Serious Discussion: Does It Belong Here?

[Nuclear Lunchbox]

That's what I meant-- I assumed that you'd read through the old logs and whatnot.

[Xard]

Nah, it was already like that when I first started out too. The film subculture was in it's heyday the year or so before I arrived. You have to go way back to find the days when there was no OT section.

That would mean going back into Eva Monkey years aka way back. Having said that perhaps we should just nuke OT from the orbit altogether. People who aren't contributing to Eva discussion would stop sticking around and many captive posters would find it easier to move on. :)

[Oz]

There seems to be a divide between posters who prefer EGF as a place to hang out and have fun and posters who seek more serious discussion. Although I like my film discussion serious (because that's how I have fun with cinema) I fall into the first category. It is nigh impossible to combine the two purposes because one spoils the other. A leisurely community makes it impossible to have in-depth discussion and a serious community makes it harder for the members to have simple fun without being sidetracked by an argument. Originally I looked for serious discussion, but over the years my mind has changed. I don't really know what are the advantages of discussing touchy subjects anymore.

[Monk Ed]

The old standard that only recently got out of hand is that political discussion was generally discouraged but allowed to flare up here and there as individual topics on rare occasion whenever they naturally arose. At least, that was my experience of it. And I was quite happy with things that way. Politics was not foreign to the forum but it was still discouraged and kept to a minimum, and the related temper issues with it.

[Chuckman]

There seems to be a divide between posters who prefer EGF as a place to hang out and have fun and posters who seek more serious discussion. Although I like my film discussion serious (because that's how I have fun with cinema) I fall into the first category. It is nigh impossible to combine the two purposes because one spoils the other. A leisurely community makes it impossible to have in-depth discussion and a serious community makes it harder for the members to have simple fun without being sidetracked by an argument. Originally I looked for serious discussion, but over the years my mind has changed. I don't really know what are the advantages of discussing touchy subjects anymore.

I don't think this is true at all. You seem perfectly capable of avoiding discussions that do not interest you. You said so yourself.

Nobody is talking about making the place 100% serious. I, if anything, think it's too serious more often than not.

Seriousness leads to arguments? Why? I've seen plenty of arguments flare up here over pretty dumb shit.

Assholes will be assholes regardless of what they're talking about.

Nor is this a monolithic thing. Banning touchy subjects is clearly on the table, but no one is talking about mandatory participation in abortion threads.

[Monk Ed]

One option I've floated is to keep serious discussion in clearly-labeled topics, marked with a tag like "[Politics]" or "[Serious Discussion]" so the wary can avoid them very easily and filter them out mentally more easily. Functionally it's akin to having a Serious Discussion subforum minus the encouragement of growth such would entail -- especially if we keep a hard or soft limit on how many political/serious topics are allowed to exist at a time (given the extra moderation strain they entail).

[Oz]

@Chuckman: You are implying that it is possible to avoid the big arguments, but as I posted earlier in the topics, I eventually end up reading about them and being involved in them. That is because the discussions tend to expand to other threads and the resulting administrative actions can not be avoided. The arguments rarely remain isolated in the threads that started them. Besides, the arguments usually create tension between the members involved and that tension usually explodes in other discussions, too. It affects the mood in general.

[Nuclear Lunchbox]

Functionally it's akin to having a Serious Discussion subforum minus the encouragement of growth such would entail -- especially if we keep a hard or soft limit on how many political/serious topics are allowed to exist at a time (given the extra moderation strain they entail).

However, that idea doesn't address how moderation plans to deal with any ensuing thread disruption. I see people arguing that the mods are too ban-happy, but the opposite seems to be true.

[Chuckman]

@Chuckman: You are implying that it is possible to avoid the big arguments, but as I posted earlier in the topics, I eventually end up reading about them and being involved in them. That is because the discussions tend to expand to other threads and the resulting administrative actions can not be avoided. The arguments rarely remain isolated in the threads that started them. Besides, the arguments usually create tension between the members involved and that tension usually explodes in other discussions, too. It affects the mood in general.

I'm not really seeing this. Things felt a bit tense when I came back from my hiatus but the members that were tense with each other left.

I would put discussions that spark my interest to read and participate over efficient mood policing.

[Xard]

Eliminating OT would still be easiest and most clearcut route. :P

The splits make sense sometimes but other times it might be better to say hey: shut up about X or start a thread about it or just shut up about it period.

I agree we're far too eager to spawn new topics through splits, especially on serious subjects. Almost every single cancer cell excuse of a threat has started as tangent split from some other topic. Brutally graveyarding stuff more often might be preferrable.

