What can we do to Off-topic to make it...something that's not this?

[Zaktar]

It seems fine to me and I'm not too clear on why you can't leave the threads you dislike alone, and create more that you prefer to see. The problem with "down with bait threads" is: what's a bait thread? Obvious to you isn't obvious to me, or necessarily correct. The forum doesn't need to be fixed.

[Gnomesized]

And it's not like I went on a purge to create my ignore list. It's just that, over time, if I see a post or a thread that looks really retarded or baity, I ignore the person.

And there's no hard feelings, it's not like I dislike (or even know) the people on my ignore list. They just typed dumb stuff that I don't want to read. No big deal. I probably wouldn't even recognize 90% of the names.

Exactly this.

I only made this account after years of reading the forums here so that I could make an ignore list, as the number of troll and bait posts from certain accounts was getting silly. I'd intended to only add the most obvious 15-20 accounts to ignore at first, but over the months my ignore list has now grown to 45. You still see the thread title but those are normally so obvious that I don't click them anyway and if I do click a thread and find the OP on ignore I just close it.

Nearly everyone I have on ignore seems to post in the off-topic type forums only, nearly always political stuff, when I actually read WoW related threads I hardly ever see any post being ignored.

[Thage]

We have so many forbidden topics already.

It's not really about forbidding topics. It's about keeping threads on the proper forum. I don't give a shit about, say, HOTS or Hearthstone, so I don't visit those forums, and HOTS/HS threads are kept in the proper forums and (generally-speaking) out of WoWGen. Politics is really the only forum that bleeds out onto its parent forum, because Gen-OT is kind of a total shitshow, so I would suggest harsher punishments until people learn to keep Politics in Politics and out of Gen-OT.

[Kathranis]

Keep politics and current events in seperate sections.

[Thage]

The issue is that Gen-OT often discusses social or economic issues and you cannot take politics out of those. Heck even science topics will inevitably end up about social or economic impact and thus become political (because keeping them science only is just silly; the vast majority of us will not be scientists at any field even remotely close to the topic discussed).

You can discuss social and economic issues without the thread rapidly devolving into "Muh Wall" or "Muh Russia." When people start dragging in unrelated political issues (fuck me, I saw a thread on RBG's health devolve into arguing over Pres. Trump for fuck's sake!) that should come with a harsh punishment and thread warnings to take politics to Politics.

[Thage]

I mean, how can you NOT discuss Trump in a thread about yet another Supreme Court Judge who might have to retire during his tenure?

By discussing the Justice in question, rather than arguing over a tangentially-related figure's policies on immigration. It's easier than people seem to think.

[Kathranis]

That's literally impossible

Obviously "everything is political" but there's a section for discussing political topics, you don't need to bring overt left vs right political discussion into every single topic.

[NoiseTank13]

By discussing the Justice in question, rather than arguing over a tangentially-related figure's policies on immigration. It's easier than people seem to think.

I don't think the President is merely tangental considering he selects the Justice in question.

Now, I'll grant you, he has less relevancy if there is a possibility for strong pushback from a party, but for things like Kavanaugh and Gorsuch there wasn't. Trump could have gotten Harriet Miers through.

[tikcol]

Not on the internet, especially not here lol

[Eveningforest]

I have to agree, though I'd still like to have a place to talk about science and such. The problem is that wherever political discussions are heavy, you get these same types that all bring down the leveling of all discussion. That level is poo-flinging even monkeys would think is too much. It's because political discussion is becoming so polarized by absolute nitwits. Everyone smart or normal just leaves because nobody wants to deal with the stubborn, ignorant hate-mongers.

They could expand the sub forum list further to include science and history and such. People would participate. We have types of posters on Gen-OT for the sole purpose of bashing groups of people they don't like (women, minorities, immigrants, etc) who bring the place down so much that any reasonable MMO player will be turned off by the forum completely. Again, actual political discussions you see in "Politics" are mostly fine; Gen-OT, on the other hand, sees a huge amount of toxic idiocy that won't be solved by banning anything political. Don't get these assholes a forum to post in; they'll go elsewhere.

