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Liberty's Edge

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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

On a side note, your post changed in the time I was typing up mine, so we are cross-posting each others' edits.


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There's this post from the 'Paizo, it's time for a change' thread, made on Nov 15, 2021:

Diego Valdez wrote:
To clarify, Tonya lobbied for and was given the Director of Customer Service and Community position. This was in effect a demotion for Sara. A few weeks later Sara was fired by Tonya. I quit when she was fired.

So... yeah, not exactly a flattering reporting of events.

Liberty's Edge

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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Kobold Catgirl wrote:
I believe Diego has explicitly referenced it on these forums, for one thing. Go browse his posts.

Thank you, I have done that.

So, Tonya firing Sara Marie justifies creating a thread mis-characterising her role within the company, ignoring clarifications by other staff members, and generally blaming her for forum suckiness that TNG has been fomenting since a time when they Totally Were Gorbatz?

People want her gone because of "what she did". They are trying to create a hostile environment, knowing it is part of her job to read each and every one of these posts. She has to suck it up without comment, remain professional, and find a way to cope with it.

It's ugly.

Master Han Del of the Web wrote:
A bed was made and now someone must lay in it.

Yeah, exactly the attitude I'm talking about. None of these people are interested in working with Tonya or hearing what she wants for the community. They've judged her unworthy and now they're making sure she pays.

That's what this thread was created for, and it sucks.

Happy Holidays Y'all. Treat each other better.


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My statement was actually intended to be neutral. Sara Marie was fired, Diego left and that created a vacuum. She took some actions and now has to step up. I'd be interested in hearing what she plans to do and the steps she plans to take in good faith but I'm not about to start celebrating her.

For better or worse the damage is done and actively seeking to drive her off achieves nothing, it certainly won't magically restore the jobs and goodwill of Sara and Diego. A lot of people are exceptionally dissatisfied with Paizo and the directions they are choosing to go in. Chief among the reasons is the utter lack of transparency with the community they actively chose to foster and profit from. Hearing from someone, anyone, and seeing them act upon stated plans and goals would be good for the community.


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Reckless wrote:

That's what this thread was created for, and it sucks.

Happy Holidays Y'all. Treat each other better.

I'm sorry, but for me as a lawyer "treating each other better over the holidays" is a premium. I'll charge you 10 bucks per hour for that, can you do PayPal?


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Wow, you do online transactions? Aren't you worried about someone stealing your identity, Totally Not Gorbacz?


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On a more serious note, Not Kobold Cleaver put it rather nicely. Tonya, by all accounts a successful PFS coordinator, likely got so happy being an overseer of PFS community that she decided to take her shot at doing the same to the entire Paizo fandom. She went upstairs, lobbied for the job, got the job created, convinced Paizo's apparently quite crappy owners and CEO to remove that job from Sara, got promoted to it, smiled, went downstairs and at the first opportunity fired Sara because if you're a deeply insecure manager who has the hindsight that the previous person might have been better at this job than you or might judge you, you fire them, an absolute The Office grade classic move.

Then Tonya smiled again, went to sleep and thought about what nice and beautiful things she can do with the community and about that post she drafted welcoming everybody to The New Tonya World and outlining exciting stuff such as Fireside Chats with Tonya on Discord or a plan for the community to help gaming veterans.

Except, in a classic display of irony that late capitalism corporate culture is capable of generating, instead of the Fireside Chat happening, the whole house came crashing down. The firing of Sara led to a chain of events that inflicted the single biggest blow to Paizo's credibility and PR - the workplace/mismanagement allegations, the revelations about how utterly crap Paizo's upper floor is, the union, the freelancer "strike", the departure of awesome folks such as Steve, somebody impersonating Gorbacz, the emergence of the actual Paizo Defence Force - apologists of Paizo's management who would be fine with Jeff Alvarez running a slave plantation and eating trans women for breakfast as long as the precious books about pretending to be an elf would be made on time.

Ever since, the place has been a burning wreck, cartwheeling from one crisis to another and at this point all that is left to me is to sip a Martini and ask: where do we go next, Tonya?

