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I recently made a post (admittedly, with respect to the removal-of-slavery issue). I asserted that, yes, I agreed with Paizo's changes and I appreciated and approved of their decisions on the matter and their reasons for them, and that the choice was the right one to make. I also asserted that there were costs to it, as there are with essentially all such decisions, and that there is value in being aware of the costs of the decisions that you make, even when those decisions are obviously correct.
This post was moderator-removed without comment, as was another post that another poster had made in response, thanking me for expressing the thought in a better way than they had been able to come up with.
Is this no longer an okay thing to say on these boards? Are we not allowed to even assert that the general path that Paizo is taking on these things has costs? From everything I have ever seen, a community is healthier overall when those that disagree (barring the outright trolls and deliberate bad actors) can at least each see where the other is coming from, and you can't do that if you're entirely unwilling to accept that there are costs and downsides even to obviously correct policies. I'm not saying this about any issue in particular, and I'm not pretending that the sides on any particular issue are in any way balanced. I'm just saying that it's a fundamental truth about human beings and the world in general that stuff is always at least somewhat messy. Are we not allowed to assert that stuff is messy?
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Is this no longer an okay thing to say on these boards? Are we not allowed to even assert that the general path that Paizo is taking on these things has costs? From everything I have ever seen, a community is healthier overall when those that disagree (barring the outright trolls and deliberate bad actors) can at least each see where the other is coming from, and you can't do that if you're entirely unwilling to accept that there are costs and downsides even to obviously correct policies. I'm not saying this about any issue in particular, and I'm not pretending that the sides on any particular issue are in any way balanced. I'm just saying that it's a fundamental truth about human beings and the world in general that stuff is always at least somewhat messy. Are we not allowed to assert that stuff is messy?
The paizo forum, and many of its users, are in a really bad place right now. That's an explanation, not an excuse.
I do not exaggerate when I say the PF2 reddit is a healthier community and has been for a long time now.
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I recently made a post (admittedly, with respect to the removal-of-slavery issue). I asserted that, yes, I agreed with Paizo's changes and I appreciated and approved of their decisions on the matter and their reasons for them, and that the choice was the right one to make. I also asserted that there were costs to it, as there are with essentially all such decisions, and that there is value in being aware of the costs of the decisions that you make, even when those decisions are obviously correct.
This post was moderator-removed without comment, as was another post that another poster had made in response, thanking me for expressing the thought in a better way than they had been able to come up with.
Is this no longer an okay thing to say on these boards? Are we not allowed to even assert that the general path that Paizo is taking on these things has costs? From everything I have ever seen, a community is healthier overall when those that disagree (barring the outright trolls and deliberate bad actors) can at least each see where the other is coming from, and you can't do that if you're entirely unwilling to accept that there are costs and downsides even to obviously correct policies. I'm not saying this about any issue in particular, and I'm not pretending that the sides on any particular issue are in any way balanced. I'm just saying that it's a fundamental truth about human beings and the world in general that stuff is always at least somewhat messy. Are we not allowed to assert that stuff is messy?
Not when doing so is basically feeding the flames of the conflagration that threatens to burn the whole city and that firemen have trouble keeping down.
Wait for calmer times before adding "nuance" that can be construed as advocating for the bad side.
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Is this no longer an okay thing to say on these boards? Are we not allowed to even assert that the general path that Paizo is taking on these things has costs? From everything I have ever seen, a community is healthier overall when those that disagree (barring the outright trolls and deliberate bad actors) can at least each see where the other is coming from, and you can't do that if you're entirely unwilling to accept that there are costs and downsides even to obviously correct policies. I'm not saying this about any issue in particular, and I'm not pretending that the sides on any particular issue are in any way balanced. I'm just saying that it's a fundamental truth about human beings and the world in general that stuff is always at least somewhat messy. Are we not allowed to assert that stuff is messy?The paizo forum, and many of its users, are in a really bad place right now. That's an explanation, not an excuse.
I do not exaggerate when I say the PF2 reddit is a healthier community and has been for a long time now.
I hope you're talking about the racist and homophobic posts, right ?
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for years Paizo forums have had a rule that they would not allow slavery as a topic of debate.
if your post came across as 'slavery is bad, but...' post then that is likely why it was removed.
Nuance is a benign word. Using it to justify getting around that rule though will still get it removed, even if you didn't know the rule existed.
