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I thought it may be good to have a place where the community can discuss reasons they would like to see political threads go away for good, come back, or be limited in scope. Please don't bring up any specific topics and definitely don't turn this into a political thread of its own! Thanks.
For me, I really appreciate having a place to discuss politics with people who are intelligent, politically aware, and are part of a community with me which is larger than the particular discussion at hand. The Paizo forums allow for me to participate in this kind of discourse and I would be truly saddened for them to go away. There are not many other places on the internet which fill all three of those features.
I understand that those threads get rowdy, loud, distasteful, and even down right abusive at times. I understand Paizo's concern about being seen as tacitly approving of that sort of thing by hosting it on their site. I understand that they put a bunch of extra stress on customer-service's and the web-team's work product. I understand it would be naive at best to expect that self-policing will yield acceptable results. I would understand a Paizo decision to ban such threads from their site.
But, it would make me sad. It would remove a big part of what this community is to me, and what opportunities it offers. I hope that Paizo can find a way to keep them around.
I enjoy the political threads, and many of the threads running up to the election to be informative (and a somewhat helpful place to talk through concerns). And I think most folks generally were civil (I think many times they were even more civil than some rule threads here). There were the occasional heated exchanges and such, but I don't think more than in other areas of the forum.
I totally understand suspending them when they did and until the post-election chaos died down, but would like to see them return.
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I'm kind of conflicted.
I understand people need somewhere to vent about such things. But I'm afraid with the current political climate it will only lead to anger, and possibly bullying.
If it returns I strongly recommend putting it in it's own section.
But frankly, with the upcoming inauguration I'd rather they wait.
Until spring, at least. :-)
I am fine with waiting a few weeks myself...since I think the inauguration will probably leave to a bit heated emotions on both sides.
I don't think it needs to be in it's own section...off topic is fine. Most threads that are political are pretty obviously political and can be easily avoided by those not interested.
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No, as someone who hates politics, but loves off topic I strongly recommend moving it away from off topic.
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I understand people need somewhere to vent about such things. But I'm afraid with the current political climate it will only lead to anger, and possibly bullying.
The paradox of this statement is that this IS the central issue of contention in present American politics:
Is bullying okay? Is abuse okay? Is authoritarianism okay? Is irrationalism okay? Are there such things as facts, or is it all nothing but a might-makes-right shouting contest?
If NO, you've taken a side. If YES, you've taken the other. This, more than anything else, IS the issue, and where one stands on nearly all other contemporary issues ultimately flows from that. There are some rocks in the stream for some people, true, and we're all at different points along/behind/ahead of the curse, but with time, it inevitably flows to the same conclusions. If 'tolerance' is our shared creed, it inevitably leads to some stances being intolerable. You can't accept every point of view when some points of view are only viable if other points of view are forcibly and unjustly excluded.
There's really no hiding from it, folks. Anything can be made 'political,' therefore being 'apolitical' is an impossibility unless you've committed to being a universal doormat. Take a stand, and accept the logical consequences. You're responsible for your inaction as much as for your action.
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Okay, then I don't think they should have political threads.
Stand taken.
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A place to talk about politics? Reddit.
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I know it is a difficult challenge to traverse, but can we try to keep this thread limited in scope to discussing the implications of political threads on paizo.com, rather than discussing the nature of politics or particular topics?
Thanks.
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I think we need to address moderation policies before we bring back political threads. I've had multiple posts get memory-holed (moderated away without acknowledgement) for no good reason, while other posts that clearly broke community guidelines (but happened to align with majority/staff-endorsed views) remained.
Moderation either needs to be more transparent, or the community guidelines need to be expanded to explicitly describe which beliefs are sacrosanct, and which are not allowed to be expressed.
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Moderation either needs to be more transparent, or the community guidelines need to be expanded to explicitly describe which beliefs are sacrosanct, and which are not allowed to be expressed.
I think "don't be a jerk" is an awfully good guideline. The nature of the beast is such that you can never REALLY codify it in as poor a medium as language, but you don't really need to since it's an inborn instinct. Unfortunately, it's also why people can b+~&@*~* their way out of knowing right from wrong when they damn well would if only they were honest with themselves - but b!@$@~%&ting IS what that is.
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I don't think off-topic political threads such a hot idea. There are enough touchy political topics just to deal with in regular, on-topic discussions.
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Don't we have enough fighting and ill will on the site? I'd prefer not to see the political threads come back.
