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Thanks, HitDice. In seriousness, before somebody accuses me of derailing a thread just to protest that I don't derail threads, let me make this clear:
We don´t like this, we don´t like what some people say, so let´s occupy the thread and fill it with jokes and nonsensical small talk untill it´s so derailed and everyone is discouraged from going on with the topic that it dies down.This post was made after everyone else agreed to drop it, and so I take this kind of personally. I regard it as a personal attack, albeit not one likely to get deleted by mods, and one I will be scolded for reacting to because "we're done talking about that" (except HayatoKen apparently is not). And six people favorited it, too, so apparently a lot of people agree with these accusations. I am being accused of trying to silence Hayato and people like them simply because I and others made some goofy posts that took up a tenth of the threadspace.
I was one of the people favoriting the post and it had nothing to do with you, so I definitely wasn't endorsing any personal attack. FWIW, I agree with you that people should be able to make jokey asides and I like the fact it pretty much sorts itself out - I think the moderators do a good job of walking the line of too-much vs not-enough moderation in this regard.
I favourited the post because I was agreeing with the sentiment - Chris Lambertz made a post asking people to stick to the topic:
As a courtesy to our moderation team and to folks providing feedback, let's keep the thread centered around the original topic.
and then there were a bunch of posts immediately after it, flatly ignoring a direct request from a moderator.
I think that's indicative of a problem we have as a community - when we disagree with a moderator decision or viewpoint, we tend to challenge it by ignoring it (think the many people who post: "This is going to be deleted but...." - they are acknowledging they are deliberately posting in a way counter to the rules).
I wasn't having a go at you or the other jokers (I didn't even read the posts in question enough to register who made them). I think this thread is a good chance for us to collectively look at what we do and how we can make the forums better (both posters and moderators). The hardest thing, in my opinion, is complying with rules or requests we disagree with. But we still have to.
I mean I think the ability to have fun in a thread is important too. I don't think the moderators want to be fun police.
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I think the mods wanted this specific thread to stay on topic due to the nature of the thread(topic). It helps them to get a good idea of the state of the forums, without having to read off-topic things.
Thanks, HitDice. In seriousness, before somebody accuses me of derailing a thread just to protest that I don't derail threads, let me make this clear:
We don´t like this, we don´t like what some people say, so let´s occupy the thread and fill it with jokes and nonsensical small talk untill it´s so derailed and everyone is discouraged from going on with the topic that it dies down.This post was made after everyone else agreed to drop it, and so I take this kind of personally. I regard it as a personal attack, albeit not one likely to get deleted by mods, and one I will be scolded for reacting to because "we're done talking about that" (except HayatoKen apparently is not). And six people favorited it, too, so apparently a lot of people agree with these accusations. I am being accused of trying to silence Hayato and people like them simply because I and others made some goofy posts that took up a tenth of the threadspace.
HayatoKen, please consider how that post comes across. You are sniping at us when we have just been told not to snipe back. Moreover, you are accusing us of attempting to silence dissent, which is a pretty serious accusation. It's extremely relevant to this thread, too, since you're asserting that this is one of the ways in which your views are being policed by the community.
To be clear, all this started because some posters made some utterly harmless jokes and some other posters got mad about it. The latter group are responsible for the digression—they took what was a minuscule number of humorous posts and turned it into a whole damn page of arguments. So maybe stop trying to blame us for derailing, censorship, and every other problem under the Internet Sun. The jokes did not derail the thread. At worst, they clogged it a little, but it's really not that hard to scroll past three near-identical "nested quotes" posts.
We didn't start the fire.
Someone else set fire to our little goofy wagon, and said it was because it was making the...
Dear Kobold Cleaver, i´m sorry that you read my posts as a personal attack on you. You could say i kinda abused you as an example, but there´s nothing personal involved at all.
It seems that the bacon point i made was badly communicated by me and i should try to make myself more clear.You are right, that everyone is invited to make (friendly) jokes and funny comments. In fact, i like that as well and it´s certainly healthy to laugh and be more cheerful.
Sadly, there´s another side to this. If you head over to Jiggys thread you´ll see that he also adressed this point.
