Thoughts on forum rules

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roxics

roxics

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I've been thinking a little about the forum rules here which ban any conversations that are political or religious or controversial in nature. I get it. I understand the approach. The idea is to keep a certain degree of civility here rather than degrade this forum into a youtube comment thread. I'm all about civility so I'm happy for that.
From a technical perspective this makes sense. As a predominately gear based forum where the majorty of discussion tends to be about gear.

Yet there is the other side of the coin. That fact that some of us are filmmakers, not just technicians. Not just camera operators or sound people or whatever. As filmmakers we tell stories and stories are all about the drama. Sometimes they are about the controversial issues because those are things humans deal with. One could make the argument that any subject could be considered controversial when viewed with the right lens. Take violence for example. A character is shot and killed. We've become so immune to this kind of thing in movies that it's no longer a thing we flinch at in film. Yet if we wanted to, we could go in a whole variety of directions with this. It could be considered controversial with the right lens.

So I wonder if to some extent this forum is shorting itself in some way by not allowing such discussion (in a civil way). Especially when it comes to story development and greater ideas and philosophies in general. That we're focusing too much of the techncal aspect here, rather than fostering an equal balance of technical and in-front-of-the-lens ideas/drama/controversy.

Could we, with the right amount of moderation, discuss such topics without it spiraling into a youtube/facebook style comment thread? Is such a thing possible?

I don't know, what are your thoughts?
 
This is one of the few social and professional venues I frequent that doesn't devolve into toxic and often un-productive conversations and I quite appreciate the guidelines at DVXuser. There are other forums that I find useful that are a bit more flexible on this, like eoshd.com, and things frequently get silly over there imo. I don't think changing forum rules on this would add much over here and I think it would actually push away a lot of great contributors. On the other hand, there are options for folks in this profession that if they want that type of discourse it's available, so DVXuser not offering it doesn't seem to be such a big deal to me.
 
Roxics - I agree with you intentions, but the practicalities of opening up discussion is probably not something moderators want to deal with. A clear 'no' makes the rules of monitoring practical. If you open up the rules, then just what do you open them up to and how do you tell when someone has stepped over the line. Someone gets offended because the rules opened up while someone else gets offended because their comments got moderated. It's a no-win situation for the moderators.
 
Please no. This is the only sane place on the internet for me. I think we can discuss most ideas in front of the lens without being overtly political or religious. Seems a small price to pay for keeping the trolls under the bridge.
 
Even in the most technical thread we have seen back-and-forth bickering, name calling, and other forms of personal attack. In a thread about filmmaking that had zero political or religious content, I saw a member tell another member that he wanted to kill him. A better rule would be:

No personal attack​


That would better tame the technical threads and allow civil discourse about other things.
 
I think the rule about "no politics and no religion" is a very good one. Because such discussions very quickly devolve into hostility that then carries over to everything else. You see the name of a given user, and then think in all contexts "wow, that guy is an X-voter, supporter!". Toxic. I don't think, quite frankly, we lose anything - it's not like you're going to convince a religious person to give up religion or the other way around - and as we've seen all too often, political arguments rarely change minds. All it does is generate ill-feeling that carries over everything and creates enemies where there need not be.

I agree with combatentropy a "no personal attacks" rule would be a good one, in fact it may exist already, but is inconsistently enforced. I for one, would much appreciate enforcing such a rule much more strongly. Of course, even so there are tricky issues, because some asshats will solicit feedback on their work, and if you say anything critical, no matter how well stated and how politely and how constructively, they'll take it as a personal attack!

The only rule I'm not 100% in enthusiastic agreement with, is the one that says "no negativity" - I can't locate it at the moment, but it's one of the 8 P's. It seems unnecessarily restrictive, and unnatural, enforcing an Orwellian "we're all positive and happy", fixed smile, false cheer. I mean, if someone is a constant Debbie Downer (and yes, such people exist), we eventually steer away from such a person. It's self-correcting, meanwhile the freedom to express opinions is not restricted. But hey, I don't make up the rules, and getting 7 out of 8 right is doing great, so I'm happy to live with it.
 
I agree with what you say, OldCorpse.

OldCorpse said:
You see the name of a given user, and then think in all contexts "wow, that guy is an X-voter, supporter!".
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Maybe this is a good time for roxics to clarify what kinds of extra discussion he had in mind. If roxics meant, "I sure wish we could have a thread about how good a president so-and-so would be," then no, I have no interest in that. However, there are political and, shall we say, metaphysical topics that are tangential to filmmaking. We can't, for example, talk very long about the meaning of art and its role in life without touching on religion (even if you say we all come from slime and art is whatever fires your neurons the most, that's still religious: atheism). Another example is discussion of what's fair use and what's a rip off. That comes a lot in our work, but we can't talk about it. I know the practical answer is, hire a lawyer, because you could get sued no matter what. But still I have wanted to poll people's theoretical opinions on that very subject.

