Should there be a Shield Hero Thread that's moderated?

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Godwin's Law was proposed at a time when the likelihood was that a comparison involving Hitler and the Nazis in an online discussion was (seen as) probably spurious. (Hence the corollary statement about such a comparison indicating that useful discussion had ceased.)

Sad to say, we are no longer in such a time.
 
Sumeragi said:
Except, this is how it actually works, using Godwin's:

"There is a work that supports Nazism" -> "People criticize the work" -> "Fans throw everything including the kitchen sink in justifying the work" -> "Thread is shut down"

The "fans" are the problem, not the critics.
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Breh, that example wasn't some abstract hypothetical I pulled out of my ass to illustrate a point. People on SV have actually argued exactly that:

Chloe Sullivan said:
It's a villainous act presented as a credible threat instead of arrant nonsense, which is inherently legitimizing.
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Fivemarks said:
You're pretty wrong and problematic here, Ford. You're continually defending what are, to many of us, betrayals of fascism and imperialism that portray it as "Cool" or "Not any worse than the alternatives."
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The organization the above posters are talking about are explicitly the villains in the series. Like there is no grey there, they aren't being presented as anything but cartoon villains.

I still think you can make those kinds of points in an open discussion without being a problem in and of itself, but at some point that kind of participation crosses the line from "discussion of thematic and subtextual elements of a creative work", and becomes "showing out just to tilt the people that like a thing that I don't like" (the Gundam one has been going for four years). It doesn't even have to be intentional, malicious, or unjustified on anyone's part.

That's why I think there could be some value in dividing the larger or more contentious works into separate threads for the people who want to talk about plot and power-levels, and the people who want to stab each other to death with words over things not actually written. Because just like splitting IC and OOC content in RPGs/Quests, on a foundational level they're serving a different function for the users who use them. Such a division might be unnecessary in most threads, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be an option for either the users or staff (or both) if there are issues with a particular discussion.
 
poaw said:
I don't think this is limited to Shield Hero. A number of posters across multiple shows/movies/games pretty much make a sport out of loudly not liking the work under discussion for months and even years on end. They show up looking for static, get static, and then everyone who likes the material gets punished by having the thread of closed. Which given some of the people involved in creating those situations is as close to a win condition as they can hope for. I'm not saying people can't point out problems with a creative work, or all discussion has to express a net positive opinion. I'm talking directly about how the staff handles the problems that come when people push persistent and/or inflammatory viewpoints which are guaranteed to provoke reactions from someone who is a fan of the work.
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I remembered that in another thread and another time, I posted:

Ford Prefect said:
I'm not anyone's dad, and I don't intend to make fucking Goblin Slayer a matter of SV policy.
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That was my second post. My first read like this:

Ford Prefect said:
Because it's not that big a deal.

Like I really need to reiterate this: Goblin Slayer isn't that big a deal. It's certainly bad, but its persistence as a topic on SV (and some places elsewhere) is largely the result of competing siege mentalities. Its popularity last season stemmed mainly from the controversy surrounding it. It was so talked about because people were turned off by it, and as CrunchyRoll were strongly promoting it that just put in front of a lot of eyes.

However its actual impact as a piece of pop culture is basically nothing. It was a widely watched seasonal anime and that's basically all its ever going to be. It's part of a current trend in light novels and light novel adaptations, and that trend will end. Goblin Slayer, Shield Hero, Arifureta, these things will be popular in the moment but won't have lasting impact. In ten years we'll still be talking about Berserk. We won't be talking about Goblin Slayer.

Or rather, we won't be talking about Goblin Slayer so long as you can all get over it.
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For what it's worth the Goblin Slayer thread made it to 70 pages on the back of its controversy and is actually still open, though dormant for eleven months, so it's not like it's inevitable that a controversial show will end up in thread jail. Certainly the Gundam thread has survived multiple instances of the Federation vs Zeon argument. That said, I do get where you're coming from. I actually do sometimes wish that people who have the energy to spend dozens upon dozens of pages arguing about Goblin Slayer or Shield Hero would instead bulk out discussions about things they actually like and help grow the breadth of discussion in that subforum. Not saying that people don't ever do this, but for better or worse people on SV are pretty much always down for a brawl, and that is sometimes reflected in which topics get a lot churn in TVMAD (abbreviation coincidental).

However when I say "we're not going to make this administrative issue" I say that in large part because I don't think it's realistic for us to manage directly. Taking our normal approach to things, the penalogical approach as Squishy calls it, is probably difficult when we're dealing with, basically, differing opinions on controversial TV shows. As you imply, cutting out negative opinions is not really viable. We can theoretically target people deliberately attempting to get threads closed, which has been suggested as a problem in the past, but I don't think that's actually common. People just get wrapped up in things and get carried away. Happens to pretty much all of us.
 
poaw said:
lol you acting like these dudes are mining coal at the turn of the 20th century or something. Moderation in xenforo is reading and button presses.
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Try it for a month and then be snarky about the workload, m8 :V

That said, Ford has the right of it - arguing about TV shows is one of the cornerstones of the Net. It happened before us, it'll happen after us.
 
Ford Prefect said:
I remembered that in another thread and another time, I posted:

That was my second post. My first read like this:

For what it's worth the Goblin Slayer thread made it to 70 pages on the back of its controversy and is actually still open, though dormant for eleven months, so it's not like it's inevitable that a controversial show will end up in thread jail. Certainly the Gundam thread has survived multiple instances of the Federation vs Zeon argument. That said, I do get where you're coming from. I actually do sometimes wish that people who have the energy to spend dozens upon dozens of pages arguing about Goblin Slayer or Shield Hero would instead bulk out discussions about things they actually like and help grow the breadth of discussion in that subforum. Not saying that people don't ever do this, but for better or worse people on SV are pretty much always down for a brawl, and that is sometimes reflected in which topics get a lot churn in TVMAD (abbreviation coincidental).
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Got it.


Ford Prefect said:
However when I say "we're not going to make this administrative issue" I say that in large part because I don't think it's realistic for us to manage directly. Taking our normal approach to things, the penalogical approach as Squishy calls it, is probably difficult when we're dealing with, basically, differing opinions on controversial TV shows. As you imply, cutting out negative opinions is not really viable. We can theoretically target people deliberately attempting to get threads closed, which has been suggested as a problem in the past, but I don't think that's actually common. People just get wrapped up in things and get carried away. Happens to pretty much all of us.
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I don't understand what you mean by the bolded portion. I think it's that I don't know what you mean when you say, "administrative issue", and "penalogical approach". I know what the words you mean, but I don't know exactly what you're saying when you use them.
 
poaw said:
I don't understand what you mean by the bolded portion. I think it's that I don't know what you mean when you say, "administrative issue", and "penalogical approach". I know what the words you mean, but I don't know exactly what you're saying when you use them.
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By 'administrative issue' I mean something which we put on our radar and devote resources to 'handling' whatever that might entail. 'Penalogical approach' refers to how we typically handle most things on SV, which is to say we mostly use punishments to negatively enforce behaviour we consider bad.
 
MrCogmor said:
There is a pretty obvious difference between having torture scenes and endorsing torture. There isn't really any ambiguity or controversy that things like Bonesaw's horrific experiments on stretching nerve endings are bad.
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So if show has negative things happen it has to beat you over head like Weed PSA during 1970s ?
 
Defiant Roar said:
So if show has negative things happen it has to beat you over head like Weed PSA during 1970s ?
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Shield Hero has negative things happen, and claims them positive, so there is a fucking difference in having a bad thing happen, and treating it as bad, and having a bad thing happen, and treating it as good.

Random Member said:
Why the fuck do some people want to segregate opinions?!
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I want to segregate opinions, because i find some opinions (largely those espoused by fascists, incels, etc) utterly loathsome and unworthy of existing.
I find the idea of unlimited freedom of speech and/or expression terrible.
That said, i suspect here it is that people do not want other people to say a thing they like is terrible.
 
Shield Hero discourse is terrible mainly because saying "thing you like is bad, here's why" clearly isn't enough and things absolutely must escalate at every turn. What's worse is that I actually have to dive back into Shield Hero material because I can't take people at their word about what's actually happened, outside of the few people who read/have read stuff like the LNs.

Everything about Shield Hero now has to be a maximum dunkfest with zero exceptions or else you're now the incels too. Like we talk about N&P all the time but Shield Hero threads are the ultimate examples of circular firing squads.
 
Defiant Roar said:
Is this the whole Videogames cause Violence,Videogames cause Sexism, shebang again ? Can we create thread somewhere else to not bother mods with this ?
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No this is about Shield Hero not videogames.

Edit: The point that media shouldn't encourage bad things applies to all media but the question of what different videogames encourage is irrelevant to the topic. The issue under discussion is what Shield Hero encourages.
 
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Videogames cause violence and sexism just like movies, comics, books, theater, poetry, song and drunken braggards do.
All stories, all media, has an effect upon those who consume them.
The idea that media contents don't matter, and the "video games cause violence" fear mongering when discussing media and its contents is as predictable as it is tiring.
 
I think the discussion is at the point where it would be better to create a separate thread in Fiction Discussion.
 
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