New Content Guidelines

Games, games news. That should it.

I agree and that's why I was always against censorship of topics on SG.
It leaves a massively wide open door for abuse or mishandling by moderators, and while most moderators are objective, there are always going to be issues because we are all humans and moderators cannot always be objective and sometimes while we mean well, we can suppress the ability of some to express their opinions.

I am not targeting any moderators on SG, I'm talking about moderation in general. I've been a mod on discussion forums before.

However, it seems impossible to actually list topics that should be removed or disallowed.

And already we have people asking for Pride thread to be banned lol. It didn't take long.

You're right. I don't agree, but the forum is theirs, anyway. So, unfortunately, if they decide to censor stuff, they have that right. I don't use it often, so I don't care, since it's just a small feature of the website. Though some people here are really "serious business" about the forum, so it may have some bigger meaning for them.

After all the changes of rules in the last years "for the sake of keeping the community a welcoming place", I still wonder how funny it is the fact they never do a thing about users being aggressive towards other people's ratio. They can blacklist whoever they want for whatever reason, but finger-pointing is not just a try to shame, it just sounds more like begging.

Last time I checked it's called steamgifts. Not reddit or news. This should be for games, games news and related things.

Not everyone supports Ramadan, Pride etc. As well as not everyone supports Christmas, Jesus etc. Very clear those types of threads should be forbidden (obviously radical/sensitive topics)

Regarding point 2: A place where basically nobody can speak about anything because it can be seen as sensitive does not sound like a welcomming place at all. On top of it it will be decided by the subjective moral compass of the one who decides about it.

This. I keep reading about people bitching that the internet and the world are now to offended to live but if we just discard anything that's not "hey this game is free on Steam this week, grab it quick"... what remains of the SG community will die.

Would you care to elaborate a little more?

I can understand your reaction somewhat regarding point 2 of the announcement.

However doing nothing I don't see it. For a while now it was in the 7 highlighted discussions I basically saw on consistent basis 2 of the 3 Palestine, Israel or Ukraine topics. While this is a site about videogames and giving them away.
At this moment I only see 1 topic that is off topic from gaming.

I saw already a few reactions that people where leaving the site because of the 3 fore mentioned topics and the negative impact it was having on the community.
So in my opinion the update to the guidelines is a way for SG to steer us back to more neutral grounds.

Regarding point 2 I agree it is way more intensive for the mods and like others already mentioned.
It feels like it will be highly dependent on the mods how it will be handled. Instead of a more clear guideline, its a difficult issue but in my opinion this solution is to unclear for the users what they can and can't say.
Although he mentions several topics that can be seen as sensitive already.

Your giveaways generally average less than 20 people because you restrict 99% of them.

You're giving nothing to the community, just your tiny bubble.

So its ok to call Russia terrorist openly in ukraine thread for 1.5 years but when it comes to israeli terrorism its not ok..... stop your double standard

By equating this thread with other closed ones, you are sending the wrong message to us all.

Well said. One thread has been raising awareness, reporting actual sourced news, listing games and devs and bundles who were raising money to support victims... the other was a clear trolling, even downright provoking thread, in reaction to the other thread. they are clearly not the same threads.

Ability to hide uninteresting threads (without add-ons).

👍

Ability to blacklist a user in Discussions so that you never see any of his or her comments again. This would greatly reduce the problem of flame wars as well as the burden on moderators.

😱No, it is counterproductive.
I have seen places where similar features were in operation.

　For example, it is often used to bypass those blacklisted in community trains. There are some common ways to do this, right?
They will open "incognito mode" or "privacy window" or "another browser" and begin to scrutinize for posts they cannot see.
If the content of the invisible message is defamatory to the other party, it will also be a serious situation and the supporter's TICKET job will increase.😢

But as for #1, I think it's a good idea. The perspective of not getting involved in threads that don't interest you itself is the right one.

Great solution with biggest flaw: need work of programmer not of some mod volunteers

Edit:
for first one need money
for second one: "free labour"

+1

+2

+3

Looks like they were all removed/closed... Threads about Palestine and Ukraine gone...

+1

Politicians anyways. They're the ones who turned people breathing into "politics" to scare, antagonize and cash in

Thats a great idea xdd

+1

He specified case by case, but it does show that in the two threads he mentioned people go kinda crazy. Sure there are other threads that are sensitive but they don't generally create that kind of chaos.

Those are the specific topics I had in mind as well. I guess there is also no harm to drop a "care about your LGBT+ friends around the holidays" topic with some encouragament. But what if actual malicious trolling starts? Should the commenters be reported and not engaged? I mean that would be more logical, but weaponized trolling is a thing.

Though with LGBT+ or Eid topics I never seen the OP adding to the fire as much as with the Palestine topic. I guess, and I hope, that mods will take the original intent of a topic and the post's tone in calculation. Like how Eid is "just" a celebration

Very late edit: my "just" I mean that it's about celebrating something, and a quotation marks are there because afaik it's the biggest celebration of the year

Are we going to ban every thread that certain uncompassionate people find 'sensitive'?

Yes?

Looks like CG decided once again to moderate forums even more... While ignoring stuff that actually hurts this site like auto joiners. Not that I'm surprised xD

Pretty sure the 2nd rule is going to be on a case by case basis, and not wholly up to any single mod..

The threads about the wars were ridiculous, and especially the Ukraine one should have been closed a year ago, as we're all VERY aware about it happening, as it is in the media every single day, and near impossible to avoid.