If we just get as zealous about enforcement of "no personal attack" as no politics, though, I think we would see the signal-to-noise ratio improve. Yes, anyone could take something personally, like you said, for example, if I say your movie stinks. What I meant though, is simpler, or at least, more literal. If, in an argument, you find yourself typing the word "you" instead of "it," you better stop. Maybe I should say, don't talk about the other person, unless they ask you to (like "I was wondering if you could give me some advice"). Even then, you can usually keep it to the inanimate subject at hand. "I was wondering if you could give me some advice about my audio recording skillz in this video." "Well, the level of background noise suggests that the mic is more than the ideal 2 feet away," instead of "Your audio recording skills stink."

It's very natural to want to address the other person, especially in a back-and-forth argument. There comes a time when you think the other person just isn't trying: he's not trying to think through the details or he's not looking at me with the same respect he looks at himself with. As soon as I get this feeling about someone, I feel like writing all sorts of personal attack. But I'm trying to hold myself to this rule and keep it to the data. It shouldn't matter how much the other person is trying. If they're wrong, they're wrong, and that can be pointed out with some objective fact. Example:

BAD:
"The capital of Iceland is Keflavik."
"You're stupid if you think the capital of Iceland is Keflavik."

GOOD:
"The capital of Iceland is Keflavik."
"According the McGraw-Hill World Atlas, 2016, the capital of Iceland is Reykjavik."
 
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I, too, find the "no politics" rule tiresome. Politics reflects general approach of people's to ideas and a such this conversation is vital in our understanding how to shape this understanding by our work.
For instance, the front runners for presidency on political spectrum do the same thing - give people what they want: ideas don't matter but how you deliver those ideas does. This directly correlates to our conversations on how general population perceives things and in essence what they want (and how willing are we to bend backwards to "give them what they want" and what kind of repercussions we have to live with if we don't).

I think a much healthier rule would be: no politics or religion unless it DIRECTLY relates to the point being made.
 
Patryk_Rebisz said:
I, too, find the "no politics" rule tiresome. Politics reflects general approach of people's to ideas and a such this conversation is vital in our understanding how to shape this understanding by our work.
For instance, the front runners for presidency on political spectrum do the same thing - give people what they want: ideas don't matter but how you deliver those ideas does. This directly correlates to our conversations on how general population perceives things and in essence what they want (and how willing are we to bend backwards to "give them what they want" and what kind of repercussions we have to live with if we don't).

I think a much healthier rule would be: no politics or religion unless it DIRECTLY relates to the point being made.
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I really don't think you can give an inch when it comes to those two subjects. There are people who actually get paid to troll websites and post political attacks and spread disinformation and hate and bile and anything to derail threads and enforce an agenda. The minute you open the floodgates they'll start pouring in. Do I wish we could discuss politics and religion here in a calm and civil manner? Yes, but just go to any random comment section and you'll see the garbage this will invite. No thanks.
 
Batutta said:
I really don't think you can give an inch when it comes to those two subjects. There are people who actually get paid to troll websites and post political attacks and spread disinformation and hate and bile and anything to derail threads and enforce an agenda. The minute you open the floodgates they'll start pouring in. Do I wish we could discuss politics and religion here in a calm and civil manner? Yes, but just go to any random comment section and you'll see the garbage this will invite. No thanks.
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Couldn't agree more.
 
I would like to see some room when discussion is about a film messaging.

This goes to the core of the thread 'Where are all the filmmakers' or something like that. The point being that this site is a tech site partially because that is all that is allowed to be discussed. You can't discuss most documentaries as they are often very routed in politics or religion. Could never discuss the content of Oscar winning Spotlight. Much of the history of film making is rooted in politics.

Just look at the Hateful 8 thread. When the issue of how Tarantino portrays violence as a filmmaker was brought up it was poo pooed immediately yet it is a valuable thing to discuss when talking about how we as filmmakers and visual artists choose to frame our contents message. As long as there is zero tolerance of politics being discussed this will always be a tech site which is fine but then don't wonder why their is no deeper filmmaking discussion.
 
FrameFarmMedia said:
I would like to see some room when discussion is about a film messaging.

This goes to the core of the thread 'Where are all the filmmakers' or something like that. The point being that this site is a tech site partially because that is all that is allowed to be discussed. You can't discuss most documentaries as they are often very routed in politics or religion. Could never discuss the content of Oscar winning Spotlight. Much of the history of film making is rooted in politics.

