Chumbles - +∞ for the Shrek reference. Only B5, LotR, and Princess Bride references top Shrek (although Blues Brothers, and Indiana Jones come close).

Here is my suggestion. For the sake of those of us who couldn't care less about Enriador's numerous additional variations on a variant and his Neverending quest for praise and ego stroking, let's breate a thread where he can post WOT hoping for ego stroking agreement all he wants and the rest of us who are sick of his numerous threads can mute it and not clog up the forum.

Or the forum could be tweaked to limit the number of new threads a player can create per day and per week. Like two in 24 hours and 3 in a rolling week.

I found it devoid of argumentation or logic and far from a significant addition to the thread, but of course, that depends on one's point of view - take your wisdom from where you wish. ;)

Ah. So you don't grep subtext and irony.

Apparently, my reasonably harmless joke has so annoyed the WOTmaster, he has muzzled me!

Plus ones to both YouCan't and Chumbles, they said it better then I could.

"If you run into an asshole in the morning, then you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole." Raylan Givens

Gents - just a reminder about the forum topic, it would achieve more if we were to stick to it rather than being derailed into the sticky subject of a finely (or not so finely) crafted insult.

Some talking points:

1) just about the only thing we as a community tend to moderate is the kindly reminder to members to post new game advertisements in the appropriate thread. Should we continue this practice?

2) what about the occasional political thread? No problems?

3) at what point to people think moderators should step in and silence a thread?

1) I think so, otherwise the thread spam would be massive without any regulation. The current compromise is quite effective anyway.

There might be a case for Live games with limited time for joining to have their own thread as well.

2) Not a fan of those for similar reasons - may end up in a webDip-like spam that clutters the forum and hides away discussion *about the game*. Maybe a single political thread? In any case, I don't think this community's culture makes it a big problem to begin with - not many political threads running around.

3) I wouldn't support silencing derailed threads because whether a thread has or has not been "derailed" is a touchy matter - it's hard to have a clear mark.

Besides, sometimes the "new topic" evolves naturally from another matter. For example, a thread about proposing a new scoring system may end up with a discussion about scoring systems as a whole. Is it that bad? I don't think so.

The "point" for moderators to step in is already well-defined in https://vdiplomacy.com/rules.php. Notably, Responsability #1 and Rule #8 (among others) - directly related to forum threads.

I political stuff in here ... I go elsewhere for that. I agree with the WOTmaster on that... ლ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)ლ (waving.. he's muted me). I can't remember his username, ?JamesUK or some such who used to drive most of us batty with his SWP rhetoric. Friends should avoid discussing money or politics...

1. Yes, keep doing that.

2. I personally don't have a problem with that. Although I do agree with Chumbles, friends should usually avoid talking about politics.

3. Not really sure about this. You are the Mods, you decide when it's appropriate to do that.

I totally get the desire to have a Diplomacy-focused forum where everyone is polite, etc etc. The problem with hard rules on etiquette is that it's pretty tough to codify. This is problem across all forums.

Some things are (relatively) easy to codify- "no racist comments" "no personal attacks" but its a bit harder to precisely define when someone is being an asshole.

If you want a less freewheeling forum, that means more mods being more aggressive in moderation using some version of the Potter Stewart test...

If that's what people want, I think we have to be prepared for *more* controversy, not less, and more time needed from our wonderful and kind Mod overlords. :)

Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!

"1) just about the only thing we as a community tend to moderate is the kindly reminder to members to post new game advertisements in the appropriate thread. Should we continue this practice?"

Yes. This keeps the forums functional and from getting too cluttered. Honestly the real answer to this is a main menu page which allows the first view of the page to browse topics in a table of contents of general categories, rather than a last posted appears first set up. This is a huge problem with spambots. Or is it spamWOTS?

2) what about the occasional political thread? No problems?

Remarkably we have been pretty good at self-policing this. Politics only rarely pops up here, and that's a good thing. If it becomes an disruptive issue, then weigh in. The rare post on politics we see now doesn't seem to be a problem.

3) at what point to people think moderators should step in and silence a thread?

I hink the between Kaner, Doc,Leif, and Gopher, you guys can figure this out. In my opinion you probably allow a little too much drama to go on. In general I would submit that when a discussion has completely lost it's constructive value from the discussion deteriorating to an unproductive rant war. Heated debate can be valuable, but when the insults outnumber points relative to the gaming environment here, it's time to shut a thread down. This would help users understand what limits should be observed.

@Enriador, kaner406 asked people to unmute each other to have a discussion about forum moderation. If you continue to ignore that request then please avoid further contributions to this thread. I feel it is important that all involved parties respect that request.

There is a lot to weigh in on, so to respect Those who would prefer to not read my WOT, I will include a TL;DR at the end.

1) RE: New Game thread- I must echo every other person in that the current system works very well (live games get special placement, non-live games have a designated thread) and I’d like it to stay.

2a) I find it odd that you singled out Poltical threads, since in my tenure they have been many of the most well behaved discussion (nothing compared to the vitriol the “WTA v PPSC” debate conjures), and, while I know I am in the minority on this, the reason I use this site and not one of the many others is the Community. The discussions about politics or history of world perspective are why I keep coming back to this site. Please don’t take that away.

2b) I think a designated “Workshop” thread for New Variant announcements/discussions is a great idea. I greatly appreciate Enriador’s work and can’t wait to play many of the things he has coming up. Having all of that info in one place (rather than digging through forum history) would be an incredible benefit to me. If someone would like to mute it, that is their loss.

3) We should all be reminded of the rules and responsibilities of the site, particularly the need to be respectful to each other, but topics drifting should not be reason for Moderator action. I appreciate the amount of freedom that we are afforded here, and I greatly appreciate the hands off approach the Mods currently have (also all of the Mods have done a wonderful job of addressing difficult issues and they have my utmost gratitude.) I assume we can report thread conversations that we consider to be disrespectful to the Mods, and, if they consider it appropriate, can issue a cautionary warning or pursue disciplinary action (silence/freeze). I bring this up because this is what I consider to be the best process (with emphasis on the warnings) and it is already in place. This is (essentially) what happened here: a perfectly legitimate conversation got out of hand, warnings were issued, and the conversation was halted until a later date.

Overall
I love this community, and despite a great many minor issues we may have, we handle them very well. Thank you to everyone for usually making this a great place to frequent.

TL;DR
- Everything is great.
- The Game Forum works perfect. Change nothing.
- Political Threads aren’t a problem (currently).
- I think adding a “Workshop” thread is a good idea so that it is easier to keep up to date with new additions.
- Don’t kill threads for being off topic.
- Warn people that they are being disrespectful.
- Mods: keep up the great work!

Thanks for the precis, Caerus, but can you put it first? Great idea, though and generally agree with all those, but in the detail, I still maintain that politics here is valid only in exception or where it relates to a game. If you're going to have a “Workshop” why not adopt Ruffhaus' main menu idea?

Ah, I thought someone had suggested that. In short, chumbles, because I don’t like it. I think it will lead to less participation in the forum, and, as Retillion pointed out, it isn’t very active to begin with.

Regarding politics, sure; I don’t currently see an issue as it currently is, thanks in-part to the format of our forum. If something falls out of public discord for a few days, that thread effectively dead. I think, during the last USA election, we only had (at most) two at any one time, so don’t believe it is a major issue currently.

You have to consider though, that People who Play diplomacy tend to be interested in politics and history, as well as they are generally motivitated to discuss any issues. I therefore don't think that These Topics aren't valid, but rather that they come with the hobby.

@jmo

I am not obliged to unmute people who, from my perspective, were either insulting or made remarks on my personal life. I did unmute those who simply made off-topic comments elsewhere, and we already respectfully exchanged points of view.

I am also entitled to engage in forum discussions as long as I respect all the Responsabilities and Rules this website has. I also happen to have said everything I had in mind already so my contributions here probably won't be necessary.

And since we are talking about moderators' actions, perhaps you should consider making a *particular* request to a *single* user (in this case, myself) through the Private Messages system rather than make yet another cluttering comment that has little connection with the topic.

Ah, and I agree with @God's argument. Allan Calhamer himself was a huge fan of history and published articles on WW1, and how it influenced Diplomacy. If the creator enjoyed the occasional historical discussion, why can't we? ;)

Tangent: Would you prefer shortened summaries at the beginning or end of the text? I am conditioned by reddit to add them at the end, but I can adjust accordingly.

For me Caerus, at the beginning, please; I can then decide if I will WOT mine...

Is it wrong to find the juxtaposing of: @God's argument; Allan Calhamer himself; and "If the creator enjoyed the occasional historical discussion, why can't we? ;)" funny... after all, in some people's eyes, God created history - I somehow think it's not open to discussion.

I proffer this as an example of something the Mods must be left to judge; is it acceptable humour or maybe insult dressed in the jester's clothes? I might be interested in the WOTmaster General's views if he could cease making pronoucements on the creator's views. Because I love the game doesn't mean I should be obliged to receive the designer;s words as Holy Writ...

Bosox, Bosox, why hast thou forsaken me in my hour of need?

Oh God! You called upon him whose name must never be uttered, Chumbles! When B*s*x destroys the Dipverse, just remember whose to blame.