Dark Archive

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Kobold Catgirl wrote:
Speaking entirely neutrally to what TNG is doing here, it is not bullying to be heavily critical of an authority figure, which is what the person who had the power to fire Sara Marie undeniably would be called.

To be fair I would be very suprised if Tonya herself had the authority to fire Sara Without going through/getting permission from someone higher up the chain.

Way I look at it there are two options

1.Tonya fired Sara 100% of her own accord In which case upper managment is just letting people do things however they want or

2. The order came from up hi or Tonya asked and was given permission.

I assume the second since if it had been the first the higher ups chave just went "My bad we had no idea Tonya was gonna do this it's all her fault and we will offer Sara her job back immediatly"

I mean the fact Tonya was promoted over Sara (and essentially took Sara's position) indicates to me someone higher up the chain wanted Sara gone a kind of "Who will rid me of this troublesome priest" situation if you get me.


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My problem with the community at the moment, is that they did not ban most of the bad faith bigots and gave them short timeouts during the week they announced they were banning bigots.

Because of how that "we can ban now" thing was rolled out, it seemed like the ground level team were enthusiastic, and there was much less will from a level or two up.

So it seems to me someone tried to sneak openly transphobic creeps back into the community while getting points for cleaning them up. Whoever that is, at whatever level: They are why this community is devolving fast, because those actions make it exceedingly clear that the safety and basic humanity of trans folk and implicitly many other marginalized folks is a distant priority if it is one at all.

That's disgraceful, and whoever is responsible needs to not be able to make those calls anymore.


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Reckless wrote:
Kobold Catgirl wrote:
I believe Diego has explicitly referenced it on these forums, for one thing. Go browse his posts.

Thank you, I have done that.

So, Tonya firing Sara Marie justifies creating a thread mis-characterising her role within the company, ignoring clarifications by other staff members, and generally blaming her for forum suckiness that TNG has been fomenting since a time when they Totally Were Gorbatz?

People want her gone because of "what she did". They are trying to create a hostile environment, knowing it is part of her job to read each and every one of these posts. She has to suck it up without comment, remain professional, and find a way to cope with it.

It's ugly.

Master Han Del of the Web wrote:
A bed was made and now someone must lay in it.

Yeah, exactly the attitude I'm talking about. None of these people are interested in working with Tonya or hearing what she wants for the community. They've judged her unworthy and now they're making sure she pays.

That's what this thread was created for, and it sucks.

Happy Holidays Y'all. Treat each other better.

I will admit I was pretty pissed off when it happened and in fact called for Tonya to be fired but I've since cooled down and realized how terrible I was for saying that.

My apologies to Tonya, I'm sorry!


Totally Not Gorbacz wrote:
Tonya, by all accounts a successful PFS coordinator,

Wait I can't tell is this sarcasm or not?

Silver Crusade

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Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Ah yes, the man who was jailed for contempt of court (because the judge ordered him not to talk about it with the media, and he did anyway) is being used as a martyr. When the only sources for "getting jailed for misgendering" are right-wing rags, you may want to open your research a bit.


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Totally Not Gorbacz wrote:
the whole house came crashing down.

Everything you're listing though was in place and already unstable long before the change. If I try to tack up a picture and the entire wall falls down, someone severely messed up way before I missed a nail. At best it's more than a little head scratchingly weird to try to blame a proximate cause for a long series of ultimate causes that were going to come crashing down at SOME point anyway.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook Subscriber; Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber
BigNorseWolf wrote:
Totally Not Gorbacz wrote:
the whole house came crashing down.

Everything you're listing though was in place and already unstable long before the change. If I try to tack up a picture and the entire wall falls down, someone severely messed up way before I missed a nail. At best it's more than a little head scratchingly weird to try to blame a proximate cause for a long series of ultimate causes that were going to come crashing down at SOME point anyway.

That's the thing with anger, it tends to stick around. When someone strikes a match and throws it on a pile of kindling doused in gasoline because they lack the foresight, hindsight or vision to know that doing so will burn the house down?

Well, they sorta get the day that they deserve.

I don't think Tonya has any clue how dedicated the community is to eachother, or the people at Paizo who have treated us fairly over the years.

When I went to bat for the person who got Doxxed by Alvarez I had never interacted with them before that post. I didn't even recognize the majority of the names I was interacting with outside of the Starfinder Mini's posts and the Adventure Card game forums.

