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As someone who recently typed something rude in a post and then subsequently apologized when this was pointed out to me by one of the developers, I think that the Paizo staff actually does a pretty good job of policing the message boards, especially with regards to rules, errata, and all the other tricky things that people have strong opinions about. I've been very impressed by the mods in the threads I've read over the last few years and I've sometimes wondered if they ever feel unappreciated. Constantly telling people they need to cool it or act more maturely can't be a pleasant way to spend a day and I'm sure they would be the first ones to celebrate if everyone agreed to communicate with some dignity and restraint on their website.
But since A) A lot of folks have to be absolutely right and win every argument on the internet and B) An equally large number of people never want to apologize for anything, ever, there will always be a need for bans, time-outs, admonishments and all the other tools used to keep things on a message board under control. Even nice people with a happy disposition can slip up and say things they really don't mean, and that applies a thousand-fold for the internet.
So I hope that whatever changes are made (if any) will encourage everyone to be just a bit more kind when dealing with their fellow RPGers, since I believe that there are way more things for us to agree on than to fight over....
A good example? I've had a number of Europeans use the term Yank or Yankee to describe Americans. I can tell you from vast experience that Americans from the South consider that an insult, one that can provoke a rather loud response.
Wow. That's another thing these forums have taught me.
I recently learnt that 'Gypsy' was derogatory, although I maintain it isn't in Australia. Similarly 'Yank' is synonymous with American here - I'd say it's almost the affectionate term. I could easily have made that slip!
A good example? I've had a number of Europeans use the term Yank or Yankee to describe Americans. I can tell you from vast experience that Americans from the South consider that an insult, one that can provoke a rather loud response.Wow. That's another thing these forums have taught me.
I recently learnt that 'Gypsy' was derogatory, although I maintain it isn't in Australia. Similarly 'Yank' is synonymous with American here - I'd say it's almost the affectionate term. I could easily have made that slip!
As another Australian, I would just like to say "ditto".
Send an email to customer(dot)service@paizo(dot)com. Or just post a thread about it.
Email community@paizo.com.Who do i need to speak to if i want one of my threads removed? I don't want my players to see the campaign details i posted? I didn't realize you cant remove your own threads :-(
You know, Miss Price, when you said "Beans and Cornbread" I got that song stuck in my head...
Darn you! :P ;)
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Also not all North Americans are the same keep in mind the country is huge compared to a lot of European countries. There is a great difference from one corner to the next.
Owner - D20 Hobbies
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I'll second the "deleted post tab" concept, but I'm unaware how difficult/trivial it would be to implement.
I've been in discussions where some people were behaving in a way that others in the thread felt was creating a toxic environment, yet the person involved didn't understand why his/her posts were toxic.
Having those post in a tab with a 1 or 3 word description as to why they were deleted would help the forums a lot I believe.
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You may be careful about how you frame your opinion, but that is still coloured by how you are generally used to argue a point.I totally get that which is why I'm not adversed to explain myself once again if I get the feeling that I transferred my opinion the wrong way. I'm also not generally averse to apologize if I unintentionally hurt someone's feelings about something.
So I'm not generally against James' suggestions how to handle forum stuff.Still, living in a country where only recently feminists claimed that if a woman claims to have been sexually harassed, this claim alone is sufficient as proof (in a case where the court eventually rightfully decided said claim to be untrue) and where, on the other hand, the society tends to think that gender equality has already been reached when it has clearly not and people get offended just by women (or men) pointing that fact out, I'm not too fond of the thought that only the receiver of an alleged offense may decide if it really is an offense.
That would most surely eventually lead to a severe impediment of free speech, because as soon as I don't like what you say, I can play the offense card, and you can do nothing about it.
I don't agree with you on the sexual harrassment issue, but that is not the subject of this thread.
If you think someone is playing the "offended card", you might try to rephrase your previous statement. If the same happens again, you disengage because the discussion is over. However, if someone is really offended by what you said, you don't get to decide whether that is justified or not. People have different thresholds of what they find acceptable.
The matter here, I believe, is whether one takes an argument in good faith or not. Thinking another person is playing the above mentioned card could be just taking the person's argument in bad faith.
