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Post by Finarvyn on Mar 4, 2018 21:09:09 GMT -6
Recently, a blog post was reported to me. I'm not sure who the poster is, but he asks a couple of great questions. I'd like to address them. (1) Why is registration suddenly closed? The answer is, it isn't. I've had the place on a lockdown for a couple of years now to keep out the SPAM posts, which we used to get on a regular basis. Most of the time, folks will contact me through other boards such as Dragonsfoot and I would sent out an invite. If that didn't work, I sometimes would open up registration for a few hours so that the individual could get in, then would shut the gates up again. There have been a couple people (maybe 3?) who have asked to get into this place in the past couple of weeks and I have temporarily denied them access. There is a reason for it, but I don't want to discuss it at the moment. My plan is to get back to those folks soon. (3) What about this "ideological purge" where accounts were deleted? Um ... I wonder what this guy is talking about. As far as I know, no change in philosophy has happened here. What I did do was to go to the Member section and delete any accounts with single-digit posts where the owner hasn't logged in within the last 12 months. I guess that ran our total number of "members" down from 2200 or so to 750. Something like that. I figured that if someone hasn't even logged in for a year or more (some hadn't even logged in within the past 5 or more years!) that person isn't really an active member. If anyone who is active got deleted by accident, please let me know and I can try to fix the situation. ---------------------------- The poster ends up by saying that if you can get in don't bother. Sorry to hear that he's unhappy with this place. My goal from day 1 has been to make OD&D Discussion a friendly environment where we can discuss our favorite edition of the game. We have had a few bad eggs here on occasion, often with some sort of agenda for some reason or other, and I've tried to deal with them in the best way possible. Frankly, some of my mod team are annoyed at me sometimes for not having a heavier hand on this stuff. (Heck, if you want actual testimonials then ask Gene "18spears" or Kent, if they are still around. They are great examples of guys who didn't play well on the boards sometimes, but I talked to them through PM and we got things worked out to my satisfaction. They turned out to be solid contributors most of the time.) Most posters have great stuff to contribute if they get a chance and are encouraged to do so. Basically, I just want us all to have fun and talk about OD&D. It's a real bummer that some poster would spread "fake news" about this place without trying to get the real story first. That's just mean. If you have any questions about how I run this place, feel free to ask me here in this very thread.
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arkansan
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Post by arkansan on Mar 4, 2018 22:42:17 GMT -6
Rather unfortunate that someone has decided to weigh in on the community without really doing the due diligence of reaching out to you and asking about his concerns.
Personally I find the community and moderation here to be among the best, if not the best, that I've dealt with in my decade or so of participating in forums.
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Post by Piper on Mar 4, 2018 23:02:06 GMT -6
You've created a place for those of who love OD&D to talk about it. That is a good thing.
I won't be naive enough to explicitly state what people say about you can't hurt you. I've been around over 6 decades and I've learned words can inflict a great deal of harm, whether true or not.
Instead, we will render those words powerless by not giving them the time of day.
I will say this. Don't let your positive works be out-shined by someone who had a bad experience. There is little you can do about that person's opinion, so instead rest easy in the knowledge those who count, the gamers who post here, know this is a great place to talk about the best edition of the best game written ... so far ... who knows what the future holds?
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Post by Finarvyn on Mar 5, 2018 5:45:34 GMT -6
Thanks for the good words, guys. I guess I need to learn to ignore guys like that, but it makes me sad that he would say negative things without trying to find out the facts. Over the years I've had lots of folks tell me that the environment here is so different than at most board ... I think we owe a lot of that to the great posters we have here. Pat yourselves on the back.
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Post by DungeonDevil on Mar 5, 2018 5:56:52 GMT -6
This is a wonderful site. Don't listen to the trolls (regenerating, or otherwise).
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Post by Mr. Darke on Mar 5, 2018 11:25:02 GMT -6
Ahhh Diaglo. To be honest I would not worry about him much. I will try my best to be polite here so bear with me; also this is all from memory so it may not be entirely accurate.
