Quote from: S'mon;1076998This worship of legalism - all the world's a courtroom - seems extra weird to me considering I teach law for a living.

That's because a worship of legalism benefits the government and the people who make their living from it, so they indoctrinate people to believe it is infallible and beyond mere mortal (non-lawyer, non-government) comprehension.  Even though 95% of current law in the world is only there to keep the lower strata of people oppressed.  That's is why governments and the elite ignore it when it suits their purposes.

That being said, I don't believe shuddemell was considering it in the legal sense, I think he was hearkening back to the actual moral/philosophical principle that the 'innocent until proven guilty' legal concept was based on.  From a moral standpoint it is the only philosophical approach that actually leads to any sort of just, egalitarian society as opposed to tyrannical despotism.

Damn, ninja'd by the great worm himself...

Quote from: Warboss Squee;10769648 posts means I haven't gotten a feel for your style yet.

I'll forgive you, but just this once.

Quote from: Chris24601;1077001How about someone who's a boor and keeps coming on to women after they've shown they're not interested? Harassment? Assault? Professes to believe what the Catholic Church teaches about homosexuality and transgenderism?

What is an appropriate financial penalty for them? Are they to be driven from all employment and financially ruined forever? What jobs can they still hold without expecting the moral harpies to drive them from it? At what point does the punishment exceed the crime (and sometimes not even a crime, just uncouth behavior or wrongthink)?

The artist community is always going to have a different relationship with their public than other forms of employment.  The physical things you buy - your computer, your keyboard, even your cup of coffee - effectively could have been made by ANYONE without changing their intrinsic value.  Since art exists in the relationship of the audience to the performer, a revelation about the artist can disrupt that performance.  

Watching the Cosby show now, it's hard to see Cliff Huxtable's facial expressions as anything other than creepy.  

There's a spectrum - a live show is more engaging than a movie.  A minor character is perhaps less distracting than the primary character.  A book, like a movie, requires the audience to engage.  

Nobody has to read a book they don't like.  There are a lot of valid reasons to dislike a book, and a subset of them are 'the author is a jerk'.
 If the author physically assaulted you, I think you'd feel justified in not reading their book, even if you might like it if SOMEONE ELSE had written it.  Likewise if they assaulted your spouse or best friend.  Or maybe a stranger that you felt was innocent.  Ultimately, you get to decide where the line is.  There are a lot of reasons to recognize that Zak is an asshole.  And if that bothers you, there are a lot of reasons not to buy his works.  If it doesn't bother you and you like his works, buy away.  

I think there are a lot of ways to be unfair to someone for their past decisions; for example, I don't think that a school teacher that has a porn tape on the internet should be fired.  For second graders, that's not going to 'come up' if nobody tells them about it and people should be allowed to make mistakes.  

Game publishing is a creative hobby; gamers have a relationship with the creatives.  That works to encourage sales from people that are respected and is works to discourage sales from people that are disliked.  There are people who don't like the idea of needing to maintain a professional image, but that's the reality for everyone.  While it's certainly possible to go 'too far', nobody here (that I'm aware of) is advocating any kind of harassment campaign against Zak, or any plan to make sure he can't get any jobs in any other industry.  Am I mistaken?

Quote from: S'mon;1076996Better go buy MYFAROG then...

I would have if I wanted to have the game. Which I don't - but if he had published something appealing... sure, why not? He's done his time.

Quote from: S'mon;1076996Of course in reality we are indeed at liberty to punish murderers and other criminals via not buying from them. Just as some people refused to buy South African peaches (yum, tasty) during Apartheid.

Sure, I'm not arguing for taking that liberty away. I'm asking how people who have done their time should live (always those pesky questions ). Preferably in a way that makes them stay away from trouble. You say you want to kill them but any harsh punishment is bound to hurt many wrongly convicted people. Punishment needs to be tempered for the sake of those. The road from what you suggested to hanging Kavanaugh is shorter than one might think, I'm afraid.

Quote from: Chris24601;1077001How about someone who's a boor and keeps coming on to women after they've shown they're not interested? Harassment? Assault? Professes to believe what the Catholic Church teaches about homosexuality and transgenderism?

What is an appropriate financial penalty for them? Are they to be driven from all employment and financially ruined forever? What jobs can they still hold without expecting the moral harpies to drive them from it? At what point does the punishment exceed the crime (and sometimes not even a crime, just uncouth behavior or wrongthink)?

I think I've given my opinion about most of these elsewhere already. Bill Webb deserved to be booted from Paizo Con and told he can't drink or be drunk at conventions any more, or he'll be banned.

Despite being a Protestant-Atheist, these days I think real Catholics are kinda cool (and their women are very cute); I wouldn't punish them at all.

So I had dinner with one of the consultants this week. The conversation went a bit like this:

"So what do you think of ConsultantGate 2?"
"Er...I didn't know there was a ConsultantGate 1"
"You know, there was a pallava about Pundit and Zak S in the PHB when it was first published. Now WOTC have removed references to all the consultants in the wake of the Zak S issue. How do you feel about that?"
"Oh right. Well it sucks to be removed. But it's negligible compared to getting rid of that guy."


Now I won't say I captured the person's position perfectly, and clearly it wasn't top of their mental agenda anyway. But it also wouldn't surprise me if it was fairly representative of the rest of the consultants.

