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real.geizterfahr: I just wanted to say that there are people who don't want to "study" LGBT (and I know that even THIS isn't inclusive!) vocabulary just to be "allowed" to write a normal post on a gaming forum.
At the very least, the problem of purposeful/strategic/aggressive exclusion/ostracism takes precedence over everyday oversights of fairly inclusive minded people. I do agree that all these considerations seem overwhelming sometimes, and the basic verbal circumnavigation maneuvers we have often lack a certain grace. Then again, well, you weren't exactly "attacked" by dtgreene's, ta-dah, low rated post. Treat it as a mere suggestion. Of which I received about half a dozen without ever feeling offended or feeling scolded into any "political correctness" of sorts. :)

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Brasas: I remember once getting heated up with your colleague for what I saw as the unwilligness to name names in public. I saw and see it as an abdication of responsibility.
From the moderator perspective, naming names is a lose-lose-lose situation. Nothing that results from it is strictly speaking desirable. If the community's torn on the ban reason, you'll have people smashing their verbal heads in in some variant of a TV court the verdict of which has been returned long ago. A recipe for deep trenches. If the community universally disagrees with the moderator's decision, he or she is effectively fucked for doing his or her job. If the community agrees with the moderator's decision, the banned person is forced to watch his repeated unwithspoken public character assassination without the ability to enter the debate.

The tendency of particularly young gamers to hold a grudge for being publicly bullied, shamed and ostracized, to sacrifice hundreds of hours to exact revenge on a community and to drag their online gotten anger violently into real life should have become obvious in the meantime.
Post edited March 01, 2017 by Vainamoinen
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Vainamoinen: the problem of
The problem of our time is that everything suddenly is problematic. You can't say anything without hurting the feelings of anyone. Even talking about other people's feelings is problematic, because I'm sure there are people who can't feel anything anymore and feel hurt when someone talks about feelings -.-

And now a bit more seriouusly:
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Vainamoinen: Then again, well, you weren't exactly "attacked" by dtgreene's, ta-dah, low rated post. Treat it as a mere suggestion. Of which I received about half a dozen without ever feeling offended or feeling scolded into any "political correctness" of sorts. :)
The problem with dt is that I barely see her talking about anything else. This is a gaming forum and all I see her saying is "trans this, gender that, inclusive lalala". To be honest: This is kinda annoying.
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fables22: As for the threads - the more recent one was closed because it has been derailed to the point where I don't think it could ever get back on track, without me having to delete every off-topic comment in there.
So deletion is your only means? You don't have a way to move posts to another (or new) thread for maintaining relevancy? Do you at least have a reasonable supply of microwavable popcorn for watching the show? Or do you just tune in on your lunch breaks away from your real work?

I mean, if all you got is a hammer, then I would imagine it could be a long wait before there's a suitable nail. And it seems like that's what you've been saying, that you expect (or perhaps "prefer"?) your actions will be rarely applied. But is that really from the lack of available options for moderating (presumably software) or is it from your optimism the members will gradually work out their different approaches of courtesy (f.e., accepting differences in expression rather than demanding sameness from each other)?

I guess I'm curious how your commitment meshes with your means (or lack thereof)… Questioning not so much your sincerity as your ability (particularly resources) for following through. (Which is partly why I've been suggesting additional means for each member to curate a personal experience of the forum listings, because I believe such a responsibility originates with the member perusing them.)
Post edited March 01, 2017 by thomq
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real.geizterfahr: The problem with dt is that I barely see her talking about anything else. This is a gaming forum and all I see her saying is "trans this, gender that, inclusive lalala". To be honest: This is kinda annoying.
Have you checked some of the game specific boards? Also, I do occasionally make topics relating to game design on the General forum.

I have a few topics, on both the Ultima subforum and the Elder Scrolls subforum, that have gotten pretty much no replies and have gotten rather lonely as a result.
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fables22: As for the threads - the more recent one was closed because it has been derailed to the point where I don't think it could ever get back on track, without me having to delete every off-topic comment in there.
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thomq: So deletion is your only means? You don't have a way to move posts to another (or new) thread for maintaining relevancy? Do you at least have a reasonable supply of microwavable popcorn for watching the show? Or do you just tune in on your lunch breaks away from your real work?

