Goonhub
04-16-2020, 06:35 PM
Making personal attacks against the rules I think is solid OMJ. In fact, I'm fairly certain that it is already against the rules.
Regarding politics chat and the discord general channel. I've long been a proponent of removing them. We've had this discussion multiple times in admin channels and the result has always been the same, that we'll keep em around. Mostly for the reasons that Pope and Bubs expressed, that it's hard to completely define "politics" in a way that everyone is comfortable with and that they can be used to stifle conversation.
Those are compelling reasons, I think, but not the end-all-be-all of the discussion. When crafting any rule, you need to weigh the positive effects it will provide against the negative. Here is where I think we disagree; I think that it would be net positive for all members of the community to forbid it even though it would stifle some conversation. My main reason for thinking so is that in my experience all of the worst fights or problems that afflict this community arose from or were exacerbated by politics. I think that preventing that discourse will make the community a more friendly and accepting place, a community we came to out of love for a game, not to discuss politics or the real world. I think that some people feel like the have the right to talk about whatever they want wherever they want, and I don't think that's right, and I think most would agree with me if they considered it. Freedom of speech is important, but that doesn't mean you're free to speak about anything anywhere. And real life politics has been very damaging to this community when that's not what the community was created for.
Regarding politics chat and the discord general channel. I've long been a proponent of removing them. We've had this discussion multiple times in admin channels and the result has always been the same, that we'll keep em around. Mostly for the reasons that Pope and Bubs expressed, that it's hard to completely define "politics" in a way that everyone is comfortable with and that they can be used to stifle conversation.
Those are compelling reasons, I think, but not the end-all-be-all of the discussion. When crafting any rule, you need to weigh the positive effects it will provide against the negative. Here is where I think we disagree; I think that it would be net positive for all members of the community to forbid it even though it would stifle some conversation. My main reason for thinking so is that in my experience all of the worst fights or problems that afflict this community arose from or were exacerbated by politics. I think that preventing that discourse will make the community a more friendly and accepting place, a community we came to out of love for a game, not to discuss politics or the real world. I think that some people feel like the have the right to talk about whatever they want wherever they want, and I don't think that's right, and I think most would agree with me if they considered it. Freedom of speech is important, but that doesn't mean you're free to speak about anything anywhere. And real life politics has been very damaging to this community when that's not what the community was created for.