I did it because I believe in our community, even the people I don't agree with. Not so much the people who feel it is ok to flagrantly attack our LGTBQ+ friends, but when it comes to hypothetical conversations about how games can and should be ran? Sure.

I don't believe that people with power have the right to abuse that power. The direction our community has always gone since I have been a part of it has been the direction of better understanding rules.

Since Sara Marie was fired, unceremoniously, and Diego quit in protest what I saw was a bon fire lit that I didn't see coming. I jumped to Sara Marie's defense as soon as I saw what was going on because I had personally interacted with her and received help from her over the years to the degree that she left an long lasting impression and I didn't like what I was seeing.

I had no clue about the workplace struggles. The need to unionize. The homophobia and transphobic policies.

It was a catalyst. One that I doubt Paizo or Tonya saw coming. If they did I doubt they would have handled the CS department the way they did. But they messed around and found out that when you create a loyal fanbase, it isn't loyalty to a king, it is loyalty to eachother.

So, that's the thing with anger. It tends to stick around.

I have invoked Sara Marie's legacy in this post and thus have ordered her another latte. You can too if you so choose by going to this link.

https://ko-fi.com/charmedneedle

Go to Paizo's Mess Around and Find Out Fund!.


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BigNorseWolf wrote:
Totally Not Gorbacz wrote:
the whole house came crashing down.

Everything you're listing though was in place and already unstable long before the change. If I try to tack up a picture and the entire wall falls down, someone severely messed up way before I missed a nail. At best it's more than a little head scratchingly weird to try to blame a proximate cause for a long series of ultimate causes that were going to come crashing down at SOME point anyway.

WW2 was caused by the effed up mess left by Versallies Treaty, the failures of League of Nations, the economic crises and inequalities, the nationalist ambitions, but in the end it's Nazi Germans that fired the first shot, so it's on them, rightfully so.

Oh crap, did I Godwin the threat? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO


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A lot of the time when studying history, the phrase, "It didn't have to go that way" applies. Every political philosophy has limits, and nothing is truly predetermined. Modern transit systems in America didn't have to become so impractically skewed towards drivers, but automotive lobbyists and Robert Moses made them that way. Many countries did different things, had different influential city planners, and so averted America's post-apocalyptic parking lot hellscape. It didn't have to go that way.

Anyways, Jordan Peterson is a transphobic windbag and trying to defend him to trans people is reprehensible. Do better. I shouldn't have to point out that defending transphobes for their transphobia is intolerant behavior.

Sovereign Court Director of Community

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Locking for moderation

Customer Service Representative

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Hello friends! I would like to let you all know, that there HAVE been permanent suspensions made. I have just now moderated and removed another problem user. I know it doesn't seem like people are being banned from the forums, but they are. It does seem that for every person we remove, another one pipes up. We are doing our best to get things taken care of in a timely manner, and your emails are helping with that as we cannot keep a constant watch with the other tasks we have.

Shadow Lodge

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Jean-Paul Sartre wrote:
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

(This is not a tactic limited to just one group of intolerant ideologues.)


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I just joined the Paizo forums roughly a week ago so reading this thread has been quite the experience

Silver Crusade

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"You should only be prepared to silence the intolerant when they renounce rational argument."

Bigotry isn't rational to begin with.


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Bigotry isn't rational and it's never argued in good faith. I don't think I've ever spoken to a transphobe who was remotely interested in my point of view.

Also, the moderators are not here to promote a Discourse.

They are here to manage a community.

I know we conflate these two, but we really, really shouldn't. They banned election talk for the same reason. When it comes down to it, they should choose protecting the community over nurturing some ideal "debate platform" every single time.

(Also, please spare me dudes declaring "lol shut it down" because they think the forums have too many SJWs on them. It's literally the most boring, unempathetic, noxious time-wasting comment I've seen around here.)


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Rysky wrote:

"You should only be prepared to silence the intolerant when they renounce rational argument."

Bigotry isn't rational to begin with.

Rysky and I don’t often agree.

Yet when we do, it is usually of the self evident, inalienable rights type agreement.