Just look at the Hateful 8 thread. When the issue of how Tarantino portrays violence as a filmmaker was brought up it was poo pooed immediately yet it is a valuable thing to discuss when talking about how we as filmmakers and visual artists choose to frame our contents message. As long as there is zero tolerance of politics being discussed this will always be a tech site which is fine but then don't wonder why their is no deeper filmmaking discussion.
Click to expand...

It's called "this is why we can't have nice things". Yes, it would be nice - genuinely nice - if we could discuss films to the degree that honors their intent wrt. politics and religion. It would be nice. But unfortunately, in the real world, this quickly deteriorates into all the negative fallout we've spoken about. Which is why that nice thing you want? We can't have it. It's a sad reality, but nonetheless reality. Wish it wasn't so, but wishing is not enough. A lot of hard experience was behind the rules, and that's where we're at - it wasn't done without careful consideration.
 
FrameFarmMedia said:
I would like to see some room when discussion is about a film messaging.

This goes to the core of the thread 'Where are all the filmmakers' or something like that. The point being that this site is a tech site partially because that is all that is allowed to be discussed. You can't discuss most documentaries as they are often very routed in politics or religion. Could never discuss the content of Oscar winning Spotlight. Much of the history of film making is rooted in politics.

Just look at the Hateful 8 thread. When the issue of how Tarantino portrays violence as a filmmaker was brought up it was poo pooed immediately yet it is a valuable thing to discuss when talking about how we as filmmakers and visual artists choose to frame our contents message. As long as there is zero tolerance of politics being discussed this will always be a tech site which is fine but then don't wonder why their is no deeper filmmaking discussion.
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That's exactly my point. We are forcing ourselves to live in some kind of artificial cocoon and then wonder why general public is not getting what we are saying. Well, if we never discuss those issues with colleagues then how can we expect that the public at large will engage in this discussion? This self-censorship we are forced to engage in is more dangerous then we assume it to be.
 
Advice is appreciated -- judgement is not. And the quickest way to bring out the judgmental in people is to get into discussions of politics or religion.

There is no lack of the public at large discussing politics and religion on the Internet. It's everywhere. There's no reason why it needs to be here.
 
Last year, a thread about drones got political. Every topic has some political content. That said, the site should not include electoral politics.
"We are forcing ourselves to live in some kind of artificial cocoon and then wonder why general public is not getting what we are saying." Why should the general public care?
 
Please no politics or religion! As previously stated there are threads that get out of hand over discussions of hardware. It's 2016, there are many venues on the net and elsewhere to discuss those topics and the issues related to them. Find the one that works for you and go there and engage all you want.
I have been a member here for almost ten years, and keep coming back and hopefully both finding and contributing some useful knowledge as well as making friends and connections. I have both political and religious views and have no problem discussing them but I sincerely believe this is not the platform. Moderating such discussions would be a nightmare that I am sure the mods here don't want to deal with ever. Though it would probably be fair to say the majority of members are from the USA, there are still many members from other countries around the world and that means many different political and religious standards and views.
If it ain't broke don't fix it.
 
BrianMurphy said:
If it ain't broke don't fix it.
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I'm with you.

I think of this place like a hardware store. I don't go to a hardware store and expect to find medicines and vitamins, or for information about health. I could argue that if I'm not healthy, then I can't very well do the home improvement tasks that I would need supplies from the hardware store for, so the hardware store should also support my health needs. But that kind of logic turns the hardware store into a Walmart, which is fine for what it is, but not much help when I need lumber or good bathroom fixtures. So I'd rather get my medicines and vitamins somewhere else that specializes in such things, and keep my hardware store focused on what it does best -- helping me with my home improvement projects.
 
I 100% agree with a no politics or religion discussion. People on this forum are everything from free market capitalists to socialists. Every thread can be viewed through a lens of politics and religion and if you let people they will preach the gospel about their views which will be the exact opposite of someone else's views and bingo the thread is a flame war or religious discussion in every single post.
There are hundreds of religious and political forums on the net for those discussions.
 
I think the distinction is pretty easy. Dead pool has grossed 300 million and counting. It is on track to be the highest grossing R rated film ever produced. If you want to discuss if this will lead to more R rated films from Hollywood that seems like a legitimate discussion.
however if you immediately start discussing if violent films cause children to commit crimes, now you are into politics and it's not appropriate here.
 
While we appreciate feedback, the rule is not going to change. No one wants to go back to the way things were before the rule. And if you weren't around then, no matter your intentions here, you don't want that, either.

There is no such thing as a "contained" political discussion.
 
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