What should be done to the Sandbox?

[hotcrystal0]

Time to bump this thread.

I believe I've said it many times now: there are other places on the internet to have off-topic discussion.

In my opinion, “other topics belong on other websites” is a drastic oversimplification of the bigger picture. If you want to discuss another topic just to discuss another topic, you should go somewhere else on the internet, but I’ve mentioned this before: We are a community, and limiting the scope of The Sandbox too much does more harm than good, as one may want to discuss other topics in The Sandbox because of the people, not the topic.

Maybe that means we do have to go the second option here:

If you're not happy with the way forum moderation works in cases like this, you have a couple of options:

1) Don't use the Sandbox. (This is the simplest and most workable option, all things considered.)
2) Recruit a team of people who want to be dedicated forum moderators, convince Nathaniel and current moderators that the new team will do a job that's as good or better than moderators are doing now, volunteer to take over the work so that current moderators can retire without worrying that the forums will get overrun with noise -- and then actually do all the work.

[dvgrn]

... limiting the scope of The Sandbox too much does more harm than good, as one may want to discuss other topics in The Sandbox because of the people, not the topic.

True enough! And limiting the scope of the Sandbox too little also does more harm than good -- so moderators are going to continue to try to strike a reasonable balance. My best advice is that people should probably stop worrying about trying to draw bright lines between inherently fuzzy categories. Just read the forum rules carefully and then do what seems reasonable, and you'll generally be fine.

Things have changed quite a bit since the last time this thread was active.

The old poll ended up with a good plurality voting for

"Lock threads and ban accounts that have nothing to do with CA and/or have a low signal-to-noise ratio..."

I'd say this is exactly what is currently happening, in the Sandbox and elsewhere on the forums -- when it's needed.

The limited role of moderators
Moderators will continue to lock threads that need to be locked -- using their own judgment to decide when it's really necessary. It's not that moderators' judgment is infallible or anything... but we don't have a good way to borrow anyone else's superior judgment, so clearly we're going to use our own!

The forums continue to be only "reluctantly moderated". Moderators are unlikely to be interested in micro-inspecting each new Sandbox thread when it shows up, and deciding whether it's perfectly appropriate or not. I'd advise everyone else to not spend much time passing judgment on other people's threads and posts, either.

The way the forums work is this: you try to keep things generally CA-related, and you post on threads that you find interesting, and you ignore threads you don't think are interesting. If everybody does that, things will generally work out fine without anyone constantly trying to call moderators' attention to perceived minor imperfections in other people's behavior.

Rule 1a
Rule 1a is "assume the best". Generally let's assume that people are trying to use the Sandbox more or less appropriately. Maybe there will always be a few newcomers who haven't quite gotten the idea yet -- but don't worry, they'll figure it out eventually. Moderators will take care of exceptional cases when they come to our attention, just as we always have.

Post reports
The previous page of this thread talked a lot about inappropriate post reports. In the last month or so, post reports have dropped right back down to their historical average -- one or two post reports per week, let's say. Some of that is reports of actual spam, some is suggestions about moving misplaced posts or threads... and very little of it recently has been people pointlessly picking fights with each other.

So there's no problem at the moment with post reports being misused. It's a good trend -- let's continue it!

[hotcrystal0]

*thinks for a while*
I have a proposed solution: what if we made another Discord server specifically for the kinds of off-topic games that used to exist in the sandbox?

What if we make a channel (forum channel) on the Conwaylife Discord for them?

Both of those could work, however not all users can access Discord. This might be for the better though.

[hotcrystal0]

I feel like a pinned thread should be made in The Sandbox detailing what is and isn’t allowed to clear up all the confusion. There should also be a message saying that it’s just a guideline and that even if it’s allowed by the thread, it could still be locked without warning if a moderator feels like it’s problematic.
Topics that mostly conform to rule 4 (like search result dumps and users’ sandbox threads) are not listed here.
Topics I think are probably fine:

• CA games (I’m not sure about roleplays yet)
• serious discussion about (most) non-CA topics

Topics I think are probably not fine:

• discussion about potentially controversial topics (like politics)
• off-topic games
• potentially very noisy threads

[hotcrystal0]

I think it’s time to say my opinion on this. You may know me as the person who advocated for a complete reform of Sandbox moderation, but that was old immature me who didn’t understand the moderators’ ideas.
I support locking off-topic game threads, as they do not contain any productive discussion and thus are of little value to the forums, and they can often get very noisy (like Word Chains).
I am against locking serious off-topic discussion threads (except for potentially controversial topics like religion and politics; those should be immediately locked if one pops up), since they can contain productive discussion, and because of that I believe that there is no need to get rid of them. While I don’t think they should be explicitly allowed (this is a CA forum), I do think that any that pop up should be tolerated unless an actual problem happens within the thread.
Now for roleplay threads. Roleplay threads are basically the modern source of noise, in other words, they take on the role that threads like Word Chains and Random Posts did back in the day. While the moderators are currently tolerating them, I believe it’s only a matter of time before they can’t anymore and roleplay threads get banned. I think roleplay threads should be moved to a forum on new website set up to hold them, set up with LifeViewer and everything. While moving them to a Discord server with Caterer in it may sound like an obvious option, it’s not a good option since not everyone here has access to Discord.