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I am not a fan of providing space for hot-button, off-topic discussion threads on community forums. There are certainly people and communities that fare better in this regard, but as a general rule discussing political topics in an anonymous forum is not even remotely productive on the whole. It's a pale imitation of face to face discussion, and lacks the single most important component of it which is our natural inhibition against letting something go too far.
Beyond that, there are practical problems, too. Heated discussion topics like this require active moderation, which means there must be people who regularly patrol the threads to keep them on an even keel. That also means there must be rules and guidelines, which in turn requires the moderators to apply those at least somewhat consistently.
And then there are less esoteric issues, such as the RSS feed. There's a sidebar on the Paizo home page called that lists the currently active topics. Someone browsing the web site looking for information on PF and SF are going to see these topics pop up on the list. Some of those topics last year had intentionally provocative titles. Is this something Paizo wants showing up on their home page? It's a solvable technical problem, of course, but it still takes effort and time to make these exceptions, put them in place, and then maintain them.
This is a lot of behind-the-scenes work for very little gain.
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I just think "avoiding politics" is a fool's errand that wouldn't even be considered very desirable in a healthy society - and that the only way to restore health to our society is to engage and push the fascists and anti-factualists back to the fringe where they belong. They're ALWAYS pushing, too, so we're really left with no choice but to actively deny them the ever-increasing lebensraum they demand - passivity's more comfortable, but it just doesn't work.
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Not having a place to discuss politics does not make the subject go away. Political opinions and affiliations make up a large portion of peoples' personalities and inform their actions in many ways.
When people can discuss them, everything is more transparent. You start to understand where people are coming from. And, bonus, they're confined to specific threads so people can ignore them if need be.
As-is people are just as pissed off for whatever reason, but have nowhere here to explain why, or be informed by peers with similar interests about other goings on. The political threads here are usually pretty informative, one way or another.
The ban on political threads has basically just put a lid on a kettle. That water is still boiling, and increasingly it's been seeping around the sides of the lid and taking over threads it has no business to.
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There's no question that having a forum to discuss this stuff is valuable, and that preventing it as a topic won't make it go away. The questions at hand are:
1. Can these forums be an effective place for these discussions?
2. Is Paizo willing to invest the time and resources needed to make #1 happen?
3. Is it in their interest to do #2?
I think the first is a no-brainer, but the rub is the second and the third. To really allow productive political discussions, the kind that people are talking about here that allow you to understand people from different viewpoints, learn from each other, and be informed, possibly even change minds, takes work. It also takes structure and rigor. Unstructured political discussion is how you get Reddit, and if you really screw it up or blow it off you end up on a path that ends in 4chan. It is worse to do it wrong than to not do it at all.
And that's why #3 is so important. This requires an investment of time and money. Is that in Paizo's interest? What will they gain? They are, after all, paying the bills for this space. If they are going to do this, there needs to be an incentive of some sort to do it. Because they'll be paying someone a salary in real dollars to do it.
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I would prefer there not be a political forum. When a poster gets heated with another poster, those interactions tend to bleed over into other topics and threads. Paizo, as a website and forum, doesn't have much to do with politics and this seems like a strange place for people to discuss it. I really don't see what Paizo, as a company, has to gain from hosting a bunch of contentious political discussions. There must be better places for people to debate that stuff.
With that said, if Paizo did create a Political Discussion board, I'd minimize and ignore it just like i do with OTD. I'm personally not interested peoples' political opinions.
-Skeld
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Ive never seen anything close to reddit or 4chan here. Ever. I dont think there needs to be any investment beyond moderation. If Paizo determines that moderation time is a waste on political threads I can understand that. However, like thejeff said, I too value the discussions that have been had here precisely because they are not like the discussions on the rest of the net.
Id say make a political sticky that doesnt hit the RSS feed. Folks who hate politics can hide it and wont see any updates. Add some new policies to the forum guidelines so the community knows there is a place for politics. My recommendation if the good folks at Paizo want to consider raising the ban.
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I'm in favor of it in a "if the community wants to talk about it, it would be nice for them to be able to" way.
I haven't noticed politics being any more vitriolic than other topics, to be frank. It seems to me that most of the time political debate here is fine, and then every now and again people feel the need to ascribe motivation to the other poster or to just denigrate them out of exasperation or something. However, I think that happens in roleplaying vs rollplaying discussions just as much as liberal vs conservative. (Admittedly, I'm not a huge participant, so may just have missed stuff).
Given Liz recently left and hasn't been replaced on the community team yet as I understand it, I could imagine it being a bad time for the next little while. (Even robots need to recharge occasionally).
