Discussion about forum moderation

[IronBars]

4 minutes ago, RShara said:

There's a degree of irony here.  The complaint from the poster in the original thread was that I was stating invalid opinions because I wasn't backing them up.  In other words, I was actually not arguing with him, and he found that annoying. The reason I wasn't arguing with him?  Because I disagreed quite a bit, and if I started, I knew I was going to come off badly.  Seriously.  Irony.  A lot of it.

Thats not what i said atal  so im not sure how you can say that

[RShara]

Quote

Or maybe we're "defending" what happened in OB because we have our own opinion, which is that we liked it, and we're explaining WHY we liked it?

I know that I have my own beefs with Oathbringer.  And I know that Calderis and many others do too.  But many of the things you see as underwhelming or as problems, many people think have good reasons for, and enjoyed. 

That's the point people are trying to make.

 

For example:  Did I find Shallan's chapters enjoyable?  Sometimes yes, often no.  Did I find them well written, insightful, and realistic?  Absolutely.

 

On 2/22/2018 at 1:08 PM, IronBars said:

See this is exactly what i mean, you made my point peferctly.

You do the same as Calderas alot as well.

Ye cut under someones point with a throw away comment defending what the author did, with out any actual arguement to back it up, then vanish, until ye see something else ye take exception to and repeat the process.

Ye seem popular on here, but ye're opinions aren't any more valid then mine or anyone elses.

If comment then back up your comment dont just randomly appear cut under someones opinion and vanish til do the same again.

If i could get downvotes for a post id prob have 50 for this but its how it seems to me and im sure others as well.

Those are the statements and replies I am referring to.  You literally say, "without any actual arguments to back it up."  So I'm not sure how else to take that?  I was trying to explain the PoV of the people who are arguing with you, acknowledging that I didn't find everything enjoyable either, but that they were still well written, without getting into an argument that I felt would end with hurt feelings all around.  Because I took exception to a lot of things.  Using Shallan was just the first thing I thought of that I remembered that you mentioned (I didn't even remember what you said about her, specifically).  But you were entitled to your opinion, no matter what it was, and I didn't want you to feel like I was invalidating it in any way.

 

Edit:  And when I see that I'm replying to a new person, I will always go back and add extra encouragement and positivity to my reply, expressly so that they will not feel piled on or unwelcome.

Edited February 23, 2018 by RShara

[Stark]

15 minutes ago, Dreamstorm said:

My two cents, posts from a moderator carry more weight than posts from a normal user.  It's like when a company executive makes a statement; you're going to listen more to that than you are to a random employee.

I don't disagree with this sentiment, but I have a different reasoning.  A fair subsection of the moderators and arcanists seem to be able to attend many of Brandon's events to personally ask questions.  They talk to him on reddit, or twitter.  The email him directly.  Some of them are beta readers.  So when they say something, unless Peter or Brandon show up to say "Nope" - I take them at face value and add more weight to their opinions.  Especially when they support themselves with a WOB.

 

When it comes to non-theory posts, maybe a mix of the previous conditioning and the implied authority given by the title makes me give their thoughts more weight.  I have yet to have an issue or disagreement with one of the Mods, but I often attribute more weight to their postings - even in off the wall theorycrafting with only the flimsiest of support.

 

Heck, as recently as last week, I was pleased when Rshara and Calderis gave me a virtual thumbs up on a theory, more so than other responses, because they are titled members of this group.

 

So I stick by my feeling.  The mods and are doing the best they can do, and I am thankful they are donating their time to keep this running.  But, as part of them evolving, they do need to be aware that a lot of us will, consciously or not, assign more weight to their posts.  Official business or not.  And I think most are pretty good about being careful of that perception, especially if the comments about off forum discussion for problem solving is to be believed, and I see no reason to doubt that.

I don't think the solution is for mods to have official and personal accounts.  That is too easy to abuse, and would be a waste of their time.  I also don't see restricting areas a mod can participate in as being a solution.  That sucks all the fun out of this and makes it work.  Unpaid, unfun work.  That would kill the interest of many mods in being here, I think.  So there is merit to the discussion of freedom vs. power, but there is no solution that will keep everyone happy.

For now, I'm still having fun 99.99% of the time I'm here, and I see that continuing as long as we can continue to have open, respectful discussion about issues that come up.

[Calderis]

24 minutes ago, Dreamstorm said:

I'm sorry, but if I came to you to say you've been offensive, why would I expect anything different than the way I've been treated (and seen others been treated) on the public forums?  If anything, I expect gloves to come off behind closed doors.  But, you're right that I assumed it was intentional, and so I avoided topics where I thought you might immediately jump all over me and stayed in my (now condemned) sandbox.  I apologize that assumption was incorrect, but can you honestly say you respect my opinions and don't consider me "just a silly shipper"?

It's completely understandable. All I said was that it was problematic. I love this place, and I don't want anyone to feel excluded. You enjoy different things that  I do and that's fine. I don't mean to belittle anyone though, so please, if I'm out of line, let me know. 

I don't think of anyone as a "silly shipper" (except maybe @FeatherWriter ). My issue with the shipping discussion here is that it overpowers all other character discussion. I get bothered about how the focus always shifts to romantic relationships.

Yes relationships can have a heavy impact on character motivations, but there is far far more to people than who they are romantically involved with, and I would love to discuss those aspects as the romances really don't interest me. 

So, tangent aside, I'm sorry for how I come across at times. I don't want to ostracize anyone. 

[IronBars]

8 minutes ago, RShara said:

Those are the statements and replies I am referring to.  You literally say, "without any actual arguments to back it up."  So I'm not sure how else to take that?  I was trying to explain the PoV of the people who are arguing with you, acknowledging that I didn't find everything enjoyable either, but that they were still well written.

Ok i explained this in the actual thresad i think, and wasnt to that post specfically more your timing on it, the way in which your reply comes across at times (same with calderis) is dismissive, and like your talking down, also sometimes the lack of use of in my opinion, seems to me etc comes across as a round about, indirect way of saying, your opinion is wrong because x y z, 

Also the random swopping into a thread saying whatever it is and vanishing til repeat the process, adds to the sense of what i said above.

I didnt even say anything bad yesterday and had chaos got defensive and i wouldnt say attack me but belittle me maybe ? but she/he tried to do somthing for no reason, in defense of someone who didnt need it when nothing was really said to begin with

[Kaymyth]

Hi, another mod weighing in. I haven’t really been involved much in the threads that got contentious, but I have observed a good bit.

So, one of the social phenomena that I’ve seen repeat itself over and over through various threads (and life) is the Escalatory Circle That Spirals Into Doom And Destruction. It goes something like this:

• ·         Person 1 states opinion.

