Forum moderation/activity discussion

[Chaqa]

This style of forum is hopelessly outdated. I'd say either kill it like it's a nazi, and move over to discord. Or try to make it a place where it's easy to discuss strategy and tactics: Support easily importing map images from all major dip websites. Auto-generate maps from sets of orders, etc.

Either way, it should be focused on Diplomacy. And not for endless abusive discussion on politics. We've got twitter for the latter.

The problem with discord is that there's an awful lot of people out there who don't like it, and it's rather separate from the site itself.

Discord has its place, although I'm not sure how it's in any way less outdated than the forum. It's got a bit of a Yahoo Pool vibe from 20 odd years ago, but without the pool.

The advantage of a forum is that it's here, and the style of communication lends itself to the way people use the site. They come here, make a move, send messages, and post something on the forum. A more real time conversational method can be an awkward fit, and I think making it the primary medium is an error.

Either way, it should be focused on Diplomacy. And not for endless abusive discussion on politics. We've got twitter for the latter.

Good God, no! The fact of the matter is that there's only so much you can ever say about Diplomacy, and most of that is pretty dull. You need a distraction and a reminder that you're playing against real people with other interests. And you need a reason to visit the site when you're sick and tired of the game itself

The problem with the WebDip Forum is that there's an awful lot of people out there who don't like it, and it's rather separate from the site itself.

The Webdip Forum has its place, although I'm not sure how it's in any way less outdated than Discord. It's got a bit of a Yahoo Pool vibe from 20 odd years ago, but without the pool.

The advantage of Discord is that it's everywhere, and the style of communication lends itself to the way people actually tallk. They go there, hang with friends, video call, post images(!), and post some memes. A less real time conversational method can be an awkward fit, and I think making it the primary medium is an error.

[Chaqa]

Discord is not appropriate for a forum, because Discord tends to be so fast-moving that it is impossible to keep up on the discussion unless you have Discord open 24 hours a day.

Discord has a forum feature that I think would bridge the gap between the two groups nicely. We're using it in the mafia discord for the kouncil chat as a test

[Jamiet99uk]

How does a peon such as me access this feature?

[President Eden]

How does a peon such as me access this feature?

If you’re in a server in which you have permissions to create forums (e.g., you own the server, or have a role granting those perms), you create them the same way you would create a text or voice channel.

We haven’t made one that is generally viewable… yet. But I think we may roll one out for general use soon.

[kestasjk]

Interesting stuff, probably more to respond to than the below I was going to post in zultar's thread but didn't want to take that back off the rails..

I can say we can rule out going back to a wild-west approach, that's one thing I think we're unanimous on.

Out of curiosity, do you have stats on how many people view the forum, but don't post? It is a well-known Internet phenomenon that the vast majority of a site's users will typically never comment or contribute even if they are constantly consuming and observing others' contributions (see here for a Wiki page on this, or here for an example as applied to Reddit).

If there are 5 people commenting on a "drama situation" but 50 people reading it without commenting on it, then it is a bigger deal than it would first appear. (This is even more true when considering causal factors, i.e. maybe those people aren't contributing precisely because of the drama situations.)

I did look at some stats but didn't want to post as I think bot games cause some wonkyness in the numbers recently, so here are some stats but take them with a pinch of salt:

Main thing is the orange line, forum users, vs the green line, logged on users, and the blue dashed line, forum messages, vs the grey dashed line, game messages, and also the steady decline of the orange.

I don't have forum views, at least not for people viewing the home page.. I could look at the number of views on threads but that wouldn't be unique users rather total hits. I don't buy the whole "5 people said they were offended, so in reality 50,000 were offended", or the even desire to prevent anyone from being offended in any way.

I was banned from the site for saying it's ok to violently stand up to Nazis.

My position was clear: You're a an outright Nazi, you give up the right to be treated sensibly and without violence. People have the right to kill you because you are a fucking Nazi.

Wanna ban me again?