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I would prefer there not be a political forum. When a poster gets heated with another poster, those interactions tend to bleed over into other topics and threads.
Yeaah, I don't post or read in political threads in paizo, but on other forums I've been occasionally been horrified with opinions of people who are otherwise pleasant to discuss with on other threads and afterwards it just feels.. Let's say awkward.(you can never tell what people believe in until you actually talk about it) Unpleasantness of political threads tends to spread around :'D
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I'm of a mind that it seems like politics has crept into every other facet of the Internet. It would be nice to have somewhere where it doesn't
This is a gaming site. Not the comments page of CNN
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I don't have an issue with them coming back but like Cpt. Yesterday would like them to have their own subforum, and on top of that would as k if that subforum can be set up like the Houserules and Rules forums and not pop up on the recent threads list.
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I think we need to address moderation policies before we bring back political threads. I've had multiple posts get memory-holed (moderated away without acknowledgement) for no good reason, while other posts that clearly broke community guidelines (but happened to align with majority/staff-endorsed views) remained.
Moderation either needs to be more transparent, or the community guidelines need to be expanded to explicitly describe which beliefs are sacrosanct, and which are not allowed to be expressed.
Overall direction of our Community Guidelines/moderation is not the goal of this thread. Our community involves thousands of posters, with thousands of posts per day, and if a post seems to just "disappear" it's fairly difficult to resolve that problem if the specific instance isn't being made known to our team. If you find yourself in this situation, the best course of action is to email community@paizo.com to give us an opportunity to investigate why this happened, and provide an explanation. While we might give the impression of being "omnipresent", we really aren't, and are human and susceptible to not getting it right all the time.
Let's move along to discussion political threads as they exist on our site, thanks!
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I'm torn here.
In theory, I'd be fine with bringing back political discussions on the boards, insofar as they stay segretated in a particular area (i.e. OTD). In better circumstances, I would advocate a return to the policy from before the current ban on political threads. I know that in the past, I've gleaned a fair amount of insight from political discussions here. I've never seen the Paizo forums devolve into the the flamewars you see on other sites like Reddit, or ENWorld, or the cesspool that is 4chan.
At the same time, with Liz' departure, it stands to reason that the Community Team just doesn't have the staffing levels it used to, putting more stress on Chris and the other mods. And I don't see the political polarization of the outside world getting any better any time soon.
So... maybe we should keep the political forums dark, at least for a few more months, or until Paizo has the resources to beef up the Community Team for more thorough forum moderation.
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It's important to note that bringing back the political threads does not mean the return of the users who got themselves life-banned in their participation on them.
It's important to note that bringing back the political threads does not mean the return of the users who got themselves life-banned in their participation on them.
I'm not convinced that people don't just come back with new profiles.
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It's important to note that bringing back the political threads does not mean the return of the users who got themselves life-banned in their participation on them.I'm not convinced that people don't just come back with new profiles.
Just an FYI, making a new profile to get around a ban is a bannable offense :3
And since they are obliged to keep a low profile, it sometimes takes a while before they cause a lot of trouble.
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I'm torn here.
In theory, I'd be fine with bringing back political discussions on the boards, insofar as they stay segretated in a particular area (i.e. OTD). In better circumstances, I would advocate a return to the policy from before the current ban on political threads. I know that in the past, I've gleaned a fair amount of insight from political discussions here. I've never seen the Paizo forums devolve into the the flamewars you see on other sites like Reddit, or ENWorld, or the cesspool that is 4chan.
At the same time, with Liz' departure, it stands to reason that the Community Team just doesn't have the staffing levels it used to, putting more stress on Chris and the other mods. And I don't see the political polarization of the outside world getting any better any time soon.
So... maybe we should keep the political forums dark, at least for a few more months, or until Paizo has the resources to beef up the Community Team for more thorough forum moderation.
Perhaps I haven't been clear enough.
We don't want the political waste to pollute Off Topic Discussion any longer. We've had a taste of fresh air, the Barbaloot's are happier than they've been in years. We don't want to go back, man.
I just think "avoiding politics" is a fool's errand that wouldn't even be considered very desirable in a healthy society - and that the only way to restore health to our society is to engage and push the fascists and anti-factualists back to the fringe where they belong. They're ALWAYS pushing, too, so we're really left with no choice but to actively deny them the ever-increasing lebensraum they demand - passivity's more comfortable, but it just doesn't work.