I guess now that we have this topic here in public it's easier to understand why I graveyarded the mysticism tangent. At that point discussion behind the scenes about serious topic ban was getting particularly heated and since it might've been implemented in near future I thought less potentially-locked-without-warning topics we had on OT the better - it was also prudential move because while discussion had been civil so far there already was *huge* number of potential landmines (did you really have to mention Randi by name...) and having seen dozen of magick/Def's weird bullshit/religion/whatever topics play out in predictable way over the years I ripped that flower off roots and all instead of waiting its inevitable mutation into troglodyte rose.

Also, the existing rules cover most of the problems anyway. Example: the so-called vegas rule and Gamer Gate.

#GG ban is actually symptomatic example of our policy being somewhat incoherent at the moment. #GG was banned by fiat almost immeaditly after its eruption by some admin before I (or I guess many others) had slightest idea what it was - and that was reflected in our initial unfortunate word filter for it, issue that is still open btw. Now while banning obvious internet shitstorm subject like #GG is sane and understandable politic it is no worse at all than any number of other hot button topics we tolerate at the moment. Global Warming, Same-Sex Marriage, Obamacare, Shit Femininists Say, ISIS, economics etc. are in no obvious way any better. Singling out #GG is just plain capricious and rationally untenable if you ask me. So either lift or at the very least weaken the #GG ban or come down on this shit in general. I hate inconsistency.

I'll be blunt: Personally I find the red text posts, etc. kind of silly and childish. Not in the sense that the mods are childish, but that they are a childish thing. If the users aren't reading every post in a thread and missing a mod's request that they stop their behavior, then screw them- and they'll probably ignore red text anyway.

Speaking from experience as average user and as mod I can't really agree with this as far as their usefulness go. As long as I've been forum member mod "stop guys" larks and the like ended up accidentally or even willfully ignored quite easily. The evil avatarless modpost mode though? It's extremely rare it isn't effective enough.

I find it very odd to call the environment around here 'ban happy:' there is a public record of all bans, and the average is something like two bans every two to three months.

Well, I guess Ursus and I are influenced by the fact how much we talk about bans and stuff backstage... Not all of them get implemented but our prodding toolkit isn't very variable. We move fairly swiftly to temp-bans even when only fault is continuous "shitposting". Having been member of one finnish literature forum in the past where bans were last of the last tools to use or part of Star Wars forum that used clear three marks and out system our banhammering temp bans around W.T Snacks style is at the same time way stricter and more lenient than most other forums I've been on.

Besides, our current ban policies rustle people's jimmies enough as is. I don't want to be the boot stamping on face of humanity forever, even if the face belongs to a snot nosed imbecile.

One option I've floated is to keep serious discussion in clearly-labeled topics, marked with a tag like "[Politics]" or "[Serious Discussion]" so the wary can avoid them very easily and filter them out mentally more easily. Functionally it's akin to having a Serious Discussion subforum minus the encouragement of growth such would entail -- especially if we keep a hard or soft limit on how many political/serious topics are allowed to exist at a time (given the extra moderation strain they entail).

Frankly if you can't figure out whether or not the topic is one you want to get involved in without such tag there's problem with you. We used to have such tags for anime/films/vidya threads and still have for [Literature] and [Music] - but I don't see any practical benefit from just adding such tag before thread title. People should be able to figure out that topic "Fiscal Warming Abortion" might be some sort of political thing.

edit: that's general "you", I don't mean Monk Ed with that. I don't doubt Monk's ability to discern between "serious business" topics and others as is.

[Nuclear Lunchbox]

I'm sitting here wondering where all the complaints of EGF being a hugbox went. Seems like we've fluctuated from "oh noes everything is being banned" to "oh noes people want to allow serious discussion".

[Xard]

Good conversations. I'm very big on good conversations.

Closest to fun, entertaining conversation on "serious subject" we've got here was towards the end of Gender Text Field but plug was pulled just when it was getting genuinely interesting.

Apart from that I can't really think of any good semi-serious convos as of late that was amusing.

I'm sitting here wondering where all the complaints of EGF being a hugbox went.

Well...


That and if we're going to really turn this place into a bigass hugbox we might as well go and do it with a bang, y'know. Banning topics that might cause negative feeling-thingies in people more likely than your average anime thread is pretty sure way to achieve that and bury that argument once and for all.

[Chuckman]

I agree we're far too eager to spawn new topics through splits, especially on serious subjects. Almost every single cancer cell excuse of a threat has started as tangent split from some other topic. Brutally graveyarding stuff more often might be preferrable.

I think the "graveyard forum" thing is kinda strange and silly but I don't care enough to talk about it.

having seen dozen of magick/Def's weird bullshit/religion/whatever topics play out in predictable way over the years I ripped that flower off roots and all instead of waiting its inevitable mutation into troglodyte rose.