You´re taking this personal and refering to this thread only, but in fact it´s a phenomenon that happens quite often. Somebody is asking questions important to them, or seriously discussing important topics and then someone else is coming in and making a joke.
Some people might to those jokes because they can´t deal with a little tension and feel the situation needs to be loosened up a bit. (Note that´s where i´m putting what happened in this thread, including you.) Others have different purposes and make jokes to demean and insult topics and people, or indeed to silence an by them unwanted discussion.
The range there varies from openly hostile over passive- aggresive to very clevery hidden. People don´t get banned for using too much sarcasm without a reason.
And in a lot of situations, both is very unhelpful, at least in my eyes.
I mean look at you quickly you feel personaly offended.
Now take a wild guess at how quickly others might feel the same, especially when they are talking seriously about things moving them and then someone feels obliged to make more or less random jokes about bacon or other things, obviously not giving anything about them or what worries them?
In many cases, this let´s people feel that they are not taken seriously and it has been complained about quite a lot as well.
Please note that i´m talking about the overall phenomenon, not about you or your jokes or behaviour.
You´re probably right that often complaining about that doesn´t make much sense either, since it often seems to spark contraproductive arguments. Instead, flagging those posts is certainly the better idea.
Personaly i decided to do exactly that a lot more in the future.
To my surprise, it seems a user who was in my opinion very contraproductive very often across the board has been banned as well 2 days ago.
And Wraithstrike expressed it quite well, since i actually think the same (just above). Steve Geddes also makes the same point.
In many threads there´s also so much "small talk" going on and back and forth, yet some posts get called out, deleted and banned, while others get away. There could definately be a clearer line in my opinion.
In many of those cases nothing gets deleted, but people asked to stay on topic for that thread. (I´m looking at product threads especially there.)
I hope i was able to express this in a way that doesn´t make you feel personaly attacked.
I don't disagree Wormy, but the post I was responding to specifically mentioned posters knowing "where they stand when they are in less than peaceful interaction with the moderation team." Sure, tone is tough to interpret on the interment, so sarcasm gets taken seriously more often than it should, but if you're behaving badly (with a mod particularly, but any with any poster) you're standing at the center of a bullseye.I think you agree, but it's not entirely clear: I read that as referring to interactions with the moderation team as the moderation team, not "I'd better be polite now because she's one of the mods", but "A mod posted and warned me/us we were treading the line, so I should listen and back off, rather than yell at them for bad moderation."
I certainly didn't mean to endorse being polite and courteous to only Paizo mods and staffers, if that's how I came across.
While some levity is OK, this isn't a thread that's really appropriate to get off track.
*hangs his head* Sorry Chris.
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I think that's indicative of a problem we have as a community - when we disagree with a moderator decision or viewpoint, we tend to challenge it by ignoring it (think the many people who post: "This is going to be deleted but...." - they are acknowledging they are deliberately posting in a way counter to the rules).
While I don't like all of GiantITP's rules, I appreciate their up front nature, and particularly like this one:
"Mea culpa" Offenses
Acknowledging the fact that your activity is breaking the rules is not allowed, nor is it a defense. If anything, it's flaunting breaking the rules, which is very insulting to both the staff and all the posters who take the time to try to follow the rules. Likewise, attempting to ward off an Infraction by admitting your behavior violates the Forum Rules is not tolerated. This will, instead, result in a second Infraction. If you know, or even think, that what you are about to do is worthy of an Infraction, then just don't do it. Find another way of saying what you wish to say or hold your peace altogether. Here are some examples of a "mea culpa" offense:"I know this is probably flaming, but you're a jerk." This would be worthy of two Infractions: calling someone a jerk is flaming, and acknowledging that you are flaming earns you a mea culpa penalty.
"I'd really love to tell you what I think of you, but it'd be against the rules." This would also be worthy of two Infractions. Passive-aggressive flaming is still flaming, and, once again, it earns a mea culpa penalty.
"I know this is harsh, and mods delete this if you must but..."
"We're not supposed to discuss religion here, but...