[b-engine]

While moving them to a Discord server with Caterer in it may sound like an obvious option, it’s not a good option since not everyone here has access to Discord.

Reddit might be a better place as people can access subreddits even when signed out.

[hotcrystal0]

While moving them to a Discord server with Caterer in it may sound like an obvious option, it’s not a good option since not everyone here has access to Discord.

Reddit might be a better place as people can access subreddits even when signed out.

It’s possible, but Reddit is a social media that may be blocked in some countries like China, so it’s also not a good place to hold roleplay threads. Plus there’s no CA simulators there.

[unname4798]

We can use Minecraft Wiki then.

[LuveelVoom]

We can use Minecraft Wiki then.

I feel like co-opting an even more specific-topic location for the purposes of these roleplay games isn't a good idea.

[dvgrn]

While the moderators are currently tolerating them, I believe it’s only a matter of time before they can’t anymore and roleplay threads get banned.

Why do you believe that?

I think roleplay threads should be moved to a forum on new website set up to hold them, set up with LifeViewer and everything.

I'm certainly in favor of that -- theoretically. In practice, I'm not seeing any evidence that it will actually happen... and also, it still doesn't seem necessary to borrow trouble from a hypothetical future.

Nobody has been engaging in Sandbox squabbles recently, or at least not the kind with floods of post reports that moderators then have to keep closing because the offenses are not really reportable. Long may that trend continue!

I will continue to suggest strongly to anyone who pops up with complaints in the future, that a very good option for solving any and all roleplay issues is to simply stop posting on roleplay threads until the problem goes away.

As long as everyone keeps firmly in mind that there are no moderators who have volunteered to mediate between roleplayers -- and, basically, no moderators who really want to ever have to look at roleplay threads for any reason -- it seems like the roleplay community can perfectly well continue to solve its own problems here on the forums.

If you're thinking about setting up a whole new website...
If a new website is under consideration, then someone will have to volunteer to administer and moderate the new website. Wouldn't it be a lot easier to just try to volunteer to be moderators for the perfectly good website that we have already?

It's technically possible that some small group of people might be able to successfully volunteer to be added to the moderator group, partly to take on that role of mediating between roleplayers. I kind of doubt that it would work to volunteer to be a roleplay-only moderator -- that would make it seem like roleplay threads were an Officially Supported Thing, whereas they're only a Vaguely Tolerated Thing As Long As They Don't Cause A Lot of Trouble. But if someone wants to donate a decent amount of general moderator work, then I personally think that it would be fine if some of that work involved dealing with roleplay-thread issues -- as long as those issues get dealt with before they become an annoyance to the currently existing moderator team.

In the long run, though, it seems like a really good idea to keep roleplay threads right there in that slightly uncomfortable Vaguely Tolerated category, so that (with any luck) everybody will eventually notice that they're not really all that much fun, and then they can go on to more interesting things.

[tommyaweosme]

While moving them to a Discord server with Caterer in it may sound like an obvious option, it’s not a good option since not everyone here has access to Discord.

Reddit might be a better place as people can access subreddits even when signed out.

reddit still has an age limit. i joined conwaylife.com when i was under 13, but even i still got to participate in the sandbox.

perhaps there should be a second tab on conwaylife.com for the sandbox?

[b-engine]

I could make something like a dedicated roleplaying project in Turbowarp and leverage Turbowarp's servers to satisfy the roleplayers.
However I need LifeViewer, and lazyslug.com disallows embedding.

EDIT:

It’s possible, but Reddit is a social media that may be blocked in some countries like China, so it’s also not a good place to hold roleplay threads.

Indeed, Reddit is blocked in China according to Wikipedia.

Plus there’s no CA simulators there.

Counterexample: r/RedditGames (EDIT 3: those games implies full CA simulators)


EDIT 2: until then, we should add a new rule that all patterns in roleplays should be smaller than the BB of 1414 cell solifuge.