I also think everybody should remember the wise words of Raylan Givens (apologies for the swearing): "If you run into an a@#~%@& in the morning, you ran into an a&!*~!+. If you run into a###~!~s all day, you're the a*$$&**."
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Then... the key is that someone gets the right to define the other's "offended card" as "given in bad faith". The one with the most popular support gets to determine that, as in all purely subjective situations. And the one with that support gets to decide in every instance whether to allow a discussion to continue. Right?
Brownies. That is all.
That and mods here are cool with me.
Then... the key is that someone gets the right to define the other's "offended card" as "given in bad faith". The one with the most popular support gets to determine that, as in all purely subjective situations. And the one with that support gets to decide in every instance whether to allow a discussion to continue. Right?No. It's more complicated, because it's purely subjective.
The other absolute approach would be James's approach earlier - anyone who claims to be offended is right and should be apologized to and the offensive comment retracted and not repeated.
On these boards, in the end it comes down to the moderators. Because they actually have the power to delete posts/lock threads/ban users. That's not quite the same as "most popular support".
Obviously, first come people who have the power to enforce things. That should be indisputable. However, what is interesting is what happens outside their direct influence. People are people, and power is certainly not only formal power. Instead, it becomes a pecking order based on very fluid, subjective criteria like political views, how well someone is liked in various groups, how well someone can bully others, age on the forum, previous interactions, number of likes you have in the thread, official stuff done, if you represent someone, and so on. Those above you have the right to shut you down. Those below you, you can shut down. All that is needed is to claim offense, then puncture their claim of offense with "it was made in bad faith". Nobody gets to say different.
EDIT: Rewrote this.
Then... the key is that someone gets the right to define the other's "offended card" as "given in bad faith". The one with the most popular support gets to determine that, as in all purely subjective situations. And the one with that support gets to decide in every instance whether to allow a discussion to continue. Right?No. It's more complicated, because it's purely subjective.
The other absolute approach would be James's approach earlier - anyone who claims to be offended is right and should be apologized to and the offensive comment retracted and not repeated.
On these boards, in the end it comes down to the moderators. Because they actually have the power to delete posts/lock threads/ban users. That's not quite the same as "most popular support".
Responding to the bold
While I agree I don't get to decide what is or is not offensive to you, being offended doesn't immediately preclude the idea stated as wrong or needing to be removed and not brought back up. Maybe it should be reworded or clarified but in other cases suck it up buttercup might also be appropriate, otherwise we are looking at a very easy method to weaponize offense. And while most popular support may not always rule the day there will always in a environment such as this be off-limit and acceptable targets.
EDIT: After reading your second post I take back part of what I said. Mostly because I believe that not all offense is worth shutting down or shouting down the whole conversation.
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Then... the key is that someone gets the right to define the other's "offended card" as "given in bad faith". The one with the most popular support gets to determine that, as in all purely subjective situations. And the one with that support gets to decide in every instance whether to allow a discussion to continue. Right?
I'm not sure what you're saying.
The whole thing is a balancing act. Everbody gets offended sometimes. Articulating this should not be met with distrust first hand (which would take the argument in bad faith), especially if the offended party explains why they feel that way - which is a good idea, but not always possible, depending in which the state the person is. The "key" is not to look for the fault in others, but rather to consider what you did before you start accusing someone else of wrongdoing, openly or not.
There may be times when someone uses being offended to "win" the discussion (which is a silly concept altogether, but not entirely avoidable, I guess), not or only vaguely explaining why they were offended. In that case, I would still try to give them the benefit of the doubt and rephrase my argument once. If the other side still insists on dying on that particular hill, withdrawing is the best option, because there is nothing to be gained anymore. They may think they have won, but you didn't concede anything, and "winning" is meaningless in this case, anyway.
OTOH, I'm bad at following my own advice and as a result, I rarely get into arguments on these boards - or anywhere - anymore.
We're all bacon-crunching Yanks at heart. :)
Speak for yourself, I can't stand the smell of the stuff, much less stomach it. I can not understand the recent fascination with it.
