Anyone else experiencing this?
- Thread starter CRH113
- Start date
Muncher 1953
Senior Member
Mixed feelings. A lot fewer posts when I run ‘what’s new’ since the change, maybe now I’ll get more chores done!
I wouldn’t want to have to moderate that one.
I wouldn’t want to have to moderate that one.
biggymu
Well-known member
What hypocrisy. A majority of your posts are in that section. As are almost 1/2 of all posts on the forum itself. Just keep it civil gentleman.
hale1940
Canadian Fabio
You’ve just illustrated part of the problem. The political section is a vampire on the forum. Its the K98kforum, not the K98k&MAGAtrashbinforum.
Plus, half the contributors to the political section effectively only post there. They aren’t serious K98kforum members.
Theres a plethora of place on the internet to talk politicals, make hacky political takes, and post shity memes. Thats literally half the internet at this point.
Just go to Twitter (I refuse to say ‘X’, since that sounds like a gay club name) most of the political section posts are just reposts from there anyways.
mauser202
Senior Member
Vampire or life blood depending on how you look at it. If it wasn’t for the off topic/political forum I would not visit the forum daily, there simply isn’t enough new k98 material posted daily. However, for me when I pop in daily on the off topic forum I will look to see if any K98/WW II material is posted.
My point is if you don’t like talking politics, if you get easily offended or think it’s child like, you have a choice: don’t visit that section.
My point is if you don’t like talking politics, if you get easily offended or think it’s child like, you have a choice: don’t visit that section.
student of history
Zorba The Geek
I sincerely don’t go looking for arguments or seek out turmoil. There’s a lot of vitriol in that section of the site, and it’s caused some division on the forum (even amongst the mods), which isn’t very productive. Most of what I say (when I’m not commenting on WWII militaria) is that the community is stronger when they’re bonded and that we should focus on positive things. If by your definition that makes me a hypocrite, then so be it.
biggymu
Well-known member
It certainly makes no sense to involve yourself in a section of a forum you feel strongly against.
I doubt if I have ever selected the “bayonets and accessories” forum, or several others because it is not an interest of mine. It’s called freedom of choice.
That one war thread in particular has a regular revolving cast that enjoys the back and forth, no matter how fierce it may appear. They argue but respect each other and work things out like men. Post things that interest you and ignore those that don’t.
I doubt if I have ever selected the “bayonets and accessories” forum, or several others because it is not an interest of mine. It’s called freedom of choice.
That one war thread in particular has a regular revolving cast that enjoys the back and forth, no matter how fierce it may appear. They argue but respect each other and work things out like men. Post things that interest you and ignore those that don’t.
hale1940
Canadian Fabio
Dude… just go use twitter. Having such an active, divisive, spicy political section on what is effectively a hobbiest forum makes zero sense.
mauser202
Senior Member
Sorry, I must have missed in the forum rules where it has to make sense to you. Guns and politics are as American as apple pie, our country was started by men shite talking on the gubermit in a pub. I prefer to get my fix of both here. Again, it is quite simple, if you get triggered don’t go there
biggymu
Well-known member
biggymu
Well-known member
Respectfully disagree. That section of the site is full of politically charged rhetoric that has nothing to do with the furtherance of K98k collecting. As Mike said, it's just creating problems. Even the moderators are at each other, which is totally unproductive for this site and for the hobby writ large.
There is some good stuff there. Funny stuff. Interesting things you might not encounter on your own.
Gun guys talking gun stuff and other areas of interest. It certainly wasn’t mostly contentious.
60 of Mikes last 200 posts were on that forum. Must be a horrible place for sure.
There is some good stuff there. Funny stuff. Interesting things you might not encounter on your own.