I encountered him on DF where he was one of a small few that claimed anything after the LBBs were money grabs an not old school enough. He was very opinionated (to the point of zealous obsession) in his views and had a tendency to troll posters on both regular DF and the secondary forum (DFF Forums?) when it was a thing. He would have a tendency to leave on regular occasions when he would burn out because he couldn't convince others of his narrow views. In short, don't worry about him as quite a few wrote him off as a kook.
That said, I am glad you addressed those questions and I will say I never felt unwelcome here or that there was any kind of agenda here beyond discussing OD&D. So keep up the good work!
[Edit to add] I also perused the blog this came from and he also has some not so nice things to say about DF as well. So this seems to be a trend on this blog. So again I wouldn't worry much about what he has to say.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 5, 2018 13:25:11 GMT -6
Always good to see you on the web, Julian! However, that's not Diaglo, to the best of our knowledge. Diaglo, did he do this kind of stuff, too, really? (For those who don't know who Diaglo is, he is basically what would happen if King Lear had access to the internet. - However, he's also pretty legit, and, from what I recall, he knows the Great Old Game pretty well. Also, he was never particularly destructive; he just wanted everyone to agree with him.)
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Post by Gene M. on Mar 5, 2018 13:38:48 GMT -6
I think this place is great. I don't post much, but I read often! Keep up the good work.
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Post by howandwhy99 on Mar 5, 2018 13:53:06 GMT -6
As a long time friend of David (Diaglo) I can say he is one of the most educated people I've ever even heard of when it comes to early D&D. My first impressions where not good from online, but he is utterly different in person. He's a highly trained scientist who works at the CDC with an even more impressive wife. D&D is his passion and I think he, more than anyone I've heard express it, remembers the early hobby and D&D as it was. With greater clarity and abundance (I sometimes have thought he may still be living in 1979). When you started this board we were already years into an extraordinary OD&D campaign he was running. I had actually thought he might be one of the focuses for the board when it began, but I know he can be pretty shy too.
All I can say is the fundamental manner in which we view not only D&D but the hobby of RPGs and games themselves has so radically altered over the course of the lifetime of this hobby that if you still remember OD&D and can design and run the old game, then the millions of fans believing the present is how everything has always been considered must be very disheartening.
EDIT: I don't remember why registration was closed for the site, but shouldn't there be some relatively easy means of allowing new members? An admin check with approval?
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Post by Zenopus on Mar 5, 2018 14:57:07 GMT -6
AFAIK, that blog is not by the Dragonsfoot poster diaglo (who appears to be inactive lately with one post in the last four years), it's someone else quoting his sig from Dragonsfoot. See diaglo's profile: www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=232Which has the following written: "Original D&D is the only true game. All the other editions are just poor imitations of the real thing." At first glance, the blog heading appears to be by "The forum poster known as diaglo", but if you parse the sentence you can see it's quoting diaglo's sig. Note the "said" in the middle. It's confusing because it's missing quotes around what diaglo said: "The forum poster known as diaglo who is known as The Great Grognard from Stoned Mtn, Jawja, Etats-Unis said: Original D&D is the only true game. All the other editions are just poor imitations of the real thing."
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 5, 2018 15:03:01 GMT -6
I guess I need to learn to ignore guys like that, but it makes me sad that he would say negative things without trying to find out the facts New to the Internet, are we?
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Post by Radio Dask on Mar 5, 2018 16:41:26 GMT -6
Why even give this Leonard Hagan and his bizarre "OD&D Stalinist Purge" conspiracy theories a second thought beyond concern of scaring away new members? I would have never heard of him, his blog, or his opinion had you not linked it here.
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Post by Finarvyn on Mar 5, 2018 16:43:09 GMT -6
Let's not talk about Diaglo or others who aren't here to defend themselves. I'd rather keep to the high road. Gronan -- I won't say that I'm at all "new" but perhaps just sort of naïve. I tend to think the best of folks unless proven otherwise repeatedly. And if you look at my posts here, at DF, at K&K, at Goodman's boards, at the Troll Lord boards, and others, I hardly ever say anything that can be construed as mean or nasty. (If I do, it's usually by accident or a misunderstanding.) It's my character flaw.