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The matter here, I believe, is whether one takes an argument in good faith or not. Thinking another person is playing the above mentioned card could be just taking the person's argument in bad faith.
Yeah. Or it is just the person actually playing the "offense" card.
The thing is, that I agree that it's very complicated for me to decide why a person feels offended and if this feeling is anyhow justified by what I said or not. So I'm definitely not trying to make myself immune against any criticism just by accusing other people of taking my arguments in bad faith. If I behave like a jerk, I should be called out for it AND I should be man enough to suck it up and apologize for my behavior. And even if I know that I did nothing wrong, there's no shame in apologizing for unintentionally offending someone's feelings.
Still, you don't have to look further than this forum to find instance of people trying to sh(o)ut you down by whatever means necessary just for having another opinion regarding any of the many hot topics (religion, politics, edition wars, PFRPG's balance issues, you name it). Those people would love to have an easy way to shut you down by claiming offense and thereby forcing you "to apologize, retract and not repeat your comment" on anything they don't want your voice to be heard.
So I'd rather have moderators to decide when I'm going over board with my posts than have this power put into the hands of any random reader who might or might not hold any grudge against me. Because self-moderation simply stops to function when a messageboard reaches a certain critical size
Drah,
The only time I've ever enjoyed bacon is when you make greasy green beans with it.
Drah,
The only time I've ever enjoyed bacon is when you make greasy green beans with it.
And there´s the bacon talk. Literaly.
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thejeff, I know that this often happens and this is not what I defend. On the other hand, and especially here in Germany, accusations of bigotry and racism are actually used to shut down dissenting opinion.
Now I'm one of those people often labeled as "linksgrünversifft" (don't know how to translate this, something like left-green-filthy perhaps) by certain members of our society, so as far as opinion is concerned, I'm most often on the side of those people calling other people out for their bigotry and their racism. Still, not everyone disagreeing with my opinion must necessarily be a racist or a bigot so I hate seeing those labels applied too freely because it's basically just another try to shut other people down and I often see it used against people just for them disagreeing with, let's say, how Chancellor Merkel handled some aspects of the so-called refugee crisis.
Which is also why I mostly avoid gender or LGBTQ issue discussions, because by reading such discussions here or elsewhere, I often get the impression that I'd probably end being called a bigot by those persons whose side I'm actually on for only agreeing to 99% of what they said.
[edit:]Though as far as this forum is concerned, another reason is, that U.S. and german point of views regarding some topics are so different, that it's sometimes actually hard to understand what someone's trying to say due to how words are used differently. For example, I don't think we use the words "communist" or "neo-liberal" with exact the same view of what this concepts entail, so it's really hard to apply them in a discussion without being misunderstood.
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Aren't we drifting a bit from the topic of forum moderation with this whole "who's offended and why" thing?
Yes, sometimes a person is legitimately offended and the speaker needs to adjust their behavior, so we can't just dump all the power in the hands of the speaker.
Yes, sometimes a person claims to be offended in an effort to silence the speaker's opinion, so we can't just dump all the power in the hands of the listener.
Yes, sometimes a person is offended and the speaker claims that the cry of offense is just an attempt to silence the speaker's opinion, but really it's the speaker trying to silence the opinion of the listener, so I clearly can't choose the wine in front of me.
Isn't that part of why we have moderators in the first place? Remember when this thread was about coming up with ways to improve the methods and/or tools of the moderation team on this particular forum?
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Fair enough on the other points. I can't speak at all to German discourse.
On a more general note, I think that this doesn't make work easier for the moderators here. I don't know how many forum members here are from abroad, but I think that having another cultural background and maybe even English not being your native language can make discussions here quite complicated.
It's definitely what I try to be aware of when confronted with a surprising reaction to what I wrote because I can never be sure if this maybe was a misunderstanding just due to my language skills (or the lack of them ^^).
And there´s the bacon talk. Literaly.Drah,
The only time I've ever enjoyed bacon is when you make greasy green beans with it.
Yes? So? you'd prefer I talk about defecation? Urination? Obliteration? Negation?