• ·         Person 2 states rebuttal.

• ·         Person 1 gets a bit shirty.

• ·         Person 2 thinks, “Hey, that was a bit rude.” Snarks off in response.

• ·         Person 1 gets massively offended at the snark and says something rude.

• ·         Person 2 gets massively offended at the rudeness and calls them out/reports to staff/tells the teacher/storms off in a huff.

It’s all predicated on the idea that if someone is rude to us, we are somehow allowed to be rude right back and because the other person started it, that’s okay. But it’s not. Retaliatory rudeness is still rude.

The part that makes it really hard to parse out is that it usually starts small and slowly escalates up until the people involved are outright attacking each other. So how do you drill down and find out where it started? Whose fault is it? The answer can range from “everybody” to “storms if I know” and everywhere in between. Or around. Or above, or under.

I had an incident that I dealt with along these lines in a real life situation earlier this week. A friend of mine shared a document to a group. One of the group posted a critique that was snarky and shaded into rude. I spoke with my friend before he made his response and advised him to try to keep it polite. Then I went into a movie.

Then I came out of the movie, and I read his response, and went, “Oh, crud monkeys.” Because it was rude. It was extremely snarky. It had a lot of facts in it, and on the factual side it was good, but the tone made me want to cry because it was just that bad.

I spent the rest of the evening in damage control, had a long talk with my friend, and between my feedback and another response from someone in the group about their disappointment in the level of discourse, my friend realized that he was, in fact, terribly wrong. And he posted a long, thorough apology on the matter.

And you know what? Solving problems like this is emotionally exhausting. We, as staff, cannot possibly manage to police every single post’s tone, or thoroughly research the lead-up to every single report of, “So-and-so was mean to me!” We look at the offending post, maybe a bit of the thread history, but in the end we do the best we can with the emotional energy we’ve got.

Could we do better at creating some kind of consistent response? Probably. The forum population has exploded in the last 6 months, and we’re dealing with a large sea change in the Shard’s dynamics of moving from a small forum to a pretty good-sized one. Things that used to work just...aren't anymore. It's tough to adapt, but we're trying.

But honestly? I don’t think it’s too much to have a general expectation that everyone stay polite and refrain from sniping at each other. You can deal with someone being rude and snarky without dropping to their level. I’ve had plenty of occasions here on the Shard where someone said something snippy to me. I take a moment, work the emotional response out of my system, and come up with a de-escalatory response that addresses their concerns without raising the tension level of the thread. And you know what? Every time, it’s worked. I’ve often even got unsolicited apologies from said person for having been short. It’s not that hard, and it serves to heighten the tone of the Shard as a whole.

I know perfectly well that even all of us staff aren’t always perfect here – keeping from sliding into the trap is hard, I just happen to be a lot more neurotic than baseline so I catch myself a bit more easily than most. I’m sure most of you can post examples of when a staffer has slid into retaliatory snark. We’re not perfect. We have bad days. We’re all going to screw up sometimes, and when we do, we take ownership, apologize, and move on.

That’s what we expect from everyone – when you make a mistake, take ownership, apologize, remove offending remarks if need be, and move on. We do it ourselves. Heck, before I became staff, I’d been subject to moderation myself. Yep, I screwed up, I panicked like a ridiculous little loon for about 90 seconds, then I fixed it, apologized, and I moved on.

As to the sentiment that has been expressed that the staff team shouldn’t be expressing opinions – I’m sorry, but I find that patently ridiculous. If you’re worried about a perceived bias situation, the last thing you want to do is make any potential staff bias less transparent. Creating staff/non-staff alt accounts won't help that need for transparency, either. Not posting opinions won’t keep us from having them, and if we’re going to have them, it’s a lot better to keep them out there where you can see them.

 

 

[Jofwu]

42 minutes ago, Dreamstorm said:

And as has since been explained, the more overt censorship was not intended to be censorship.  Though I do wish the fact that staff wanted to facilitate discussion, just in another manner, would have been more obvious in the ASK thread locking post.

It's amusing several people can all look at a thing and still fail to word it just right. I guess when you talk about something too much it's easy to leave out certain context and not realize it.

[RShara]

9 minutes ago, IronBars said:

Ok i explained this in the actual thresad i think, and wasnt to that post specfically more your timing on it, the way in which your reply comes across at times (same with calderis) is dismissive, and like your talking down, also sometimes the lack of use of in my opinion, seems to me etc comes across as a round about, indirect way of saying, your opinion is wrong because x y z, 

Also the random swopping into a thread saying whatever it is and vanishing til repeat the process, adds to the sense of what i said above.

I didnt even say anything bad yesterday and had chaos got defensive and i wouldnt say attack me but belittle me maybe ? but she/he tried to do somthing for no reason, in defense of someone who didnt need it when nothing was really said to begin with

I'm sorry...I don't understand this?  I'm not being disingenuous.  I actually do not understand this.

  I mean, the whole thread was about opinions.  I repeatedly said that everyone's opinion was valid.  I have screenshots.  I repeatedly said that we needed to keep it civil.  I repeatedly said that no one was intending any insult, so please forgive any unintended ones, and let's stick to the subject.  In the very first line of my post, I said, " because we have our own opinion, which is that we liked it, and we're explaining WHY we liked it " .  I was attempting to cool down tempers that were growing heated, by pointing out that everyone had a right to their opinion.

I tried to make a point with you a couple of times, and you disagreed with it.  So I stopped.  Because I didn't want to come across as aggressive.  And that's what I'm being criticized on.  This is utterly and completely baffling to me.  I was literally doing exactly what I was supposed to do.  I just...I don't....  What?

Edited February 23, 2018 by RShara

[Alderant]

4 minutes ago, RShara said:

I'm sorry...I don't understand this?  I'm not being disingenuous.  I actually do not understand this.

  I mean, the whole thread was about opinions.  I repeatedly said that everyone's opinion was valid.  I have screenshots.  I repeatedly said that we needed to keep it civil.  I repeatedly said that no one was intending any insult, so please forgive any unintended ones, and let's stick to the subject.  In the very first line of my post, I said, " because we have our own opinion, which is that we liked it, and we're explaining WHY we liked it " .  I was attempting to cool down tempers that were growing heated, by pointing out that everyone had a right to their opinion.

I tried to make a point with you a couple of times, and you disagreed with it.  So I stopped.  Because I didn't want to come across as aggressive.  And that's what I'm being criticized on.  This is utterly and completely baffling to me.  I was literally doing exactly what I was supposed to do.  I just...I don't....  What?

