Quote from: yosemitemike on January 27, 2025, 03:00:31 AM

Quote from: David Johansen on January 26, 2025, 09:24:38 PMI was on there back in the threaded view software days.  So long ago.  I often think the upgrade was the beginning of the decline.  Because that lead to Tangency and while, for the first couple years it was just some guy posting whenever he got a free Coke, it eventually had everything ruled as off topic shunted over to it.  For a number of years there wasn't even a media forum, it was all just in Tangency.

I was there too.  Tangency was the beginning of the end.  We were all assured that the off-topic political stuff would be confined to tangency but I and many others knew that was bullshit.  It quickly spread to the other forums like a metastasizing cancer.  Once Tangency was allowed, it inevitably morphed from an RPG forum to an RPG forum with a political section to a political forum where RPGs are sometimes discussed too.  All of the forum's current problems follow from this bad decision.  Give these people an inch and they will take the whole damn forum. 

Sadly, this happens here all too often as well. Non-gaming politics still shows up fairly often in the gaming sections of the forum, with posters using the flimisist of attempts to link a political rant to some piece of gaming (if they even bother with that).

Quote from: HappyDaze on January 27, 2025, 04:36:45 AMSadly, this happens here all too often as well. Non-gaming politics still shows up fairly often in the gaming sections of the forum, with posters using the flimisist of attempts to link a political rant to some piece of gaming (if they even bother with that).

The difference here is that Pundit will actually take action if people too it too much and too blatantly.  At TBP, the staff either ignored it or supported it as long as the person was expressing the correct Progressive viewpoint.  It didn't take long for people to figure out that they could say pretty much anything they wanted as long as they used the correct Progressives framework and couched it in the approved Progressive words and phrases.  People learned to play the game and get around the rules very quickly. 

Quote from: yosemitemike on January 27, 2025, 05:49:10 AM

Quote from: HappyDaze on January 27, 2025, 04:36:45 AMSadly, this happens here all too often as well. Non-gaming politics still shows up fairly often in the gaming sections of the forum, with posters using the flimisist of attempts to link a political rant to some piece of gaming (if they even bother with that).

The difference here is that Pundit will actually take action if people too it too much and too blatantly.  At TBP, the staff either ignored it or supported it as long as the person was expressing the correct Progressive viewpoint.  It didn't take long for people to figure out that they could say pretty much anything they wanted as long as they used the correct Progressives framework and couched it in the approved Progressive words and phrases.  People learned to play the game and get around the rules very quickly. 

In practice, there is little difference. People here "play the game" and get around Pundit's rules all the time. It would be nice if the non-politics sections actually stayed that way, but that's not whats really going on. Fuzzy rules with weak enforcement has a downside.

Quote from: HappyDaze on January 27, 2025, 05:59:32 AMIn practice, there is little difference. People here "play the game" and get around Pundit's rules all the time. It would be nice if the non-politics sections actually stayed that way, but that's not whats really going on. Fuzzy rules with weak enforcement has a downside.

I would say that the difference in outcomes between there and here demonstrates that there is a lot of difference.

Quote from: yosemitemike on January 27, 2025, 06:15:38 AM

Quote from: HappyDaze on January 27, 2025, 05:59:32 AMIn practice, there is little difference. People here "play the game" and get around Pundit's rules all the time. It would be nice if the non-politics sections actually stayed that way, but that's not whats really going on. Fuzzy rules with weak enforcement has a downside.

I would say that the difference in outcomes between there and here demonstrates that there is a lot of difference.

We get less people banned here, but we also get more off-topic politics splattered everywhere.

Quote from: HappyDaze on January 27, 2025, 06:20:35 AMWe get less people banned here, but we also get more off-topic politics splattered everywhere.

More than TBP?  I would say there's a lot less. 

Quote from: jhkim on January 25, 2025, 06:25:27 PMI would consider it a positive value for free speech to talk to and thus associate with people of differing values to one's own. That is what enables broader understanding and the free marketplace of ideas.

As do I, but rpg.net forums is exactly the opposite of that: an echo chamber of left-leaning views on rpg culture. You have to play by their forum rules, which is my point. If their forum rules, code of conduct etc, weren't so restrictive then most people wouldn't have a problem with them. They are not free speech.

Quote from: blackstone on January 27, 2025, 09:49:39 AMAs do I, but rpg.net forums is exactly the opposite of that: an echo chamber of left-leaning views on rpg culture. You have to play by their forum rules, which is my point. If their forum rules, code of conduct etc, weren't so restrictive then most people wouldn't have a problem with them. They are not free speech.

The only rule over there is you can do whatever you want as long as you badmouth conservatives. That's it.

Quote from: jhkim on January 26, 2025, 08:14:47 PMThanks for the info - my memory is hazy. I know I was never very active on rpg.net, but I probably had a forum account earlier. I knew it mostly as a place for reviews back then, and I submitted a couple of reviews in the early 2000s.

FWIW, I remember reading one of the forums on TBP the morning of 9/11. 

Stopped visiting around 2010 or so, after going after some guy who was telling me how much he hated children and the mods didn't care (I was a new dad at the time, so sensitive to this).  "It's okay to not like some groups of people" I believe is what they said, which I admit -is- fine, but I knew that they'd have dropped the banhammer on that clown if he'd said the same thing about gays.  Between that, tolerating Old Geezer's repeated abuses of the system, and letting Rand Brittan advertise for Jenna Moran's fiction books in the general threads -repeatedly-, I'd realized something.  I realized that even if their clique never came after me, it was too willing and ready to play favorites for me to want to participate anymore in their forums. 

I did submit reviews of items I'd gotten comp copies of for a while longer, but eventually I stopped doing that too.

Okay, my digression is over.

Quote from: HappyDaze on January 27, 2025, 06:20:35 AM

Quote from: yosemitemike on January 27, 2025, 06:15:38 AM

Quote from: HappyDaze on January 27, 2025, 05:59:32 AMIn practice, there is little difference. People here "play the game" and get around Pundit's rules all the time. It would be nice if the non-politics sections actually stayed that way, but that's not whats really going on. Fuzzy rules with weak enforcement has a downside.

I would say that the difference in outcomes between there and here demonstrates that there is a lot of difference.

We get less people banned here, but we also get more off-topic politics splattered everywhere.

Nobody plays games to get around the rules, what happens is we all start mouthing off and derail a thread. Then Pundit comes in and tells everyone to knock it off, and we do.