Scaring off the female members

Originally Posted by StintDArt
Well, there is such a thing as oversensitivity creating the illusion of a bigger problem.

I've been on countless forums, and the Watch was always - by a country mile - the most laidback and tolerant of diversity of all the gaming forums I've frequented.

Now, do note that such is simply my perception - and I can't enter the minds of other members.

I've been to forums where there's certainly more "politeness" on the surface - like on QT3 forums, but if you dig a little deeper, you notice a severe lack of tolerance for outsiders and there's a lot of unspoken rules that seem to support certain "high ranking" members on that site.

To me, that kind of deceit and let's-pretend-to-be-amiable is much worse.

So, I definitely think this place made a turn for the worse when they tried to regulate certain behavior.

Like I said, it became a little nauseatingly woke in that way.

But, as I said, moderating is a hard job - and I don't envy anyone trying to police human behavior.

I think watch has always been liberal/left wing but in the past we had more right/conservative posters so it appeared as more balanced. Since most of the right/conservative posters has left, it sort of feels like "nauseatingly woke" now.

What I meant about polarisation was that, as we spent more time on the internet, we are interacting with more people and getting into debates and arguments with people lot more over silly and trivial stuff. As you said before, this is very exhausting and people tend leave and maybe find places which are in keeping with their views so they having less fights hence polarisation of views.

Right/conservative posters moved on to different places so whats left is liberal/left wing poster here so watch feel woke.

Also its not just politics also same applies to issues about gaming points too. For example the other thread about turn based v real time etc.

Things are getting polarised in everything….

I don't really think it has much to do with our political standpoints, though I could be wrong.

It's hard to get anymore "leftwing" than I am - and that has nothing to do with my woke comment.

Woke is what I consider destructive and mostly illusory progressive behavior, as opposed to beneficial and considered progressive behavior.

txa would probably be the best example of how NOT to be progressive around non-progressives, for instance.

Woke is what I might call the modern DNC - but someone like Bernie Sanders is genuinely progressive and is using his brain along with his heart, which is entirely different from drone-like SJWs and other variants of the woke position.

They tend to use their hearts as their compass - which is no less destructive than not using your heart at all.

You really need your brain to do good.

But that whole woke thing might have absolutely nothing to do with the drop in members. I don't necessarily correlate the two.

I just personally think it was more interesting when moderation was less obtuse and woke.

Does most (if not all) of the moderation happen in the non-gaming forums?
Until some weeks ago I didn't even realize the watch had active moderators.

Originally Posted by Morrandir
Does most (if not all) of the moderation happen in the non-gaming forums?
Until some weeks ago I didn't even realize the watch had active moderators.

Ha, I was thinking the same thing. I knew we had it since I've seen topics split up by Eye when the original thread had derailed, but other than that I've only seen members editing their own posts.

Now that I think about it I know I've also seen some comments about off-tooic conversations taking things to far off course, but that's about it.

The rule #1 of good moderation: Best moderators are those you rarely notice doing something.

The major problem on the site IIRC are spambots, not us, so there's where moderators get exhausted the most.

About non-gaming forums vs gaming forums and moderation, we can't generalize anything. Sims forum is gaming forum and is heavily moderated. Now defunct Bioware forum, also gaming, was almost without any moderation.

In the end, I don't think any form of moderation can scare off anyone. Bans can happen, but noone will be scared.

Originally Posted by joxer
The rule #1 of good moderation: Best moderators are those you rarely notice doing something.

It's the same rule for boxing referees.

Eye and I (deliberate pun) check out the forums every day, but we only do what is necessary so as not to stifle reasonable discussion and debate!!

People m/f have left, people have always left ever since the start of this site. New people m/f have arrived, and keep arriving.

The only ones using the easy stick ‘ugh it is that &#*! moderation’ are old members that seem to have forgotten about days gone by where it was ok to say all sorts of things that are now dealt with in our TOS - maybe because they themselves like (to be able) to use insulting, abusive terms, to make discriminative generalizations, or nazi statements, you name it, wherever they go and in whatever kind of company they are?
The TOS was introduced because a. European law simply does not allow certain things and holds the siteowner personally responsible, and b. because @Myrthos (and others) finally got fed up with wading through the (abusive) shit.

The RPGWatch team does not care about your (political) views.
The only thing the moderation team does and has been doing is making sure people respect the TOS, by trying to convince them via PM for example. The large majority respects the TOS. I have banned two people since I became a moderator, iirc, one was a troll and the other a conman. But that can change.

I agree with @Cacheperl that young members seem to be the minority. Also, less people seem to be posting.
I don’t think that has anything to do with The Watch, I think nowadays there is a different way of communicating (videos and short messages about feelings, sympathies and antipathies, instead of long texts substantiating a PoV - more competition from YT, Instagram, Whatsapp, Snapchat, TikTok, and the like, via tablets and phones).