To be fair here @IronBars, the thread wasn't moved to vanish on you and repeat the process. There are some concerns that have been voiced and the moderators thought it prudent to create an entirely separate thread to focus on the problem. Unfortunately it appears RShara was caught up in the aftermath of it. She was trying to explain to Dreamstorm her side of the thread.

[RShara]

You're right.  I should drop it.  I'm sorry for any hurt feelings.  I was trying to be helpful.  I'll try and do better.

If I fall, I will stand up a better (wo)man.

[Jofwu]

15 minutes ago, Alderant said:

There are some concerns that have been voiced and the moderators thought it prudent to create an entirely separate thread to focus on the problem.

Yep! Sorry if that wasn't clear. We felt Dreamstorm's warranted discussion... but that such discussion would totally derail @IronBars's topic.

[FeatherWriter]

4 hours ago, PhineasGage said:

I wasn't present for this event so I don't have first hand experience of it, but simply from your own words this seems very flawed. A member came into a thread and proceeded to break the rules. Was she put on moderation? Was she banned? We have no idea that any real discipline was carried out and she wasn't publically shamed like a new member would have been in the same circumstance. And why did this happen? According to you it is because she is your friend. You just had a chat.

How is this ok?

This proves that there is bias again. Indeed, it is even worse than I thought! Why wasn't a post made by a moderator at least acknowledging this - can it not be seen that this has the effect of making people feel like as long as you know the mods, you're golden?

54 minutes ago, Dreamstorm said:

Yes, you can contact RandomUse096; it's called sending them a PM.  I don't get this argument at all.  You have a way to privately address any member of the 17th Shard through PM.  Yes, they may respond poorly (your next point), but that seems to be a hazard of moderation.  If someone responds poorly, then you can take other steps.  There isn't actual risk in this situation, it's not like deciding to go to your friend's house to discuss a situation versus going to a stranger's house; you have total authority to moderate a user, ban a user, delete their posts, modify their posts.  Shouldn't the exact way you dealt with your friend be the way you deal with all posters?

I think my post was perhaps, a little unclear. This is not to say that we never moderate through PMs. As I said, we do! For many people and for many reasons. A lot of moderation happens privately rather than publicly, but, since it's not open for everyone to see, obviously people don't know about those cases. This just happened to be one that people noticed happened "off-screen" so to speak.

My point in talking about that experience wasn't to say that "my friend got private talks while strangers get public ones" because that's just not the case. I meant to say that in that case, because I know my friend well and we talk frequently, we were able to accomplish the moderation with a chill and friendly chat, because I knew she'd understand and listen even before I spoke to her. That's just not a luxury that we get with random users who we don't know. I have to tread more carefully when moderating people I don't know well because they don't know me and I don't know them. The kind of PM that I'd send to a user like that would be more calm, professional, and explanatory than the casual chat I can have with a friend where I can just swoop in and go "yo, fren, u went too far there, fix it."

If the person who gets a PM is a brand new user, I tend to be gentler, because I don't want their first experience on the Shard to be a scolding from authorities. More than likely with newbies, they just don't have a handle on the rules yet and some encouragement in the right direction is all it takes. If it's someone who's been around for a while and should know better, I can be a little stricter. There's not a "boilerplate" response for when something's wrong. The kind of response that I send as a moderator changes based on the person I'm talking to and the situation at hand.

I think perhaps the root of the issue is that while there's clear rules in place, there aren't necessarily delineated punishments for breaking them. Getting moderated on 17S isn't like getting a speeding ticket where it's "pay this amount if your 10mph over, pay this much if it was 25." There's not a chart somewhere that says doing this will get you a PM, or this will be a public warning, or this will get you mod queued, or this will get you banned. Dealing with situations is done on a case-by-case basis, and usually collectively. When a problem post is brought to our attention, the staff often talks together about how to handle it. Should it be deleted, or edited, or should one of us post a warning, or should that person be mod queued? It depends on a lot of factors. Has this person been trouble before? Are there multiple reports about this post, or is it just one person who might be overreacting a bit? Is this somewhere where making a statement about what's happening will help solve it best, or is it better to pull the person aside in private and see if they'll fix it quietly? Are there other people involved who also need to be seen to? Should they get PMs as well, or is it a problem that will shape up if just the main offender shapes up?

Personally, I think that flexibility helps the staff respond to problems more efficiently than a more rigid system would. It gives us the chance to use our discretion and take extenuating circumstances into account while we're sorting through what are usually tense situations with high emotions. Because of that, we can handle them in the way we think is going to get things settled rather than making it worse. I think there's some situations where there just isn't a great answer that's not going to upset people, so you pick the one that upsets the fewest, or the one that's going to be better for the site overall. And in those cases, when the backlash rolls in, you push up your sleeves and try to mediate and settle that too. 

Like I said before, I'm sure we pick wrong sometimes. There's probably times where another method might have been more effective or better. But that can't always be helped. Conflicts are messy, no matter what, and that unpredictability of not knowing how people are going to respond to the things we do means often, we've got to take our best guess and go with it.

Maybe that staff-discretion method needs to be reconsidered. Personally, I think it's efficient and the wisest course of action, but if a majority of our users find it unfair or feel like the staff are attacking them for no reason, then that's something we need to consider. From what I've seen, I don't think that's the case. I think a lot of people are mostly okay with staff making decisions in how to handle things as they arise, but maybe I'm wrong about that. That's part of what discussions like this are for.

[Chaos]

I would like to address two general matters at hand.

Regarding Moderators Having Opinions

I can definitely see how having moderators in discussions is concerning. It would be nice if, like on Reddit, it only showed the moderator badge when it is time to do official moderator business. That's not how this software is structured unfortunately. I could totally remove the "Group" thing that says Admin, Moderators, etc. on posts, but then it wouldn't appear on official business. So, that's a problem. 

I would like to say that it is totally unrealistic for moderators to never discuss content. That... that is not possible. Are people suggesting we shouldn't say words in Discord, too? I cannot seriously entertain the idea that moderators never engage in content discussion. Wouldn't this be way worse if we were some aloof group who never said anything, who you knew nothing about, and had no relationship with? Wouldn't people on Discord think that if we didn't engage, we didn't care about the community and didn't care about managing it? 

Let's say, hypothetically, moderators did not engage in discussion. I think you'd see moderators engage in the entire site less. They wouldn't notice problems. They would basically just manage reports. I don't know, that sounds like a good way to lose moderators. (Plus, people would complain "this post that is offensive took a whole HOUR to be removed? Screw this site, I'm leaving." You'd have even more of that. 

I didn't spike Argent and Pagerunner saying they could never discuss any topics they like (magic, theorizing, that stuff). That's not a realistic expectation, and I would expect many mods to prefer to not be mods if we made that policy. 

