Moderation in the thread ANOTHER nerf to casters

[Sar]

Can I make fun of other people in neighbor thread where they discuss that haunt is like summon butterflies++?

You can make fun of me anytime you want, Sandman-kun~~

[Sandman25]

Can I make fun of other people in neighbor thread where they discuss that haunt is like summon butterflies++?

You can make fun of me anytime you want, Sandman-kun~~

You see, here is another point - posters tend to do different things depending on whom they are talking too. It is wrong IMHO, we should discuss things, not posters.

Edit. I was not going to have fun, I was shocked/glad to learn Haunt is so weak.

[Sar]

It is wrong IMHO, we should discuss things, not posters.

So you suggest to force anonymity on this forum? A bold idea!

I was shocked/glad to learn Haunt is so weak.

Well, we often disagree on various things, so you won't necessary find Haunt as disappointing as I did. I've gotten it by V:5 or so and maybe it's not supposed to be good at that point? Actually, my last char got Haunt even later in the game, but that was exactly the kind of char Berder mentioned in the other thread - high Int, high Necro (which I've gotten for another spells) and free 7 slots.

[byrel]

Haunt isn't weak. It's a sucky damage spell vs rN+ monsters. It's still a great utility spell though. Summon butterflies is probably the best level 1 utility spell. Haunt has better competition at it's level but it's still good.

[Sar]

Well, I have weird ideas about which spells are weak and whatnot (for example, I think Fire Storm is an awfully weak spell that is only good in the exact part of the game where getting it is not practical at all).

[Sandman25]

So you suggest to force anonymity on this forum? A bold idea!.

Unfortunately it has its own disadvantages but yes, I suspect number of thanks would change significantly if readers could thank messages only without being aware who the author is (so they decide either they want to thank or not and then press either "thank" or "show author" button, messages with author displayed cannot be thanked).

Well, we often disagree on various things, so you won't necessary find Haunt as disappointing as I did. I've gotten it by V:5 or so and maybe it's not supposed to be good at that point? Actually, my last char got Haunt even later in the game, but that was exactly the kind of char Berder mentioned in the other thread - high Int, high Necro (which I've gotten for another spells) and free 7 slots.

In this particular case it is unlikely since I find Monster Menagerie a weak spell unlike you do

[bel]

Wasn't the thank feature supposed to be removed? What happened to that?

[Sar]

I find Monster Menagerie a weak spell

[Sandman25]

I find Monster Menagerie a weak spell

As far as I remember we discussed it already

[Sar]

Maybe, I don't remember that though. Sorry! Anyway, that's offtopic I guess. Let's talk about casters and all the terrible things done to nerf them.

[byrel]

Maybe, I don't remember that though. Sorry! Anyway, that's offtopic I guess. Let's talk about casters and all the terrible things done to nerf them.

No, no! Lets talk about all the terrible things done by those who want to nerf casters! This is the moderation thread.

[Sandman25]

Oh, sorry, it was nago.

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=15249&p=208888#p208888

But I guess you have the same standpoint, I don't remember when you and nago had different opinion about something

[Sar]

Oh, I see. Well, that was a very specific situation (being with Chei and having a vamp laj). Though harpies are extremely good at getting in the face of ranged packs fast and tearing them apart, but you don't harpies each cast.

[duvessa]

I think it's kind of shitty to talk up people you think are good (who are, I don't dispute that of course) and tell other people they're bad, constantly in new and inventive ways, then when someone calls you on it, say "well, no one deserves any special consideration for being good at a damn video game."

I know I say people are bad at DCSS all the time, but come on, all I said this time is that people here aren't as good as mikee and elliptic. When was the last time you saw someone arguing based on the online record of someone worse at crawl than them? It would be downright silly to do that, you could just use your own games instead and they would be more relevant! Unless, of course, you only wanted to make a personal attack on a player based on their crawl games, but I never see anyone doing that!

[gammafunk]

Note: Anyone who implies that Haunt does poor damage or is otherwise bad at killing enemies will receive a warning. Discussing how it may be a poor XP investment compared to pure summons spells is acceptable. Anyone who insinuates that Monstrous Menagerie is in any way a weak spell or even that it's a poor XP investment (assuming that you want to train summonings) will receive an automatic 24-hour ban.