You may be right, but Paizo has the right to decide that their venue will not be one of the battlegrounds where this will be fought. I think this is a good thing. I believe that those threads are places where people will find themselves getting into trouble they can't redeem themselves by being tempted into behaviors that they ordinarily would not engage in. And we have no shortage of venues for party partisans to shout at each other.
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As someone who doesn't participate in political threads, my opinion may not mean much. But as someone who previously ran nerdy websites for over a decade, maybe that gives it some weight.
The way I see it, if it was alright to have political threads a year ago, it ought to be alright to have them now. Discussions may be heated, and the threads may be difficult to moderate, but that's politics. There's a reason it is taboo in regular conversation (or was, at any rate). I think these are questions worthy of being asked by Paizo's forum decision makers:
1) Were Paizo around during the heart of the civil rights movement, would political discussions be taken offline because many got angry about the idea of minorities getting whites-only rights and privileges?
2) Do you believe discussing politics on paizo.com has value beyond just venting or arguing? If so, recall Kennedy's famous moon speech: "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win." To paraphrase, if it has value, do it, even if it's a pain in the butt.
3) Even if taking down the political discussions is the right decision for the site, do you believe doing so is allowing the bad elements of society to win? (note: bad elements doesn't mean a political party, but rather people who choose not to have civil discourse)
I was not a great site runner. If I was, I would just offer you the right answer, something I don't have. But I do know attempts at silencing your fans rarely goes well. And silencing will have to happen often since many topics relate to politics, especially since the new president is planning on removing many things we took for granted the past several decades.
Some topics that are by default banned simply by disallowing political discussion:
- Funding for the arts
- Climate change
- NASA
- Education
- Mortgages
- Protections for animals and the great outdoors
- Civil rights
- Guns
- Video games
- LGBTQ and women's rights and equality
- The list goes on...
Good luck. I don't envy this position
Perhaps I haven't been clear enough.
We don't want the political waste to pollute Off Topic Discussion any longer. We've had a taste of fresh air, the Barbaloot's are happier than they've been in years. We don't want to go back, man.
Perhaps I am just confused on how exactly they manage to "pollute" the off topic section. Most political threads are pretty clear...from the bat...they are political. Thus if you don't like politics...you don't need to click on them. And with the exception of a few anomalist circumstances, usually there are not a large number of them at any given time.
The only real place I ever see contamination are the rules forum, where alignment/flavor vs crunch/caster vs martial issues end up spreading to very different rule threads. I didn't see the existence of say...the the specific debate threads really contaminate the other threads, other than a few existing election related threads.
I mean I never really read a lot of the FaWtL and related threads, but I don't begrudge there existence.
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Opinion:
Paizo is a business, one that has absolutely nothing to do with politics, and on its face it makes little sense to facilitate the hosting of political discussion, even if labeled 'off-topic'.
In my experience online political discussion is seldom helpful and more often than not becomes a pissing contest. Exacerbating the point further, most RPG gamers seem to gravitate to a particular side of the aisle, and thus these threads become little more than echo chambers.
I say gut 'em. They're divisive and problematic for the community. There is no shortage of free-speech outlets to voice political opinion and participate in discourse.
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I was not a great site runner. If I was, I would just offer you the right answer, something I don't have. But I do know attempts at silencing your fans rarely goes well. And silencing will have to happen often since many topics relate to politics, especially since the new president is planning on removing many things we took for granted the past several decades.
Except no one is being silenced. This site doesn't have a section on survival preps, backpacking, gardening, Thai cooking, photography, scrapbooking, collecting rocks, basket weaving and so on and yet no one is saying that the Powers That Be are silencing anyone.
There are hundreds of sites out there that one can talk and scream and yell and yes, even discuss like rational human beings any of a variety of subjects. No site has to be a Walmart one-stop shopping center for every topic.
Except no one is being silenced. This site doesn't have a section on survival preps, backpacking, gardening, Thai cooking, photography, scrapbooking, collecting rocks, basket weaving and so on and yet no one is saying that the Powers That Be are silencing anyone.
I think you know what I meant. When people have the privilege of doing something (talking politics in this case) and you remove it, they get angry. It's a 100% certainly. It happens on sites, in software development, in schools, all over really. That was the point I was trying to make, not that they are literally silencing people.
Some topics that are by default banned simply by disallowing political discussion:
- Funding for the arts
- Climate change
- NASA
- Education
- Mortgages
- Protections for animals and the great outdoors
- Civil rights
- Guns
- Video games
- LGBTQ and women's rights and equality
- The list goes on...