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Post by geoffrey on Mar 5, 2018 20:37:53 GMT -6
What I did do was to go to the Member section and delete any accounts with single-digit posts where the owner hasn't logged in within the last 12 months. I guess that ran our total number of "members" down from 2200 or so to 750. Something like that. I figured that if someone hasn't even logged in for a year or more (some hadn't even logged in within the past 5 or more years!) that person isn't really an active member. I approve of that sort of thing. It keeps things more accurate.
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Post by scalydemon on Mar 5, 2018 22:01:34 GMT -6
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2018 4:17:14 GMT -6
I'm not sure what kind of weed that Purple Worm Carcass Poster smokes, but I assume it kicks like a mule.
This forum is not far-left at all, and the only SJW-behavior (ridiculous term) I'm noticing is from the kooked up keyboard warriors who blame the left for the common cold.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2018 5:29:48 GMT -6
I'm not sure what kind of weed that Purple Worm Carcass Poster smokes, but I assume it kicks like a mule. This forum is not far-left at all, and the only SJW-behavior (ridiculous term) I'm noticing is from the kooked up keyboard warriors who blame the left for the common cold. Nah, we simply had to ban a few nazis - not, whatever, right-wingers, or conservatives we might perhaps have disagreed with, or even those strange MAGA people you have in the US. Nazis; like with pornography, you will know what they are when you see them. We banned them, and they shed many tears of Ubermenschian rage. That is all.
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Post by hamurai on Mar 6, 2018 7:25:33 GMT -6
I'm glad I found this board. That said, focus on how many people have a great experience here, not on the few who might not.
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Post by Finarvyn on Mar 6, 2018 7:34:31 GMT -6
Rafe throws around "ban a few nazis" like there was some big purge or something like that. We had a couple of folks who didn't seem to play well with others, we gave them second (and usually third) chances, and finally had to resort to banning. I would guess that I've actually banned something like 6 people in 10 1/2 years of running this place. Most of the trouble makers just go away after a while if no one takes the bait.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2018 7:53:25 GMT -6
Yeah, what Fin said. - There is a notable difference between how some of especially last year's moments of grim fandango might have been perceived by the public, and what their actual effect on the community was - in that it really was very minor. Basically, we had a few people who continually tried to sabotage ongoing conversations, presumably because they wanted their own voices to be heard more, whether out of purely Freudian, or out of more mundane motives. So, Fin dealt with them. ...And of course, it seems they cannot let things go: Leonard Hugs-None, much a real person, very no sock puppet.
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Post by oakesspalding on Mar 6, 2018 8:48:29 GMT -6
This forum is not far-left at all, and the only SJW-behavior (ridiculous term) I'm noticing is from the kooked up keyboard warriors who blame the left for the common cold. Nah, we simply had to ban a few nazis - not, whatever, right-wingers, or conservatives we might perhaps have disagreed with, or even those strange MAGA people you have in the US. Nazis; like with pornography, you will know what they are when you see them. Those "strange MAGA people you have in the US" combined to give another strange MAGA person the majority of electoral votes and thus the Presidency. But point taken. As I understand it, you mean people who behave like Nazis online, in a non-political way, as it were. Not like those SJW's (spot-on term, in my opinion) or those strange leftist Europeans who rival their American counterparts in obsessing about a certain politician with bad hair, or his supporters. In seriousness, you approvingly cite the claim that "this forum is not far-left at all." I agree, but then you can't resist making the same boring leftist insinuations, snarks and talking points that have poisoned other boards. Given that sort of behavior, which seems to be semi-frequent, especially when questions of banning and membership are raised, it wouldn't be irrational for someone with a political bee in their bonnet and who just skimmed these boards to assume that there was something political going on, even if there wasn't. If you want to keep politics off this board, why don't you cut it out?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2018 8:59:56 GMT -6
You're right, it was a juvenile reaction of me. I just felt p*ssed that somebody was attacking this group, and felt the need to take that troll down a notch. Best way to deal with trolls: ignore them if they're online, give them a pouch of gold if you need to cross their bridge.