I mean, if all you got is a hammer, then I would imagine it could be a long wait before there's a suitable nail. And it seems like that's what you've been saying, that you expect (or perhaps "prefer"?) your actions will be rarely applied. But is that really from the lack of available options for moderating (presumably software) or is it from your optimism the members will gradually work out their different approaches of courtesy (f.e., accepting differences in expression rather than demanding sameness from each other)?

I guess I'm curious how your commitment meshes with your means (or lack thereof)… Questioning not so much your sincerity as your ability (particularly resources) for following through. (Which is partly why I've been suggesting additional means for each member to curate a personal experience of the forum listings, because I believe such a responsibility originates with the member perusing them.)
I'm not sure how long you've been around, but it's not widely unknown that the forum code is quite obsolete and, given our means, hard to change under the current circumstances. So that, I think, answers your questions about what I can or cannot do.
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fables22: As for the first thread - as I said previously, I found many comments in there worthy of their author's ban - however, as some of those authors made themselves (conveniently) very difficult to get in touch with, I had no way of warning them and giving them the option to delete/edit their posts.
Is this a temporary solution to users making themselves difficult to get in touch with? Otherwise, it seems like an exploitable method of getting someone's most disliked threads locked.
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Gersen: Once again that's IMHO an oversimplification, the problem is not really in condemning racism, homophobia, whatever... the problem is that, over the years, those words have been so abused and overused that they lost a lot of their meanings.

Nowadays they are thrown around so easily as soon as somebody feel "offended" or even as soon as there is any sort of disagreement, regardless of whenever or not they are actually justified, so it's no surprise that some start to consider those words as being meaningless buzzwords, or even "name calling".

I don't think that many peoples are "worried" that hate speech, abuse, outright racism, etc... end up being forbidden / restricted on this forum, no, but some peoples are worried that some others starts calling racist, sexists, etc... anything they don't like and try to abuse of the forum moderation rules (if those are too "blurry") to remove anything that doesn't perfectly align with their own personal agenda.

And no, I disagree that they "have" to alienate peoples, if there are clear "neutral" rules, that the moderators judge posters / posts fairly based on those rules and not on based on their own belief. I think that it's possible to have peoples of various political alignment frequent the forum have have discussions without anybody (apart from the most extremist on both side) needing to feel "alienated".

It won't be easy and there will be peoples warned/banned, thread closed, etc... but it's possible.
That's one subjective impression. With a lot of implicit premises, of the very commonplace "i am reasonable therefore those who are far from me are extremists" sort. The kind of premise which justify the just as widespread "racism is what others believe in, therefore what I believe in is devoid of racism".

There is a whole spectrum of standards, about racist mindsets, depending on various subcultures that are all represented on a gaming forum. It goes from the relatively rare, proudly admitted racism, to the continuum of much more common denied racisms ("i am not racist, as we know it is a bad word, BUT..."), to naive antiracism that are very ambiguous and patronizing ("noble savage" phantasies, clumsy well-meaning feel-good movies, etc), to all the ambiguities of academic research (explicitely antiracist but still permeated by subtle ethnocentrisms), etc... These are all very different degrees. But you could still split it all into three broad areas : embraced racism, denied racism, aware and reluctant racism. And these levels come with very different levels of self-awareness and attitudes.

The further you go to the academic world, that is, into the most rigorous and self-reflexive domains of research, the less is "forgiven", because the less can be afforded. In anthropology, the most specialized field of knowledge about cultural differences, there is a strong awareness of the unavoidable ethnocentrism (and the pitfalls of culturalism and essentialisms) that can very subtly distort researches on the unfamiliar. Dealing with this awareness is part of the methodology. Nobody considers themselves exempt of these biases, but what matters is the effort to overcome them and get as accurate as possible. So, keeping an eye for them, and pointing at them wherever they manifest themselves, no matter how subtly, is central to the methodology. Just like surgeons take care about disinfection, or astronomers about lens surfaces, programmers about sloppy syntax, etc.

Politics, infotainment and common sense discourses, have a very different approach to it, as racist reflexes are very fruitfully instrumentalized (and re-branded) by rhetoricians, to varying degrees. This is horrifying by academic standards. But as society evolves, it incorporates more and more of the popularized scientific knowledge. And society does evolve, as we've mostly left behind a series of outdated conceptions of the humans (such as the racialism that was justifying slavery, the sexism that was excluding women from politics, etc). It doesn't evolve uniformly. Each progression has met cultural resistance. Each traditional worldview has fought against its marginalization. And, at every moment of history, society has been stretched from the reactionary pole ("let's go back to former beliefs"), to conservative norms ("we have reached perfection, because we are us"), to the most progressive poles ("let's not be too self-satisfied, look at all there is to yet ameliorate"). In terms of societal beliefs, you can see both this evolution and the differencial of attitudes about it in mainstream fictions : a smaller part of the public manages to enjoy unironically the (now) blatant sexism, racism, and homophobia of older movies. A small part of the public is sarcastic about the (still) latent sexism, racism and homophobia of our current productions.

