Hi all,

We just closed the latest political Mother of All Topics that became pretty contentious. You know which one I'm talking about.

Since we do have a lot of newer members and older members alike, I'd like to open up a discussion about our policies on Politics @ GameDev.net, get feedback, and have a mature discussion about how to make this community better.

Many communities outright ban Politics in forums. I believe that is the lazy way out and refuse to do that here.

First, we have the best moderation team around and there's a reason why GameDev.net is your best signal:noise for game development. As a team we can handle and manage political discussions from a moderation point of view.

Second, when you ban "politics" from being part of the community's natural discourse, you are also saying events, policies, and "politics" affecting the games industry, games, and developers should also not be allowed. It's the age old political question surrounding regulation and banning - at what point do we draw the line and say a topic is not "politics"? If anything, banning politics makes things more convoluted.

I want open and free discussion on GameDev.net, and I know this community and our moderation policies can allow it.

The vast majority of members are mature enough to be able to discuss contentious topics, and for those that aren't, we know who you are and will moderate appropriately. GameDev.net has existed for almost 20 years with an open policy toward discussion topics and at one point in our existence even had a Politics forum. If you think any political topics are contentious now, you should check out the web archive from 2002-2004!

Some changes we will be making in the near future:

• Removal of reputation voting from the Lounge. This is unfortunate to have to do because I think there is value in allowing it for most cases, but if we're going to allow contentious topics then this is probably necessary
• Reinforcing the moderator-participant rule, where moderators participating in a topic may not moderate the topic.
• Enforcing a stricter policy toward Politics and other contentious topics on GameDev.net

My hope is by doing these things will make the community stronger and GameDev.net a more attractive place for everyone, whether you want to participate in contentious topics or not.

I opened this thread because I'd like to have a discussion about how to make the gamedev community stronger. If you participate on GameDev.net then you have a voice in the matter too, so please share your thoughts.

For my part, I'd say...I probably could have just focused just on the topic and leave the smart-assery behind, but I kinda find it hard to do in the 'heat' of the moment, even if it's online. In any case, I apologize for that.

I'll probably stay away from political threads in the future for that reason, just to be on the safe side.

Yea we got pretty heated in the end there. As someone who does discuss politics a lot (I've started a couple of threads on GDNet, including the latest, so clearly I discuss a ton), I'd say it's only getting tougher and tougher to not have these threads get very heated with just the way our current political climate is. 

Since y'all are opting not to ban them I can only say that most politics threads will require some pretty heavy handed moderation. I think most of us will agree that passions run pretty hot for anyone actively participating and contributing.

19 minutes ago, Nypyren said:

Can we at least ban the "politics for the sake of politics" threads?  If a thread is discussing politics-in-relation-to-development, then it might have useful content.  Plain politics threads are worthless and should be closed immediately.

What would you define as a "politics for the sake of politics" thread though? Is it easy to define this? I'd agree that any broad politics topic is pretty worthless, but where do you want to draw the line?

13 minutes ago, Nypyren said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

Fair enough.

51 minutes ago, deltaKshatriya said:

I think most of us will agree that passions run pretty hot for anyone actively participating and contributing.

This is not true for everyone. If this is true for you, that you cannot discuss politics without a degree of negative emotional response, then in my view you should not be participating in (or starting) political threads in forums not geared towards, or permissive of, that sort of heated discourse, since you will be unable to participate.

I am happy that the other threads were closed because it is virtually impossible to have any kind of productive civil discourse when absolutely everyone is allowed to participate and contribute and there are multitudes of political activists on the internet who specialize in infiltrating social networks and attempting to proselytize in the name of their respective causes.

We wouldn't, for example, expect a religious debate on here to go well. For the same reason, I can't see any political debates going well. Especially when opinions are all regarded as equally qualified and valid and people continue to attach emotional importance and self validation to their political beliefs.

My intent in the original thread was to say just this very thing... our ability to civilly discuss political matters has been lost. It's not about the facts or causes, anymore, it's merely my side vs your side and the withstanding notion that anyone who does not agree with my side is the enemy and must be defeated/destroyed by any means available, even if that means reporting all of their posts to moderators or downvoting them with multiple user alts. 

That's sad but it's exactly where we are at. I would love to see a dialogue about that... much more than any political horse race or the same old talking points ad nauseam.

Can't we all just get along?