That is, this is the crux of the biscuit:
Saying that adult should have these right but this adult should not have those same rights …
that ain’t right

Not relativistically, but universally.

The intolerant are not interested in definitions, or good faith discussions, or the like type of open, honest, rational discourse & exchange of ideas.
By definition the intolerant are, well, intolerant.
Someone who has an open mind and is willing to change if they acquire knowledge which conflicts with the conclusions they made … such a person may appear intolerant, yet such an individual is simply misinformed, not intolerant.

El Waiki wrote:
After all, years ago, criticism of the crown or church was what would be considered offensive, or intolerant, speech.

this isn’t a comment about an open, free, tolerant society but of one about forms of authoritarianism


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Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Every time that happens, it causes harm to the community because there are those who will look at the donkey and go "Hey, that's KINDA like a horse, and it's still breathing... so I guess it's not beating a dead one..."

The victims of bigotry and hatred then feel as if they have been outright ignored and/or the moderators are empowering the bigotry.

The moderators are running around trying to put out a hundred fires with the line for three.

The bigots chuckle and tell all their friends that the 'enemy's gate is down'.

Folks who are concerned about expressing themselves either fall back into verbiage that treads dangerously close to dog whistles (if they are trying to type in good faith) or cross into the land of a million yapping canines because they aren't going for good faith.

Then the immediate response is "But... but, I wasn't doing anything wrong!"

This cycle has been happening for years, but it accelerated and magnified within the last three months has it been that long already?


Deriven Firelion wrote:
When I read all of this, if I were Paizo I'd get rid of the forums. Let some other discussion site handle dealing with this. Keep a blog or some other similar product information delivery media tooks. Give permission to my content creators and employees to engage on a discussion site like Reddit or EN World if they feel like it.

But...but... where would we get all dat free stuff goodness that seems to popz up every now and then on these here Paizo message boards if it just gets itself ridden of? :(

PS. With all of this crazy-talk about getting rid of these forums going around, it is clear... this thread really needs a hero- not the one that this thread deserves or needs right now... so haz some Orchestrally-based David Hasselhoff- the much longer, extended-version. ;)

PPS. Technically, the 'heroes' that we all needs and deserves would be the moderator staff, past, present, and future... but everybody already knows all that. ;p


I’m still not Gortle wrote:


The intolerant are not interested in definitions, or good faith discussions, or the like type of open, honest, rational discourse & exchange of ideas.
By definition the intolerant are, well, intolerant.
Someone who has an open mind and is willing to change if they acquire knowledge which conflicts with the conclusions they made … such a person may appear intolerant, yet such an individual is simply misinformed, not intolerant.

That why the line in the sand, as explained by Popper, is the renunciation to rational argument. If somebody isn't willing to engage in rational argument then they are bigot and not misinformed.

I’m still not Gortle wrote:
El Waiki wrote:
After all, years ago, criticism of the crown or church was what would be considered offensive, or intolerant, speech.
this isn’t a comment about an open, free, tolerant society but of one about forms of authoritarianism

Popper's Paradox of Tolerance, specially in its delimitation of when to reserve the right to suppress the intolerant, can be read as a guideline of how to defend a tolerant society from intolerance without becoming intolerant ourselves.


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El Waiki wrote:
I’m still not Gortle wrote:


The intolerant are not interested in definitions, or good faith discussions, or the like type of open, honest, rational discourse & exchange of ideas.
By definition the intolerant are, well, intolerant.
Someone who has an open mind and is willing to change if they acquire knowledge which conflicts with the conclusions they made … such a person may appear intolerant, yet such an individual is simply misinformed, not intolerant.

That why the line in the sand, as explained by Popper, is the renunciation to rational argument. If somebody isn't willing to engage in rational argument then they are bigot and not misinformed.

I’m still not Gortle wrote:
El Waiki wrote:
After all, years ago, criticism of the crown or church was what would be considered offensive, or intolerant, speech.
this isn’t a comment about an open, free, tolerant society but of one about forms of authoritarianism
Popper's Paradox of Tolerance, specially in its delimitation of when to reserve the right to suppress the intolerant, can be read as a guideline of how to defend a tolerant society from intolerance without becoming intolerant ourselves.