Seems weird reading this and yet you're saying I should've thought twice before making a joke in your thread about IWD. (That was intended to be read in favor of IWD)
A ban for either seems a bit much to me, though I can imagine someone could get offended by either. (Or by a red brick)

This Kestas guy is giving me Elon Musk vibes tbh.

Oof.. Elon Musk after putting a Tesla into space on a Falcon Heavy, or Elon Musk after he took over Twitter? Either way I don't think I deserve that comparison..
If the latter I am offended btw, and therefore 10,000 people are offended. (*j/k*)

We should put ChatGPT in charge of moderating the forum

Ah wouldn't that be nice .. It could have a dial for sensitivity and list of okay and not okay topics.. I bet we'll see something like that available as a service before long, then we can all blame the machine.

I do like the thoughts about having a Discord/moving elsewhere instead.. Backstabbr does fine without a forum etc, and I think the future of Diplomacy sites is to be more decentralized and have users go from site to site depending on which is best for a certain type of game

Edit: Stashing the sql to generate stats here in case it comes up again:

Code: Select all

SELECT CONCAT(Y,'-',m) ym ,SUM(b) forummsgs, SUM(u) forumusers, SUM(gb) gamemsgs, SUM(gu) gameusers, SUM(gg) games, SUM(ausers) ausers, SUM(ahits) ahits
FROM (
	SELECT Y, m, SUM(b) b, SUM(u) u
	FROM (
		SELECT YEAR(FROM_UNIXTIME(timeSent)) y, MONTH(FROM_UNIXTIME(timeSent)) m, COUNT(*) b, COUNT(DISTINCT fromUserID) u
		FROM wd_forummessages
		GROUP BY YEAR(FROM_UNIXTIME(timeSent)), MONTH(FROM_UNIXTIME(timeSent))
		UNION ALL
		SELECT YEAR(FROM_UNIXTIME(post_time)) y, MONTH(FROM_UNIXTIME(post_time)) m, COUNT(*) b, COUNT(DISTINCT poster_id) u
		FROM phpbb_posts
		GROUP BY YEAR(FROM_UNIXTIME(post_time)), MONTH(FROM_UNIXTIME(post_time))
	) s
	GROUP BY Y, m
) x
INNER JOIN (
	SELECT YEAR(FROM_UNIXTIME(timeSent)) gy, MONTH(FROM_UNIXTIME(timeSent)) gm, COUNT(*) gb, COUNT(DISTINCT m.userID) gu, COUNT(DISTINCT m.gameID) gg
	FROM wd_gamemessages gm
	INNER JOIN wd_members m ON m.gameID = gm.gameID AND m.countryID = gm.fromCountryID
	WHERE gm.fromCountryID <> 0 OR gm.toCountryID <> 0
	GROUP BY YEAR(FROM_UNIXTIME(timeSent)), MONTH(FROM_UNIXTIME(timeSent))
) z ON z.gy = x.y AND z.gm = x.m
INNER JOIN (
	SELECT YEAR(lastRequest) ay, MONTH(lastRequest) am, COUNT(DISTINCT userID) ausers, SUM(hits) ahits
	FROM wd_accesslog gm
	GROUP BY YEAR(lastRequest), MONTH(lastRequest)
) q ON q.ay = x.y AND q.am = x.m
GROUP BY y,m
ORDER BY Y,m;

[kestasjk]

By the way what was the reason for not allowing images? Was there a worry there'd be more to moderate? There's no technical reason we can't turn it on for everyone I can think of

[Chaqa]

By the way what was the reason for not allowing images? Was there a worry there'd be more to moderate? There's no technical reason we can't turn it on for everyone I can think of

I believe there were concerns of incursions of howler monkeys.

[captainmeme]

By the way what was the reason for not allowing images? Was there a worry there'd be more to moderate? There's no technical reason we can't turn it on for everyone I can think of

The main issue is that we already have quite a significant spam problem here; fake passport sellers and their ilk (oil paintings, anyone?). We were quite worried about turning images on with that in mind, the consequences of not removing a spam post in time goes up quite significantly if they can include nsfw images.

[Octavious]

Risqué oil paintings? Rather!