So, claiming that there is an objective "middle ground", threatened by the respective "extremism" of reactionaries and progressives, is itself a very situated conservative point of view. Reactionaries will complain about the "politically correct" oppression of racism, and progressists will grow impatient about the mainstream conservatives still being naively unaware of our current shortcomings and ethnocentered assumptions (and the way re uncritically reproduce them in public discourses). This has little to do with any objective notion of "extremism" as opposed to some noble (temporary yet imagined intemporally valuable) "middle ground".

GOG's conundrum, right now, is to deal with this spectrum of standards. This means, defining a line of acceptability somewhere in that continuum. There is enough of a social consensus about the reactionary fringe's overt fascism (Infinity9 regretting the end of segregation and praising Pinochet, Kingsbradley campaigning more or less overtly for the neonazi Golden Dawn, etc), so this will certainly go. Then, there is the ordinary spectrum of "I am not racist but", which is more complex to deal with, because it is quite diverse. Not only diverse in terms of intensity (going from parliamentary far-right militantism to ordinary ignorant common sense) but also diverse in their objects (for those who really don't care about introspective discipline, racism is very visible when it's about human groups very remote from their own everyday concerns, but suddenly very justified -and nonracist- when about human groups deshumanized by their own daily newspaper). The acceptability threshold will be awkward, especially when the speaker adheres to this commonplace denial of ethnocentric biases (which is the surest way to never have them addressed) yet strongly agrees that they would be A Bad Thing (hence the outrage of being accused of it). In contrast, the most progressive people usually welcome a heads-up when being signified of such a bias having crept up. Because they already know that it is a constant issue, which gravity depends merely on the intensity and the good will or bad will behind it.

So, no "neutral" ground there. The only actual "neutral" position would be, objectively, way beyond what you'd consider as extremism : it's the cognitively unreachable state of freedom from ignorance and ethnocentrism, and not even the most trained, seasoned, veteran anthropologist could claim it. And we would probably all fail to match it, because we're humans, with all the cognitive limitations it implies. What you'd call "neutral" would be simply a temporary social consensus, based around some statistical average of awareness in your own society, or, more likely, your own speciific subculture within it.

And what will certainly happen instead, is a norm set around Fable22's (or GOG staff's) own subculture, with some margin of tolerance. It won't be academic standards, it won't be neonazi standards either. We do all cross our fingers for these norms to be within acceptable reach of our own respective ones, but the way we all imagine ourselves as The Neutral Point of Reference is utterly naive. Let's simply hope for a good comprimise between objective decency and realistic (international early 21st century) expectations.
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Gersen: Once again that's IMHO an oversimplification, the problem is not really in condemning racism, homophobia, whatever... the problem is that, over the years, those words have been so abused and overused that they lost a lot of their meanings.

Nowadays they are thrown around so easily as soon as somebody feel "offended" or even as soon as there is any sort of disagreement, regardless of whenever or not they are actually justified, so it's no surprise that some start to consider those words as being meaningless buzzwords, or even "name calling".

I don't think that many peoples are "worried" that hate speech, abuse, outright racism, etc... end up being forbidden / restricted on this forum, no, but some peoples are worried that some others starts calling racist, sexists, etc... anything they don't like and try to abuse of the forum moderation rules (if those are too "blurry") to remove anything that doesn't perfectly align with their own personal agenda.

And no, I disagree that they "have" to alienate peoples, if there are clear "neutral" rules, that the moderators judge posters / posts fairly based on those rules and not on based on their own belief. I think that it's possible to have peoples of various political alignment frequent the forum have have discussions without anybody (apart from the most extremist on both side) needing to feel "alienated".

It won't be easy and there will be peoples warned/banned, thread closed, etc... but it's possible.
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Telika: That's one subjective impression...
As are *everyone's*, Telika.