[Sar]

So I'm still allowed to call Fire Storm useless? Good.

[johlstei]

I want to read the deleted posts, except the spam ones. I like deleted posts and want to marry them.

[and into]

Well I responded to the reports mentioned in the OP, and I did so before checking this thread, if that matters to anyone.

Facts as I see them:

3. The moderation dynamic that protects this speech can only be accounted for by social relationships, not any concept of fair play or objective assessment of the merits. Even if it's framed as principled objection to comparing records or whatever, this is just another aspect of the power dynamic at play. If it weren't about "record sniping," there'd be some other problem with Berder and/or Sandman25 asserting themselves in a way that makes their antagonists uncomfortable. I would also point out that it shouldn't actually be necessary to make record comparisons, since any reasonably well-informed poster would know what kind of records Berder and Sandman have and post with appropriate level of regard (which isn't much, but which is more than the contempt I regularly see).

If the attacks bothered you so much why didn't you bother to report report them? Clicking one button would have been a lot easier than typing all this stuff up complaining about nothing being done about bad posts. So maybe the explanation is just that people didn't report those posts (including the people who were being insulted—or whom you assume were insulted)?

People get into heated arguments on the Internet. In most cases, it doesn't erupt, but sometimes it does. I want to stop that from happening, but I'm always wary of intervening when no one has actually submitted a report. (That doesn't mean I won't intervene without a report, just that I'm much more cautious about it.)

So precisely because I am not all that into the sort of power-mongering you suggest, I tend to be reactive, rather than proactive. For this particular role, and in this community, I think that's for the best, although I'm always open to suggestions about how I could be doing things differently/better.

[and into]

Pardon the double post, but it is also worth mentioning (or, rather, emphasizing) that there are multiple moderators and we do have different sensibilities and styles. Even in cases where the moderation is fair, it might be "uneven," in the sense that some set of problematic posts get dealt with first. This is basically what happened in the case Arrhythmia referenced—in a cursory glance you can see that someone called another user a retard, and you know that the post should be deleted, but it isn't immediately obvious that the other person is making a deeply tendentious argument over the course of several posts throughout the thread. The other poster was held to account, it just happened later.

That's not what happened in the caster thread, where as far as I can tell (from the moderator log), the posts from Berder and Sandman25 were dealt with first because reports were submitted on them earlier. [EDIT: Slight correction—Lasty saw Sandman's report but was not sure if and how he should act on it, so he left it open for another mod to weigh in.]

Anyway, nevertheless, we try to be consistent, and we confer with each other when things aren't clear (in our mods-only lair, located deep in Mount Doom, naturally). There is something like "peer review" in place, informally. If you disagree with a mod's decision, another moderator can arbitrate and possibly a different conclusion will be reached—this has actually happened before, by the way. However, the way to handle that is via PMs and reports, not by posting drama threads.

[dowan]

I don't think your moderation has ever been anything but fair, and it's clear you err on the side of leaving well enough alone. I think the same of NJVack. Some of the dev-mods seem to have less even moderation standards, which I brought up in this thread(well, the thread that turned into this).

In the now locked suggestions&criticisms thread I made, I complained about getting warned for a post that was considered too snarky, even though it was relevant to the discussion at hand and had no insults toward anyone. However, in the original thread that turned into this, duvessa made a post that was nothing but snark, and it got thanked, by the same mod who gave me the warning about being too snarky, which is exactly what I complained about in my S&C thread(To be clear, I made that complaint before the incident happened).

I realize my post was in GDD, while duvessa's was in CYC, however I wasn't under the impression that the rules of conduct were different in the two forums, but rather that the GDD forum has a much stricter standard of relevance.

It's not that I think duvessa's snarking shouldn't be allowed, or mine should, but rather that the same standards should apply to both. It's not fair that one is characterized as someone just having a laugh, which the mods join in on, while the other is characterized as bad behavior, which is condemned by those same mods. This is, I think, where MPS is coming from, although I don't think it has to do with any relationships, but rather a reflection that the mods treat people who hold similar points of view differently than those who hold vastly different points of view.

