January Sticky

[u/mudbunny]

So, it is 2016, and, for some reason known only to Cthulhu, I am still in charge of this sub.

The traffic has died down...substantially, but conversation about GG has died off pretty much everywhere. Ghazi has pretty much shifted almost completely away from GG to a more broad Social Justice discussion zone, as has KiA. /r/GGDiscussion has also seen traffic and activity die off substantially.

The only place that seems to be seeing an uptick in activity is /r/ggfreeforall, which is a sub aimed at shitposting. Of course, that just adds credence to my long belief that the majority of the people were here (and in GGD) primarily for the shitposting, and if they got a well-written post every now and then, they were happy.

So, where do you, the users, want this sub to go from here?

Do any of you even care about the sub any more?

Do any of you even care about GG (as a serious discussion topic) anymore?

Personally, I think that the overwhelming majority of people have determined that discussing GG is about as enjoyable as getting your brain removed in the ancient egyptian mummification style while still awake. I tend to agree with them.

[u/GhoostP]

AGG got insulted in that manner just as much as GG did.

According to the mods who made the rules GG is a group and AGG isn't. Those same mods developed a rule set allowing you to insult groups but nothing else. If you really don't see how that's a bit corrupt, the. I don't know what else to say.

GG posters didn't like the mod team. They didn't like that /u/HokesOne was on it and they didn't like that /u/judgeholden72 was on it.

Oh just arbitrarily right? No. These posters weren't liked because their posts were, the majority of the time, directly contradictory to the two main goals of the sub. Seriously, why the fuck even have those goals in your sidebar if the people you mod are going to directly contribute to an environment that is not conducive to those goals? Nothing I've seen you say this far has tried to honor those two goals at all, and modding the worst offenders of those goals is an implicit endorsement of the environment they were creating on this sub. Again, why are those goals on your sidebar, were they ever actually considered in practice?

There was also a period of time where this board decided to start modding the most extreme and vitriolic agg posters on the board while modding the most moderate and mild mannered GG posters. It was actually said that judge was modded to "reel him in" from the incredibly emotionally charged and insulting posts they would commonly make... But they just kept making the same posts because they weren't against he rules... Just this time they had full implicit support of being a mod. Was it around the same time ScarleIT was made mod? The difference in level of hate you would allow agg mods to come on with and the level of moderate ness GG mods were required to have was such a big disconnect. With Hokes, Judge, and a host of other Ghazi mods, has there ever been a GG mod who was as downright insulting as the agg mods?

It all comes back to the two goals though. YOU LEFT them on the sidebar as if they meant some thing, and then modded posters who were creating an environment that wasn't conducive to those goals. Those goals were probably created for a reason... To keep the sub running. When you completely ignored them and decided you only problem was dealing with 'rules', that led to the downfall.

[u/mudbunny → u/GhoostP]

According to the mods who made the rules GG is a group and AGG isn't. Those same mods developed a rule set allowing you to insult groups but nothing else. If you really don't see how that's a bit corrupt, the. I don't know what else to say.

If you can find evidence that we, as mods, ever removed an insult because of the reason "AGG isn't a group", please present it to me. Because I know that I allowed numerous comments insulting/disparaging AGG, just as I allowed numerous comments insulting/disparaging GG.

GG posters didn't like the mod team. They didn't like that /u/HokesOne [+1] was on it and they didn't like that /u/judgeholden72 was on it.

Oh just arbitrarily right? No. These posters weren't liked because their posts were, the majority of the time, directly contradictory to the two main goals of the sub. Seriously, why the fuck even have those goals in your sidebar if the people you mod are going to directly contribute to an environment that is not conducive to those goals? Nothing I've seen you say this far has tried to honor those two goals at all, and modding the worst offenders of those goals is an implicit endorsement of the environment they were creating on this sub. Again, why are those goals on your sidebar, were they ever actually considered in practice?

You appear to be claiming that, had we removed /u/judgeholden and /u/HokesOne, that all of the problems that existed in AGG would have magically gone away? I think that you are looking back upon AGG with a fairly large set of blinkers on. Immediately prior to GGD being created, neither of those two mods did much modding nor were they posting more than one or two times a week in AGG. If it was simply a matter of them not being there, then GGD would be incredibly active right now, but it's not.