Aren't we drifting a bit from the topic of forum moderation with this whole "who's offended and why" thing?
Yes, sometimes a person is legitimately offended and the speaker needs to adjust their behavior, so we can't just dump all the power in the hands of the speaker.
Yes, sometimes a person claims to be offended in an effort to silence the speaker's opinion, so we can't just dump all the power in the hands of the listener.
Yes, sometimes a person is offended and the speaker claims that the cry of offense is just an attempt to silence the speaker's opinion, but really it's the speaker trying to silence the opinion of the listener, so I clearly can't choose the wine in front of me.
Isn't that part of why we have moderators in the first place? Remember when this thread was about coming up with ways to improve the methods and/or tools of the moderation team on this particular forum?
From the looks of it, trust seems to be the main issue; not just trust with the moderators, but trust with your fellow poster not to try to twist things against you.
How do you fix an issue of trust?
Yes? So? you'd prefer I talk about defecation? Urination? Obliteration? Negation?Moderation?
Unification!
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I just try to be the sort of person who doesn't say things that need moderation. XD It helps that the mods here generally seem to be tolerant, and a lot of it basically boils down to two things:
1) Try to keep the thread reasonably on-track. If you have a different subject you'd like to talk about, you can always make a new thread for that discussion.
2) Be reasonably polite to other people. You are free to disagree with each other, but please avoid personal attacks and try to help keep this a welcoming community.
Then... the key is that someone gets the right to define the other's "offended card" as "given in bad faith". The one with the most popular support gets to determine that, as in all purely subjective situations. And the one with that support gets to decide in every instance whether to allow a discussion to continue. Right?No. It's more complicated, because it's purely subjective.
The other absolute approach would be James's approach earlier - anyone who claims to be offended is right and should be apologized to and the offensive comment retracted and not repeated.
On these boards, in the end it comes down to the moderators. Because they actually have the power to delete posts/lock threads/ban users. That's not quite the same as "most popular support".
There is a very objective way to break these things down. However, it takes an amount of intellectual rigor that few want to put into an online discussion. For example, there are quite lengthy, formal discussions about what is and isn't offensive, and those discussions are quite nuanced while maintaining cohesiveness and clarity.
It comes down to a series of logic tests to drastically simplify it. That doesn't mean an argument can be made that something like the Holocaust or something isn't offensive. Rather, it reinforces that it is offensive. But, what I'm talking about is basically college level courses in reasoning, formal arguments, logic, history, analysis, and psychology. I find it fascinating, but not many others do from what I've seen.
Then there's the whole potential for social blowback on calling BS when someone feigns offense. It certainly won't win you friends.
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Aren't we drifting a bit from the topic of forum moderation with this whole "who's offended and why" thing?
Yes, sometimes a person is legitimately offended and the speaker needs to adjust their behavior, so we can't just dump all the power in the hands of the speaker.
Yes, sometimes a person claims to be offended in an effort to silence the speaker's opinion, so we can't just dump all the power in the hands of the listener.
And sometimes the listener is offended , the offense is genuine, but that still doesn't make the speaker wrong.
Honesty.
Say you have a post deleted, and you e-mail Paizo asking why. If you are told
"We are sorry, to protect your confidentiality, we cannot tell you any details as to why your post may or may not have been deleted, nor can we even confirm or deny that we did delete one of your posts,"....then either
a)Whoever wrote that e-mail (and possibly whoever wrote Paizo's moderation policies) is ignorant of what confidentiality actually is, or
b)Whoever wrote that e-mail is lying.If no one at Paizo honestly knows what confidentiality is...there are a lot of ways they could find out. I don't really think we need to delve into this possibility. It certainly won't instill much trust of the mods in users.
If you find out that Paizo has sent the same nonsensical response to many users over a long period of time, it sends the impression that Paizo has a policy of lying in responses when asked about moderation decisions. And that, too, is not a good way for Paizo to build a reputation of trustworthiness.
If, on top of all that, e-mailed responses you get from Paizo are laced with personal insults, it becomes really hard to believe that whichever moderator is e-mailing you can enforce the Community Guidelines.