I agree with your post for the most part until here. It's absolutely possible to discuss most of those topics without it inherently becoming political (note that I didn't say "all" and that I'm aware that politicizing would occasionally happen, as it does with most anything), so I disagree that those topics are banned by proxy. For example: guns are pretty easy to discuss without getting political so long as you just talk about the items themselves. In fact while many firearm enthusiast/hobbyist sites are hotbeds of angry political yelling, that type of talk generally keeps itself to one or two smaller off-topic (different kind of off-topic than what we're discussing here) forums.
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Perhaps I haven't been clear enough.
We don't want the political waste to pollute Off Topic Discussion any longer. We've had a taste of fresh air, the Barbaloot's are happier than they've been in years. We don't want to go back, man.
Perhaps I am just confused on how exactly they manage to "pollute" the off topic section. Most political threads are pretty clear...from the bat...they are political. Thus if you don't like politics...you don't need to click on them. And with the exception of a few anomalist circumstances, usually there are not a large number of them at any given time.
The only real place I ever see contamination are the rules forum, where alignment/flavor vs crunch/caster vs martial issues end up spreading to very different rule threads. I didn't see the existence of say...the the specific debate threads really contaminate the other threads, other than a few existing election related threads.
I mean I never really read a lot of the FaWtL and related threads, but I don't begrudge there existence.
The pollution may come from hard feelings from those threads bleeding into discussions on other threads. We already see it when Bob tells Sally that she is WRONG WRONG WRONG on the "Are Paladins really LG?" thread and Sally stays mad for 2 years and brings it up at every opportunity.
Politics seems to bring out the worst in some people, even worse than debating the merits of jumping over a pit or if killing goblins is evil.
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Except no one is being silenced. This site doesn't have a section on survival preps, backpacking, gardening, Thai cooking, photography, scrapbooking, collecting rocks, basket weaving and so on and yet no one is saying that the Powers That Be are silencing anyone.I think you know what I meant. When people have the privilege of doing something (talking politics in this case) and you remove it, they get angry. It's a 100% certainly. It happens on sites, in software development, in schools, all over really. That was the point I was trying to make, not that they are literally silencing people.
I guess? I'm not sure where the anger comes from though, other than Internet Entitlement. I tend to believe in the "My House" rule: This is Paizo's house. They've asked us to not do X thing, and I respect that. If I have a problem with it, I can do X thing at Bob or Sally or Fred's house rather than being upset that Paizo doesn't like X thing (politics, bringing my gun to the gaming table, calling people names, drinking all their milk, etc.)
Getting upset about it is an alien idea to me.
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Perhaps I haven't been clear enough.
We don't want the political waste to pollute Off Topic Discussion any longer. We've had a taste of fresh air, the Barbaloot's are happier than they've been in years. We don't want to go back, man.
Perhaps I am just confused on how exactly they manage to "pollute" the off topic section. Most political threads are pretty clear...from the bat...they are political. Thus if you don't like politics...you don't need to click on them. And with the exception of a few anomalist circumstances, usually there are not a large number of them at any given time.
The only real place I ever see contamination are the rules forum, where alignment/flavor vs crunch/caster vs martial issues end up spreading to very different rule threads. I didn't see the existence of say...the the specific debate threads really contaminate the other threads, other than a few existing election related threads.
I mean I never really read a lot of the FaWtL and related threads, but I don't begrudge there existence.
The pollution may come from hard feelings from those threads bleeding into discussions on other threads. We already see it when Bob tells Sally that she is WRONG WRONG WRONG on the "Are Paladins really LG?" thread and Sally stays mad for 2 years and brings it up at every opportunity.
Politics seems to bring out the worst in some people, even worse than debating the merits of jumping over a pit or if killing goblins is evil.
No, I just don't want to have to sift through twenty "Trump did this" "Trump did that" etc. To find something fun or intelligent, like asking Vertebrate specialists what's so fascinating about having a spine in the water. That's all.
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Should the LGBT Gamer Community thread be shut down as a hot-button political issue, that has nothing to do with the business and is little more than an echo chamber?
I think you know that's not a fair comparison. LGBT GAMER Community does have to do with Paizo, a gaming business.
And frankly if you think the political threads around here are echo chambers, I don't think you've been reading them. I think they were generally pretty damn good, but there's certainly plenty of disagreement. Thus the locking and banning. :(
I've perused some and found them toxic, usually one-sided mudslinging, and so unpalatable that I have no intention of stopping by again. Admittedly this is anecdotal and a limited sample size.