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Is this no longer an okay thing to say on these boards? Are we not allowed to even assert that the general path that Paizo is taking on these things has costs? From everything I have ever seen, a community is healthier overall when those that disagree (barring the outright trolls and deliberate bad actors) can at least each see where the other is coming from, and you can't do that if you're entirely unwilling to accept that there are costs and downsides even to obviously correct policies. I'm not saying this about any issue in particular, and I'm not pretending that the sides on any particular issue are in any way balanced. I'm just saying that it's a fundamental truth about human beings and the world in general that stuff is always at least somewhat messy. Are we not allowed to assert that stuff is messy?The paizo forum, and many of its users, are in a really bad place right now. That's an explanation, not an excuse.
I do not exaggerate when I say the PF2 reddit is a healthier community and has been for a long time now.
Yeah the PF2 Reddit is a surprisingly wholesome and easygoing place.
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for years Paizo forums have had a rule that they would not allow slavery as a topic of debate.
if your post came across as 'slavery is bad, but...' post then that is likely why it was removed.
Nuance is a benign word. Using it to justify getting around that rule though will still get it removed, even if you didn't know the rule existed.
Oh, that wasn't what I was saying at all. I was saying "Paizo's choice to remove it from Golarion was a good call, but not without cost"
I'd thought it was pretty clear in context, but I suppose it might have been misconstrued, if they were moving quick. I do get that the mod staff have too much to do and not enough time.
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I hope you're talking about the racist and homophobic posts, right ?The paizo forum, and many of its users, are in a really bad place right now. That's an explanation, not an excuse.
I do not exaggerate when I say the PF2 reddit is a healthier community and has been for a long time now.
To be honest, I don't see as many racist and homophobic posts as I see messages from CS people locking threads and deleting messages. So I guess the mods delete those sorts of messages quicker than I see them.
I'm talking about the bizzare, hostile stuff that I think might be the pandemic talking. It has appeared during the slavery thing and the Jessica's Price allegation and Sara Marie's firing and the Agents of Edgewatch and so on.
I think part of the problem is that here dumb comments can derail an entire thread. On reddit it just gets downvoted.
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when an entity makes a correct move, which has very little yet not zero downside, or has a small yet I guess could be meaningful to some who isn’t vested in a negative way to what the change removed, then commenting in the style of
- I agree with that move yet please remember there is a cost to every decision
then yeah, that is a sort of wutabutism
which is problematic when the upside:downside ratio so vastly outweighs any possible argument against (when the upside includes removing even ‘incorrectly inferable’ or passive support for extremists and haters, it’s hard to imagine a downside that makes that ratio problematic)
worse, those who are against the decision that was made will see such comments as support for their view and gain succor from that perception
this is another aspect of normalizing hate
I will not apologize for
Comforting the afflicted, afflicting the comfortable.
Nor for not just being a proponent of but trying to actively do my part to see that the underdog and underprivileged are provided a voice.
Where I come from that doesn’t make me noble or kind or … it just makes me not a total jerk. I can still be jerky in many many ways, just not by being a non-egalitarian.
(though some will argue the reason I’m not a total backsidehat is only because parts are missing)
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when an entity makes a correct move, which has very little yet not zero downside, then commenting in the style of
- I agree with that move yet please remember there is a cost to every decisionthen yeah, that is a sort of wutabutism
which is problematic when the upside so vastly outweighs any possible ‘cost’
worse, those who are against the decision that was made will see such comments as support for their view and gain succor from that perceptionthis is another aspect of normalizing hate
First, how much downside there is on many of these issues is not easily measurable. We can look at it and say "yes, clearly the gains are worth the costs", but one person's "vanishingly small" is another's "small but meaningful"... for those things where the first person does not find meaning in that cost and the second does. That's part of the point of acknowledging that costs exist... because you can then at least admit that those costs might have meaning for others, however small they seem to you.
For most people, on most topics, these sorts of disagreements are not necessarily driven by hate. That's the thing. Insisting that your preferred choices have no downsides at all is denormalizing "any disagreement with me on any meaningful point ever"... partially because when you reject the idea that the things you like might have costs, then "hate" becomes the only explanation you have left for why people might disagree with you.
I'm not saying the hate isn't out there. It obviously is. I'm saying that there are real problems with convincing yourself that it's all hate. There are problems in particular with making that the overall policy of an online community.