Quote from: S'mon;1077015I think I've given my opinion about most of these elsewhere already. Bill Webb deserved to be booted from Paizo Con and told he can't drink or be drunk at conventions any more, or he'll be banned.

Okay, but the point of my question was "for how long?" Presuming no new offenses crop up how long is he to be banned? How long does a writer's work become verboten? One year? Ten? The heat death of the universe?

At what point does the punishment exceed the crime and become an injustice itself?

I doubt WOTC will find from here on consultants that won't oblige them contractually to credit them and to credit them for as long as product X is on sale. And if necessary to detail the specifics of how to get credited.
But then again it's D&D and who knows what people are willing to do for being associated with the product.

Quote from: Chris24601;1077020Okay, but the point of my question was "for how long?" Presuming no new offenses crop up how long is he to be banned? How long does a writer's work become verboten? One year? Ten? The heat death of the universe?

At what point does the punishment exceed the crime and become an injustice itself?

I meant banned from that event. I guess if repeated then 3 years. If third time then life.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1076969If you require moral purity of your authours, you are going to have a rather bare bookshelf, and had best not go to the cinema or turn on the radio at all.

And eventually you'll cull that bookshelf down to only the very short Approved Reading List allowed by your moral authority. It's a good way to make absolutely certain that none of your wild beliefs are ever challenged.

People who think like this manage to seal themselves in ever-shrinking thought bubbles, eventually eliminating literally everyone and everything else. It would be entertaining to watch if it weren't so tragic.

Apparently, I am being too roundabout... I didn't mean just the specific instance you mentioned. I mean as general principle... at what point does the punishment inflicted for allegations of acts or statements that may or may not even be criminal (rude and uncouth or "wrongthink", but not criminal) exceed the crime?

Let's say nothing new comes up in relation to Zac S. He's never prosecuted for any crime and all the allegations remain as confirmed as they are now. How long from now before buying his products again becomes acceptable?

When does the unpersoning and deplatforming turn into the actual injustice?

Because the sense I'm getting is "forever" is perfectly fine for a lot of people.

That it's okay that  people should be driven forever from their careers without a trial.

The SJWs seem to think that anyone who ever associates with someone they've unpersoned should themselves be boycotted until they cast the unperson back into the wilderness (one suspects they'd cut off welfare too after making them unemployable if they could because unpersons don't deserve to live... that's why they were unpersoned in the first place).

And the fact that there seems to be no end... no point where one can say "they've suffered enough"... strikes me as the height of injustice.

That's the point I'm trying to make.

Quote from: Chris24601;1077029Apparently, I am being too roundabout... I didn't mean just the specific instance you mentioned. I mean as general principle... at what point does the punishment inflicted for allegations of acts or statements that may or may not even be criminal (rude and uncouth or "wrongthink", but not criminal) exceed the crime?

Let's say nothing new comes up in relation to Zac S. He's never prosecuted for any crime and all the allegations remain as confirmed as they are now. How long from now before buying his products again becomes acceptable?

I'm not planning to buy his stuff again. I didn't like him much anyway, and he's coming from a place I don't like.
Heck, I try to buy as little Paizo stuff as possible these days, ever since they went Full SJW.
I don't much care what other people do. I'm not going to buy anything from Varg Vikernes, but I'm not going to freak out that Thegn Thrand gave MYFAROG a positive review. If people want to keep buying Zak S stuff, whatever, I don't care. I am mildly annoyed by "I am going to buy Zak S stuff BECAUSE he is under SJW attack!" though - save your support for people who deserve it.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;1077003I didn't find his gaming products to be to my taste. They're kinda gimmicky, and the writing strives (rather painfully, IMO) to be Art. A lot of people seem to disagree with my opinion, but I don't get the appeal. I think he was pretty good at capturing attention and selling himself and his products.

This is my position as well. Too many people drank the Kool-Aid and lauded ZakS as some sort of auteur when the reality is he just took conventional stories/backgrounds and subverted them slightly. Not to say his stuff is terrible, but I don't think it's demonstrably better than something like Stonehell Dungeon, and certainly less useful and interesting than anything by New Big Dragon. I guess for stuff to LOOK AT, his books are fine, but in actual play...not a fan whatsoever.

If you like his stuff, you can continue to buy it.  

If you like his stuff, but you don't want to support him because you think he's a bad person *for any reason*, don't buy his stuff.  Continue to not buy his stuff until you decide that you like his stuff so much that you're willing to buy it *even though he's a bad person* which might not ever happen.  

If you don't like his stuff, don't buy it.  

These are personal decisions - there is no right or wrong.  It's true that if he pisses off enough people (and he has tried REALLY HARD to do exactly that) he might destroy his career.  Actions have consequences.  

There is no mob and there is no organized campaign to destroy/discredit him.  There are people evaluating their opinion of him based on new evidence.  Some people are skeptical of the evidence and their opinion has shifted little; some people believe the evidence and their opinion has shifted a lot; some people believe the evidence and they already had a low opinion so nothing changed.  But any 'demand' that people start buying his stuff again after some suitable amount of time for punishment misses the point - people are free to make their decisions and express them online.  'I don't buy Zak's stuff because I think he's an asshole' is one type of opinion you'll see.  'I don't buy Zak's stuff because I think it is crap' is another type of opinion you might see.  I find the second one more compelling than the first, especially if I think the critic shares my tastes.

Quote from: Snark Knight;1077009I'll forgive you, but just this once.

Wasn't an apology.