rpg.net forums down

[David R]

I'm a recent poster but long time lurker - very long time. Never had any problems with the mods, but then again I've never mixed it up with anyone. I'm not even a face in the crowds. The whole moderation spill over from Tang is one of the reasons I don't post as often as I do here. I don't like the feeling of having to watch what I say, not because I want to piss on anyones parade but rather because it's a game forum and I don't see the need for such tight moderation which sometimes strays into censorship territory with I despise.

Now, I'm very well aware that RPG Open has got hell of a lot of posters and without some kind of moderation, the whole place could blow up -it will be interesting to see the situation here when this site gets as much traffic as tBP - but I do think one of the reasons threads seem to degenerate into minutiae and passive/aggresive BS is because the conversation stopper, Fuck You has been taken away.

Also, I get the feeling that most folks on RPG Open are more interested in talking about games than actually playing them. This really does not have anything to do with Tang, just my thoughts about tBP in general...

Regards,
David R

[Aegypto]

My God.

That means 499,900 Exalted threads were snuffed out in an instant.

The thing that bothers me is how this will affect the Play-by-Post forum. Losing four months worth of gaming posts is no fun.

[The Good Assyrian]

My God.

That means 499,900 Exalted threads were snuffed out in an instant.

"I feel a great disturbance in the Force. As if 499,900 Exalted threads suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced."


TGA

[Zachary The First]

The thing that bothers me is how this will affect the Play-by-Post forum. Losing four months worth of gaming posts is no fun.

Seriously, that is sad.  I hope they're able to back up a fair amount of it.  That and the AP forums would be devastated (if they didn't keep backup txt copies themselves) if they couldn't.

[NYTFLYR]

One thing about tangency is if you dont go with the group think that goes on over there you get dogpiled, and eventually banned. They are tollerant only as long as you agree with them. That kind of behavior has no place on an RPG site, its about games, not about global warming, Bush's latest mistake, Ketooms, or anything of the like. when tangency outgrew the gaminging portion it should have been reevaluated.

when you have gamers talking off topic, it doesnt take over a board, its when the non gaming friends show up to be part of a clique is when it starts to overflow.

And for the life of me I dont know why they wont trim off old posts, its not like you can find any if you wanted to anyway

[One Horse Town]

There are some really good, thoughtful threads on Tagency. Then you get the waste of bandwidth that are the 'I've got a new pen!' or 'Post boosting' threads. Wierd.

[Consonant Dude]

What I find so interesting about all this is the sheer number of people on this board that dislike other boards but continue read them. Why do people do that? I figure that if you hate them and they've banned you, why bother?

There were several questions along the same lines so I chose yours.

First of all, I don't think it has to be absolute love or hate. I should also get out of the way that I have never been warned, suspended or banned on RPG.net. I also haven't left with the notion that I will never come back.

I still perceive good things at RPG.net. For instance it's a pretty good place to get information and news. The userbase is huge and reports all sorts of things from all corners of the world.

The huge userbase also means that there is a variety of games being discussed. I feel the variety is not what it used to be but still, it's damn impressive.

There are also some great users over there. Fortunately, you can find many of those here. Personally, I became more comfortable leaving when I saw that guys like Balbinus were also members of other forums.

Things such as trolling, xenophobia, homophobia are quickly dealt with, which is great. This comes with a trap I feel moderation has fallen for, unfortunately.


On the not-so-positive side, the moderation team is hellbent on being "accepting" to the greatest number of people. This leads to ridiculous accusations of "group attacks on X" which are sometimes laughable.

There's also the fact, as JimBob pointed out, that Tangency is responsible greatly for the moderation over there. Simply put, you want moderation to be appropriate for the environment. Moderation on a porn website is different than on a "First Time Mom" website. Same thing here. Moderation on a general interest website is different than on a roleplaying website.

One byproduct of this "accepting policy" is the useless  need to constantly be "positive". By that I mean that over there, there's this extremely artificial vibe that you need to talk of how great things are. Pointing out negative facts is sometimes seen as "trolling" or "threadcrapping" no matter how true they are. What you end up with most of the time is empty, senseless lovefest like the "awesome SteveD phenomenon" that JimBob sometimes refer to. You know, where all you have to say is how your games are awesome, and your players are awesome and everything is "awesomified", without ever having any fucking substance to your arguments.  

But probably the worse aspect of RPG.net currently is the rampant elitism and clique-ish nature of the place. Over there, a large number of users judge your posts and opinions by the number of posts you have and how popular you are. This leads other users into pretending they like popular things so they can gain acceptance. I know for a fact some posters over there are pimping games they have never read and never played as if they were the best thing since sliced bread. This is rather depressing and is not conducive to sincere discussions.