...and one of the things you can do - one of the great things you can do - when you acknowledge that your choices do have costs, is possibly find ways that you can mitigate those costs without really harming those things that gave you cause to make your choices in the first place. That's the sort of thing that makes it easier to welcome and accept and get along with the people who don't necessarily agree with you perfectly on all points while still driving away the real haters (and also leaving them with less rhetorical ammo).
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Dood, it’s slavery. It’s not integral to Pathfinder.
Sad hill to die on.
but... I'm not?
Like I've said - I basically agree with Paizo's call here. I agree with the reasons they chose to make it, and I think they made a good choice on how to handle the situation. I'm just saying that it's important to understand that the choices we make have costs.
If I'm dying on any hill at all, it's the hill of peace, love, and understanding (mostly the last, with the hopes that it'll help the others).
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Will just leave this here.
Right now Paizo is permanently banning accounts ability to post on the forums for breaking their rules about intolerance.
I stated up top exactly why your posts were likely removed.
You now know. To continue down the 'slavery is bad, but...' path could get your account banned.
As Rysky just said, sad hill to die on. If you think slavery is bad? Leave it at that and walk away from the conversation. I am getting sad at how many people are misunderstanding the zero tolerance policy when it is much simpler to just support people who are marginalized instead of goin to bat for people who will take your words and twist them to mean you support them.
But you do you. Exiting this thread, stage left.
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me! I was quoted! disclaimer: this is not the actual quoteInsisting that your preferred choices have no downsides at all is …
not what I said
I didn’t say ‘no downsides at all’I did say (or at least imply) such a low level of downside that, with the current state of the discussions on these topics, mentioning it as a counter-argument is counter-productive to the motions Paizo is striving for
and, even worse, those who do hate may very well take such comments as supporting their position and feel energized by such [mis]perceptions of support
and while I’m sure you didn’t mean it intentionally, misparaphrasing someone’s argument in a way which non-trivially changes the argument that was made is typical of those who are less tolerant than of those who are more tolerant
as you’ve said, you agree with the move Paizo is making
and as I said, I’m sure you unintentionally transmogrified my argument into something other than what it actually is
…
P.S. is it wrong for me to add
“I choose you pikachu!”
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For the record, just to be clear, I think that the primary real value that the institution of slavery had in Golarion was that it offered the opportunity to stab slavers in the face, and to assemble organizations with the general purpose of stabbing slavers in the face. I am really, really not trying to defend slavery as an institution in any way. It was both fundamentally evil and fundamentally wasteful, with some really terrible secondary incentive effects. Modern-day sexual trafficking and the like are likewise abhorrent. I would that we lived in a world where that was taken as a given... but apparently we don't. Fine. I don't have a problem saying it explicitly.
For the record.
not what I said
That's true. Here. My initial post (the one that was removed) had been in response to a different Gortle-variant... which was apparently you under a different name. In that one, you did state pretty clearly that you comprehensively rejected the idea that there might be downsides. That's the sentiment I was responding to here.
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Dood, it’s slavery. It’s not integral to Pathfinder.
Sad hill to die on.
but... I'm not?
Like I've said - I basically agree with Paizo's call here. I agree with the reasons they chose to make it, and I think they made a good choice on how to handle the situation. I'm just saying that it's important to understand that the choices we make have costs.
If I'm dying on any hill at all, it's the hill of peace, love, and understanding (mostly the last, with the hopes that it'll help the others).
Those people who accuse you of normalizing hate or whatever? They don't know you and don't care that you've said that you like the change. They're busy fighting strawmen. It has nothing to do with you.
Like I said earlier, this forum is in a bad place right now.
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… had been in response to a different Gortle-variant... which was apparently you under a different name.
there are too many gawds be damned Gortle knock offs!
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Actually it has everything to do with that “but” they’re putting on the end there.
What’s there to accomplish?
Trying to cool down the rhetoric a bit. Trying to point out that there is meaningful distance between "I agree with you in general" and "everyone who disagrees with you is evil, crazy, or desperately deluded". Asserting that I am in that in-between ground, where I am capable of agreeing with you while not immediately assuming that everyone who disagrees is fundamentally diseased, and suggesting that, hey, we might be happier overall if a few more people were here with me - not least because there are potentially useful solutions that can be found from this place that cannot be seen if you are not in it.
That's what's there to accomplish.
Oh, and the "but apparently we don't" was meant as "I wish we lived in a world where everyone agreed that slavery was fundamentally horrible, and it didn't even need to be said, but clearly that's not true. Ugh." Is that the "but" you're talking about?