[Kul Tiras]

You know what I'm talking about. What could we do to make off-topic a place you can actually look at without having to filter out all the baits, the latest political tangent stupidity or what have you?

I'd love to have a place where I can go and talk about stuff like science, some happenings in the world, some news and what have you. But most of hte time it's just some bait, a flame-fest or another invasion of You-know-who's. People spew out anything, misinformation is rampant, source criticism doesn't exist, self-reflection is a legend, polite discourse is a miracle.

Should we stop all political discussion? Stop all controversial discussion? I dunno. Some things might be controversial without being targets for stupidity. Though it tends to be the exception...


How do we make people more responsible and accountable, without taking away privacy and personal integrity?
Do the staff have some ideas cooking perhaps? I'm sure you'd all love to not have to put all this time into the off-topic forum for above stated reasons.

Stop being so easily offended.

Ban post count grinders who post massive copy paste wall of texts from other articles and just post: "thoughts?" or nothing.

Force people to post at least 200 word replies, and none of it can be bullshit filler like "10chars". It has to be actual coherent, thoughtful thought process.

You want to stop types of discussions? That's your idea? It's not enough that making a thread named "what attracts you about the opposite sex?" gets you banned, or close to, because it counts as "sexual content"?

Filter mature, millenially abrhasive content into something like "extreme General", and leave all the whatever the fuck counts for you as approproiately safe space in your current General section.

[Noomz]

Stop being so easily offended.

This and

Filter mature, millenially abrhasive content into something like "extreme General", and leave all the whatever the fuck counts for you as approproiately safe space in your current General section.

this, in the same post.

You clearly, clearly, didn't read anything I've said. I don't even think you read what you quoted. You'd know this has absolutely nothing to do with being offended. But here you are, just violently reacting to something. Exactly what's part of the problem.

Why is it always the people to say "stop being offended" that are so blatantly offensive and hostile...?

[Kul Tiras]

This and


this, in the same post.

You clearly, clearly, didn't read anything I've said. I don't even think you read what you quoted. You'd know this has absolutely nothing to do with being offended. But here you are, just violently reacting to something. Exactly what's part of the problem.

Why is it always the people to say "stop being offended" that are so blatantly offensive and hostile...?

You posted this part in your post honey:

"...But most of hte time it's just some bait, a flame-fest or another invasion of You-know-who's. People spew out anything, misinformation is rampant, source criticism doesn't exist, self-reflection is a legend, polite discourse is a miracle.

Should we stop all political discussion? Stop all controversial discussion? I dunno. Some things might be controversial without being targets for stupidity. Though it tends to be the exception...

How do we make people more responsible and accountable..."

It's called reading between the lines.

What you consider flame bait, flaming, controversy and accountability is probably (don't even dare say I'm wrong, actually) related to having someone come in your thread and saying something like:

"FUCK YOU! I know what I'm talking about and here are a, b and c irrefutable arguments as to why I'm right and you need to stop bullshiting everyone pretending you have any sort of grounds to refute this."

You probably take the "FUCK YOU", write a dissertation reply about how "Verbal violence is the last recourse of mental incompetence" or paraphrase some other quote your read in some cesspit like Reddit but which you don't even know where it comes originally, and you ignore all the arguments because swearing for you means:

- flaming
- baiting
- controversial
- requiring personal responsibility.

You know why I even said "don't even dare say I'm wrong"? Because I've been seeing this sort of shit for almost a decade corrupting the internet into the wannabe morally righteous pit of self-deceit it has become today.

Ever since people started spewing that "online toxicity" nonsense, you can't even deviate a little from the online acceptable norm in an online argument without someone going all "OMG TROLL OMG BAIT" and ignoring 99% of a post which is the actualy meat of the argument.

I've read your post. I've read a hundred like them. They're thinly veiled presumptuous statements which once dissected, mean: "I WANT THE INTERNET TO BE LIKE THIS BECAUSE I WANT TO NEGATE PEOPLE'S ARGUMENTS BY CALLING THEM OUT ON UNRELATED BULLSHIT."