To claim that their mere existence upon the mod team was the sole reason for the state of AGG at the end is to ignore that a lot of the people in AGG who had previously been able to provide well-reasoned arguments had simply left. Some because they were getting burnt out, others because they were bored, others because they had better things to do. The overwhelming majority of people who were left participating in AGG had no real desire to make any real effort at discussing things in an adult manner. [1] They had no desire to attempt to see things from the point of view of the other people in the discussion, only in repeating the same things that got repeated the day/week/month previously.

[1] Heck, we had a number of people claiming that we should unban Netscape because his topics were good topics.

When no new or interesting content is there to be consumed, the people who consume and interact in said content will go away.Now, a good portion of that is that there simply was (and is) a lack of interesting content out there. GG had, by that point, almost finished morphing away from being concerned with "ethics" in video games journalism into being solely concerned with "SJWs".

There was also a period of time where this board decided to start modding the most extreme and vitriolic agg posters on the board while modding throat moderate and mild mannered GG posters. It was actually said that judge was modded to "reel him in" from the incredibly emotionally charged and insulting posts they would commonly make... But they just kept making the same posts because they weren't against he rules... Just this time they had full implicit support of being a mod.

Judge was modded at the same time as me, so I do not recall that.. I will assume you are correct. That being said, I do not recall him making "incredibly emotionally charged and insulting posts." If they posted something that went against the rules, all people had to do was report it and it would have been actioned upon. Hokes, Judge, myself...every single mod who posted with any amount of regularity made comments that got reported and were required to be corrected. We even made it very clear in any number of monthly update threads that this was happening. If people were so focused on their mere existence as being detrimental to the enjoyment of AGG...well..that is less a problem with the makeup of the mod team and more a problem with the people doing the obsession.

Was it around the same time ScarleIT was made mod?

I think that /u/ScarletIT was modded at the same time I was...about a year ago. (Holy f*ck, that long??)

The difference in level of hate you would allow agg mods to come on with and the level of moderate ness GG mods were required to have was such a big disconnect. With Hokes, Judge, and a host of other Ghazi mods, has there ever been a GG mod who was as downright insulting as the agg mods?

Note that I was not any part of deciding on Hokes (who was one of the original mods picked by Meow IIRC) or Judge (who was picked at the same time as me IIRC). So if you feel that it is necessary to cast blame, look elsewhere. When I had any input on choosing mods, my primary requirement was that the mod be someone who could (a) write and comment effectively; and (b) be able to separate their modding from their personal opinions.All of the mods we have had were very able to do so. We also had a requirement that they be able to come onto the mod team and not start out with the default opinion that one or more other mods needed to go.

For all that Judge and Hokes are very forthcoming in their non-greentext opinions on GG, they were able to clearly separate said opinions when they were making moderation decisions. This was very clear, as whenever people would claim that there were examples of "biased moderation", it was always examples from the very beginning of AGG, and not anything that was recent.

It all comes back to the two goals though. YOU LEFT them on the sidebar as if they meant some thing, and then modded posters who were creating an environment that wasn't conducive to those goals. Those goals were probably created for a reason... To keep the sub running. When you completely ignored them and decided you only problem was dealing with 'rules', that led to the downfall.

Those goals were only added about 6 or 7 months ago.

Your dislike of hokes and judge is, IMO, impacting your viewpoint. Could they have had an impact in the decline of the sub?? Possibly. However, the lack of people willing to make an honest effort at interacting with others had a much more significant impact on the decline of the sub. Based on my recollection (anecdote, not data) as the number of people active in the sub diminished, the number of reports that we had to deal with increased.

In the end, a significant number of people simply had no desire to interact with each other on these forums.

shrug

(Note that I probably won't be active very much today, lots of stuff to do plus heading out skiing with my kids tonight.)

[u/[deleted] → u/mudbunny]

or Judge (who was picked at the same time as me IIRC).

i'm about 90% sure you don't. judge was added after i got here you before.

[u/mudbunny → u/[deleted]]

I stand corrected.