Without neutrality, there can be no objectivity.
Post edited March 01, 2017 by richlind33
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fables22: As for the first thread - as I said previously, I found many comments in there worthy of their author's ban - however, as some of those authors made themselves (conveniently) very difficult to get in touch with, I had no way of warning them and giving them the option to delete/edit their posts.
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227: Is this a temporary solution to users making themselves difficult to get in touch with? Otherwise, it seems like an exploitable method of getting someone's most disliked threads locked.
My response would be: Fables seems reasonably intelligent. And even if she weren't, then we users are going to notice if threads with certain similar attributes (topic, who is the OP, etc.) suddenly start getting hammered until locked.

People will notice, figure out the source, and then user-directed banhammers can be applied until the problem goes away.
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real.geizterfahr: The problem with dt is that I barely see her talking about anything else. This is a gaming forum and all I see her saying is "trans this, gender that, inclusive lalala". To be honest: This is kinda annoying.
Yes, she brings it up often. But, honestly, often it's the right context, and she's getting downvoted for it anyway.

A thread about least favorite words? Nope, she was evidently not allowed to talk about prejudice there. People were talking about how they hate labels like "Islamophobe", got no downvotes, but dtgreene voices similar concerns about actually gaming-specific terminology and ... wam, bam. An express thread about feminist issues in which dtgreene dares to talk about feminism (and nope, she didn't start the thread)? Yup, you guessed it, downvotes.

And, yes, of course dtgreene hasn't got as flat a personality that she's "barely talking about anything else". E.g. one of her visible other areas of interest/ pet peeves is "grinding"/"leveling up" as an old school game mechanic. Every thread that talks about that, she's in, with a wealth of experience and suggestions. And of course that's just the beginning. You just need to open your eyes.

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real.geizterfahr: The problem of our time is that everything suddenly is problematic. You can't say anything without hurting the feelings of anyone. Even talking about other people's feelings is problematic, because I'm sure there are people who can't feel anything anymore and feel hurt when someone talks about feelings -.-
I absolutely understand how that sentiment comes into existence. But, well, words tend to have been problematic long before they were labeled as such, and the hurt feelings have been there long before people started speaking up about it.

Totally with you on the last part. If you read my posts in this thread, you may catch me describing something fairly similiar. It seems like issues that do threaten real lives are not to be debated "emotionally" i.e. with feelings of compassion. Seems to be wrong and shit.
Post edited March 01, 2017 by Vainamoinen
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Telika: That's one subjective impression. With a lot of implicit premises, of the very commonplace "i am reasonable therefore those who are far from me are extremists" sort. The kind of premise which justify the just as widespread "racism is what others believe in, therefore what I believe in is devoid of racism".
Nope, it's just based on the apparently not so commonplace idea that you can have a civilized discussion with somebody, even if you disagree with him/her, even if you consider what he/she said to be "reprehensible", without necessarily needing to call him or her a racist, misogynist, feminazi, homophobic, SJW, etc... at the first sign of the slightest disagreement; and that often when it's done it's just a cheap way to try to kill any possible further discussion.

And even if "absolute neutrality" is not really possible I still consider that a good moderation should try to remain as neutral / objective as possible and that the more it is the less likely it is to alienated peoples.
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Vainamoinen: ...
I'm not talking about the few threads where she's clearly on-topic. You can't complain that a thread called "This thread sucks" sucks (I stay out of political threads). I'm talking about threads like this one, where she's popping out of nowhere to lecture people about how they should speak to be inclusive.

There's really no need to discuss this with me. Ask anyone here: dtgreene's doing this all the time for years already. Don't get me wrong, I don't want her to stop... She's old enough and should know what she's doing. I just told her why I won't change how I write.
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Post edited March 01, 2017 by real.geizterfahr
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fables22: the more recent one was closed because it has been derailed to the point where I don't think it could ever get back on track
If you're referring to 'we are under attack', https://www.gog.com/forum/general/we_are_under_attack?staff=yes shows you've been participating in the topic drift for the past two days. I'm not saying that should rule out thread closure - I moderate a little on another site, and have certainly done that when a thread degenerated into arguing with me - or that it's trivially avoided, but it's worth being aware of how it can look to a third party.
I'm starting to be okay with the idea that someone can only post on the forums if they've made at least one purchase, or some other way to stymie alt accounts.
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tfishell: I'm starting to be okay with the idea that someone can only post on the forums if they've made at least one purchase, or some other way to stymie alt accounts.
ditto
But is there a way to discern purchase from redeeming a code?

Right now Wakkalo is going after me with his stupid thread and while he has never bought anything here, he probably owns hundreds of games here.