I find it very interesting that historically I've been very involved in cosmere theories, but it never seemed to blow up. People told me I was wrong. I admitted when I was wrong. I wish I had more time to engage with users. That's important. We are not enemies. We are among you. It always seems that people take all character opinions very strongly when we should again, all go grab a cup of tea and chill out.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying we can't take our roles seriously, and I tend to think we do. If someone doesn't seem to take that role seriously, they can message me with posts they feel was over that line. 

Regarding a Character Subforum

There was a discussion about this on Discord too a while back. I've thought about forum layout more than really anyone should, so I'd like to talk about this. I do want to promote character discussion, but there are very important factors to consider in making such a board that people are glossing over. (That's fine, it's not their job to think about this minutiae.) 

I will say: the more forums there are, the more confusion there is about where to place new topics. When a member isn't sure where to put something, there's resistance. That resistance is hard to overcome and thus people will leave the site. It is for this reason you do not see book-by-book forums on 17th Shard. I don't want people to think, "Oh man this talks about Hero of Ages but also a little Alloy, do I put it in the HoA board or Alloy one?"  I am inherently resistant to new forums because of this core philosophy.

There are pros and cons to making a Character and Relationships forum. I'm going to assume this board is separate thing, kind of like Cosmere Theories, but for deep character analysis. (I am opposed to making a Character forum for each series; that is excessive.)

Pros:

-Gives a dedicated place where people know what they will get. Cultivates people who want this kind of discussion, of which there is a lot. 

-People not interested in that forum won't go into it and will leave it off their Activity Streams. This should dramatically lower the annoyance some members find with this class of discussion. 

Cons:

-Segregation. One reason I'm resistant to this idea for a subforum is kind of a reason why ASK became problematic: people would feel that the only place for character discussion is that board. They'd feel secluded from the rest of the site and not part of the community at large. I really wish that we could have these discussions in book discussion boards without people being "ugh more relationship stuff," so all felt welcome, but I suppose I should take seriously the reality that this isn't happening at large, and we should try and foster this type of discussion more explicitly. But I do think segregating this discussion into its own corner would absolutely have consequences five years from now, so it's something to think about. 

-Confusion for users posting things. Imagine I'm a new user and I'm not tech savvy. I want to talk about a character, and I have thoughts. Do I post it in this Character forum, or do I post in the dedicated book boards? That's a really difficult line. It's hard enough to get the book series / cosmere distinction already, and this line would be way fuzzier. I don't want people to think this is the only place where character discussion should go, like we are hiding them in a box. That's the opposite of what I want. 

-Spoiler policy. I'd say people having opinions on characters is likely a larger audience than those who care about minutiae about magic. Because of this, much more casual members would likely be interested in such topics. That is a good thing, but that poses difficulty for the Character board. It's more likely for a more casual user to go into that forum and probably get spoiled on a different series they don't care about. Sure we could use topic tags, but again, that makes inertia for newer posters. 

So, you see, it isn't really a trivial matter. I am curious what everyone thinks about these issues and how we could counteract segregation and animosity from that.

[Kiiyashi]

5 hours ago, PhineasGage said:

Sorry, but every time a moderator posts their personal opinion it is an abuse of power. This is because there is an imbalance of power. Mods should not be allowed to post their opinions unless they have no mod rights in the threads they want to participate in. I don't remember this being a problem in other fora I've participated in - it is usually possible to segregate which areas mods can effect change and which they can participate in. Its a trade off - power for freedom.

I don't post here much. I mainly swoop in occasionally each year when I finally get a Dragonsteel WoB. But I, where possible, read just about everything in the Cosmere section.

As someone who has been a moderator on other forums, and even been an administrator, I am curious to know how you would even want this to work.

Do you want mods who have no care for the material, or ones who must sacrifice their ability to interact for a volunteer position?
Those are the only real options.
And even if you have dedicated mods for each section, as has been said above, they're either interested in that area and active, or not interested and they'll be slow.
And hell, an administrator is essentially a super mod for every board. Do you want them to go "Yeah, I'm doing a ton of work for all these fans, but I need to step back and not interact because people may be intimidated"?

Mods who are interested in something are going to keep a closer eye on it, and are more likely to try and adjust things quickly.
People are here because they like the same thing.

Being a moderator is not easy.
If something goes wrong, and you're involved, then people perceive as that being your fault.
They have more incentive than anyone to ensure that their posts, and the topics they post in, run smoothly and well for everyone.


I'm not directing this solely at you, I should add, but that quotation just clicks poorly with me.
And a trade off? Power for freedom?
That works when power is sought, and people want it to do stuff.
A moderator's power is only useful for moderating.
That's the point.
It's not fun, it's not enjoyable, it needs to be done.
Moderators take on that extra responsibility so other people can enjoy posting, without having that burden.

Sure, it doesn't always work, but people try.
I think I've lurked here for some stupid amount of time, probably three or four years now, but I've always felt that this was one of the calmer and more reasonable forums I have ever seen.

 

Ah, and true to my roots, I've latched onto something and gone on a rant.
So again, this is not intended as an attack, nor directed solely at you, but just a sore point.
And to clarify my point further, mods are fans too. If they didn't care, if they weren't allowed to discuss what they liked about the books, then they wouldn't be here, and I guarantee that the situation would be much worse.

Mods are people too.
Report them if they go overboard.
Report other people if you think there's a problem.
No one can be everywhere, and no one can handle everything.
Reporting posts brings it to the attention of the full moderation team, and if they all share the same opinions, thoughts, and logical process, then I will be very surprised.

And, uh, sorry for throwing this wall of text in your face.

[Kogiopsis]

I want to clear up a couple of things related to a particular incident, if I may, as I think clarification may be pertinent to the discussion at hand.

10 hours ago, Dreamstorm said:

It's no secret that the moderators of this forum have a consistent bias, in general not liking criticism of the book and specifically having strong opinions on certain topics, as these views have been aired very publicly.  From what I have seen, it is the posters whose opinions run contrary to the collective "moderator opinion" who are the ones publicly chastised.  For instance, a moderator once brought in a friend as an "attack dog" to the shipping thread (the poster stated they were there to provide snarky comments), the moderator's friend got extremely heated and was reported.  The moderator team on some level must have agreed on the offensiveness of the post, as it was deleted and then reinstated with revisions.  No public chastisement was given.  This is not an anomaly; it's been quite clear that biased treatment is to be expected.

Feather has already outlined the actual event quite thoroughly, but I want to make two things as clear as possible:

1.  I was not and have never been anyone's "attack dog".  I have a... strained relationship with this site, and tend to only jump into conversation when pissed enough not to hold my tongue.  Feather was telling me about the ASK thread, yes, but... she also knows me well enough that she was largely lobbying against me wading into things.  Thing is, as much as I respect her and her very diplomatic approach to things, that decision was already made.