[Noomz]

You posted this part in your post honey:

"...But most of hte time it's just some bait, a flame-fest or another invasion of You-know-who's. People spew out anything, misinformation is rampant, source criticism doesn't exist, self-reflection is a legend, polite discourse is a miracle.

Should we stop all political discussion? Stop all controversial discussion? I dunno. Some things might be controversial without being targets for stupidity. Though it tends to be the exception...

How do we make people more responsible and accountable..."

It's called reading between the lines.

What you consider flame bait, flaming, controversy and accountability is probably (don't even dare say I'm wrong, actually) related to having someone come in your thread and saying something like:

"FUCK YOU! I know what I'm talking about and here are a, b and c irrefutable arguments as to why I'm right and you need to stop bullshiting everyone pretending you have any sort of grounds to refute this."

You probably take the "FUCK YOU", write a dissertation reply about how "Verbal violence is the last recourse of mental incompetence" or paraphrase some other quote your read in some cesspit like Reddit but which you don't even know where it comes originally, and you ignore all the arguments because swearing for you means:

- flaming
- baiting
- controversial
- requiring personal responsibility.

You know why I even said "don't even dare say I'm wrong"? Because I've been seeing this sort of shit for almost a decade corrupting the internet into the wannabe morally righteous pit of self-deceit it has become today.

Ever since people started spewing that "online toxicity" nonsense, you can't even deviate a little from the online acceptable norm in an online argument without someone going all "OMG TROLL OMG BAIT" and ignoring 99% of a post which is the actualy meat of the argument.

I've read your post. I've read a hundred like them. They're thinly veiled presumptuous statements which once dissected, mean: "I WANT THE INTERNET TO BE LIKE THIS BECAUSE I WANT TO NEGATE PEOPLE'S ARGUMENTS BY CALLING THEM OUT ON UNRELATED BULLSHIT."

You're reading into something that isn't there. Sorry that you took it that way, but it really isn't the way I wanted it to come across.
You're projecting things onto me that I've never displayed, because you're reading into it way too much. You're making up wild things about me, based on what you're imagining is there. Sincerely, the things you've just made up on the spot about me after you having read 1 post from me is frankly really insane.

You've even turned this simple discussion about how to moderate a forum into personal attacks and imaginary personalities. I suppose I should thank you for showing everyone the problem I'm talking about by making a post that very much highlights it. You've exploded on a tangent, insulted me, made up incredibly wild things about me and my person, insinuated things about me, put words in my mouth and imagine up a whole story about who you think I am and what you think I say.
You appear to be exactly the kind of person who talks about how people are offended, whilst you are blatantly offensive, toxic and more. You don't seem to understand what you're doing.

I don't want to change the internet. I want to change this forum a little bit. If you'd ever seen me anywhere else here, you'd know I've no problem with swearing nor do I have a problem with discenting opinion. I've had many good arguments with people on this forum whom I've not agreed with and in the end still didn't agree with, but the argument was civil, intelligent and informative so it was still good.

[Derpleton]

The problem is that the mods don't contain politic topics to the politic sub forum. Just now I clicked over and the top two topics as I'm writing this are: "Germany: Suspected far-right attacker 'intentionally' rams car into crowd of refugees" and "2019 off to a good start in London" both of these look like they belong in the political subsection.

[Noomz]

It's not your responsibility to do any of this, and you can press Ignore. Why don't you suggest fewer rules and more liberty to post what you want, for example? Why should we always walk on eggshells if there's something interesting to discuss that the society considers controversial at that moment in time?

Just to give you an example:

- slavery was not controversial just 400 years ago
- war is not controversial even to this day, although it's an insanity that costs humanity so many lives and resources
- famine is not controversial, even though it is such an atrocious thing that humans born in the wrong part of the world have to suffer

You can sure make topics about war, nuclear bombs, you can talk about African countries, you can be pro-war, you can cheer for your nation, or if you're lucky, for your empire, you can cheer for capitalism or socialism or even communism.

But hey - can't talk about gender, or race, and I'm sure religion is just as sensitive, even though it's not as hot of an issue as it used to be in the 2005 era. Funny how things work.

So, why would you want even more subjects added to the "not allowed" list?

