28 minutes ago, krb said:

I understand the title of the thread wasn't the most flattering to one particular politician

I'd say this illustrates the biggest issue really with discussing Trump: we can't really seem to agree on the most basic things leading to toxicity. I didn't think I was being particularly negative about Trump in my post title: I simply asked how long can a President that has been riven in scandals last. But it seems to some that's an automatic indicator for *this will be terrible stuff about Trump inside*. I acknowledge that perspectives differ, and that this is very difficult to get past.

Ok, granted, I'm not even remotely in favor of Trump, we all know that. But this highlights the difficulty of discussing Trump related topics.

I think @Gnollrunner misunderstands non productive posting in an online discussion/bad faith posting/trolling. Look at the user in question's posts right now. How are they contributing to the discussion at hand? Namely, has this user contributed much about how politics should be discussed on GDNet?

In regards to the last thread, the user in question pretty much admitted to posting to provoke negative reactions. That's the definition of trolling right there, no matter what point you are trying to make. And in this case, the user's only point was that the 'other side' is just angry. This isn't productive for the discussion in the thread. 

If we decide that it's arbitrary to decide what's trolling or not, most things are not going to be trolling. 

22 minutes ago, mikeman said:

The same can happen in technical discussions just fine.

1) We have a thread about singletons.(note : random example!)
2) Person A comes and claims "singletons are great"

3) Person B posts links about all the problems singletons can cause.
4) Person A responds with "You actually took the time to find links just to prove me wrong? You probably don't have much of a life!"

Would you say that claiming that person A argues in bad faith is "arbitrary" and there's just no way to distinguish between them? Had he received a warning, or a downvote, would that be because the moderator punished him for his positive opinion on singletons?

Granted, of course, it's harder in political "open-ended" threads.

 

I'd say that example is a little extreme since it's pretty clear cut, but yea, it's tougher to find less clear cut examples in technical forums. Another example would be as follows:

What's the better platform to dev for, Xbox One, or PS4?

Person A: I think the PS4 is better because of x, y, z and q. The Xbox One is bad because of x, y and z.

Person B: The Xbox One is amazing. 

Person A: Why do you think that?

Person B: Lol your position is built on nonsense, I'm not gonna respond, I just want to make you angry to show that all people who think PS4 is better are just secretly angry inside.

I know this example is a bit silly, but that is an example of pretty non productive behavior with regards to the topic and essentially what happened in the last thread.

 

EDIT: For the record, I don't really care which route we take going forward, but if we do decide to ban politics, we should at least do so for the right reasons and not because we believe that the mods are arbitrarily deciding what's trolling and what isn't.

18 minutes ago, mikeman said:

The same can happen in technical discussions just fine.

1) We have a thread about singletons.(note : random example!)
2) Person A comes and claims "singletons are great"

3) Person B posts links about all the problems singletons can cause.
4) Person A responds with "You actually took the time to find links just to prove me wrong? You probably don't have much of a life!"

Would you say that claiming that person A argues in bad faith is "arbitrary" and there's just no way to distinguish between them? Had he received a warning, or a downvote, would that be because the moderator punished him for his positive opinion on singletons?

Granted, of course, it's harder in political "open-ended" threads.

 

Well I would say "You probably don't have much of a life!" is somewhat of an insult.  We also have A admitting he was wrong.  So those are two differences.

But again, stuff like this is hard to qualify as good or bad. I use singletons on occasion.  Can there be issues with them? Yeah sometimes, depending on the exact implementation, but it's not black and white.  I also use multiple inheritance in C++ a lot.  Many people say that's bad but still I like to use it.  If someone can shut me down simply because they can point to an article saying something is bad that I think is good, I would say that's pretty close minded.

Likewise politics is not black or white either.

Wow, a lot to discuss.

When these potentially contentious threads come up there is almost always a discussion between the moderators in our admin channel in the GDNet chat. In this latest instance, I said to let the thread continue as long as discussion remained respectable. That's always the key for me.

Looking back, the weaponization of reputation downvoting as part of the debate is a big part of the problem.

You'll notice the Lounge no longer allows reputation voting. I will also be looking at how to reset reputation from Lounge votes.

You may also notice the Lounge no longer shows on the front page.

I think a forum like the Lounge is a pillar of a strong community. We are all here for a reason technically, and we participate in those parts of the community, but the Lounge is where we can discuss other topics with people we already "know". But the Lounge can also be a detractor from the core purpose of GameDev.net if it is more visible than the technical areas and/or affects everyone's technical reputation.

I know this thread veered off a little bit at times, but I do appreciate those who took the time to provide direct feedback in the interest of bettering the community.

On 9/8/2018 at 9:38 AM, Nypyren said:

Can we at least ban the "politics for the sake of politics" threads?  If a thread is discussing politics-in-relation-to-development, then it might have useful content.  Plain politics threads are worthless and should be closed immediately.

I understand your point that we should be able discern political trolling vs real discussion, but this might be a little difficult to enforce until the thread evolves.

On 9/8/2018 at 10:50 AM, GoliathForge said:

To me, thread topic is not the problem here,  but the abuse of the rating systrm, which by the way had moderator participation last I checked.

Yes. I'll be enforcing this if necessary.

On 9/8/2018 at 11:16 AM, fleabay said:

I don't know why the mods/admins here think that it is a good idea to have political discourse here.

I explained why?

On 9/8/2018 at 10:58 AM, Unknown33 said:

I would love to see a dialogue about that... much more than any political horse race or the same old talking points ad nauseam.

That is a worthwhile topic for any community to have.

On 9/8/2018 at 11:44 AM, Lactose said:

Games, as a whole, are political. There might be instances of games which aren't, but there's also a plethora of games that quite clearly are.

I think this is a great point. Just this morning my wife was playing a game and mentioned how the part she was at seemed to poke a bit at the state of political discourse in the US with one of the characters.

On 9/8/2018 at 12:16 PM, Lendrigan Games said:

Downvoting over politics, religion, and whether The Hulk stands a chance against Batman is just ripe for mob rule.

Agreed. And after observing Lounge behavior, this seems to be the case in both positive and negative cases.

On 9/8/2018 at 12:25 PM, deltaKshatriya said:

I’d agree that getting rid of voting in the lounge makes the most sense, especially given that political discourse will be allowed.

Done.

On 9/8/2018 at 12:29 PM, krb said:

Let me know if any of you are interested, not to single anyone out but Unknown33 in particular, I am reaching out to you, maybe differing opinions can make something great that doesn't take itself too seriously and can find a broad appeal

This would be an interesting way to engage in political discourse through games.

On 9/8/2018 at 12:54 PM, Lactose said:

I, too, would like The Lounge (or potentially only the threads you already flag as contentious?) to not have any voting capabilities, for the reasons already mentioned by others. Me thinking potentially only the contentious topics is due to there often being tech-related posts here, or something else of interest outside of the "ripe for disagree = down vote" mentality commonly seen in the contentious topics.

We'll start with the full Lounge, and maybe look at voting at an individual topic level in the future. Not a bad idea, but we need more controls over reputation management.

On 9/8/2018 at 1:08 PM, Lendrigan Games said:

Mandate that political threads be tagged as such by OP, and the tag triggers removal of voting for that thread.

Interesting idea, related to previous comment.

23 hours ago, Promit said:

• Minimum reputation to even participate in political threads, and I'm not thinking small here. Perhaps a hundred points. Alternately minimum post counts/account ages? Either way, I believe that new accounts should have no right to participate.
• An understanding that stepping out of line in these threads is grounds for an insta-ban, much more readily than we might normally do so.

Minimum participation was an option I thought about too. We need more administrative control to implement that, but certainly feasible.

Heavier enforcement of rules in "debate" threads is certainly necessary.

23 hours ago, Tape_Worm said:

Also, I'd like to add that anything politics related should be hidden from the main topic stream on the front page (at least give me the option to filter it).

All Lounge topics are off the front page now.

23 hours ago, Tape_Worm said:

I don't think suppressing the rating/voting system is a good idea either.

Unfortunately for now this needs to be done in the Lounge, but I do agree with your sentiment. Perhaps we can bring back the "Thanks" or "Like" only at some point in the future.

22 hours ago, grumpyOldDude said:

I have zero tolerance for personal insults

Exactly. That's the line that has been drawn and the rule I usually give to the mods when contentious threads come up. As long as people are respecting each other, let the conversation happen.

22 hours ago, Promit said:

Unlike Khawk, I have no belief that political threads are healthy, useful, or positive for this site and I would not blink if we revoked them entirely tomorrow.

Can confirm. @Promit has made this clear to me in the past. We don't always agree on implementation, but I think we both know we're interesting in ensuring GDNet is the best gamedev community.

22 hours ago, LifeIsGood said:

However, what I will say is, that it has been way too present at the main page.

You do bring an interesting idea with limitation instead of removal. For now it needs to be removed, but it's worth thinking about introducing limitations to highly active topics.

20 hours ago, Unknown33 said:

I think what's interesting is when a Trump bashing thread lasts for several pages but a similar question about the future of liberalism is closed immediately, followed by serious discussion about only allowing certain people to participate in political discussion.

I wanted that thread closed as soon as it was posted because I wanted to have the discussion we have in this topic before any further political threads were started. Members threatening to leave because they're tired of seeing politics on GDNet is a much bigger problem than your thread being closed. My focus is on finding the balance of allowing the political discourse without alienating members.

20 hours ago, Unknown33 said:

This is how you destroy a forum, by the way.