2.  As soon as I was aware that I was under moderation for the post in question, I made sure to let Feather know that I was open to whatever decision the mods made amongst themselves, from minor edits to a full-blown ban.  I'm mostly active in the Tumblr Cosmere fandom, and I view this account as a 'burner', so to speak - I stick my head in to say what no one else will, and then vanish into the mists for another two years, like a very cantankerous living Brigadoon.  (The first time, it was for the purpose of calling out homophobia and making the point that the site can be friendly to queer fans, or to homophobes, but not to both - and much to my relief, things have gotten better.  I don't regret it.)  But I am well aware that I tend to be more overtly pugnacious than the average Sharder, and that in order to maintain the social peace of the site I might have to be banned.  That's fine by me, and the mods are aware of such.

All this to say - I don't think my friendship with Feather was as much of a factor in that situation as you suggest in this post.  However, it's still relevant; see below.

6 hours ago, PhineasGage said:

I wasn't present for this event so I don't have first hand experience of it, but simply from your own words this seems very flawed. A member came into a thread and proceeded to break the rules. Was she put on moderation? Was she banned? We have no idea that any real discipline was carried out and she wasn't publically shamed like a new member would have been in the same circumstance. And why did this happen? According to you it is because she is your friend. You just had a chat.

How is this ok?

This proves that there is bias again. Indeed, it is even worse than I thought! Why wasn't a post made by a moderator at least acknowledging this - can it not be seen that this has the effect of making people feel like as long as you know the mods, you're golden?

...

Personally I think public shaming is not useful - it causes defensiveness which then prevents a change in behaviour. A PM with an explanation about why the post is a problem is going to be more effective with more people (you can even have C+Ped sections in to make them quick to write!). 

What I get from these two portions of Phineas's post is that the problem is not how the mods handled me, but the fact that that is not always the case with everyone.  Which... I think is a reasonable objection, actually.  However, it's worth noting that there is a benefit to making a public post in a thread which cannot be replicated in PMs:  the reinforcement of overall social norms.    That can carry an air of public shaming, depending on how the parties involve behave, but I don't think its value is in question.  I do seem to recall a couple of mods (especially Chaos) dropping into the ASK thread to ask people to simmer down, which to me carries an implicit rebuke of all involved, for what that may be worth.

(Also, for a nitpicky clarification:  it was my understanding of the situation at the time that the person who reported my post objected to one singular line, not the entire post.  That was the portion which was reworked after the post was hidden, in response to the reporter's wishes.  As far as I know, no further objections were raised, so in the end it was a small issue that could be handled with minimal fuss.  I just wanted to point that out, as Dreamstorm's initial description could lead it to sound like a much bigger brouhaha.)

 

All that said - I think one of the most useful options for those who are troubled by the current mod practices would be documentation, going forward.  As the mods have mentioned, they won't necessarily know about a problem until someone brings it up, and that includes conscious or unconscious biases among the moderators themselves - it would therefore seem useful to keep a record of what posts you report, who wrote them, what the response was, and which mod was involved (if that information is available).  That way, everyone involved would have a concrete basis for discussion and a database from which to brainstorm solutions.  And even if you think mods won't remonstrate old-timers or their friends, this way you could 1.  test that theory by reporting as you deem necessary and 2.  have a record of specific cases of bias if your theory is supported.

Edited February 23, 2018 by Kogiopsis

[Chaos]

30 minutes ago, Kogiopsis said:

That can carry an air of public shaming, depending on how the parties involve behave, but I don't think its value is in question.  I do seem to recall a couple of mods (especially Chaos) dropping into the ASK thread to ask people to simmer down, which to me carries an implicit rebuke of all involved, for what that may be worth.

Correct, and anyone is welcome to look at my post history to see that when I did join to make a public rebuke, people did need to chill. 

I am not scared to explain exactly my thought process in an entirely candid manner, and if you disagree, I can probably improve too. We are not a secret cabal. We have nothing to hide. I'm an open book. 

One more thing about bias from the OP: everyone is biased. Every one of you with your opinions and how you have lived your life. The way to deal with bias is not to hide it but to acknowledge it as being real. The OP seems to suggest that because we biased, we can't moderate anything. That's just not a good argument. Everyone, I don't know if you know this, but we actually hid a lot of posts in ASK, on both sides. Do we need to announce publicly the reason why we do everything? That definitely can have some very serious ramifications if we had, say, a moderator action log for everyone to peruse. That is not a wise course of action. But just because you didn't see it, doesn't mean it didn't happen.

If we wanted dissenting opinions gone as this seems to suggest, we're extremely bad at it, I guess, because I can think of a lot of methods to make people go away very rapidly. It's almost like we specifically didn't do that because we actually value those people. 

One last thing. This seemed to spawn from IronBar's topic. I would absolutely tell anyone who accuses someone of being a "fanboy" on this site in a negative manner to cut it out. That is not respectful, sorry. We're a fan site. There are fans here, so yeah, I do tend to find that disrespectful and in extremely poor taste. 

I don't really see how I am intensely biased against contrary opinions when you can clearly look at my post history where I say it's totally fine for IronBars to have his opinion: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/66361-ob-underwhelming/?do=findComment&comment=676327 

To people who seriously are convinced that we are biased against contrary opinions and that we want to silence opinions: If we wanted to do that, wouldn't we just hide this topic/post? Wouldn't we remove various topics like, "Adolin and Shallan will not last," various threads hating Moash and hating on his sections, The Shallan Disgust Thread? Hiding various negative things where people basically are hugely disappointed with Brandon for Adolin's lack of character development in Oathbringer? Has that happened? No. Not in the slightest. 

This is not a ploy, guys. We don't have a hidden agenda. We are not trying to silence critique. If that was our goal, we are doing an exceptionally poor job of it. We will have more character discussion, and that has not ended. Your feedback is valuable. If you think we are biased against opinions then I guess we need more transparency and more clear ways to record moderator actions, I suppose. We can do that. We are here for you.

[little wilson]

Eric already covered a lot of what I was going to say, but I’ll provide my thoughts about some of this as well, so you have another mod’s perspective.

I don’t often post outside the community board—particularly the Sanderson Elimination games—and the reason is because a lot of what goes on elsewhere is realmatics theorizing. There was a time when this was interesting to me: about 10 years ago when I joined TWG. But that time is long past, and now, I’m far more fascinated by character discussion. Arcs, development, romance, you name it. I love it. Unfortunately, it’s historically been something looked down upon here.