Everything I just said only applies to trust in moderators. As you pointed out, trust in other users is an issue as well, but it's an issue I have absolutely no idea how to address.
Actually, and risking the ire of the moderation folks - apologies in advance, but I would hazard a guess that seeing Paizo folks' responses of late make me wonder if certain story elements are translations of real life events from Paizo employees, their friends, or other associates no matter how outlandish or over simplified the final outcome may appear.
So, confidentiality could come into play if in explaining the reasoning behind the moderated actions would belie the subject matter's origins. Which, if that's true - which, admittedly, is pure speculation on my part, then that is bad sportsmanship on Paizo's part. It makes them literally too invested in their own products. They can't properly evaluate commentary on their products since it'd be commentary on individuals they know or have read about IRL. It also invites controversy by extension since any discussion or critique about except in praise will be inherently divisive, hurt feelings, and stir trouble.
That's one of the very few angles I can see there being a genuine confidentiality interest.
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Fair enough on the other points. I can't speak at all to German discourse.On a more general note, I think that this doesn't make work easier for the moderators here. I don't know how many forum members here are from abroad, but I think that having another cultural background and maybe even English not being your native language can make discussions here quite complicated.
It's definitely what I try to be aware of when confronted with a surprising reaction to what I wrote because I can never be sure if this maybe was a misunderstanding just due to my language skills (or the lack of them ^^).
I haven't worked through the entire thread, but I will say I find Paizo mods more willing than typical board mods to explain the reasons for their moderation. I've dealt with forums (yes, I took Latin and forums is a glaring fricken error when it should properly be "fora," but whatever, I'm going for comprehension, not smartness of pants) where posts are deleted and posters are banned with no explanation whatsoever. Paizo mods usually post their reasons for removing posts and forgive innocent mistakes. I mean, Paizo mods also seem completely fricken merciless when it comes to feigned innocence from trolls, but that's as it should be.
From the looks of it, trust seems to be the main issue; not just trust with the moderators, but trust with your fellow poster not to try to twist things against you.
How do you fix an issue of trust?
Honesty.
Say you have a post deleted, and you e-mail Paizo asking why. If you are told
"We are sorry, to protect your confidentiality, we cannot tell you any details as to why your post may or may not have been deleted, nor can we even confirm or deny that we did delete one of your posts,"....then either
a)Whoever wrote that e-mail (and possibly whoever wrote Paizo's moderation policies) is ignorant of what confidentiality actually is, or
b)Whoever wrote that e-mail is lying.If no one at Paizo honestly knows what confidentiality is...there are a lot of ways they could find out. I don't really think we need to delve into this possibility. It certainly won't instill much trust of the mods in users.
If you find out that Paizo has sent the same nonsensical response to many users over a long period of time, it sends the impression that Paizo has a policy of lying in responses when asked about moderation decisions. And that, too, is not a good way for Paizo to build a reputation of trustworthiness.
If, on top of all that, e-mailed responses you get from Paizo are laced with personal insults, it becomes really hard to believe that whichever moderator is e-mailing you can enforce the Community Guidelines.
Everything I just said only applies to trust in moderators. As you pointed out, trust in other users is an issue as well, but it's an issue I have absolutely no idea how to address.
Or it could be (c) they intended to say they were protecting the other poster's confidentiality and simply misspoke/mistyped.
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?"
It's hard to consistently do a job like that and not have a level of distrust from users who are upset that their friend got punished or that the response they got wasn't as clear as they'd like. But it breeds what we're seeing here, with calls of lying, of favoritism, of corruption. None of those things are easy to disprove once the rumor mill starts up.
Regardless of how you feel about the mods or other posters, if your post(s) get deleted, it isn't the end of the world, or even that bad of a thing. You shrug and go back to that conversation or another and try not stray towards whatever got the thread removed, the posts taken down, and so on. We have to negotiate the same mine field in real life with other people. I'm not sure why it has to be so hard here.
Yes? So? you'd prefer I talk about defecation? Urination? Obliteration? Negation?And there´s the bacon talk. Literaly.Drah,
The only time I've ever enjoyed bacon is when you make greasy green beans with it.
