Discussion of religion and politics on the gdb

[Akaramu]

People will disagree about stuff no matter what, and some will judge others for their opinions no matter what. This isn't about religion or politics, it's about people being people.

That said, I believe there are less game related posts than OOC ones because...

-Some veterans have seen all those discussions before, and most likely more than once
-Some veterans are less interested in the game these days and stick around for the OOC community
-The large group of new or newer players might feel they aren't experienced enough to really contribute to discussions. Or maybe they're afraid of being told 'no, this isn't how it works, keep playing for another year and you'll understand'

[Grapes]

I must add, the contributions by staff members in this thread are anything but toxic. I too miss RAT, who closed it?.. was it the guy we somehow disgusted?

[nauta]

I must add, the contributions by staff members in this thread are anything but toxic. I too miss RAT, who closed it?.. was it the guy we somehow disgusted?

Grapes,

I'm going to ask for something a little unorthodox for this thread: please post your thoughts on this but do not argue against or with each other.  I think it would be more useful to hear feedback and opinions on the topic from a wide-range of viewpoints, and it is easier to state your opinion if you don't feel that someone will leap out of the margins and nitpick it or break it down and argue against it.  Also, let's avoid +1 or "me too", or "I agree with X".  Just state your opinion in as substantive of a way as possible.

Do you think we should have an informal agreement to not talk about politics and religion on the gdb as well?

Obviously, what I'm asking for in this thread is not a 'rule' and it need not be followed.  But it is a hope I have for this thread that people can say their views without being attacked for them.  If you want to attack a view, start a new thread.  No need to reply to this post either.  Thanks.

ETA: Also this thread is not about RAT.  Start a new thread for that.

[BadSkeelz]

No one is attacking a view. We're disputing them. I'm becoming more personally convinced (thanks to observations made by others and my own reflection on them) that your fundamental premise is wrong. That it isn't the Politics or Religion threads that turn people off, it's threads where the Game itself are debated between players and/or staff. Personally I find the "Hey guys here's what I think we're doing wrong and you're not allowed to challenge that" structure of this thread intensely irritating, far more than any politics thread.

RGS raised a very good point that the most dramatic threads on the forums are ones where the players are arguing with each other, or arguing with staff, over some meta feature of the game. At the time those posts may make varying degrees of sense to us who play the game and can understand the context, but to a newbie we must just appear as insane nerds screaming at each other over inscrutable points of doctrine. They're ugly to look at, but I don't see how we can exactly get rid of them. If we don't have the game meta to talk about, why do we even have this board?

[chrisdcoulombe]

You guys are all awesome, kill ya later!

[ghanima]

No one is attacking a view. We're disputing them. I'm becoming more personally convinced (thanks to observations made by others and my own reflection on them) that your fundamental premise is wrong. That it isn't the Politics or Religion threads that turn people off, it's threads where the Game itself are debated between players and/or staff. Personally I find the "Hey guys here's what I think we're doing wrong and you're not allowed to challenge that" structure of this thread intensely irritating, far more than any politics thread.

Bingo. The toxicity that's often talked about with regards to the GDB is more of the above, to me. Religion and politics isn't even a part of the matter.

But look. Bad reputations are difficult to shake off. They take time. And lots of it. I've actually seen marked change in the overall tone here. Though admittedly I do not read the entirety of the GDB, so maybe I'm missing something? One of the biggest improvements for me is that threads are no longer being locked over the smallest thing (they're not getting locked at all as far as I can tell, which is downright historic for this game!) The kind of sheer pettiness behind all the constant thread locking didn't help with the game's reputation, and in fact it probably made it worse.

I'm glad there seems to be a sense of self-awareness going on here. And I'm not going to talk up the deservedly bad reputation of the community as a whole, as pointed out by Rahnevyn. But I actually think there's been some improvement in more recent times, both player side as well as staff side. The longer everyone keeps it up the more distant the toxicity of the past will be the past. And that isn't to say there isn't room for improvement, just that things aren't quite as bad as they once were and we should take heart in that fact.

[Marauder Moe]

Having thought about this a while... I still haven't come to a conclusion.

I've enjoyed GDB political/moral/whatever discussions in the past.  I don't enjoy it currently. 

I can see how that sort of talk could drive away new players, though in the grand scheme of GDB history I think we've had WAAAAY more heated/toxic ON-TOPIC discussions than off-topic ones.  (Assuming forum mafia doesn't count.  )

Seems like the politics thread has been mostly dead these last few weeks anyway.