[Jamiet99uk]

By the way what was the reason for not allowing images? Was there a worry there'd be more to moderate? There's no technical reason we can't turn it on for everyone I can think of

It gave Bo_Sox a way of feeling special.

[brainbomb]

so then make it so that only donors can upload images.
youll literally get my money and probably hundreds of other people

[Jamiet99uk]

so then make it so that only donors can upload images.
youll literally get my money and probably hundreds of other people

Hey, that's not a bad thought.

[Octavious]

so then make it so that only donors can upload images.
youll literally get my money and probably hundreds of other people

Hey, that's not a bad thought.

It would be a lovely thought, but people can already post links to scenes of graphic scenes violence, such as this

https://twitter.com/MikeWag4707777/stat ... 7Ek2Q&s=19

Is a photo ban really saving us from much?

[Jamiet99uk]

I was so disappointed that wasn't a rickroll.

[Octavious]

One would never be so cruel. How very dare you

https://images.app.goo.gl/nB1AymzrhvLde1UAA

[bo_sox48]

By the way what was the reason for not allowing images? Was there a worry there'd be more to moderate? There's no technical reason we can't turn it on for everyone I can think of

It gave Bo_Sox a way of feeling special.

Don’t need one, I am special. No one else here is nearly as special as I am.

[kestasjk]

so then make it so that only donors can upload images.
youll literally get my money and probably hundreds of other people

Hey, that's not a bad thought.

I'm kinda squeamish about making certain features paid for.. If it cost us something to provide a feature, like SMS notifications or full-press AI games etc, then I think it's fair to pass the cost on to accounts that pay, but I've always liked how webDip and vDip are free for all.

I think perhaps enabling it for users after a certain number of posts etc, or a player's reliability rating, the number of games, etc. I think after a few dozen posts you know whether it's a spambot or not.

I'll have a ponder about it, next dev cycle is a few weeks away so there's some time

[alexintour]

In my opinion a forum is definitely needed.
When we do have it it's like something we do not notice much, but when we don't have it it's bad.

Some other resources like discord seem to be more "modern", but Diplomacy itself is not quite a brand new game. Main thing is that your forum stays your. External resource can stop working, arbitrarily delete everything, change rules and so on and so on.

Back in the old times I ran both a webdip site and a separate forum for it, and the users used the "system". Now that there is only 1 account for both playing and writing is really cool.

Images in the forum. this can be easily implemented for let's say "advanced" users.
After 20-50 posts every user can automatically be granted bigger priviledges. That's it. (or for donators is also not a bad idea; WebDip will remain free to play for everyone, and only secondary options like posting images will "cost money". I'll be glad to help this site this way)

Normal people usually do selfmoderate themselves. If they don't, it's easy to calm them down.

[Jamiet99uk]

so then make it so that only donors can upload images.
youll literally get my money and probably hundreds of other people

Hey, that's not a bad thought.

I'm kinda squeamish about making certain features paid for.. If it cost us something to provide a feature, like SMS notifications or full-press AI games etc, then I think it's fair to pass the cost on to accounts that pay, but I've always liked how webDip and vDip are free for all.

I think perhaps enabling it for users after a certain number of posts etc, or a player's reliability rating, the number of games, etc. I think after a few dozen posts you know whether it's a spambot or not.

I'll have a ponder about it, next dev cycle is a few weeks away so there's some time

You should make it so that only people with over 15,000 Karma can post images.

That would be a fair system.

[flash2015]

I don't even think this is controversial.

We fought the entire Second World War.

Nazis should die. No controversy.

What makes a person a Nazi? I ask because it is pretty common these days for people in political discussions to call someone a Nazi. Some left leaning people in the US believe anyone that supports Trump is a Nazi. On some days it is DeSantis who is the Nazi. I moderate my own Politics forum and seen this happen many times.

Even if we all agreed on a certain set of extremist opinions that makes someone a Nazi, are you suggesting that that should be enough to sentence that person to death? If yes, I would argue that this very much is a controversial opinion.