[erictom333]

Personally I would like to see the ConwayLife Skyscraper return, as I have been fairly active there. However, I do think that discussion and forum games in the Sandbox should be at least somewhat CA-related.
One other potential change would be to make forum games their own subforum of the Sandbox, and potentially impose restrictions there (for example, not letting people post there unless they make a certain number of posts to non-Sandbox threads).

[dvgrn]

One other potential change would be to make forum games their own subforum of the Sandbox, and potentially impose restrictions there (for example, not letting people post there unless they make a certain number of posts to non-Sandbox threads).

This seems similar to other "What Should Be Done" proposals to me.

1) All of these potential changes are possible, but someone would have to do the work.

2) In general, current moderators are not very interested in adding to their workload to help support Vaguely Tolerated game threads.

3) Setting up a subforum would take some work by Nathaniel, and then it would be likely to encourage more activity on game threads.

4) If restrictions are then imposed via custom coding, Nathaniel would have to do the custom coding.

5) Past experience says that Nathaniel tends to avoid spending time adding complexity that then makes the whole system more likely to break. So #4 is wildly unlikely to happen.

6) If restrictions are imposed via moderator actions, moderators would have to monitor the subforum and enforce the rules. See #2.

7) I'd still suggest that everyone interested in this topic should focus with laserlike intensity on this key question:

if a What Should Be Done proposal requires that someone do some work, who exactly is volunteering to do that work?

[hotcrystal0]

However, I do think that discussion and forum games in the Sandbox should be at least somewhat CA-related.

I very much agree with this, however I do not believe serious non-CA discussion threads (not game threads) should be locked simply because they have nothing to do with CA if they aren't potentially controversial topics like religion, politics, or current events (such topics should be locked if they come up). Although I support discouraging such topics from being made, I am against banning them completely. Non-CA discussion are not typically "difficult to moderate". Sokwe argues that there are other places on the internet where one could have non-CA discussions, however I think that although the community is tied together by a mutual interest in CA, discussions that are not likely to be rule-violating should not be stopped even if it has nothing to do with CA.

TLDR: Moderators, don't bother with non-CA discussion threads unless they are topics likely to actually be difficult to moderate.

[tommyaweosme]

if a What Should Be Done proposal requires that someone do some work, who exactly is volunteering to do that work?

me! i am willing to do whatever it takes to get back Random Posts or Conwaylife Skyscraper (trust me i am so desperate)

[b-engine]

if a What Should Be Done proposal requires that someone do some work, who exactly is volunteering to do that work?

If I had that much time to attempt unofficial "moderation" of roleplays, why don't "officialize" it?

[dvgrn]

if a What Should Be Done proposal requires that someone do some work, who exactly is volunteering to do that work?

If I had that much time to attempt unofficial "moderation" of roleplays, why don't "officialize" it?

I did talk a little bit about a possible narrow path toward "officializing" some more moderators, not long ago on this thread:

If you're thinking about setting up a whole new website...
If a new website is under consideration, then someone will have to volunteer to administer and moderate the new website. Wouldn't it be a lot easier to just try to volunteer to be moderators for the perfectly good website that we have already?

It's technically possible that some small group of people might be able to successfully volunteer to be added to the moderator group, partly to take on that role of mediating between roleplayers. I kind of doubt that it would work to volunteer to be a roleplay-only moderator -- that would make it seem like roleplay threads were an Officially Supported Thing, whereas they're only a Vaguely Tolerated Thing As Long As They Don't Cause A Lot of Trouble. But if someone wants to donate a decent amount of general moderator work, then I personally think that it would be fine if some of that work involved dealing with roleplay-thread issues -- as long as those issues get dealt with before they become an annoyance to the currently existing moderator team.

It's just ... well, given the level of self-restraint that many roleplay-thread participants have shown so far, I would honestly expect that if one single person became an official roleplay-thread moderator, other participants would probably be unhappy with that moderator's actions sometimes -- and complaints and post reports would go up from current levels. Which is the opposite of what we want.

The odds are maybe a bit better with a small team of new moderators, say three people two of which have to agree on any action taken on one of these threads -- but I would still guess that that team would likely end up getting into arguments sometimes, and then there would be complaints and post reports and requests for intervention from the current moderator team, and again it looks like a can of worms that it's better not to open.

That's just my personal guess about what would happen, in advance of actually hearing any specific proposals of who would be added as moderators and what work they would or wouldn't want to do. And, fair warning, I don't really have any decision-making power as far as adding new moderators anyway, so I'm not the one who would need to be convinced -- other moderators might well take a different view, and Nathaniel has the final say.

TL;DR: So far, speaking for myself, I'm not actively working on changing anything, because I haven't heard any clear specific proposals yet that seem like any kind of improvement over simply leaving things the way they are (which ain't so bad, really, all things considered).