About the Code of Conduct... Discuss!
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I think a company that is 80% owned by China is in a not so great position when they censor ANYTHING even if it is their right. Ya pays ya money and ya takes ya choice though. Or in this case, other way around.
Censored.
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"It was more that you were saying things like "Censorship is still censorship, and it's harmful no matter who does it" - that's why I quoted that statement. If removal/denial of particular kinds of speech is censorship, then I cannot agree that that is always harmful. Indeed, it's regularly beneficial, hence my example. I’m with you on not supporting unquestioned acceptance of authority. You don’t want people to “dismiss it as okay”, and that’s fair. Hopefully that implies the acknowledgement of the alternative: that it’s entirely possible to, rather than dismiss it as okay, consider it on a case by case basis and decide it’s okay. Because one size does not fit all. "Well, I don't at all agree with considering it a "basic expectation" that moderation "represent the community will". A long term goal, perhaps, because gamers are regularly petty, abusive, and unreasonable, and you might have to put in a lot of effort to cultivate a positive and constructive community before you can reach the point where your moderators "representing the community will" isn't a disaster. Last edited by GusTheCrocodile on Apr 5, 2020, 3:10:23 PM
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" I don't know about that. The PoE subreddit (yes, that community that the people on these forums usually love to hate on) does it. They're far from perfect, but I'd definitely rate their moderation as way better than what we've got here. The mods are certainly more well-known and have to have at least some cachet with the community, for one thing. They're not exactly community representatives, but they're still a lot closer to that than the ones here. And hey, look at what's currently going on over there (and indeed often goes on) - https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/fqs5cf/policy_discussion_part_1_leaks/ ^Yep, active discussions on what their policy itself should be. Again, it isn't like the community itself gets to decide on said policy and so I'm hardly presenting it as ideal, but it's still a damn sight more proactive engagement than these fora have. Also, this idea that "gamers are regularly petty, abusive, and unreasonable" is popular meme, but when you literally have people on these forums bending down in submission, and even a few in active support, to the current forum moderation regime, do you really think that ought to be the biggest concern here? And what of the current state, why is that assumed to not already be a disaster? The activity levels here certainly seem to suggest that all is not well for one thing, whatever the reasons for that might be. Contrast that with the subreddit (again), which is a thriving hive of activity. This goes back to a familiar argument that's frequently made on a more general level - that empowering people is a recipe for disaster. Unfortunately the current policy doesn't allow for discussions of that issue more generally, but suffice to say it's incredibly status quo biased - centralization and authoritativeness are assumed as the default ideal, and anything deviating from that has to pass through inordinate amounts of skepticism to even be tried out, let alone accepted. Entrusting people is treated with disdain, despite that fully entrusting authorities has frequently shown itself lacking - sometimes to very much disastrous extents, often far more than any of the small examples of entrusting people ever did - throughout history. But unfortunately this forums' current policy barely even allows this sort of discussion to occur (can't even be sure this light touch on the topic won't get deleted), so the system effectively insulates itself from change. Mind you, I'm not trying to present the PoE subreddit as the ideal alternative, but it's worth recognizing. And hey, if you've issues with it, at least that's at least partially attributable to the community as a whole (meaning you don't really gel with said community) rather than being solely caused by a small set of unaccountable elders gifted absolute authority. Last edited by Exile009 on Apr 5, 2020, 4:52:37 PM
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"It sounds like you've interpreted my comment as saying "giving power to the community will be a disaster", which it wasn't. I was simply saying that I find it unreasonable to consider community-led moderation a "basic expectation" of game developers; the 'disaster' was a possibility, not a rule. "Well, you don’t literally have that, you figuratively have that, according to you. I’m not seeing behaviour I’d liken to “bending down in submission”, personally. So I can't in good conscience answer your question, because it's based on a premise I don't agree with, but I'm not sure why you're asking me if I "really think" [gamers being arseholes] should be "the biggest concern here" anyway, when I haven't said anything of the sort in the first place. ""Assumed" makes it sound like there's some underlying fact, which isn't really the case. I don't call the state of these forums a disaster because...there doesn't seem to be any significant problem? You're of course entitled to your own criteria, but I guess I don't share them. Are you basing this activity assessment on data of some kind? I mean I've not been collecting stats on the site's activity levels, but it seems to get plenty of use from where I'm standing. "I don’t think anyone here has argued that "empowering people is a recipe for disaster", so luckily you don't need to make the counterargument anyway. "They’re employees of the company doing their jobs. Bizarre language. Good use of the news media tactic of referring to authorities you don't like as a "regime", too. Last edited by GusTheCrocodile on Apr 6, 2020, 5:26:07 AM
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" While a somewhat rough take on it, for Off-Topic in particular - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2823247 " Depends on what your frame of reference is. They're employees of their company, not us. They're accountable to their company, not us. From our perspective, they are functionally equivalent to unaccountable elders, 'cept that those elders report to an even higher authority. Last edited by Exile009 on Apr 6, 2020, 6:59:13 AM
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"So then you're comparing that with the Off Topic section of r/pathofexile, right? Which would seem to be be about six threads less than here. Like I said I don't really have a horse in the race in terms of that definition of 'disaster', but to compare one whole community with just one part of another community, and use that to conclude there is low activity in the latter, seems either mistaken or disingenuous. ""Unaccountable 'cept for their accountability" is kind of a weird idea. Either way, functional equivalence is not what I was questioning; rather, the language chosen to be applied to some (for-argument's-sake-)functionally-equivalent things but not others. Last edited by GusTheCrocodile on Apr 6, 2020, 8:15:52 AM
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" Err no. That thread has nothing to do with the subreddit. I only used the subreddit as an example here. The subreddit doesn't even have an Off-Topic section, so that's not even a comparison one can make. That thread simply points out that this space only has about six really active threads (and only 5 of which actually have a discussion of some nature, since the counting thread is just, well, a counting thread). It never compared that with anything. If you think that a forum from a game with well over a hundred thousand players at peak time, and still over 70k today (and both of these figures are just the Steam numbers, which seems to be about half the playerbase these days), having just 5 active threads featuring a small handful of names showing up repeatedly is in a healthy state ... well, that's your prerogative I guess, but it certainly doesn't seem good to me. Of course, you can point out that those are the numbers of people actually in the game, so of course they're not here, but it does give one an indication of the sheer volume of the pool of potential people from which this paltry showing arises from. They're presumably not always playing, nor always working, and yet so little of it (really, next to none) finds its way here. That's a statement in itself imo. " "Unaccountable 'cept for their accountability" - 'cept I never said that, and you know it. That paraphrase would hold only if I said they were accountable to the same people I said they unaccountable to, which I didn't. Reporting it that way is an exercise in the very same kind of narrative manipulation and language games you're suggesting I'm engaging in. In any case, arguing phrasing is a time-consuming exercise I'd rather not be drawn into - this thread was meant to be about the Code of Conduct, not the particular color of one word or another. I've seen enough discussions being bogged down that way. | |
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"Yes, I know. That's what I'm talking about - your assessment of activity in comparison to the subreddit, and then your offer of Off Topic data as supporting your position. The fact that "that's not even a comparison one can make" with that OT data is my point. "It's a mistake to conclude that because I don't agree that there's an activity problem, it means I have assessed the activity level as "healthy". What I am doing is not buying into the idea of making "high activity = good, low activity = bad" assessments at all. "Your phrase was "unaccountable elders", not "elders unaccountable to us", is all. That's all that was about. Anyway, I hope you keep this insistence on discussing the pathofexile.com Code of Conduct in mind next time you feel yourself drifting off into a vague musing on authoritarian thought or something. |
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Actually never mind. This entire discussion is getting way too cagey for my liking, leading me to suspect yet another attempt at diversionary tactics. You say you do have your own positions, but you won't say what they are. You try to bog things down in minutiae regarding phrasing and languages games, while engaging in similar things yourself. You suggest I'm being vague, while reveling in that mode yourself. And you seem to deliberately misrepresent my argument all the way. This entire back and forth just doesn't seem to have been taken up with the intention of going anywhere to begin with. That being the case, I'm done indulging it.
Sadly, this forum seems to bring that out of some people - not being free in many cases to speak forthright, some of them seem to have honed their ability to circle around, distract, misdirect, hint, allude or otherwise frustrate while directly saying little themselves. I'm afraid I'd much rather be shot from the front than from some Rube Goldberg-like landmine placed by an opponent (or whatever the hell you'd like to consider your position here) that's camouflaged and hiding behind foliage 2 kms away. And if I see people trying to pull those kinds of tactics, which tbf I don't assume from the start as I do try to give the benefit of doubt to people, then I'm just going to point it out and disengage. I'll give you one thing though - at least you didn't try to goad me into crossing the line and hence weaponizing the CoC against me, sadly another tactic I've seen used by some of the people here. It's walking on eggshells while inside a den of lawyers. :/ P.S.: Plenty of metaphors for you to dissect there^. Or whatever the hell the proper label for those phrases are, I'm sure you'll know better than me. Last edited by Exile009 on Apr 6, 2020, 9:16:09 PM
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