Gun guys talking gun stuff and other areas of interest. It certainly wasn’t mostly contentious.
student of history
Zorba The Geek
No one is making the argument that it isn't a popular section of the site. There are approximately 3,600 threads in the current version of the 1st and 2nd Amendment Defense section, and that's after forum staff deleted a large portion of it as a result of some really deplorable comments that continued to be made. Now, I'm not saying that all the content is bad, but you need to acknowledge that there's been a lot of inappropriate content generated as a result of giving certain folks a soapbox to spew hate from. Some (certainly not the majority, but some) forum members were calling for the execution of politicians that they disagreed with, and were making some equally repugnant comments related to gay people. I've brought this up a couple times, but you seem to just glaze over it. Do you not understand that threads like that legitimately bring real heat down on this entire community? That's the kind of stuff that law enforcement agencies take note of, and I can pretty well guarantee that the forum's ownership team wants nothing to do with anything like that.
Now, let's pivot to the current state of affairs. Over the last few days even the mods have been in disagreement about the type of stuff that's being posted in that section of the site. The political content has created division and now certain key folks are threatening to leave the forum, and these are knowledgeable people that bring a lot of positive content to sections of the forum that actually matter. There's nothing good about longtime members who have generally been able to peacefully coexist on this forum since 2010 now being so at each other that they want to pack up their marbles and call it a day. If that happens, it's just going to hurt the community's ability to generate positive content that helps drive forward the original objective of this forum, which was to study and share knowledge related to the K98k.
In a perfect world, we'd be able to have an off topic section where folks could post lighthearted funny stuff, but at this point, it's just been proven too many times that certain people can't seem to keep themselves in check, and the result is just a lot of needless heartache and drama.
Oh, and for the record, I'm not some easily offended latte sippin leftie. I don't generally care what gets posted (whether I agree with it or not), but I do care if the forum gets torn apart as a result of some truly needless dumbassery, and that seems to be the direction this continues to head in. If people were just a little better at keeping themselves in check, none of these discussions would be happening right now...
biggymu
Well-known member
I’ve been here multiple times a day for years and have never noticed any indication of this forum being “torn apart”. I see people posting their acquisitions, I see people helping new members and a generally professional demeanor by almost all members of the forum. There are even rules of conduct posted on the top of that forum against ad hominem attacks and vulgarity. Honestly all forums have side forums where members discuss many different things. This was no different.
What obviously happened was one of the forum owners was insulted by some fool who should have been disciplined at that moment and not persecute everyone else that enjoys that section of the forum, I am not aware of all infractions that you mention above, but they should have been dealt with in the prescribed fashion by the moderators at the time they occurred.
Not everyone is sensitive to all social issues as are others. Censorship is not moderation.
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Cyrano4747
Well-known member
It also makes it really hard to grow a community, especially if you want to see posters in here who are under 50. I've mentioned this place to more than one younger (again, as in under-50) collector and had them nope out shortly after seeing something like the above. There have been times when I've closed the tab and not come back for a few days because I just didn't want to participate for a while. I didn't go in there, but it doesn't help when you've got the bar on the right of the screen serving as a ticker of recent posts and seeing that stuff flick past.
I'm not talking low information people who are going to breathlessly trot out the prize of their collection, an RC BYF43, either. There are plenty of younger collectors out there who have good jobs, own all the books, have established a nice little collection of their own, are very online and willing to share, but who aren't interested in the political rally happening in the background. It's easy to say "just don't go there" but it doesn't put the forum's best foot forward.
The other issue is mod burn out. Maybe it needed stricter moderation. But at the end of the day I strongly suspect the moderators here signed on to help run a website for discussing collecting German firearms, not a political debate club. Moderating online discussions is hard and thankless at the best of times and really the only thing that makes it bearable is having the community be someplace you want to hang out anyway. Having to trudge through a bunch of arguments about a topic you don't want to engage with to find the people who step too far over the line in a sea of posters jabbing at each other just sucks and it can rapidly destroy any desire to hang out and contribute, much less moderate.
Stuff that leads to moderator burn out is bad for the community in the long run.
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That's a fair take in my book. Moderator burn out isn't good for the forum but I imagine there is the chance that others will fill the gap (much like a job, we are all replaceable even if we feel the emptyness from people very valuable and interesting people departure)