Unrelated question: is there any 'manual' for the different OSR threads online? I tried digging through Dragonsfoot, but I mostly find inflated egos there.
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Post by oakesspalding on Mar 6, 2018 9:07:41 GMT -6
You're right, it was a juvenile reaction of me. I just felt p*ssed that somebody was attacking this group, and felt the need to take that troll down a notch. Best way to deal with trolls: ignore them if they're online, give them a pouch of gold if you need to cross their bridge. Unrelated question: is there any 'manual' for the different OSR threads online? I tried digging through Dragonsfoot, but I mostly find inflated egos there. My reply wasn't directed at you. Apologies if you thought it was. And I completely sympathize with your feelings about those who attack the group. We should all try to calm our own bees.
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Post by geoffrey on Mar 6, 2018 9:25:06 GMT -6
I think that politics should not have any place in posts on these boards. No matter what the politician or the issue, lots of old-school gamers support that politician or issue; and lots of old-school gamers oppose that politician or issue. It is obviously not the case that old-school gamers are in agreement on ANY politician or issue.
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Post by Piper on Mar 6, 2018 9:40:39 GMT -6
I think that politics should not have any place in posts on these boards. Right on, brother.
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Todd
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Post by Todd on Mar 6, 2018 11:05:34 GMT -6
I have no idea what that guy is seeing. As someone who reads these boards a lot and posts a little, I find nothing but value here and no sense of ideological rigidity. I’m not sure why it’s even worth posting about, even if his worst accusations proved true. As someone who doesn’t have to put any work into running or maintaining these boards, I’m not inclined to insinuate diabolical motives for every decision made to keep things running in a constructive manner. Certainly, I haven’t seen anything in anyone’s conduct to lead me to question those decisions.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2018 12:53:24 GMT -6
If you want to keep politics off this board, why don't you cut it out? Despite your second comment below, I am not really sure if you're addressing @jonasaap, or me. - As far as myself, I didn't cite anyone, or anything, and whatever cause you think you were jumping in to defend here, it was not under attack. - If you have more to say on the issue, feel free to send me a PM. Let's keep this out of this thread. I think that politics should not have any place in posts on these boards. No matter what the politician or the issue, lots of old-school gamers support that politician or issue; and lots of old-school gamers oppose that politician or issue. It is obviously not the case that old-school gamers are in agreement on ANY politician or issue. Now, as to politics on OD&D'74, there was never a question whether to "keep them out", or "to bring them in" - because we all agree that this is not the place to do so. In fact, Fin - and frankly, me too - went to rather great lengths to make sure that especially the sort of "internet arguments about personal convictions regarding identity politics" don't find their niche here. This is - in part - what caused the meltdown of the second quarter of '17. --- The surprising twist to the continued attacks against OD&D'74 for all we know, is that it really has nothing to do with personal differences of any kind, but with rock-solid business calculations. You ALL well know by now that there are certain people in the oldschool scene who'd very much like to see communities like this one fail, just so that they could take over. It's not just on OD&D'74 - it's become a recurring phenomenon virtually everywhere. We have reason to believe that there are always more or less the same people involved, albeit maybe under different aliases. Inadvertently, this has had the beneficial side effect that, at some point, most of the organizers of the different oldschool boards started talking to one another, and to look for ways to deal with this mess. So, this has brought many of us closer together. And, of course, those that look to divide the community don't like that, at all. Which might explain this recent blog post, and some other stuff, as well. So, what we all are asking from you, if anything, is to stick together. The whole oldschool community is nearing a watershed moment - and that will be, whether we decide to celebrate the coming decade of RPG-related anniversaries together, or whether public discussion will revolve around jealous wanna-be businessmen and their sock puppets throwing mud on one another. And while we won't be able to influence the general turning of opinions, we'll be able to make a difference here. ...If we all hold true to each other. (Yeah, that's how epic I tend to get, ever. Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week.)