I prefer to call it the "two for flinching" rule. I like it.
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Hayato Ken, I still don't totally agree with you, but I see what you were trying to say. I appreciate your clarification, accept your apology, and now understand that you weren't aiming to launch a personal attack. I'll avoid sidetrekking this thread further.
Currently, just Chris, with Sara Marie filling in. Liz recently left and I don't think they've replaced her yet.
That is abnormal. Try flagging it?
<snip>Or it could be (c) they intended to say they were protecting the other poster's confidentiality and simply misspoke/mistyped.No, it isn't. There are two reasons I am confident in saying it wasn't a typo:
1)I asked. I asked "did you really mean to say that it was my privacy you would be violating by telling me about moderation action taken against me? Did you maybe mean it would be someone else's confidentiality?" And I was told that no, they actually meant what they said.
2)As I noted previously, this "typo," if it were a typo, has been sent on multiple occasions to at least three different users about separate incidents, and the "typo" was consistently made every time, including the time that I asked to make sure it wasn't a typo. That's not impossible, but it would be quite a coincidence.
I cannot speak for the moderators here, but when I administrated several games and had to discipline someone, for whatever reason, we customarily didn't disclose what had happened to other people that we had to talk to, in order to cut down on the "why did X get that punishment and Y didn't?"This is not at all comparable to what I was talking about. You assert that moderation action taken against one user is not made public to other users. I pointed out that Paizo has a rule that moderation action taken against one user cannot be discussed, or even acknowledged, to that same user. Those situations are completely different. You know they are completely different, and you know why they are completely different.
You also conveniently avoided responding to the last part of my post: if a private e-mail from the moderation staff is laced with personal insults that they would never say in public, it becomes very difficult to believe that such a moderator can enforce the Community Guidelines. After all, the community guidelines apply to PMs too, and PMing someone personal insults should be a violation.
But whatever. This side-conversation is getting off-topic for this thread. I think I'll make a new thread about it (give me a couple days....)
Perhaps they were looking for a way to avoid saying "we don't talk about moderation, at all, even to the person we're moderating so that we don't have to go through page after page of "but but but WHY?""
I don't know. YOU don't know. They know, and they haven't talked to us about it and may never. The point of my post was to illustrate that there might be more to all this than the mods searching through the 5000 posts a day to pick on an individual.
As for the second part of your post: no, it wasn't what you were talking about. It was what I was talking about. I was following up on my comments with an illustrative anecdote. Much like with accusing the mods, you're now accusing me of something, about how I know this or that. Wasn't talking about it, and whether you believe they are comparable is up to you. I happen to see some similarities.
Finally, I didn't "conveniently" avoid talking about the last part of your post. I didn't talk about it at all. I was not aware that I needed to address every line in someone's post in order to reply. But, sure, I'll cover that ground now.
If the mods are out of line in a private email, then sure, they should be reprimanded. If they are responding to someone who chooses to cross the line and they respond in kind, they probably should't but instead just stay away from the person and complete the ban. But it works both ways -- you cannot be rude to the mods and then expect them to emit sunshine and unicorns and happiness while someone dumps on them.
Anyhow, I've observed that the lack of a notification system can lead to people believing that certain kinds of behavior is acceptable when it isn't. For example, if someone starts a thread, and you have no interest in discussing the topic of the thread, the appropriate thing to do is to simply not post in it.
But it is perfectly alright to post as a sarcastic alternate account and make comments? And yes, persons 2 and 4 should be slapped around for their actions. I'd sure love to see that.
But whatever. This side-conversation is getting off-topic for this thread. I think I'll make a new thread about it (give me a couple days....)
I don't think so.
FWIW, I think you've misunderstood them or they've misunderstood you. However, if it was paizo policy that they won't talk to me about moderation action on my account out of respect for my privacy then I think that should be made explicit. Personally, I'd also like to hear why such an odd decision was made.
My guess is that your post was moderated for reasons involving someone else and they didn't want to discuss it with you out of concern for the third party. I think this is all likely to have stemmed from miscommunication (this opinion stems partly from the brief pm exchange you and I had the other day).