Truly the capacity of people to have the patience to dig through trash to get the pearls highly depends on the circumstances. Maybe you missed the avalanche of transphobic bigotry we got a few weeks back.
Now is just not the time.
It's... a fair point. I might be trying to push this a bit too soon.
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It's... a fair point. I might be trying to push this a bit too soon.
I appreciate your willingness to consider that, Sanityfairie.
Basically, my answer to the "nuance" issue is pretty simple: When someone doesn't seem to care if we trust them, I don't trust them. If someone doesn't seem to care about my feelings, I feel pretty negatively towards them.
Recently, someone posted their outrage at that. They thought I was being unfair, tribal, anti-inclusive.
I am being unfair. I am being tribal. I am being anti-inclusive. I am not motivated to be "fair" to someone who may be a transphobe. I am not motivated to expand my trust beyond those I know to be safe, not on a gaming forum and not about issues this important. I am not motivated to include people who seem to not care about my feelings, or worse, seem to resent the idea that "feelings" should matter at all. It is not my effing job to be nice to anyone. I am trying to be nice to people, but I am actively exhausted, and y'all keep posting threads like this, and I am just getting more and more tired.
I should note here that not everyone who disagrees with me has received this treatment. Oppsylum comes to mind--we disagreed about the slavery-in-Golarion issue, but I could tell that they were taking care not to come across badly, and because they showed that people's feelings mattered to them, nobody accused them of defending slavery.
It's that easy. Just... care about people's feelings.
And if that sentence offends you, well, you would probably be happier on Twitter or another social media platform. The messageboards are a community space, and if one neighbor shows no regard for the feelings of others, they will become ostracized.
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Nah. We don't promote racism, transphobia, sexism etc. I don't think anyone will take the time to educate you on something you can clearly educate yourself on.
We will point it out to the moderators, but if you have been around, even 3 months, then this wouldn't need to be pointed out to you as it has been very very apparent that the new rules are needed.
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Will also say, this conversation is exactly why posts that go 'slavery is bad, but....' get removed.
Hope SanityFaerie got a bit more back story as to why they get removed.
Inevitably someone will come in and say they don't believe that the racism or transphobia exists and it puts an emotional burden on our marginalized friends to come in and defend themselves.
Thank you for coming to my ted talk.
In a world with Taylor Swift please do not be Jake Gyllenhaal
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It's times like these that I think of a Stephen Fry quote.
It’s now very common to hear people say, “I’m rather offended by that”, as if that gives them certain rights. It’s no more than a whine. It has no meaning, it has no purpose, it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. “I’m offended by that.” Well, so [expletiving] what?
Bigotry has been a problem on these forums, but even moreso, this attitude has been a problem on these forums.
It's an absolutely awful attitude to take to a messageboard forum.
It works on Twitter or Tumblr, funny enough. I write adult fiction for a living. Sometimes people are offended by what I write. I have colleagues who get harassed pretty badly, because Twitter and Tumblr make dogpiling easy. But, well, nobody has to read our work. So they're offended? So what? Move on. They never have to see me or my colleagues again if they don't want to.
But this is a community. I will run into y'all again, and it's our mutual responsibility to try to make this space pleasant and livable for the both of us so we can coexist pleasantly. That means respecting boundaries. It means considering each other's feelings. It means showing humility, where appropriate.
And if someone's offended by something you post, the priority is not that you still win the argument. The priority is that the argument stays civil. Because this is not a debate hall. So you empathize. You walk back comments that discomforted them, or apologize and clarify what was misunderstood.
We can still disagree. But sometimes it's best to agree to disagree, or to spend a whole post clarifying, "Hey, to be clear, I don't want to be misunderstood. I fully understand that people are getting uncomfortable here and I am not trying to make things worse. That said, I really want the chance to express myself here, because I think I have something genuinely important to share."
And if the idea of valuing being nice over proving yourself right offends you?
Well, so freaking what?
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Actually, if you want to see evidence of these experiences - go find any moderator post by Heather F or Tonya Woldridge; then click on their name, and within their profile, click on the "Posts" tab, and scroll back a few days/weeks. See how many times they say they've removed posts; they'll often describe (in general/polite terms) what they've removed.
Also, notice that in some of those threads, a page of 50 posts may have only a handful of posts remaining after the moderators did that cleanup - because that's how much vitriol and dog-whistle-laden and "oh but I didn't mean to offend I just want to keep repeating this offensive thing until you can convince me it's really offensive" there was to be cleaned up.