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Post by krusader74 on Mar 6, 2018 18:00:15 GMT -6
I think that politics should not have any place in posts on these boards. No matter what the politician or the issue, lots of old-school gamers support that politician or issue; and lots of old-school gamers oppose that politician or issue. It is obviously not the case that old-school gamers are in agreement on ANY politician or issue. There are a few major exceptions... (1) Every now and then a politician, religious authority, or media personality attacks our hobby, D&D, saying it increases suicides, homicides, drug use, debauchery, or whatever. As is the case with most politics (past or present), they state these deplorable lies without facts or evidence, appealing to emotions and logical fallacies. The classic example is when 60 minutes did a smear job on D&D, TSR and Gary Gygax back in 1985. A more recent example is when Pat Robertson told a woman to stop her husband from playing online RPGs -- he said they were rooted in D&D, which was "demonic" (the exact word he used). D&D has already gotten banned from US prisons. And whenever there's a school shooting or mass shooting (which is too often), if the shooter ever played a video game or D&D, there's a call to ban it or regulate it. We heard that call once again last week from POTUS. D&D is not corrupting our kids, or causing the collapse of our civilization, as these politicians would have others believe. I hope we can all agree on that! And so I strongly believe that these constant political attacks on our hobby must be exposed and rebutted. And I set up a thread here to do this: Religion, politics and D&D. (2) Laws, particularly IP laws, directly effect our ability to share and play our hobby. We have had useful, constructive conversations about them, such as May Purchased PDF files be Printed?(3) In-game politics (and religion) can also be used constructively, e.g., I'm not sure how you would play Gangbusters without the politics of prohibition being a factor. While the thread on Adventuring in the time of the Crusades got a little overheated at times, I think there's quite a bit of useful and educational stuff in there. See also: Medieval Christianity in OD&D and The Exodus. One other point about politics: The smear job of our site, the Original D&D Discussion, posted over on the Carcass of the Purple Worm on March 3rd and March 5th, was clearly politically motivated -- an attempt to drag us into the culture war. You need only look at Arnold Master's Google+ blog to see a clear political bias, and then note that the attack directed at our site singles out one of our mods with whom he has a political axe to grind. The attacker takes one of Rafe's posts out of context to leap to the conclusion that we deleted 1425 accounts as part of an ideological purge. He backs this up by citing "rumors" flying about the internet without providing any actual links or sources to these rumors. This is the sort of dirty politics and fake news that has no place on our boards.
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Post by oakesspalding on Mar 6, 2018 20:04:12 GMT -6
Oh, great. Another moderator takes a slam at Donald Trump (this time he's "POTUS"), while slamming those (right-wing culture warriors, it is implied) who would ever THINK that this board is politically biased at all.
Forfend the thought.
The lack of even an atom of self-awareness is a wonderment.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2018 23:04:26 GMT -6
Seriously, Oakes, stop. You're completely losing yourself in this strawman argument that some random internet troll has created.
So, the sportive description about the character of the trolls which I gave above was just that, descriptive. Now, you are insinuating that I am either mislabeling them, or that I would have treated them differently if their characteristics had been different. Both those insinuations are wrong; if only, because the mod squad here made those decisions based on information you cannot possibly have.
The same goes for you now attacking Krus for - again - factually describing a situation that you have limited insight in, and already demonstrated to simply not fully understand: As displayed above, when you responded to jonasaap's and my separate posts as if they were one.
At the same time, you busy yourself obfuscating the argumentative base here, which is that - demonstrably - neither Finarvyn nor anyone else went after posters because he or she didn't like their "ideology", or the way they conducted themselves.
- This is so funny to me, because exhibit A in our defense is literally YOU. Or do you really think that, if Fin had come to me, and said something along the lines of "give me a list of people you don't like", YOU would have survived the purge?!
" - No, we can't kill him. He has written twelve thousand forecast reports for the Middle Earth weather channel. He must live, or the hobbits will not know when to harvest their pipeweed." - Do you think THAT'S how that conversation would have gone, seriously?!
It's you who's lacking self-awareness, man. You're not becoming a hero, you're making yourself the court jester of Llaurenella's pet harem.
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