This leads to a forum where interaction is based on popularity. And it makes RPG.net constantly behind the curve in what's happening. When the Forge was all new and shiny, people at the Big Purple derided that place unnecessarily and didn't understand half of what is going on. Now that it's mostly irrelevant but popular, people are hyping the place while still not understanding half of what's going on over there.

[Tom B]

All I can say is that I've been a regular on RPGnet since...oh, about two incarnations ago.  I've never received a warning or had the slightest problem with the mods.  The RP forum is more active than just about any other RPG site on the web, which along with the Gaming Index and the bi-weekly reviews more than justifies the domain.  Yes, there are cycles of certain types of issues (waves of posts following new releases of certain games, indie-RPG darlings of the moment, the ever-returning "price of RPGs" debates, etc.)  Oddly enough I've never had a problem ignoring topics that didn't interest me, though.

It's interesting how Tangency has grown pretty much into its own entity, though, even while the rest of the board remains active and interesting.

I've kept an eye open for years, looking for other sites that were as useful and interesting, and they've been hard to come by.  (As a tangent, can anyone recommend some other good RPG sites?  (apart from this one, that is).)

[Melan]

Ah, I just knew I would find a discussion about this subject at TheRPGSite. :haw: Great minds also seem to think alike, since my first response was also "so why not ditch Tangency and refocus on real gaming?" Not that it would happen with the current administration.

On to specifics:

I cannot see a day where they will separate the two communities. I think they like the pathetic outlook of users telling each others what they had for dinner and exchanging secret geek handshakes like it's actually something you should be proud of, while that Curt continues to mis-moderate the place like it's a freaky gay advocacy forum.

Yeah. What galls me is how RPG.NET used to be the coolest general gaming site you could visit about two or three years ago, and it has since been turned into a grownup version of Livejournal. A place where genuine debate about gaming is no longer tolerated, but look, you can join in on the fun of talking about keetoms, your headache in the morning, and your favourite gay/transfolk-friendly colours!

While we are at it, Curt, you useless nitwit, get off your fucking gay cross already. The rest of the world doesn't give a fuck about your Holy Martyrdom, and even less about hiding the sausage. It is 2007, dude, and just because some random loser uses gay as a general pejorative doesn't mean you have received Divine Dispensation to right their wrongs by banning them. I don't think I have seen too many worse moderators than you, and I have seen an awful lot of bad ones.

On another note, when the forums crashed there was a note over in Trouble Tickets saying Jared Sorensen was "gone for good". I assume this means permabanned. I wonder what that clown did this time.

Once the forums come back, check that "Nazis Are Munchkins" thread at RP Open. Sorensen suddenly started claiming that the jokes in the thread are against the guidelines of the forum, and when the mods wanted to know exactly what the problem was, he began quoting the rules along with comments like "consider this your warning" and "my mod voice is black".

Now this - although it regrettably cost Jared his posting privileges at The Big Purple - is funny as hell. I don't know Jared, don't remember his posts either, but that could be exactly the right way of going out in a blaze of glory. To tell the truth, I was occasionally getting the urge to do something just like he did (only with a stronger "Kiero sucks!" message), before my sanity returned. Shitty moderation does that to you.

I never quite understood why this pisses so many people off. "How dare people talk about things you don't want to talk about! They should only be allowed to talk about what I want to talk about! But the mods are bad fascist censors!"

No. Because, of course, it is perfectly possible to carry on conversation without getting warned or banned. Its not, however, possible to carry on a conversation being a cockmunch and not get threatened or banned. Theres a difference.

My problem is that the whole corpus of rules were changed over our heads without there being a need for it (I am only talking about Open; Tangency and its requirements are completely inconsequential to me, because Tangency should be an appendix to the main site, and not its main driving force). For example, about two or three years ago, RPG.NET not only allowed heated discussion about gaming subjects, but was actually infamous for it.

There was even a (generally Tangency) clique which noisily left because they were thinking RPGNet was unfriendly to various groups (minorities were cited, but I think the general message was against "non-niceness" in general). While their requests were openly ridiculed back then - including by people who were, or still are active moderators, like Kuma and (IIRC) Darren. Today, it is as if the same group of thin-skinned attention whores had taken over the place, and set their agenda as the rules. When the boards come back, look for the letter of "the Undersigned", and compare them - especially in the context of the responses - with the current guidelines and their enforcement.