When the ASK thread first popped up, my first impression upon seeing the thread title was “OH YES SOMEPLACE I CAN POST!!!” (without so much caps and exclamation points, but I was excited at the time, so there you have it). And then I read the OP and it seemed less like a discussion about Adolin-Shallan-Kaladin, and it became clear to me that this was not the haven of casual character discussion I’d thought it would be. I think it’s entirely possible to carry on a conversation/discussion with someone of an opposing view without needing to cite every single point you make, and I don’t really have the time or motivation to do that. So I never posted in that thread, even though I followed along with it a bit and there were times when I desperately wanted to say something.

Additionally, it saddened me to see members directing other, newer members to that thread as the “the place to talk about characters,” because….it shouldn’t be the only place to do that. We’re the Brandon Sanderson fansite. We should welcome all things Brandon. Including character discussion. It’s not inherently lesser than realmatic theorycrafting and it shouldn’t be treated as lesser.

It’s funny, because this isn’t the first time I’ve come across the view that a fan-related thing that isn’t theorycrafting is somehow lesser. Back when we were having initial discussions about reputation issues with the negative rep, some people suggested removing rep entirely from the community boards, including the roleplaying section and fanworks. I was a very strong proponent of keeping the rep on those forums because they are related to Brandon and shouldn’t be relegated to a lesser section of the site simply because they’re not realmatics. I’ve seen RP that took just as much time to write as a well-sourced and well-written theory. We have people who run Sanderson-based games, dedicating hours per day for weeks at a time (sometimes months). That is not lesser. It’s just different.

Character discussion is similar. It’s not lesser. It’s merely a different kind of theorycrafting than realmatics. And because it’s technically theorizing, it belongs with the other theories. The two shouldn’t be separated just because some people enjoy realmatics and others enjoy characters. If we make the thread titles obvious, you can avoid what you don’t like. Easy peasy.

But moving on from character discussion and onto moderator opinions. I get the point there, that what we say may seem to carry more weight because of our moderator tag. But like Eric said, that’s not something we can toggle on and off for any given post. One potential solution is prefacing our posts with “Taking the modhat off” so it’s clear this should not be taken as from a mod, but I don’t think that would solve the issue, because I think you’d still have people wary to engage in discussion opposing a moderator for fear of being mod-queued even though the moderator has said they are not a moderator for that post.

Another solution is making staff create an alternate account when they’re promoted. But not only is this somewhat impractical for the staff, as it necessitates that we log out of one account to log in to another to do specific things (which would get really tedious after a while), but there are a lot of other issues with it too. One, it distances the staff/admins from the regular users on the site. We’re no longer people. We become Big Brother (I don’t want to be Big Brother, and you shouldn’t want us to be Big Brother either). And two, forcing us to create new identities means we’re required to give up our current identities—identities that have very likely garnered respect in some parts of the forum, hence the promotion in the first place. A lot of us have been on the Shard for many years. These accounts are who we are. They are what we, as people, are known by on this site. And, this may seem overly sentimental, but I’m fairly attached to my account/username. It’s the same name I used on TWG ten years ago. Giving it up so it becomes a purely authoritative figure and creating something new would feel like giving up a large part of who I am on this forum. That really doesn’t feel like the right solution, but again: maybe I’m being overly sentimental.

I don't know what the right solution is, outside of us just mingling more. But we should absolutely be allowed to post as ourselves. You don't a moderator who doesn't care about the community in a position of power. That would lead to neglect at best and abuse at worst. And moderators who care about the community get involved with said community.

[Ammanas]

Everyone is hypersensitive about everything nowadays and quick to be offended. I believe that the moderators do a great job and this is the most friendly forum I have been apart of.

[maxal]

I have read the full two page of conversation and I feel the need to step in, for a moment, to share my personal experience with the moderation team and the 17th Shard.

I have been a member of the 17th Shard for nearly four years now: what started up as an innocent account to voice a few thoughts on my favorite topic, turned to be a pass-time hobby. Discussing the Stormlight Archive has been a way to communicate with people sharing similar-like interest and also a way to vent out from real-life induced stress. No matter how many brick work dropped on me, I always knew I could go back to my safe haven of character related discussion and rehearse, once again, a given aspect or another of my favorite narratives.

I am a strongly opinionated individual who tends to stick with her opinion unless proven utterly wrong or until someone is brave enough, persevere enough to change my mind. And yes, it did happen. More times then people are aware of: ask anytime for the story of how I went from being a firm believe Adolin as a Dustbringer was the absolute best possible narrative to the Adolin as an Edgedancer one, which I have been strongly promoting for the past two years. I love telling stories... 

This being said, being a highly opinionated individual, sometimes having as much tack as an elephant walking into a glass store combined to being a tad too passionate about one given story aspect or another has not made me the 17th Shard most popular poster. I have often been heavily criticized, shunned upon, bullied on Discord, massively downvoted and oh how I have publicly pestered against the downvote system. I never liked it and I never missed an occasion to make my thoughts on the matter being heard, loud and clear. Now you get none of this made me the moderation team's favorite poster... I clashed with some of them, on occasions, I have entertained the thought they were being unfair towards my person and despite being here for four years, I never really felt I was part of the "older crew". My reputation never really was something I felt was solid enough to sit on.

So where's my point in telling all of this? I have read others argue there is a preferential treatment onto the 17th Shard, I have read others state they feel older posters were treated differently than newer ones and they felt there was a double standard into the community. I have been this newer abrasive controversial poster. My trajectory onto this community has not been straight-forward, it was made of bumps and lumps, but despite all of this, despite my quite spectacularly obnoxious start into the community, despite myself thinking moderation hated me, I have to now state they always, always, always took the time they needed to pass the message they needed to pass into the best possible way. 

I have had mods take their personal time to answer to my pesky antics, to stop their car at gaze stations in a panic to answer to my frantic antics, to write long replies, to address the points I was trying to raise and to explain why a handful of given posts have been received so badly. I have had mods try to explain to me why I seem to come off as so controversial, why I seem to be so heavily downvoted. I have literally been on both side of conflicts: I have probably been reported many times, I have occasionally reported other posters when I felt they trespass and started indulging into personal attacks. Each and every single time an event happened, the moderation addressed it and did their best to solve it. They listened to me. The empathized with me after the Discord incident and they also told me when I went too far. They hid some of my posts because they felt they weren't helping improve the mood and I fully support their decision. I have not always agreed with the moderation team, but I do think they did the best they could with the task at hand. Would I have done better? Me? Hell, no. I'd be about 10 times worst. Mind, I'm generous, I'd be about 100 times worst.

