Alright, I guess I'll lay this out.
GAF is something of a cornerstone of my daily routine, it's my go-to whenever I have a free moment to check my phone or glance at my other monitor. I've been posting here for about a year, and lurking for about two.
I came here for the community and personalities- the Jawmunchers, Piston Hyundais and BY2Ks, the tags with funny (and sometimes tragic) stories behind them, the legitimately witty banter and goldmine of reaction gifs.
Now, this was after becoming disenfranchised with the internet's other major forms of gaming discussion. *chan is a warzone. Reddit is bad word salad jokes, karma pandering and fanboy fiefdoms framed in a faux democratic system that doesn't work. Twitter is an environment that encourages hot takes and empty snark.
GAF on the other hand, has personality. It has room for discussion, and isn't pervaded with infinite shitposters (shit shitposters, not quality shitposters). Or at least, it wasn't when I hopped on.
It feels like everything's been gradually going downhill, in particular since the last US election. People's stances have been getting more extreme, respect for the views of others has been on the decline, and the chances of a given thread running its course without someone getting screamed at have nosedived.
And that's just gaming side, I don't go to off-topic. It sucks that the community threads in there have been temporarily shuttered for the sake of stemming the flow of political outrage, but given the state the forum is in right now it seems like a necessary evil while things shake out.
I completely agree with the 'no politics' stance GAF is taking, and hope it applies just as much to gaming side as it does off-topic. I'm here to have a fun discussion about the hobby I love with like-minded people, not butt heads in heated debate with political extremists.
'Gamergate pandering' is a lazy box to put this in given the implications the term has taken on since its inception. I'm not bigoted, racist, sexist, or any of that shit, and I find it offensive that there are people who would make the necessary logical backflips to brand others with those terms for wanting a proper signal-to-noise ratio in their discussion forum of choice.
It seems like some posters would rather sit in a safe place and vilify people with parroted labels rather than have an actual discussion. I'll die a happy man if I never see the term 'alt-right' ever again.
All it takes is one person dropping a "isn't this the guy that did xyz thing ages ago" post for a thread to fatally derail away from the actual topic at hand and into a pile-on witch hunt. This mostly happens around whichever internet personality is the hot topic of the moment, but I've seen it done to fellow posters in an attempt to undermine their argument and make an example of them.
That kind of behavior is thoroughly poisonous and should not be tolerated. I've only ever seen a mod step in to keep things on track once (in the A Hat in Time review thread), but I'm hoping that we'll be seeing more of it with the forum's new direction.
On the subject, the new mod setup sounds like it could be a double-edged sword.
No red text means that mods will be treated like any other user, which is good- I've held back from posting multiple times before now due to the presence of a firecracker with mod powers in a thread, which isn't healthy for discussion.
However, moderation is ultimately still arbitrary. The new system could be great, providing we don't see people getting banned because a mod is having a bad day and disagrees with them. In the cases where bans do happen, it's important that people know the reasoning in order to keep the rules clear, even if it means finding out through ModBot.
As for the accusations against Evilore, they're exactly that. Accusations. No proof, no investigation, yet people are jumping straight to condemnation and suicide posts.
Suicide posts that amount to little more than a 'fuck you' in most cases, which is pretty telling as to the caliber of poster making them. To the few actual reasoned "I'm leaving please ban me" posts: Fair enough. I respect your stance, and appreciate that you communicated it without resorting to petty insults.
Myself, I'm not taking a stance. Evilore's personal life is not my business, and Innocent Until Proven Guilty is an important principle to uphold.
And where the ResetAge ship-jumping is concerned, you all do you. If it gives you a space to have the discussions you want to have with others of a like mind, more power to you. Just don't come back.
Right, I'm done. Time to go and unplug for about a week.