Second, I believe the current strategy of moderation/site administration is a poor one. I am no enemy of moderation; being a moderator myself on a subforum of RPG.HU, I readily deal with people who break the spirit of the rules (I don't moderate just by the letter of them, if possible). However, the particular way RPG.NET does it is, I believe, harmful for open discussion. In debate, there are always disagreements that result in hurt feelings, anger or general resentment; there is no avoiding it. People, even otherwise relaxed people, need an opportunity to kick back, or occasionally to vent steam. By over-moderating, the possibility is removed (since the consequences of going off are severe and administered without an understanding of or consideration for context), yet hostilities do not disappear. Instead, they collect under the surface, increasing pressure and resulting in either passive-agressive behaviour (that is, within-the-rules weaselly behaviour, the kind of underhanded insults you would choke someone for if you could) or people snapping and getting banned like Jared and many, many others.

Right now, RPG.NET is this place: it has a constraining and poisonous atmosphere, frustrated moderators and rules designed for the most delicate little flowers in the fucking garden. That's not to say I consider every opinion worthy of inclusion. Some users just can't get along and need to be removed for the good of others (Mark "kamikaze" Hughes comes to my mind, but - with all due respect otherwise - a good argument could also be made for nisarg/RPGPundit, whose getting an own site to administer seems to have done him a lot of good). But that's no longer the case. Now, the mods are banning good people who have been a positive influence on the site and who made it a fun place, just because they no longer fit the changed policies and because they aren't the precious little flowers in need of protection (who, if I might remind anyone, are generally non-contributors on the gaming side). That sucks. That's betraying the trust of those who invested their opinions and work in the forums, and made them successful.

Also, I would have been permabanned for this message on The Big Purple. Think about it a little.

And finally, a friendly message to all those who would disagree with me:

[O'Borg]

This leads to ridiculous accusations of "group attacks on X" which are sometimes laughable.

I still think the "Misspelling The as Teh is a group attack on dyslexics" was about the funniest thing I've ever seen on big purple

[Consonant Dude]

(As a tangent, can anyone recommend some other good RPG sites?  (apart from this one, that is).)

Story-games is kind of an opposite to this one (rpgsite). Where this one focuses too much on traditional games, Story-games focuses too much on new-shiny-weird. If the qualitiesof both could be put together and the faults of both could be ditched, you'd have a hell of a website.

Then there's Levi's gamecraft, which is unfortunately totally useless despite having some nice ideas to it.

There's isn't yet a balanced, all-around gaming website to take RPG.net's place.

[Melan]

I should also get out of the way that I have never been warned, suspended or banned on RPG.net. I also haven't left with the notion that I will never come back.

For the record, neither have I - on RPG.NET or elsewhere, except for a small, small number of deleted posts. Also, I post in the worthwhile threads, of which there is still a fair number of. I don't "hate" RPGNet; if that were the truth, I'd just have found a discussion forum elsewhere. I like it too much not to care.

[edit]In all fairness, it comes to my mind I was recently warned for posting links to covers of a Hungarian science fiction magazine that had tits on 'em. I included a warning, and my post was perfectly on topic (discussion about sword&sorcery), but it got edited and I got a note to cease. I did.[/edit]

[Balbinus]

Story-games is kind of an opposite to this one (rpgsite). Where this one focuses too much on traditional games, Story-games focuses too much on new-shiny-weird. If the qualitiesof both could be put together and the faults of both could be ditched, you'd have a hell of a website.

Then there's Levi's gamecraft, which is unfortunately totally useless despite having some nice ideas to it.

There's isn't yet a balanced, all-around gaming website to take RPG.net's place.

I think Storygames does what it does pretty well, I don't post there anymore but that's mostly as I didn't feel especially part of the group and didn't feel I had much to contribute to their interests, I don't rule out posting there again at some point in future though I doubt I will.

Personally I rather like the split between Storygame and the RPGsite, it's like we have a thematic gaming forum and an adventure gaming forum almost

Of course, looking at the top ten rpg thread in the top forum here I notice, probably to the great surprise of many Storygame posters, that indie/thematic type games actually have quite a solid following here.  They crop up in an awful lot of top tens, including top tens from people who are plainly mostly playing adventure games.

[Balbinus]

Oh, for the record, generally I like Kiero and find his posts interesting.

[Consonant Dude]

Of course, looking at the top ten rpg thread in the top forum here I notice, probably to the great surprise of many Storygame posters, that indie/thematic type games actually have quite a solid following here.  They crop up in an awful lot of top tens, including top tens from people who are plainly mostly playing adventure games.

Yup! What's interesting is that I think you'd see a similar breakdown over there. You probably have the hardcore "story game afficionado" and then you have people who like all sorts of games.

I don't post there (due to a couple of reasons) so I might be wrong but a few threads I read led me to the impression that gamers are more alike than they think.

It's too bad we have to have this "war" :rolleyes: