Freedom of Idiocy

[Pipstickz]

Quote

Fang, I get what you are trying to say, but its not helping and is actively inflaming these things.

Everyone else: If you have an issue with something here, can you make a new topic or contact judges, or me. All this infighting just gets everyone upset.

Link for when this becomes ancient history and nobody knows what I'm talking about

To be clear, I 100% agree with Chew's statement here. Fang added nothing (or very little) to the discussion in that topic. However:

I'll put all my cards on the table here (at least in one of my hands), so I can hopefully make my point more clear: I was 13 when I started playing this "game", and I'm 22 now. You have all watched me grow into an adult (whether you realized it or not) and not only watched me but sculpted me. So given that, here we go:

As a younger man, I found it much more easy than I do now to engage with my passion for justice in MD. That's what I believe Fang was doing in the topic in question, and I don't think that should be shamed or stopped, at least not from an administrative standpoint such as the one that Chewett represents (whether he likes it or not, I should say), because (to be quite blunt) doing stupid things is how one grows and learns, and if it's somehow seen as "against the rules" to be passionate in the way that Fang was, I think it would be to the detriment of MagicDuel as a whole, based on how much I grew by being allowed to spew my own brand of BS back in the day (and even right now, what you're reading will probably be BS to me in the future). Sure it clutters topic and bothers everybody to read, but that's what the reputation system is for, and it's not like we have a lot going on here right now anyways.

That being said, I'd love to learn your thoughts, and I'm making this a topic rather than a PM because it's ultimately up to you: Do you want a slightly censored and more convenient forum utopia where everybody has positive rep, or an open forum where things get stupid, annoying and messy?

NOTE: I'm not casting blame or anger at Chew. Just want to make that especially clear.

[(Zl-eye-f)-nea]

I agree with you Pip.

Z

[Chewett]

I would agree with pip and am open to discussion about how we want to run our forum.

i have had the pleasure of knowing many md'ers on a personal level alongside playing with them in MD and therefore know a decent number that "grew up" with the site. As you say its important for people to be well supported during a period when they are growing into "themselves" so I agree the mistakes are important.

the freedom of idiocy as you say is therefore an important part of life and therefore our game. The main question is how far do we want it to go. 

The main thing that drives newer players away is the comment that there is a lot infighting. Part of the issue here is we have quite a lot of pretty smart players all who have allegiances and people they don't get on with. There is a fine line between moderating everything and freedom.

I dislike it when I have to do something like I did, but I was slightly happier when I got two forum messages thanking me for doing it. Hopefully, specifically in fangs position, he has learnt a little from this. I'm not going to ban anyone permanently for these kind of scraps but might slap a mod preview on them for a bit.

I want to do something to try and reduce some of the toxic messages but with me being most of the mod team it's hard to deal with these kind of things, especially when we are trying to give people freedom.

opinions on what we can do are welcome.

[Pipstickz]

(Perhaps this is already in effect but...) Could some boards be hidden to users with under x posts, so they appear to new users as they start using the forum more?

[Burns]

http://magicduel.invisionzone.com/forum/321-heated-discussions/

IIRC that subsection is visible only to registered users?

[Change]

It's hard to say. It'll always be messy since it's rare that someone explicitly breaks the rules. Take insults, for example. They're difficult to moderate because minor insults and passive aggressive posts are commonplace in heated debates. Should we remove such insults? If not, when is something insulting enough that it gets removed?

That debate is why it's hard for me as a mod to know what to do when I come across such posts. Having other people report them helps, so I know that someone outside of the mod circle takes issue with a post. But even when a post is reported, the debate is often 'is this bad enough for something to be done about it?'

The two easiest options moderation wise is either be very strict and warn people about every minor insult, or to be very lax and only step in if things get really bad. Of course the easiest option isn't always the best.

What would I want? I honestly don't know. I don't think we should go super strict. But should it be stricter than things are now? Or should it be even less strict?

If we go less strict, the 'infighting' will be more visible. Perhaps that might turn people away. But I honestly don't know of a roleplaying or gaming community that doesn't have its share of infighting. If we hide it all, then that's fine when it comes to the forum, but what about MD itself? Sooner or later people will come across all the grudges and the bitterness but also the friendships and the fun.

