Wow, a lot to discuss.
When these potentially contentious threads come up there is almost always a discussion between the moderators in our admin channel in the GDNet chat. In this latest instance, I said to let the thread continue as long as discussion remained respectable. That's always the key for me.
Looking back, the weaponization of reputation downvoting as part of the debate is a big part of the problem.
You'll notice the Lounge no longer allows reputation voting. I will also be looking at how to reset reputation from Lounge votes.
You may also notice the Lounge no longer shows on the front page.
I think a forum like the Lounge is a pillar of a strong community. We are all here for a reason technically, and we participate in those parts of the community, but the Lounge is where we can discuss other topics with people we already "know". But the Lounge can also be a detractor from the core purpose of GameDev.net if it is more visible than the technical areas and/or affects everyone's technical reputation.
I know this thread veered off a little bit at times, but I do appreciate those who took the time to provide direct feedback in the interest of bettering the community.
On 9/8/2018 at 9:38 AM, 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.
I understand your point that we should be able discern political trolling vs real discussion, but this might be a little difficult to enforce until the thread evolves.
On 9/8/2018 at 10:50 AM, GoliathForge said:
To me, thread topic is not the problem here, but the abuse of the rating systrm, which by the way had moderator participation last I checked.
Yes. I'll be enforcing this if necessary.
On 9/8/2018 at 11:16 AM, fleabay said:
I don't know why the mods/admins here think that it is a good idea to have political discourse here.
I explained why?
On 9/8/2018 at 10:58 AM, Unknown33 said:
I would love to see a dialogue about that... much more than any political horse race or the same old talking points ad nauseam.
That is a worthwhile topic for any community to have.
On 9/8/2018 at 11:44 AM, Lactose said:
Games, as a whole, are political. There might be instances of games which aren't, but there's also a plethora of games that quite clearly are.
I think this is a great point. Just this morning my wife was playing a game and mentioned how the part she was at seemed to poke a bit at the state of political discourse in the US with one of the characters.
On 9/8/2018 at 12:16 PM, Lendrigan Games said:
Downvoting over politics, religion, and whether The Hulk stands a chance against Batman is just ripe for mob rule.
Agreed. And after observing Lounge behavior, this seems to be the case in both positive and negative cases.
On 9/8/2018 at 12:25 PM, deltaKshatriya said:
I’d agree that getting rid of voting in the lounge makes the most sense, especially given that political discourse will be allowed.
Done.
On 9/8/2018 at 12:29 PM, krb said:
Let me know if any of you are interested, not to single anyone out but Unknown33 in particular, I am reaching out to you, maybe differing opinions can make something great that doesn't take itself too seriously and can find a broad appeal
This would be an interesting way to engage in political discourse through games.
On 9/8/2018 at 12:54 PM, Lactose said:
I, too, would like The Lounge (or potentially only the threads you already flag as contentious?) to not have any voting capabilities, for the reasons already mentioned by others. Me thinking potentially only the contentious topics is due to there often being tech-related posts here, or something else of interest outside of the "ripe for disagree = down vote" mentality commonly seen in the contentious topics.
We'll start with the full Lounge, and maybe look at voting at an individual topic level in the future. Not a bad idea, but we need more controls over reputation management.
On 9/8/2018 at 1:08 PM, Lendrigan Games said:
Mandate that political threads be tagged as such by OP, and the tag triggers removal of voting for that thread.
Interesting idea, related to previous comment.
23 hours ago, Promit said:
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Minimum reputation to even participate in political threads, and I'm not thinking small here. Perhaps a hundred points. Alternately minimum post counts/account ages? Either way, I believe that new accounts should have no right to participate.
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An understanding that stepping out of line in these threads is grounds for an insta-ban, much more readily than we might normally do so.
Minimum participation was an option I thought about too. We need more administrative control to implement that, but certainly feasible.
Heavier enforcement of rules in "debate" threads is certainly necessary.
23 hours ago, Tape_Worm said:
Also, I'd like to add that anything politics related should be hidden from the main topic stream on the front page (at least give me the option to filter it).
All Lounge topics are off the front page now.
23 hours ago, Tape_Worm said:
I don't think suppressing the rating/voting system is a good idea either.
Unfortunately for now this needs to be done in the Lounge, but I do agree with your sentiment. Perhaps we can bring back the "Thanks" or "Like" only at some point in the future.
22 hours ago, grumpyOldDude said:
I have zero tolerance for personal insults
Exactly. That's the line that has been drawn and the rule I usually give to the mods when contentious threads come up. As long as people are respecting each other, let the conversation happen.
22 hours ago, Promit said:
Unlike Khawk, I have no belief that political threads are healthy, useful, or positive for this site and I would not blink if we revoked them entirely tomorrow.
