendly or fun for people to turn to threads here just to be met with overly sarcastic and heated posts (in fact, this became the reason why we had to implement a hard line for the Advice forum ["if it isn't advice, it doesn't belong here"]). So yes, intent and "tone" (although, this is *incredibly* hard to judge through text) do matter here.
We're totally fine with facilitating debates, as long as these debates don't resort into a "well, you're just an X, Y or Z and you always act this way" vs "you're so stupid why would you ever think this way" bickering match. We try to encourage discussion of ideas, not comments leveled to personally "one up" others in the conversation. Sometimes, I can see why it would come off as "Paizo just doesn't want these thoughts heard!", especially when the reason we have to remove a post is generally a jab or quip appended to an otherwise OK post, but the reality is that we should be enforcing our guidelines regardless. Making exceptions for posts just because an individual on our staff agrees/disagrees with the content is something I'm not at all a fan of. We try to be as fair as possible, but there will be times where it's imperfect because we're a staff of real people.
As an aside: I would tend to agree that derailing a conversation isn't the right course of action. Our flagging system and community@paizo.com inbox exist so that we can step in as necessary. Utilizing these two channels decreases the drama or personal attacks that can result by attempting to call out another person in the conversation.
I'd rather mods police tone than fellow posters harassing each other over it.
This thread was directed at fellow posters that was why I put it in general discussion not website feedback.
I'd rather mods police tone than fellow posters harassing each other over it.
Indeed. It's fine when the moderators act like the forum police because they actually are the forum police.
It would be better not to need forum police at all.
Can't argue with that.
I'd rather mods police tone than fellow posters harassing each other over it.
This thread was directed at fellow posters that was why I put it in general discussion not website feedback.
Yeah, I thought it was in the wrong forum—I already flagged it for Wrong Forum, but I think the mods are assuming it was a mod-directed thread.
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You cannot have serious debates without them getting heated.
You can and the forum will be better for it.
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Tone is a valid cause for complaint.
Of course, there's a substantial deficiency of thickness of skin, by my own likely unpopular opinion, but I don't run the joint. I may be able to take as well as I give, but it ain't my house, so if they want to tell me to curb it, until I start running my own place to discuss things I can't really make a big stink about it.
I'll call it like I see it, but accept that the House calls the shots.
No, tone is generally a useless complaint. If the tone you're reading into an argument is unpleasant to you, then that is mostly a problem within the head of the reader; reading tone is HARD. But the real problem is mostly the crowd of layabouts taking it on themselves to tell one side (the not socially approved one) that they need to shape up their tone. It is merely a way to suck up to their perceived authorities, to silence disagreement, and to score points. Yes, much would be far better without tone trolls.
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If someone says to you, "you must be retarded to have opinion X," then a complaint of tone is legitimate.
The flip side of the tone "fallacy," as someone earlier in the thread stated is that calling a complaint directed at your tone a fallacy is also a fallacy, because you're using a fallacy to dismiss a complaint against how you are communicating with another person. The fact of the matter is that tone is extremely important; as the Wikipedia page that was provided states, people are more likely to filter your ideas if they are overly rude. Because tone has nothing to do with negativity and everything to do with common courtesy. Take the following example:
The Divine Protection change was too harsh; it went from being too powerful to an option that few players would find attractive. The design team needs to reconsider the errata for this feat.
The Divine Protection change was retarded; it was overly nerfed from being too strong to being worthless. Someone on the design team needs to be fired over this.
The first statement is negative, but it is polite and to the point. As a result, it's tone is neutral even though it is offering criticism. The second statement has a very negative tone in addition to being negative. It is insulting to the designers, and the moral of tone is that one can express displeasure and call for change without being a jerk about it.
(Note: both examples are paraphrases of various comments that I have seen following the latest ACG errata.)
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No, tone is generally a useless complaint. If the tone you're reading into an argument is unpleasant to you, then that is mostly a problem within the head of the reader; reading tone is HARD. But the real problem is mostly the crowd of layabouts taking it on themselves to tell one side (the not socially approved one) that they need to shape up their tone. It is merely a way to suck up to their perceived authorities, to silence disagreement, and to score points. Yes, much would be far better without tone trolls.
It is of as much or as little use as being overly hostile is.
To address your other points:
* I don't care to silence anyone. Complain to your heart's content! But calling names, being insulting and otherwise throwing a fit aren't complaints, they are acting out for attention.
* I suck up to my perceived authorities here by spending my money on their products and that's about it. I ask people to stop making the forums a miserable place purely for my own benefit. If I wanted to listen to people howl and kick and throw things because they don't get their way, I'd turn off my five year old's Thomas movie in the middle.
* I don't keep track of points. This isn't a game, nor a registered debate setting. If you are keeping points, that's up to you. I try to stay in the middle in most of these discussions because I perceive that people can have good points and agree with The Man and have bad points and be The Man.
(Note: both examples are paraphrases of various comments that I have seen following the latest ACG errata.)
On the flip side, I've seen posters complain about the tone in comments like the first one, accuse the other person of attacking them, bullying etc.
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No, tone is generally a useless complaint. If the tone you're reading into an argument is unpleasant to you, then that is mostly a problem within the head of the reader; reading tone is HARD. But the real problem is mostly the crowd of layabouts taking it on themselves to tell one side (the not socially approved one) that they need to shape up their tone. It is merely a way to suck up to their perceived authorities, to silence disagreement, and to score points. Yes, much would be far better without tone trolls.
This is an example of crossing the line from tone to outright insult and ad hom: you're accusing people that don't agree with you of being lazy, which is more than a little random.