General Discussion > Moderation Discussion

Re: Khanid Kingdom and Blooders and controversy, oh my!

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Silver Night:

--- Quote from: Samira Kernher on 05 Nov 2018, 01:06 ---It's not necessary. Regardless of how polite or not a comment is, if the points it makes are valid, then it is a valid contribution to the discussion. Debates can and will get heated, but that's not a sign of a bad debate. Only when a post contributes nothing but personal attacks should it be removed.

--- End quote ---

Except this is explicitly not how the rules here are set up. Which is the reason I quoted the FAQ, twice. That's the exact point it makes - that the way we communicate can have an effect on what we communicate and further an effect on other people and how welcome they feel in participating. For example, Miz's post above continues to be dismissive of the views of other people and claim they are in bad faith rather than consider other viewpoints. That's not useful and isn't the sort of thing that contributes to useful dialog.

On the flip side, if indeed the words you use don't matter, then it doesn't matter what words you use as long as they convey the information, and there should be no reason not to use polite words.

If Backstage dies because people are upset they can't be rude to each other, then it dies. vov

The site is provided as a service to the community at a financial cost to me. If people end up not using it, then that means it's a service they don't need - and that's okay. Contrary to what Miz posits above, I don't actually find the power to move people's posts from one forum section to another forum section all that intoxicating. My goal with keeping it going has always been to do what I can to help the RP community be more active (which benefits me personally in that I like there to be an RP community to interact with). Maybe it isn't the best way to do that, but it's the way I've decided to do it.

As I already said, other people are welcome to decide on ways of their own they would like to help the community. That doesn't mean deciding that Backstage should be something different from what it has always very explicitly been.

Samira Kernher:

--- Quote from: Silver Night on 06 Nov 2018, 00:34 ---Except this is explicitly not how the rules here are set up. Which is the reason I quoted the FAQ, twice. That's the exact point it makes - that the way we communicate can have an effect on what we communicate and further an effect on other people and how welcome they feel in participating.
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I did not see anything that broke a forum rule, myself. The only "rule" that was broken was the 'You're doing it wrong' guideline. A guideline which, frankly, leads to some really disingenuous stuff. I generally agree with 'try to post with civility', absolutely, but criticism is not a bad thing, and it isn't always served to waffle around about it. By the standards of the 'You're doing it wrong' guideline, someone could be RPing a bridge captain in space and treating their capsule as an escape pod and we wouldn't be able to call it out here because of YDIW (or at least wouldn't be able to call it out without twisting and contorting your post to make it a 'suggestion' instead of simply saying 'sorry but you're a capsuleer by lore').

And speaking about making people feel welcome: When a person is trying to contribute meaningfully to a discussion, overzealous moderation doesn't make them feel welcome. It makes them feel like their voice isn't allowed to be heard.


--- Quote ---For example, Miz's post above continues to be dismissive of the views of other people and claim they are in bad faith rather than consider other viewpoints. That's not useful and isn't the sort of thing that contributes to useful dialog.
--- End quote ---

Why not? It's a legitimate point. There was a lot of kneejerking in that thread that helped contribute to a heated debate, to the point that one of the posters apologized for it. By a strict interpretation of the rules (in terms of what counts as an 'attack') there's a lot more posts in that thread that I'd moderate than just the ones you did. So do you eviscerate the whole thread in modding it, or do you let people come to a resolution on their own terms (which, I think, ultimately they did)?

People need to be trusted to handle things on their own. They need to be allowed to be challenged, even if that is sometimes a little beyond what is civil, without requiring someone to hold their hands. That isn't to say that negative behavior should be encouraged, absolutely not, but shielding people from it doesn't help them to grow and it doesn't help the discussion move forward.

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