I was called out a bit upthread for complaining about people talking about bacon, what has been misunderstood as something beans&bacos.
And a very short time thereafter we have the bacon talk.Kind of ironic^^
It gets compained about because this is a common method to derail discussions by lots of totally unrelated posts doing some weird small talk, going over things and it mostly doesn´t get moderated.
Some people do have the impression that some others do this on purpose...
I absolutely do it on purpose, to break the tension.
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It's definitely what I try to be aware of when confronted with a surprising reaction to what I wrote because I can never be sure if this maybe was a misunderstanding just due to my language skills (or the lack of them ^^).I haven't worked through the entire thread, but I will say I find Paizo mods more willing than typical board mods to explain the reasons for their moderation. I've dealt with forums (yes, I took Latin and forums is a glaring fricken error when it should properly be "fora," but whatever, I'm going for comprehension, not smartness of pants) where posts are deleted and posters are banned with no explanation whatsoever. Paizo mods usually post their reasons for removing posts and forgive innocent mistakes. I mean, Paizo mods also seem completely fricken merciless when it comes to feigned innocence from trolls, but that's as it should be.
Just to be clear, when I mentioned "surprising reactions", I was meaning the reaction of the adressee of my post. I really can't say anything bad about the Paizo moderators from personal experience. Especially as I basically have none (apart from probably some deleted posts, but even then I don't remember having been the cause of the deletion).
So you're doing fine then, even if english isn't your native language. :)
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Aren't we drifting a bit from the topic of forum moderation with this whole "who's offended and why" thing?
Yes, sometimes a person is legitimately offended and the speaker needs to adjust their behavior, so we can't just dump all the power in the hands of the speaker.
Yes, sometimes a person claims to be offended in an effort to silence the speaker's opinion, so we can't just dump all the power in the hands of the listener.
Yes, sometimes a person is offended and the speaker claims that the cry of offense is just an attempt to silence the speaker's opinion, but really it's the speaker trying to silence the opinion of the listener, so I clearly can't choose the wine in front of me.
Isn't that part of why we have moderators in the first place? Remember when this thread was about coming up with ways to improve the methods and/or tools of the moderation team on this particular forum?
From the looks of it, trust seems to be the main issue; not just trust with the moderators, but trust with your fellow poster not to try to twist things against you.
How do you fix an issue of trust?
Don't talk with people you don't trust to have an honest conversation.
FWIW, I think the "people are lying about being offended" thing is being blown way out of proportion.
I also think everybody should remember the wise words of Raylan Givens (apologies for the swearing): "If you run into an a~#&*$~ in the morning, you ran into an a+!@###. If you run into a~@~**+s all day, you're the a~$*@##."
Unification!Yes? So? you'd prefer I talk about defecation? Urination? Obliteration? Negation?Moderation?
Unification!
Unification!Unification!Yes? So? you'd prefer I talk about defecation? Urination? Obliteration? Negation?Moderation?
Imitation?
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I absolutely do it on purpose, to break the tension.I take it then that you disagree with Jiggy's critique of such behaviour and how it enables poor behaviour or as Hayato Ken discussion of how such is frequently indistinguishable from attempts to take the thread off-topic (to either kill the thread, or shout down a discussion the poster does not want to continue).
I suggest flagging it. We don't have a thread crapping/thread jacking flag, so I'd suggest spam or one of the other open ended flags.
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I agree with Captain Yesterday, and disagree with your conflation. Using humor to distract from a serious issue is very different from using humor to break the tension, and while I cheerfully embrace the "threadcrapping" label with pride, I highly resent the claim of threadjacking. How does silly banter about bacon or beards actually prevent you from having your serious discussion? This isn't a real-time conversation; you can talk about both. I can rickroll until the lolcats come home, but nothing I say on a messageboard can "interrupt" you.
If you'll pardon the irony of my saying so, you guys need to chill out.
EDIT: As an addendum, it seems like posting complaints about our silly bacon side conversation on the same thread is more likely to derail the main subject than anything else, since you're actually posting in seriousness, and therefore are making the thread vulnerable to a serious threadjack.