I've been doing this for 20 years. Many forums and sites have come and gone since GameDev.net was formed. This isn't the first time we've had this kind of community conversation, nor is the latest political thread the most contentious we've ever had. I guarantee GDNet will not be destroyed from this. Expect the opposite.

19 hours ago, 0r0d said:

Whether politics threads should be allowed to me just depends on how much and how strict the mods want to be with them.

Thank you for the well thought out, balanced input.

19 hours ago, Oberon_Command said:

There have been plenty of politics threads on GDNet before. It didn't destroy the site then, it won't destroy the site this time.

Anyone from the pre-2006 era knows this well.

16 hours ago, JTippetts said:

As a conservative, if I were just coming to the site now as a fresh youngster looking to learn a new hobby, and I clicked the unread content button

Hopefully banning the Lounge from the streams and RSS feeds helps with potential first impression problems. It's not perfect, but it's a start.

12 hours ago, grumpyOldDude said:

What I can suggest for further improvement is: that filters be placed all over the site so that you see only your preferences

This is a future definite plan. Just going to be a little while before we get there.

6 hours ago, Gnollrunner said:

However what I dislike  even more is when moderation is not even handed (which it rarely is). 

I'll monitor this in the future. While like everyone else I have my own political views, I don't want or expect that to play into the moderation of these topics.

The #1 rule for contentious topics from a moderation standpoint is "Respect". There shouldn't be a need for moderation if people are being respectful to each other, and that starts no personal insults, including phrases like "you don't get it". There is a way to debate without personally insulting another person's intelligence. Moderation should never be about the opinions but about whether the way those opinions are being expressed are respectful to others or not.

The GDNet moderators more often than not want to close contentious topics when they start. I'm usually the one to stop them with the caveat of the "Respect" rule. We've had the debate within the moderator team many times, but I truly believe these conversations can be had in this community and people can be respectful.

5 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

Do mods want to chime in on why the thread was shut down so we can get some clarity?

For violating my paragraph above about "respect". When I visit the GameDev.net front page and see the summarized contents of replies where members are attacking each others' intelligence, the thread has to stop.

5 hours ago, mikeman said:

Peronally I would keep that in mind(as in, the fact that we're dealing with human beings with emotions here), if I was to continue to allow political threads to exist .

I agree.

5 hours ago, mikeman said:

I admit it does seem very strange even to me to log onto Gamedev.net and see in the front page constant posts about political stuff.

Agreed. And it's addressed.

4 hours ago, Gnollrunner said:

I even noticed this site was described as a "dictatorship".

This has happened many times in GDNet's history.

4 hours ago, _the_phantom_ said:

But you can't remove politics...

Thanks for taking the time to provide input. I think the changes that have been made should have a similar effect to your suggestion. We'll see how it goes.

2 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

For the record, I don't really care which route we take going forward, but if we do decide to ban politics, we should at least do so for the right reasons and not because we believe that the mods are arbitrarily deciding what's trolling and what isn't.

You bring up a point about mod decisions. To provide some explanation, a lot of times in these types of situations we have our own debate behind the scenes. It's only in extreme cases that a moderator has taken action without consultation with something like a political thread - and that's usually because no one else is around and the situation can't wait.

Our moderation team has respect for people's opinions, for the community, and for the process in which we make decisions. Usually I'll have to be the final arbiter on a decision, but I also respect their judgment as moderators and expect that they will make the most fair, unbiased decisions. And if it so happens that they don't, we'll talk about it and try to improve how we do things.

2 hours ago, Gnollrunner said:

Well I would say "You probably don't have much of a life!" is somewhat of an insult. 

Exactly. That is an example of the kind of insult that will earn a member a warning, a ban, or close a topic.

18 hours ago, frob said:

Programmers tend to be highly intelligent and it shows clearly in the discussions here.

Programmers also aren't exactly known for their empathy, and I think that tends to show in the more heated discussions around here as well.

Coupled to our (characteristic of the entire industry) lack of significant diversity, and it may be necessary to be more careful in the how we judge the value of various discussions than one would normally have to.

I just want to thank Unknown33. Intentional or not, you got the crap shoveled out of plain view. Seriously, good job.

As someone suggested earlier, maybe the best thing is to have a specific "politics" section under the Lounge section (or along side, or whatever) that doesnt show up in the front page feed.  Honestly I never even knew that any political discussions ever happened here, and I only posted in the Trump thread because it caught my eye in the front page.  

But anyway, if it's not in the front page feed, then by definition people have to actively go to that sub-section to read the threads and respond to them.  Wouldnt that solve the problem that most people are having with this?

To the point of how much to moderate... I'd say it's not that hard, just allow people to say what they want, except if they are clearly trolling, insulting others, or otherwise misbehaving or acting in bad faith (i.e. creating alts just to post supporting themselves, etc).  Yes, this includes some amount of subjectivity on the part of the mods, but I dont have a problem with that. 