Thus, even if moderation on the forums becomes more strict, it'll have less of a point unless there's similar levels of moderation of behaviour in the game itself. And do I want that? I don't think so.

[Tom Pouce]

If you want MD to be a game for only 4 years old players, go with Chewett thinking, an aseptic forum with only pink posting content and words.

If you want MD to be a growup game for people, moderate ONLY if there is grave and evident not tolleratable posting.

Hidding sections is not an honest solution.

[Pipstickz]

2 hours ago, Tom Pouce said:

If you want MD to be a game for only 4 years old players, go with Chewett thinking, an aseptic forum with only pink posting content and words.

If you want MD to be a growup game for people, moderate ONLY if there is grave and evident not tolleratable posting.

Hidding sections is not an honest solution.

I would argue that gradual discovery of more and more information is a key concept in MD, so it may make sense to employ similar things in the forum, but that's just one suggestion, if you don't like it that's fine. My personal views on this matter align more closely to yours, however:

I believe in MD, and I think it should exist forever, even if one day it's empty it'll be the mausoleum for pieces of all of us. I consider myself a stakeholder in MagicDuel and so I try to think about the best thing for the game as a whole, from my perhaps more unique perspective than I like to think*.

And when I start thinking like that, things start to look very different...

*I was in the Advertisers for a while under different leaders, same with Treasure Keepers until I finally gave up and took co-leadership. In the past I've generally tried to apply for odd jobs, even though I've given up and gotten lazy on some, notable ones I remember atm being illusion testing, the large scale PL-spam-edit thing that happened years ago, alignment of TB map dots (which I never finished, I'm sorry </3), and now GATEWAY. To summarize all this: Maybe after all that I know some things most players don't. I'm not sure, though.

[Chewett]

4 hours ago, Tom Pouce said:

If you want MD to be a game for only 4 years old players, go with Chewett thinking, an aseptic forum with only pink posting content and words.

If you want MD to be a growup game for people, moderate ONLY if there is grave and evident not tolleratable posting.

Hidding sections is not an honest solution.

You don't appear to have read the parts of my post where I recommend the second half of your post as you are misrepresenting my views.

[Tom Pouce]

Chewett

I had read, and had understand you where your usual idea of heavyly moderating and warning .

If i misunderstood and you are of my view of:

" If you want MD to be a growup game for people, moderate ONLY if there is grave and evident not tolleratable posting.

Hidding sections is not an honest solution. "  

Then sorry and take my post to support that

 

[Chewett]

4 hours ago, Tom Pouce said:

I had read, and had understand you where your usual idea of heavyly moderating and warning .

Tom you seem a little confused, as I haven't said this at all. Actually in my experience of participating and running forums (a number over the years) MD is one of the more relaxed one We deal out very few mod previews and lock very few posts.

This does mean that sometimes there are a lot more arguments due to the various personalities but thats a choice we have made in giving people freedom.

As for what age category the MD forums should be, I believe Mur's basic idea for the game and forums is a PG-13 type endeavour and that is the basic idea we moderate to in terms of swearing etc. 

[Chewett]

17 hours ago, Burns said:

http://magicduel.invisionzone.com/forum/321-heated-discussions/

IIRC that subsection is visible only to registered users?

Yes

[No one]

Well ... good for me to opening forum and for you Pip for opening the topic.

I too believe in freedom of speech and the right to make mistakes. BUT some behavior must be responded and then attended.

I don't know about your background Pip, but when one child is not capable of attending some classes due to some ... difficulties, it is transferred to another class with different standards or level or profile.

If you don't agree, please try the experiment to explain and "force" some reason into one of those "different".

I have nothing against them, don't get me wrong, but trying to explain to them high level concepts or getting their approval for such stuff is counter productive.

As a counter to this measure (to simply start ignoring them) , we have to be careful and watch the ruling party (in this case Chewett which we still support as most of the times impartial).

Afterwards, these special cases, as they still have the freedom of speech ... will still get their chance but through representatives until they prove they can speak for themselves (in our case : mod-preview).

--------

Spoiler

If anyone wants to say that it is a personal thing with Fang ... then it is not , it has been a long time since I don't see or read his comments. Thus he doesn't bother me anymore.