Tons of other social media and chat rooms that give you space to discuss these topics. Including it in an environment 99% about gaming is as inappropriate as kids at an event about adult sexuality.

Maybe there could be an "Adult" section of the forum, where you have to follow a thread in order for it to appear in your discussions page. But for now i'm happy that there will be a little less uncomfortable focus on discussions. I was just starting to work on several positive and more fun "awareness" threads, just to offset the horrifying gloom of the discussions page.

I just noticed the writing on my duo-pack of toothbrushes, I can see everything clearly now.

View attached image.

nope

... and by agreeing to your own thread being closed, you literally admit it was just a trolling thread in reaction to the Ukraine war thread.
Well played.

I only saw one person who called others terrorist all the time like a parrot and it was you

Congrats, in all my time on SG I haven't seen a troll as successful as you, you've literally managed to murder this site.

Actually, it is "the Palestinian mass-slaughter" or "the ongoing genocide amid the hypocrisy and double-standards grand fair", but I got your point.

Here, consider this as a replacement for the current "2.":

2. Content regarding sensitive subjects (e.g. politics, religion, sexuality) that we believe are presented in a manner which promotes a hostile and divisive environment throughout our community.

3. Content related to sensitive events with significant social, cultural, or political impact (e.g. catastrophic natural events, terrorism and related activities, military or social conflict, or other mass acts of violence or death) that we believe are contributing to a hostile and divisive environment throughout our community, regardless of their presentation.

You also need to consider adding a rule that notes heavy penalization for anyone deliberately trying to create a divisive or hostile environment, if you want to fully patch in the holes and misphrasings related to the new site guideline.

And while you're at that, maybe add rules to emphasize that spamming and necroing in a way that's disruptive to the site (eg, by flooding the Deals forum) is a rule violation. And deal with that staff member who said they planned to sabotage the site's functionings. And maybe get some active staff members. And maybe add or at least address some of those easy-to-add requested site features that can't be handled by scripts, that we've been asking for for years, such as manual ignore list syncing.

Just saying, this was a weird place to start addressing site requests from, given that the only thread I saw promoting the change was handled by someone who was behaving entirely irrationally and with toxic intent, with- at least at the time wherein I checked the thread- very little support for the change they were requesting.

Not that I'm not saying the change isn't favorable (wouldn't mind the site moving away from darker, more spammy [due to their high quantity of ocurrance], blog-related content like celebrity deaths, as well). But given how long you've deliberated on arguably more important matters, it does seem a bit surprising that you've made such a quick, problematically miswritten response on this one matter(?)

Highlights to the changes I presented above:

Public Health Announcements and discussions around related Emergencies are inherently beneficial, as they're always important and informative. Not only is that one of the few things the site SHOULD be allowing in off-topic (the only other one I can think of that's inarguably beneficial is non-gaming deals posts), but the phrasing is far too specific for an eg inclusion. By switching to the broader and more suitable category of catastrophic natural events, you better convey scope and form.

Given that events like earthquakes and floods are far more likely to be addressed than pandemics, this is much better phrasing. It's a bit of a problematic inclusion to begin with, in my opinion, given that such events usually benefit from coverage (thus promoting donations or other aid) and that threads on such matters can be extremely valuable (in helping people know their options for medications, access to medication, etc), but if you're going to include it, let's include it in a way that better implies "we don't want people harassing those who are in pain" rather than "we don't want people discussing real world disasters that other people may want to conspiracy theory out of existence", as per what's being expressed by the current phrasing.

You can't include gender/sex/religion under the current formatting, without disasterous results for community health. My proferred phrasing is "presented in a manner which", which puts onus on the presentation itself, thereby allowing such discussions to still be a part of the community by natural discussion, as is necessary for anything that's so widespread and important to self-identity as those concepts (or sex, skin color).

The current phrasing, on the other hand, puts responsibility on the OUTCOME of the conversation, thereby allowing trolls to freely vocalize disagreement or add toxicity to the conversation, thereby forcing its closure, regardless of the nature and presentation of the topic. Conversely, toxic threads would remain open under the current phrasing as, again, the onus isn't on the creator of the topic or the nature of the topic, but on the outcome, and toxic threads are less likely to get toxic results (as toxic people tend to troll together, while reasonable people tend to not jump straight into toxic responses).

Really, the current phrasing is a hot mess, not to mention unfeasibly vague for staff to handle. As an extension of that, considering worst possible outcomes, the vagueness allows for any potential ill-intentioned staff to easily be able to mishandle matters, if so inclined, simply by arbitrarily claiming contention- at least, unless power to designate problematic threads is specified to be limited to you, cg, alone.

Named topic essentially rund by a bunch of trolls from both sides. The whole essence of that topic came down to the humiliation of people based on nationality/race under the guise of “publishing news”. There are more suitable places on the Internet for such... hm... conversations.

I think both threads bring enough chaos, so it would be a double standard to close this topic but not that one although they both have the same kind of outcome from the users.

Also, shutting down the "trolls" which are classified as trolls by who? Like you want mods to silence specific users that you or mods disagree with and are considered trolls? That would be like censoring one side specifically and supporting one. Wonder if all the mods agree on every topic the same, and if their agreement always reaches yours. That would be a lot of coincidences.

I just did a quick scroll between those two threads, and they are both filled with people using the same rhetoric about one side and supporting the other or vice-versa. So how is it a completely different matter, I don't understand.

The most laughable thing is that it flew under everyone's radar for almost 2 years, then suddenly it was treated as problematic to minimize double standards when closing other threads.

Double standard at its finest.

Why russia ukraine different and how?