I never said it's my responsability. You misread me. What I said is that people should perhaps be made responsible for their actions. Or to make people act more responsably.

I've not many good suggestions myself, which is why I'm asking others for what you think so there can be a discussion about it.
Please don't inject some real life Libertarian rethorics into this or make some faux intellectual mumbojumbo about society's modern norms. This is an internet forum, not a public venue for freedom of speech. MMO-champ is privately owned and can police this site any way they see fit. We are however, also free to make suggestions to how this should be done, which I am.

Some subjects have been banned here because they exclussively led to some really horrible threads with nothing but toxic garbage posts. If people could actually discuss these things like mature, responsible adults they wouldn't have to ban some topics. But that's not the case. So in order to more easily moderate this forum of tens of thousands of visitors, they create rules. Again, this is just an internet forum and your freedom or liberty isn't being infringed upon here.

[Calfredd]

Why is it always the people to say "stop being offended" that are so blatantly offended and hostile...?

Small typo, carry on.

[Kul Tiras]

You're reading into something that isn't there. Sorry that you took it that way, but it really isn't the way I wanted it to come across.
You're projecting things onto me that I've never displayed, because you're reading into it way too much. You're making up wild things about me, based on what you're imagining is there. Sincerely, the things you've just made up on the spot about me after you having read 1 post from me is frankly really insane.

You've even turned this simple discussion about how to moderate a forum into personal attacks and imaginary personalities. I suppose I should thank you for showing everyone the problem I'm talking about by making a post that very much highlights it. You've exploded on a tangent, insulted me, made up incredibly wild things about me and my person, insinuated things about me, put words in my mouth and imagine up a whole story about who you think I am and what you think I say.
You appear to be exactly the kind of person who talks about how people are offended, whilst you are blatantly offensive, toxic and more. You don't seem to understand what you're doing.

I don't want to change the internet. I want to change this forum a little bit. If you'd ever seen me anywhere else here, you'd know I've no problem with swearing nor do I have a problem with discenting opinion. I've had many good arguments with people on this forum whom I've not agreed with and in the end still didn't agree with, but the argument was civil, intelligent and informative so it was still good.

Do whatever the fuck you want, it's not my forum, and I will never try to stop you or what you're trying to say.

That's the difference between you and me. You could post a wall of what you label as "insanity", "insulting" and all that shit and I would read it and agree or disagree and still go on my way without asking "MODS MODS PLZ HALP", whereas you see that and go "THIS IS NOT PROPER DISCOURSE YOU'RE THE PROBLEM BLAH BLAH".

See, this is the kind of shit I'm talking about at the heart of the problem. The Internet didn't use to be like this. You used to have sages, lunatics, maniancs, fanatics, intellectuals and what have you and all would blend together in the wonderful free world of the Internet.

Today? Everyone gets a label, and if it's not a star on your forehead, you can't go outside for recess with the rest of the kids.

CONTROL. WE NEED MORE CONTROL. YESSSSS. CONTROL EVERYTHING AND PUT IT IN A NICE LITTLE CHAOS FREE BOX.

[Queen of Hamsters]

There's nothing that can be done.

The other week we had a discussion (on another website) on why it's not "Teddy Bear Hamster", it's just Syrian (Golden) Hamster in different coats, Teddy Bear = long-haired hamsters named prettier so that the stores can charge more and make them seem special.

It was going quite civil and people were changing their opinion left right and center based on simple facts and courtesy.
Then came the American forum members and turned it into a "left vs right"-crapshoot. It happens in Youtube comments, dog forums, on these forums, other gaming forums and so on all.the.time. Did you know that you're a MAGA-follower if you accept the Teddy Bear Hamster-acronym? I didn't neither, but apparently so. Or that you're a Communist if you deny the stores ways to mark up prices on pets? Neither did I, but there we are...

Everything's turned into an identity-political crapfest these days.

[MoanaLisa]

I would be in favor of science and history sub forums although I fear the former would be endless threads about climate change/evolution and the latter endless threads about Dinesh D'Souza. It's the nature of the site really.

Can we ramp back the hostility a little please?