But you have not seen Chuckman. Nothing like Chuckman has come among you before. Nothing like Chuckman will come among you again.

Singling out #GG is just plain capricious and rationally untenable if you ask me. So either lift or at the very least weaken the #GG ban or come down on this shit in general. I hate inconsistency.

Consistency is meaningless. Handling things on a case by case basis is fine. Flexibility is good. You don't need a blanket justification to ban #GG. Ban it because it's lame and dumb and a magnet for outside drama to find the forum. Look at what happened when the pic thread title was a fappening joke.

Doing things for a reason is good. Doing things because rules say so is bad.

You people with your rules and systems and overthinking. Everybody takes all this shit wayyyy too seriously.

[Nuclear Lunchbox]

That and if we're going to really turn this place into a bigass hugbox we might as well go and do it with a bang, y'know. Banning topics that might cause negative feeling-thingies in people more likely than your average anime thread is pretty sure way to achieve that and bury that argument once and for all.

Considering that Evangelion is anti-hugbox in its nature, that seems like a great way to kill discussion about Evangelion as well. There's plenty of serious topics to discuss within Eva itself that can incense passions-- unless we're just talking about not hurting feelings in OT section, in which case those arguments will likely be fought in Eva discussion forums.

My ire at the "boo hoo Evageeks is hugbox" people (or person, as you've pointed out) is that Evageeks isn't a hugbox. I have no desire to see it become one, but I'm also not claiming that it's already here. GG discussion was halted because people couldn't talk about it in a manner befitting a serious conversation. People get into arguments about other things as well, sure-- but the problem seems to lie in incivility and disruptiveness, not the topic itself. I'd be all for reviving discussion of GG if people wouldn't start throwing out insults at one another with such frequency that it starts a new wordfilter. Abortion debate lasted a little longer because its participants did. GG died because its participants started flinging shit so fast and thick that response just couldn't keep up.

It also partially comes down to what moderation policy is, I'm guessing. Evageeks doesn't have 24/7 mod or admin support, leaving ample time for discussions to grow out of hand before somebody comes back and administers a thread lock. Does Evageeks want that style of moderating? I don't know. But, without somebody to keep an eye on things, it always leaves a chance for disruptive members to break out the beating sticks and start beating the discussion to the point where it's not going anywhere useful anymore.

Then we get back to banning serious discussion full stop, which I'm heartily against. Evangelion, as I stated, is loaded with heavy images and themes that result in intensely thought-provoking discussions and debates. It's part of what makes Evageeks Evageeks. Much fewer incidents of shit slinging result in the Evangelion topics, but that brings me to my point of this paragraph: it still happens. There's always going to be somebody that doesn't think before they post and bring out the personal attacks or slurs or just general unproductiveness. Killing serious discussion topics in OT amounts to killing them elsewhere, and then much of the meaningful discussion about Evangelion has to get thrown in the trash or flushed down the toilet simply because the conversations are not being maintained.

Banning discussion doesn't seem to be the right path. More efficient regulation does.

[Rosenakahara]

We've been considering a blanket ban on political and similar discussion in Completely and Utterly Off-Topic, be it just a moratorium for a number of months or something more permanent. Thoughts?

Yeah...........no, there has been some shit flinging but there has also been some great discussion that i would rather not see banned.

[Mr. Tines]

Another thread that has exploded while I was sleeping. At least this one doesn't need the action that such things usually do.

So, catching up on points raised.

So that obnoxious parading of half-baked (and occasional fully-baked) politico-philosophical views of people on an anime forum stops being tolerated exception to the general forum ambience and becomes the new normal? Yeahhhh no, it doesn't sound very attractive to me.

This is the primary motivation here. We have the sorry example other forums which ended up being consumed by their own "srs bzns" subforum.

This, more than anything, would go a long way to easing a lot of the controversy we see in those threads.

Just so long as it doesn't end up causing more controversy, if it looks like the staff have all become fascist bastards -- the hair-trigger objectively defined sanctions in the Q spoiler policy caused a bad enough atmosphere all around; more subjective ones could add fuel to fires.

We don't actually have ability to make thread-specific bans on the current forum software (I'm not sure if subforum specific bans would work after some tweaking, I'm not techie)

The hack for rebuild specific bans is not scalable -- it needs a list of "everyone except the banned" to be maintained.

#GG ban is actually symptomatic example of our policy being somewhat incoherent at the moment. #GG was banned by fiat almost immeaditly after its eruption by some admin before I (or I guess many others) had slightest idea what it was

It was I -- following the initial thread in the video games sub-forum turning rancid, the damn thing was leaking everywhere on the internet -- from tech blogs to political ones, and all places in-between. So I unilaterally declared a quarantine to have somewhere free from it.