14 hours ago, khawk said:

You may also notice the Lounge no longer shows on the front page.

Isn't this a bit extreme?

The Longue is not "the politics forum", or "full of discussions we don't want to share with other people". Quite the opposite: the Longue is supposed to be the part of the forum that gives an insight in its community, the part that says "this is not just some robot developers answering development questions, this is a community of people, people that have other interests and hobbies and off-topic things to discuss". At least that is what it looks like to me, a relatively new guy on the forum. Removing (in a way, hiding is removing) that part of the forum because of a couple topics you don't want to ban is, as I said, a bit extreme.

If I may add another piece of insight: I am not American, and I don't take part in American politics. The thing that you call "political discussions" on the internet are just low-key shouting matches. There is no discussion, only arguments between two opposite sides. Just like you wouldn't expect meaningful discussion between extreme sports fans of two rival football clubs, you don't expect meaningful discussion between fans of two American political parties. Even if that is not the topic's idea, it will attract that kind of audience eventually. So the best course of action is to stop any political topics early, or not have any in the first place. Nothing of value would be lost.

I am an administrator on one regional forum, in a country where politics is also everywhere and part of everything. We realized that no good can ever come from political topics, so we outright banned them. Any post that turns towards politics is just deleted, no matter if it's actual politics, polititians' memes or just things like "...that's because this country (and it's leadership) sucks". We just delete all of it before all hell breaks loose. And nobody ever misses it. We had people complain about politics on the forum when moderators were slow to remove it, but never that we had too little of it. Mind you, this is also a topical forum (smartphones), so people just talk about other things, both topical and offtopic.

I don't know why you don't want to ban politics, i doubt the forum would be worse for it. But hiding the Longue and removing voting from it just because of some political topics is the exact opposite of what should be done, as it gives political topics more power over the forum instead of less.

4 hours ago, 1024 said:

Isn't this a bit extreme?

Not necessarily.

It will still show under Following if you follow the Lounge (click the Follow button) along with anything or anyone else being followed, and it will still show in the Forums tab. It just won't show in the Activity feed. It actually used to work this way.

Any talk about politics or religion contributes more to divide than progress through the debate. 

These topics are banned not to shut down the spread of awareness of some important events, but it is a time tested experience, that no one ever listens to the other side. It is too engrained in people psyche, debates cannot change the opinion of neither side. Discussion ends in a draw and no improvement, or a hot headed mess where both sides are fueled by their defensive mechanisms unaware of it.

We have to entertain the fact that people want the same things - better life, safer environment, improvement over matter. These topics are fueled by the fire we all have, but words are way too limited to see through the other person. In order to unite, we have to direct our efforts toward the common goal, and debating about politics is simply not the action that works. Words divide.

If one google the positive side of something, they will find the positive arguments, if someone google the negative - finds negative. And after many searches your suggestions will be related to your previous searches and you become stuck in a bubble where one side is always right and the other is not. It is too easy to get wrapped up in the youtube/google algorithm, and that is the problem. 

58 minutes ago, Sideer said:

Any talk about politics or religion ... it is a time tested experience, that no one ever listens to the other side.

9 hours ago, 1024 said:

The thing that you call "political discussions" on the internet are just low-key shouting matches. There is no discussion, only arguments between two opposite sides.

These certainly can be the case.  That is exactly what we moderators watch for.

These are discussion forums, not a soap box. As long as the discussion stays as a discussion about the topic we're typically easy going. We've got a strictly enforced rule about no personal attacks, and contentious topics need to stay focused on the actual issues, but that addresses most conversations.  As long as the discussion remains an actual discussion people can share their views all they want.

 

The site has had many great discussions about both politics and religions over the past two decades. In discussions people are trying to understand what others believe, or present a problem asking for what the community things would be a good solution, or are discussing alternative solutions to problems.  These discussions are generally productive and enlightening. 

When it becomes a soap box, when people are presenting their own views only rather than respecting a range of views, or shouting each other down attacking people rather than problems, or when people have become entrenched in their opinion and refuse to acknowledge others, that's when we step in.  When the discussion is slipping we try to get it back into a discussion.  When it has lost control we shut them down: at that point it is no longer a discussion.

The rule about no personal attacks is a defining feature of the board and something that helped build the community we've got.  We can disagree about topics, we can hold views that are at opposite ends of the spectrum, and that's okay.  As long as we are talking about what is in common, or to identify what parts of the view we share in common versus what is different, those are great.  We can discuss the differences between religions and how they help people to better their lives in their own unique ways.  But when they become personal attacks the moderators step in, typically either hide or edit the comment to remove the attack, and issue warnings to the offenders.  Repeat offenses yield short-term and permanent bans.  Personal attacks are not okay on the site.