[archaeo]

[and into]

I realize my post was in GDD, while duvessa's was in CYC, however I wasn't under the impression that the rules of conduct were different in the two forums, but rather that the GDD forum has a much stricter standard of relevance.

It's not that I think duvessa's snarking shouldn't be allowed, or mine should, but rather that the same standards should apply to both. It's not fair that one is characterized as someone just having a laugh, which the mods join in on, while the other is characterized as bad behavior, which is condemned by those same mods. This is, I think, where MPS is coming from, although I don't think it has to do with any relationships, but rather a reflection that the mods treat people who hold similar points of view differently than those who hold vastly different points of view.

I think this is a fair point, but another thing worth keeping in mind is that these different groups (poster, moderator, developer) have a different relationship not only to this forum, but also to the game. When I read someone saying that the developers are ruining the game and doing terrible things, etc., it is pretty easy for me just to roll my eyes, but I'm sure I'd feel differently if I had actually spent real (completely volunteered) time and energy working on Crawl. At the same time, this is a fan site for Crawl, and so just like every fan site ever, there's a lot of (often exaggerated) kvetching about things people don't like, in a game they nonetheless play and thus overall enjoy. It just comes with the territory. I expect I would have a much harder time just posting and reading the forum if I worked on the game.

[mps]

Well I responded to the reports mentioned in the OP, and I did so before checking this thread, if that matters to anyone.

Facts as I see them:

3. The moderation dynamic that protects this speech can only be accounted for by social relationships, not any concept of fair play or objective assessment of the merits. Even if it's framed as principled objection to comparing records or whatever, this is just another aspect of the power dynamic at play. If it weren't about "record sniping," there'd be some other problem with Berder and/or Sandman25 asserting themselves in a way that makes their antagonists uncomfortable. I would also point out that it shouldn't actually be necessary to make record comparisons, since any reasonably well-informed poster would know what kind of records Berder and Sandman have and post with appropriate level of regard (which isn't much, but which is more than the contempt I regularly see).

If the attacks bothered you so much why didn't you bother to report report them? Clicking one button would have been a lot easier than typing all this stuff up complaining about nothing being done about bad posts. So maybe the explanation is just that people didn't report those posts (including the people who were being insulted—or whom you assume were insulted)?

People get into heated arguments on the Internet. In most cases, it doesn't erupt, but sometimes it does. I want to stop that from happening, but I'm always wary of intervening when no one has actually submitted a report. (That doesn't mean I won't intervene without a report, just that I'm much more cautious about it.)

So precisely because I am not all that into the sort of power-mongering you suggest, I tend to be reactive, rather than proactive. For this particular role, and in this community, I think that's for the best, although I'm always open to suggestions about how I could be doing things differently/better.

The attacks themselves don't bother me as much as administrative action on their behalf that silences a legitimate avenue of pushback against them. I don't think I would ever report on a regular poster here unless they suddenly started recruiting for a skinhead group or something, in which case I would assume the account had been hijacked. I'm somewhat amazed to hear that there are users who reported Berder and/or Sandman25.

[njvack]

Anyone who insinuates that Monstrous Menagerie is in any way a weak spell or even that it's a poor XP investment (assuming that you want to train summonings) will receive an automatic 24-hour ban.

menagerie is terrible and you know it

[njvack]

I realize my post was in GDD, while duvessa's was in CYC, however I wasn't under the impression that the rules of conduct were different in the two forums, but rather that the GDD forum has a much stricter standard of relevance.

FWIW, I think generally rules of conduct are quite different in the two forums -- and different still for Advice & CIP. That said, I really don't get around to reading CYC much unless someone calls my attention to a thread, so I don't really know.

[archaeo]

The attacks themselves don't bother me as much as administrative action on their behalf that silences a legitimate avenue of pushback against them.

Nobody here got "silenced" in any meaningful way whatsoever. Source: this thread, which looks to me like a "legitimate avenue of pushback."