The moderation team are just human beings and they often are stuck in between the anvil and the hammer. They have however always did their best to be as impartial as possible, to treat each forumer with respect and yes, they even did it when I didn't deserve to receive it. I sincerely do not believe one minute in preferential treatment. I sincerely believe the moderation team is allowing all posters to grow into this community, even the ones which start off wrong, even the ones having sometimes been an offender.

The situation, since OB's release, has been difficult to manage for everyone. The book wasn't received as enthusiastically as the previous ones: some readers are disappointed with some aspects of its narrative. It has been hard for all of us to hear so many dissenting opinions. I has been hard for myself to see how liking Adolin suddenly become something I should be ashamed of as posters started to use it as an argument to dispel my own argumentation. Character related discussion had been confined to this one thread which was supposed to house the Kaladin/Shallan supporters while making a bit of room for the Adolin/Shallan ones while discussing Shallan's character mostly from the angle of one preferred ship while offering a bit of space to discuss Adolin and.... it was a mess. Too many discussions were going on at once, too many conflicting opinions and it created bad karma for many posters. 

Character discussion is my favorite discussion, but ever since OB, there hasn't been many threads to do so besides The Thread and well, one single thread cannot discuss ALL opinions in a peaceful way when the subject is one which raises passion. More threads were needed, but the existence of the massive one prevented those from coming into life. It didn't help any poster making a comment on shipping was bluntly told, at times, to keep it to The Thread. 

The Thread has been great: I have a love/hate relationship with it. I have thoroughly enjoyed parts of it, but I have also called it "toxic" and negative for the community. The moderation were given a very hard task and I firmly believe they made the right move. I do hope closing the massive thread will help several smaller ones to come to life so other character readers can find themselves a few threads to discuss, peacefully, the subjects they enjoy, be it shipping or Shallan's mental's health or Adolin's sense of fashion (seriously this discussion was interesting and the thread was closed before I had time to respond ).

Lastly, I would never want the moderators to lose the right to post their own opinions. Of course, the moderation badge will always feel a little scary to see pop into a topic, whenever I see one, I tend to think I've written something bad, but I do maintain they have the right to their opinion. I love reading their opinion and I think we all are smart enough and old enough to make the distinction in between an opinion post and one having moderation purposes.

So that's what I wanted to share. I hope it helps newer members having a greater confidence into the moderation team.

[Alderant]

22 minutes ago, maxal said:

I have read the full two page of conversation and I feel the need to step in, for a moment, to share my personal experience with the moderation team and the 17th Shard.

I have been a member of the 17th Shard for nearly four years now: what started up as an innocent account to voice a few thoughts on my favorite topic, turned to be a pass-time hobby. Discussing the Stormlight Archive has been a way to communicate with people sharing similar-like interest and also a way to vent out from real-life induced stress. No matter how many brick work dropped on me, I always knew I could go back to my safe haven of character related discussion and rehearse, once again, a given aspect or another of my favorite narratives.

I am a strongly opinionated individual who tends to stick with her opinion unless proven utterly wrong or until someone is brave enough, persevere enough to change my mind. And yes, it did happen. More times then people are aware of: ask anytime for the story of how I went from being a firm believe Adolin as a Dustbringer was the absolute best possible narrative to the Adolin as an Edgedancer one, which I have been strongly promoting for the past two years. I love telling stories... 

This being said, being a highly opinionated individual, sometimes having as much tack as an elephant walking into a glass store combined to being a tad too passionate about one given story aspect or another has not made me the 17th Shard most popular poster. I have often been heavily criticized, shunned upon, bullied on Discord, massively downvoted and oh how I have publicly pestered against the downvote system. I never liked it and I never missed an occasion to make my thoughts on the matter being heard, loud and clear. Now you get none of this made me the moderation team's favorite poster... I clashed with some of them, on occasions, I have entertained the thought they were being unfair towards my person and despite being here for four years, I never really felt I was part of the "older crew". My reputation never really was something I felt was solid enough to sit on.

So where's my point in telling all of this? I have read others argue there is a preferential treatment onto the 17th Shard, I have read others state they feel older posters were treated differently than newer ones and they felt there was a double standard into the community. I have been this newer abrasive controversial poster. My trajectory onto this community has not been straight-forward, it was made of bumps and lumps, but despite all of this, despite my quite spectacularly obnoxious start into the community, despite myself thinking moderation hated me, I have to now state they always, always, always took the time they needed to pass the message they needed to pass into the best possible way. 

I have had mods take their personal time to answer to my pesky antics, to stop their car at gaze stations in a panic to answer to my frantic antics, to write long replies, to address the points I was trying to raise and to explain why a handful of given posts have been received so badly. I have had mods try to explain to me why I seem to come off as so controversial, why I seem to be so heavily downvoted. I have literally been on both side of conflicts: I have probably been reported many times, I have occasionally reported other posters when I felt they trespass and started indulging into personal attacks. Each and every single time an event happened, the moderation addressed it and did their best to solve it. They listened to me. The empathized with me after the Discord incident and they also told me when I went too far. They hid some of my posts because they felt they weren't helping improve the mood and I fully support their decision. I have not always agreed with the moderation team, but I do think they did the best they could with the task at hand. Would I have done better? Me? Hell, no. I'd be about 10 times worst. Mind, I'm generous, I'd be about 100 times worst.

The moderation team are just human beings and they often are stuck in between the anvil and the hammer. They have however always did their best to be as impartial as possible, to treat each forumer with respect and yes, they even did it when I didn't deserve to receive it. I sincerely do not believe one minute in preferential treatment. I sincerely believe the moderation team is allowing all posters to grow into this community, even the ones which start off wrong, even the ones having sometimes been an offender.

The situation, since OB's release, has been difficult to manage for everyone. The book wasn't received as enthusiastically as the previous ones: some readers are disappointed with some aspects of its narrative. It has been hard for all of us to hear so many dissenting opinions. I has been hard for myself to see how liking Adolin suddenly become something I should be ashamed of as posters started to use it as an argument to dispel my own argumentation. Character related discussion had been confined to this one thread which was supposed to house the Kaladin/Shallan supporters while making a bit of room for the Adolin/Shallan ones while discussing Shallan's character mostly from the angle of one preferred ship while offering a bit of space to discuss Adolin and.... it was a mess. Too many discussions were going on at once, too many conflicting opinions and it created bad karma for many posters. 

Character discussion is my favorite discussion, but ever since OB, there hasn't been many threads to do so besides The Thread and well, one single thread cannot discuss ALL opinions in a peaceful way when the subject is one which raises passion. More threads were needed, but the existence of the massive one prevented those from coming into life. It didn't help any poster making a comment on shipping was bluntly told, at times, to keep it to The Thread. 