The problem is discerning when they've renounced rational argument, because they will rarely admit that. And will in fact accuse others of doing so. "Fact, not feelings".

Just because someone is aping the form of rational argument doesn't mean they're actually engaging in it. As the Sartre quote above says, they're using the form because it's effective on us.


didn't we have this discussion already?

Liberty's Edge

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We should not confuse the ability to reason with having an open mind. Believing this is thinking IQ is the same as empathy, when it is really not.

We're not more intelligent just because we're not extreme bigots. That would be too easy.

Liberty's Edge

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Deriven Firelion wrote:

When I read all of this, if I were Paizo I'd get rid of the forums. Let some other discussion site handle dealing with this. Keep a blog or some other similar product information delivery media tooks. Give permission to my content creators and employees to engage on a discussion site like Reddit or EN World if they feel like it.

The current political environment seems to have carried over everywhere including RPG forums. You can't really have a discussion without someone bringing up some political topic into it and trying to shove it all down our throats one way or the other with Paizo having to pick sides and involve themselves in matters that have little to do with their core business.

Are these forums productive for Paizo or their employees? Do they provide any help to the bottom line? Are these forums providing what they once provided for Paizo? All questions Paizo management should be asking themselves as they move forward.

The forums are required to keep the community of fans close to Paizo. Since it is their strong advantage, I think they ask themselves these very questions often and answer yes. After all they cannot rely on having a strong brand. That belongs to the competitor everyone knows.


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Andy Brown wrote:
didn't we have this discussion already?

Yup, but some people refuse to listen and allowing their bad takes to go unchallenged creates the false appearance of acceptance by the community, functionally shifting the Overton Window for the site and encouraging others with equally bad or worse takes to come out of the woodwork.

It's a war of attrition, but these things have to keep being said. Hopefully, the ones with truly heinous opinions will go mask-off and get themselves banned. At the same time, they're hoping to sap the mental and emotional energy of the rest of us until we're too tired and frustrated to continue. This is how bad faith arguments are used.


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BigNorseWolf wrote:
Totally Not Gorbacz wrote:
the whole house came crashing down.

Everything you're listing though was in place and already unstable long before the change. If I try to tack up a picture and the entire wall falls down, someone severely messed up way before I missed a nail. At best it's more than a little head scratchingly weird to try to blame a proximate cause for a long series of ultimate causes that were going to come crashing down at SOME point anyway.

That isn't an excuse considering the fact that she was explicitly warned that this was a problem years before it ever blew up publicly by someone I know. Now sure that was Organized Play but the sentiment was that bad actors in that community can drive people away is kind of a universal issue. But no she kind of dug her head into the ground and just sort of ignored what was going on.


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The Raven Black wrote:

We should not confuse the ability to reason with having an open mind. Believing this is thinking IQ is the same as empathy, when it is really not.

They don't need to be the same they just need to arrive at compatible results on the big issues, and they usually can. There's more than one way to arrive at the conclusion NOT to skin the cat.


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Something of Poppers I like. Must be an alternate reality.

Silver Crusade

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Rysky wrote:

"You should only be prepared to silence the intolerant when they renounce rational argument."

Bigotry isn't rational to begin with.

Unfortunately, not really true.

If you're the person in power (or, at least, with more power) due to things like skin colour, gender, religion, sexual orientation, etc etc then it is rational to fight to maintain that power.

Evil, disgusting, awful and definitely counterproductive in the long term.

But it is rational, at least in the short term

While I was talking mainly about racism and sexism here far more than bigotry against LBGT+ people, bigotry against LBGT+ can also be rational IF your desire is to gain political power from like minded bigots, defend morally indefensible religious views, etc

Lets not confuse evil with irrationality. Evil people can act terribly in order to rationally achieve their disgusting goals

Silver Crusade

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That’s needling one specific aspect of bigotry for the sake of pedantry. Not even getting into instances of not having that power.

Bigotry is not rational.

Silver Crusade

“Lets not confuse evil with irrationality. Evil people can act terribly in order to rationally achieve their disgusting goals”

What are you hoping to achieve by muddying the waters like this? You’re ignoring what I was responding to, to what? Softball bigotry with a “well, AKSHOOLLY”????

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