Can confirm. @Promit has made this clear to me in the past. We don't always agree on implementation, but I think we both know we're interesting in ensuring GDNet is the best gamedev community.
22 hours ago, LifeIsGood said:
However, what I will say is, that it has been way too present at the main page.
You do bring an interesting idea with limitation instead of removal. For now it needs to be removed, but it's worth thinking about introducing limitations to highly active topics.
20 hours ago, Unknown33 said:
I think what's interesting is when a Trump bashing thread lasts for several pages but a similar question about the future of liberalism is closed immediately, followed by serious discussion about only allowing certain people to participate in political discussion.
I wanted that thread closed as soon as it was posted because I wanted to have the discussion we have in this topic before any further political threads were started. Members threatening to leave because they're tired of seeing politics on GDNet is a much bigger problem than your thread being closed. My focus is on finding the balance of allowing the political discourse without alienating members.
20 hours ago, Unknown33 said:
This is how you destroy a forum, by the way.
I've been doing this for 20 years. Many forums and sites have come and gone since GameDev.net was formed. This isn't the first time we've had this kind of community conversation, nor is the latest political thread the most contentious we've ever had. I guarantee GDNet will not be destroyed from this. Expect the opposite.
19 hours ago, 0r0d said:
Whether politics threads should be allowed to me just depends on how much and how strict the mods want to be with them.
Thank you for the well thought out, balanced input.
19 hours ago, Oberon_Command said:
There have been plenty of politics threads on GDNet before. It didn't destroy the site then, it won't destroy the site this time.
Anyone from the pre-2006 era knows this well. 
16 hours ago, JTippetts said:
As a conservative, if I were just coming to the site now as a fresh youngster looking to learn a new hobby, and I clicked the unread content button
Hopefully banning the Lounge from the streams and RSS feeds helps with potential first impression problems. It's not perfect, but it's a start.
12 hours ago, grumpyOldDude said:
What I can suggest for further improvement is: that filters be placed all over the site so that you see only your preferences
This is a future definite plan. Just going to be a little while before we get there.
6 hours ago, Gnollrunner said:
However what I dislike even more is when moderation is not even handed (which it rarely is).
I'll monitor this in the future. While like everyone else I have my own political views, I don't want or expect that to play into the moderation of these topics.
The #1 rule for contentious topics from a moderation standpoint is "Respect". There shouldn't be a need for moderation if people are being respectful to each other, and that starts no personal insults, including phrases like "you don't get it". There is a way to debate without personally insulting another person's intelligence. Moderation should never be about the opinions but about whether the way those opinions are being expressed are respectful to others or not.
The GDNet moderators more often than not want to close contentious topics when they start. I'm usually the one to stop them with the caveat of the "Respect" rule. We've had the debate within the moderator team many times, but I truly believe these conversations can be had in this community and people can be respectful.
5 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:
Do mods want to chime in on why the thread was shut down so we can get some clarity?
For violating my paragraph above about "respect". When I visit the GameDev.net front page and see the summarized contents of replies where members are attacking each others' intelligence, the thread has to stop.
5 hours ago, mikeman said:
Peronally I would keep that in mind(as in, the fact that we're dealing with human beings with emotions here), if I was to continue to allow political threads to exist .
I agree.
5 hours ago, mikeman said:
I admit it does seem very strange even to me to log onto Gamedev.net and see in the front page constant posts about political stuff.
Agreed. And it's addressed.
4 hours ago, Gnollrunner said:
I even noticed this site was described as a "dictatorship".
This has happened many times in GDNet's history.
4 hours ago, _the_phantom_ said:
But you can't remove politics...
Thanks for taking the time to provide input. I think the changes that have been made should have a similar effect to your suggestion. We'll see how it goes.
2 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:
For the record, I don't really care which route we take going forward, but if we do decide to ban politics, we should at least do so for the right reasons and not because we believe that the mods are arbitrarily deciding what's trolling and what isn't.
You bring up a point about mod decisions. To provide some explanation, a lot of times in these types of situations we have our own debate behind the scenes. It's only in extreme cases that a moderator has taken action without consultation with something like a political thread - and that's usually because no one else is around and the situation can't wait.
Our moderation team has respect for people's opinions, for the community, and for the process in which we make decisions. Usually I'll have to be the final arbiter on a decision, but I also respect their judgment as moderators and expect that they will make the most fair, unbiased decisions. And if it so happens that they don't, we'll talk about it and try to improve how we do things.
2 hours ago, Gnollrunner said:
Well I would say "You probably don't have much of a life!" is somewhat of an insult.
Exactly. That is an example of the kind of insult that will earn a member a warning, a ban, or close a topic.