The Thread has been great: I have a love/hate relationship with it. I have thoroughly enjoyed parts of it, but I have also called it "toxic" and negative for the community. The moderation were given a very hard task and I firmly believe they made the right move. I do hope closing the massive thread will help several smaller ones to come to life so other character readers can find themselves a few threads to discuss, peacefully, the subjects they enjoy, be it shipping or Shallan's mental's health or Adolin's sense of fashion (seriously this discussion was interesting and the thread was closed before I had time to respond ).

Lastly, I would never want the moderators to lose the right to post their own opinions. Of course, the moderation badge will always feel a little scary to see pop into a topic, whenever I see one, I tend to think I've written something bad, but I do maintain they have the right to their opinion. I love reading their opinion and I think we all are smart enough and old enough to make the distinction in between an opinion post and one having moderation purposes.

So that's what I wanted to share. I hope it helps newer members having a greater confidence into the moderation team.

Thanks for your thoughts. I appreciate your perspective, as is usually the case. 

[Calderis]

@maxal for what it's worth, you were here and insanely active when I started posting like crazy, and you're always going to be a member of the "older crew" to me.

I've been on the same side of arguments as you, and probably more often on the opposite side, but we always manage to keep it civil. 

If the ASK thread closing does what it's intended to, I look forward to debating with/against you again in character discussions that explore beyond the ships. 

[Steeldancer]

Well said maxal, but I'm not quoting that monster of a post. 

I haven't really been paying attention to the controversy- I've been sucked into this nonsense PC game that I'm addicted to now. However, i feel like the mods have always been fair, dealing with people in the way they see fit. I do see the argument that perhaps more moderators might be needed. What came to mind for me was when/if Way of Kings movie comes out. If it does well, we will see a MASSIVE surge in membership. And as the membership increases, our relatively tight-knit community will have to adapt. (Because as we know, all the weirdos come after the movie. )

Furthermore, while I agreed with removing the downvotes- i was guilty of misusing them at times as well- I am strongly against removing upvotes. While yes, they can sometimes be used negatively, in general they are here to reward hard work and good thinking. At the end of the day, it's meaningless, but I feel that removing them would be a mistake. 

[BraidedRose]

I’m new here and haven’t personally been involved in moderation on either side so there’s not much I can add to the original post and main discussion here but I did want to comment on one point.

50 minutes ago, Calderis said:

If the ASK thread closing does what it's intended to, I look forward to debating with/against you again in character discussions that explore beyond the ships. 

There’s a misperception I’ve seen perpetuated throughout the forum (as above) that the entirety of a 96 page thread was directly about ships. In reality the conversation evolved again and again to cover a wide range of topics having anything to do with all three characters. I get that this is part of what some are arguing against and there may be a point to that. But the closing of the thread in an atmosphere of dismissiveness around any discussion of relationships leaves many who enjoy character based discussion feeling less welcome. Many seem to feel that problems have been solved by closing a thread. I can see that some have been created (or at least worsened) without being addressed yet.

[Calderis]

7 minutes ago, BraidedRose said:

There’s a misperception I’ve seen perpetuated throughout the forum (as above) that the entirety of a 96 page thread was directly about ships. In reality the conversation evolved again and again to cover a wide range of topics having anything to do with all three characters. I get that this is part of what some are arguing against and there may be a point to that. But the closing of the thread in an atmosphere of dismissiveness around any discussion of relationships leaves many who enjoy character based discussion feeling less welcome. Many seem to feel that problems have been solved by closing a thread. I can see that some have been created (or at least worsened) without being addressed yet.

And I'm fine with the rest of that discussion. I intentionally stayed away from the thread though, because that was it's focus. 

My issue with shipping has nothing to to do with the character discussion. I am fine with seeing that as one facet of many. 

That thread though, in the few times I did pay attention to it, was factionalized. All of my exposure to "shipping" has been these factionalized shipping wars that are about which ship is the "right" one. Because of Feather I have a much greater appreciation for what shipping should be... But what I saw were all of the reasons I have an issue with it to begin with. 

There were probably portions of the thread that I would have gladly taken part in. Things that were about the characters and their motivations as individuals. I didn't want to wade through the fighting and picturization of the people as only parts of a relationship to find them though. 

I dislike even the names of ships really, because as much as it's meant to be a cutesy thing to easy convey meaning... It has an implication of the two characters as incomplete without the counterpart. Relationships shouldn't work that way. 

[maxal]

1 hour ago, Calderis said:

@maxal for what it's worth, you were here and insanely active when I started posting like crazy, and you're always going to be a member of the "older crew" to me.

I've been on the same side of arguments as you, and probably more often on the opposite side, but we always manage to keep it civil. 

If the ASK thread closing does what it's intended to, I look forward to debating with/against you again in character discussions that explore beyond the ships. 

I am looking forward for the new discussions too. I have been less active lately, but honestly real-life has been crazy. Work has been crazy  I need to perform a miracle.

1 hour ago, Steeldancer said:

Furthermore, while I agreed with removing the downvotes- i was guilty of misusing them at times as well- I am strongly against removing upvotes. While yes, they can sometimes be used negatively, in general they are here to reward hard work and good thinking. At the end of the day, it's meaningless, but I feel that removing them would be a mistake. 

Now the mods are going to freak out, but I kind of wish the downvotes were back...  While I still think they could discourage unpopular opinion from being voiced out, the upvotes have proven to be nefarious too.

18 minutes ago, BraidedRose said:

There’s a misperception I’ve seen perpetuated throughout the forum (as above) that the entirety of a 96 page thread was directly about ships. In reality the conversation evolved again and again to cover a wide range of topics having anything to do with all three characters. I get that this is part of what some are arguing against and there may be a point to that. But the closing of the thread in an atmosphere of dismissiveness around any discussion of relationships leaves many who enjoy character based discussion feeling less welcome. Many seem to feel that problems have been solved by closing a thread. I can see that some have been created (or at least worsened) without being addressed yet.

I think it was very clear why they closed the thread. It wasn't because there weren't any decent, interesting, amazing discussion on it not because there never were great analysis posted into it, it was a matter of it being the only character thread. It was getting suffocating. There were great elements in it, but those great elements would breath better into a given number of separate threads. We used to have several threads discussing characters, all characters and shipping too. Why satisfied ourselves with just one? Besides, threads live and die on a regular basis, new ones are created: often on the same topic. How many Adolin threads did we have prior to OB's release? Quite a few, all revolving on the same topic.

I think this will be for the best and I don't think it should be interpreted as character discussion being shunned upon. On the contrary, I do feel the decision was made to help it flourish as opposed to have be contained to one gigantic thread.