 

[Pipstickz]

1 hour ago, No one said:

I don't know about your background Pip, but when one child is not capable of attending some classes due to some ... difficulties, it is transferred to another class with different standards or level or profile.

If you don't agree, please try the experiment to explain and "force" some reason into one of those "different"

Here in Canada, there are various such things in the schooling system. On the extreme end, some "special needs" students are paired with an adult who helps them through school. On the more light side, kids were often encouraged to join extracurricular activities (granting different social / physical / mental / creative opportunities) which I saw take students from failing to above average and some struggling students were given a supervised work period rather than one of the 6 "open slots" for spare period or extra classes (it surprised me how many were in this, people I considered at least average) where it's a classroom where many students work on different things and the teacher just tries to engage them and make sure they're doing alright, much less structured than regular classes were, for a focused enough student it was the same as a library work period.

As for transferring students, I never saw anything like that happen. Children were, however, placed in either standard, modified, or advanced classes (normal, easy, hard respectively) probably depending on how their primary schooling went and how they do in grade 9, where none of your classes are worth credits.

As for trying to "force" reason into these people, I think an authority figure like a teacher is there to do exactly that. What's the closest parallel to a teacher in MD? Adeptors! But also players in official-seeming (to a young player) roles. If you can't name any such players, maybe it's time to make an alt and try to see MD through MP3 eyes again.

So yeah, you're (you the average MD citizen, not you No one) free to ignore them or to do as some do and chase them out or force advancement (I think Nadrolski and Fang are both such cases of forced advancement, but I could be wrong) on them, but just realize you could be actively damaging MagicDuel as you do. Teaching/Coaching is a difficult and nuanced job though and not everybody is cut out for it, so there's no shame in some such things, but it's important to be cognizant (sort of the root word to "recognize" for non-English speakers and Americans ) of how your actions affect other players at least when they're young.

Edit2: tl;dr I think there`s more we can do, and I think there`s more we are doing, to help new players, but our structure is weak compared to other games

 

Edit:

1 hour ago, No one said:

Well ... good for me to opening forum and for you Pip for opening the topic

Also I don`t understand this part but that`s fine, it seems unimportant anyways, but thanks for saying I`m good I guess.

Edited February 27, 2017 by Pipstickz

[No one]

Exactly, then you understand what I mean.

The teacher in MD is, like everywhere else, everybody else. You learn from every one. And you find your own niche.

The only problem is that we don't have that "adult person to pair" or at least ... most of them quit after a while. You do know that everything in MD is voluntary, right. And nobody is voluntarily receiving crap for ever, not even in MD, not everywhere. And Chewett and the mods are no exception.

And this thing with pushing the unfit out ... is common human behavior for millennia. Each community trims their unfit. You don't expect MD to be heaven, right ? Not while you detach yourself from certain MDers, right ?

[Fang Archbane]

On 2/27/2017 at 8:00 AM, No one said:

 

  Hide contents

If anyone wants to say that it is a personal thing with Fang ... then it is not , it has been a long time since I don't see or read his comments. Thus he doesn't bother me anymore.

 

I can personally vouch for this. Though No One and I might never get along, we have developed (or at least I know i have have for him) a sort of silent mutual respect.

We don't need to agree to stand each other. No One has Tact, and Class. Something those I don't respect vastly lack.

[Pipstickz]

I don't expect MD to be what you claim is heaven, no. To put it bluntly, we need hardworking dumb folks as much as the lazy intellectuals we seem to be over-saturated with. So, you think that our millennia-old ancestors, who knew a fraction of what we know today, should dictate how we operate today? We as the human species have rapidly evolved, even over the time since MD was first conceived, let alone millennia. I'll assume we all enjoy MD and we all want to see it continue as long as possible, as I usually assume. Under that assumption, I can say with 100% certainty that we have bigger problems now than "trimming the unfit" and you're* wasting your time if you're doing so. Unfortunately most who do such things have other priorities on their minds that take precedence for them.

*General You *salutes* - This is a joke but also an applicable metaphor here. I try to show due respect to the "general you", but unfortunately based on the arguments I've laid forth, I've narrowed down the "general you" to a very specific subset of people, and so my tone turns more blunt. However, I'm not actually trying to stir up drama or point fingers here, I don't want to waste time with that.