Covid-19 Megathread 2 Electric Boogaloo (I think we're upto the sixth Covid thread now?)

So apparently even the official Covid thread has had to be shut down now.

Just for the record, let's take stock of how many of these we've had so far...

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2820093

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2805481

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2764710

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2782812

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2795698

And those aren't counting a bunch of smaller more specific Covid-related threads, just the ones that were about having a general discussion about it.

Gee, it's almost like it's futile to try pretending you can isolate and, shall we say, quarantine discussions of world events, which are by their very nature interrelated. Even with the constant babysitting, one by one the threads have fallen, victims of restrictions completely out of touch with the nature of the topic they wished to regulate. So what now? Yet another pathetic stab at it? Or a final recognition that Covid itself cannot fit into the confines of the CoC, despite itself not explicitly being in breach of it? And how many other topics are much the same, impossible to effectively straitjacket? What's the point of the CoC if even topics within its confines can't be reliably discussed? Maybe its time to recognize the futility of this entire exercise, because this will most definitely happen again with a myriad of future topics, and just shut down these forums entirely? A quick death, to spare the pain of seeing the life slowly squeezed out of them.

Anyway, here's another thread to discuss...whatever the hell is even left that it's possible to discuss here. May as well see how many pages it can reach before it ends up shuttered too.

I dont see any reason to block any kind of discussion that isn't abusive towards any group of people or forum users, aka breaking the rules of forum, with exception of disallowing pol/rel talk.

My theory is that there is higher power that made the order to ggg what topics are allowed and not, and they don't wan't for whatever reasons, to derail forums into a mess that could label them into any label that exists on internet that can get you into trouble.

So they took the easy way out, instead of having people moderate such discussions in line with political correctness trends, it all out lockout.

I'm even afraid to post what I posted, even though its harmless and just my theory on events on forums.

I kinda killed the previous thread. My bad. I am not even trying to be contentious. Didn't know that talking about capitalism and its features are extremely controversial, and highly associated with being political. Or was it feudalism?


But the Moderators expecting people wouldn't mention or say something on politics on a topic about Covi-19 is pretty credulous. :)

Covid got boring, let´s switch it out with hypothetical G4 ?

-100 social credit points to the OP for daring to start this thread.

"

Exile009 wrote:

So what now? Yet another pathetic stab at it? Or a final recognition that Covid itself cannot fit into the confines of the CoC, despite itself not explicitly being in breach of it? And how many other topics are much the same, impossible to effectively straitjacket? What's the point of the CoC if even topics within its confines can't be reliably discussed?

"Can't be reliably discussed" seems kind of an odd conclusion - I mean it was discussed for ~150 pages before that thread was locked. The topic has had no shortage of discussion. If there isn't much left to talk about without it turning into arguments about the definition of capitalism or whatever, then people could just...leave it there, and talk about something else? Conversations don't need to last forever.

"

GusTheCrocodile wrote:

"

Exile009 wrote:

So what now? Yet another pathetic stab at it? Or a final recognition that Covid itself cannot fit into the confines of the CoC, despite itself not explicitly being in breach of it? And how many other topics are much the same, impossible to effectively straitjacket? What's the point of the CoC if even topics within its confines can't be reliably discussed?

"Can't be reliably discussed" seems kind of an odd conclusion - I mean it was discussed for ~150 pages before that thread was locked. The topic has had no shortage of discussion. If there isn't much left to talk about without it turning into arguments about the definition of capitalism or whatever, then people could just...leave it there, and talk about something else? Conversations don't need to last forever.

You're deliberately ignoring how hamstrung that thread was, which is easy for you to do since you were barely even part of it. They babysitted it all the way through, locking out participants and deleting posts galore. Them locking it only shows that even with all that energy expended on controlling it they still couldn't make it abide by their arbitrary (and ever malleable) restrictions, not that the thread was over (is the pandemic over? No? Then why would there be nothing left to talk about? It's still making news, still precipitating change, even now). They tried having a lame Covid thread, and still failed. That's not the failure of the topic, but a failure of their vision for it. The thread wasn't over, just like the previous threads on it weren't over. The conversations were all cut short, not died a natural death. And this is coming from the person who was asking for it to die a natural death towards the end, fyi. Precisely because of how straitjacketed it was. Instead what we got was something else - yet another monument, to failure. And btw, if you'd like people to talk about something else, how about you try engendering that conversation? Instead of idly supporting the suppression of a conversation that was ongoing, and thriving whenever the mods allowed it to. If you think an alternative is in order, go ahead and make one. Let's see how far it goes. Incidentally, the very CoC you seem to like so much was used just yesterday to suppress a post about harassment (not of me, btw) in this game's community, so I rather think its defenders ought to think about what they're supporting. For context, just check the subreddit, where they don't censor such things.

"

Exile009 wrote:

You're deliberately ignoring how hamstrung that thread was, which is easy for you to do since you were barely even part of it. They babysitted it all the way through, locking out participants and deleting posts galore. Them locking it only shows that even with all that energy expended on controlling it they still couldn't make it abide by their arbitrary (and ever malleable) restrictions

I'm not ignoring anything, it just didn't affect what I said. The fact is that even with all the times that people needed to be guided back to the forum rules, there has been loads of discussion. That's how much discussion there was - despite "deleting posts galore", there's 150 pages of it in that thread alone! And there are two sides to the coin: them locking it (also) shows that the community couldn't discuss the pandemic for that long and keep it within the forum rules.

Now, I'm not saying that as some kind of condemnation of the community. It's not, at all. If you get a relatively small bunch of people and set them to write about the same topic back and forth constantly for weeks, they're going to drift away from it; that's just how human conversation works. It's not a big deal, and if/when people once again have something to say that fits here, then they can pick it up again. The drama over it is silly.

"

Exile009 wrote:

(is the pandemic over? No? Then why would there be nothing left to talk about? It's still making news, still precipitating change, even now)

So much to talk about that you felt the need to make this thread despite having nothing to say about it, when if you actually wanted it to "die a natural death", surely you could have just...left it, and let someone who actually wanted to discuss it do so? I mean this clearly isn't a COVID-19 thread, it's a COVID-19 thread thread. It's here because you wanted to talk about moderation again.

"

Exile009 wrote:

And btw, if you'd like people to talk about something else, how about you try engendering that conversation? Instead of idly supporting the suppression of a conversation that was ongoing, and thriving whenever the mods allowed it to. If you think an alternative is in order, go ahead and make one. Let's see how far it goes.

I have neither said that an alternative is in order, nor that I'd like people to talk about something else. I just noted that it's an option if actual discussion of the pandemic has run so low that it got down to the standard internet dregs of dudes arguing over definitions of capitalism (indeed, that literally is people talking about something else, just using the same thread to do it in).

"

Exile009 wrote:

Incidentally, the very CoC you seem to like so much was used just yesterday to suppress a post about harassment (not of me, btw) in this game's community, so I rather think its defenders ought to think about what they're supporting. For context, just check the subreddit, where they don't censor such things.

I tried checking the POE reddit both when I read this and last time you made this comment, and didn't see what you're referring to. Mind sharing a link?

"

GusTheCrocodile wrote:

If you get a relatively small bunch of people and set them to write about the same topic back and forth constantly for weeks, they're going to drift away from it

We're not even a page into this thread and it's already off topic.