[Nuclear Lunchbox]

Just so long as it doesn't end up causing more controversy, if it looks like the staff have all become fascist bastards -- the hair-trigger objectively defined sanctions in the Q spoiler policy caused a bad enough atmosphere all around; more subjective ones could add fuel to fires.

Seemed to me more like people being unable to follow the rules and getting smacked for it.

[pwhodges]

I have long been a proponent of the idea of a separate serious discussion forum. Like some of those who argue against it, my view is based on experience - but my experience is positive. I won't repeat my views on the matter in full, but pick out some points from the discussion above in an omnislashing sort of manner:

If these topics break out into arguments and bad behavior all the time it's indicative of a problem with people involved, not these topics. Plenty of people here can have rational discussions over deep disagreements and even have a pretty heated back and forth and remain friends.

But to see the staff not only failing to enforce standards of civility, but appeasing such behavior and imposing a ban on everyone to avoid trouble... No, that is just too much.

Install a fourth subforum in the off-topic section for all political/hot-button topics to be created in. (Any topics belonging here created in other sections can be moved.) Within this fourth subforum (titled "Serious Discussion" or something along those lines), impose harsh policies on the guidelines for discussion. Rulebreaking and incivility is targeted with a subforum-exclusive ban [...]

Typically we give out one serious warning and second offence lands a ban. Of course warnings for minor stuff can accumulate for longer period of time but really, we're anything but lax with using hammer. Going clearly further than now would just result in playing whack-a-mole on even minor offences.

From my experience it comes over as lax; the difference lies in the extent to which poor behaviour is seen as a minor offence.

we do tend to dish out a lot of temp bans but that's better than just perma-banning people for accumulated infractions. We don't really give out that many perma-bans at all really

So people come to see discipline as a mere inconvenience rather than something with teeth.

Evageeks used to be a place just for Eva, and grew into many other things than what was intended to be discussed.

That's what makes it a community. Without that, it could be seen as devolving back to being an inconvenient kind of wiki.

One option I've floated is to keep serious discussion in clearly-labeled topics, marked with a tag like "[Politics]" or "[Serious Discussion]" so the wary can avoid them very easily and filter them out mentally more easily.

Nah. Don't see that working; plus it misses the [s]key[/s] handy thing of being able to block troublesome individuals from that area. BUT THEN:

The hack for rebuild specific bans is not scalable -- it needs a list of "everyone except the banned" to be maintained.

Are you saying that the forum software has no facility for negative permissions? Really? Bummer! Still, that's not a complete killer for the idea (it's a facility I've actually used very rarely, on most occasions by the request of the person concerned!).

[Rosenakahara]

So people come to see discipline as a mere inconvenience rather than something with teeth.

That's what makes it a community. Without that, it could be seen as devolving back to being an inconvenient kind of wiki.

These things in particular are quoted for truth.
I enjoy the way EGF is now, sure it could be improved and that is why we are discussing this but right now this places feels like a very active community, much more interesting than almost any other forum i have been too, cutting back discussions because there might be shit-flinging can not help in any way imo.

[Sorrow]

I don't see the issue of the "poisonous" discussions being ignored, myself. More often than not, I don't much care for the chit-chat posts, but I wouldn't call to an end of them. If the topic itself doesn't interest me, then I'll read the first and last post and then move on to something else. I'm not sure why other people can't do that with serious discussions? But, other people aren't me - awful, I know. There isn't much of a point for it bleeding out all over the place though, because people can grow a dislike for each other without serious topics being discussed. Some people get upset over others "shipping" Rei and Shinji, on grounds of incest etcetera.

I see no reason why there can't be a discussion because someone may be offended. Most people are offended over something, even other people's hairstyles[s]---[/s]as I often am[s]---[/s]but it's not an excuse to illegalise it. It's not people expressing their opinion that seems to be the problem, it's people saying: "this offends me so I'll let you know how much", and then: "you letting me know how much is utterly offensive". Instead of people focusing on why it is or isn't seen as offensive, they simply descend into name calling - because they're offended.

It's pointless in the long run, because it amounts to nothing. No one has been swayed either way, and everyone walks out exactly as they walked in. But, perhaps that is because it always gets shut down or locked by the referees on the grounds "someone has, or is likely to be, offended"? Sometimes though, it's just a good exercise to debate with people who are willing to debate. If possible I'd like to see ways of the discussion continuing with people who become too attached getting locked out by becoming either a victim, a victim/champion for (hypothetical) others, or a victimizer.

I don't think you can restrict some of the conversations and not others. You have to choose whether it's going to be entirely Evangelion discussions, or not. I wonder how many people would have hung around so long if the discussion was entirely Evangelion related?