Those posts are not about making informed decisions regarding vaccines:
Those posts are about what happens in the political world regarding vaccines.
Edit: And it is clearly about politics!
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How about this one?
âIt is not in our nature to make informed decisions if it takes a lot of energy to do soâ is not about making informed decisions?
Doubting the existence of Canada isnât political! Itâs cryptogeography!
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I donât know. You also write here:
It seems like you think sarcasm is okay when you do it, but not okay when someone else does it.
I think politics here is a nicer way of saying wrongthink. If you squint hard enough everything is about politics. GPL is about politics. Freelancing vs studio jobs is about politics. etc. etc.
Itâs natural to derrive toward other conversation subject IMO, itâs a bit of a weird rule and iâm always a bit surprised when a MOD close a topic because it got slightly or totally deviated.
thatâs part of having a conversation isnt it?
Not really. Itâs more like âletâs not discuss this topic thatâs bound to get people mad in the forum where we primarily post pretty pictures and ask questions about how to make pretty pictures of our own.â
Some topics are loaded. Some people donât want to deal with the fallout from people bringing them up. Itâs as simple as that.
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You asked me for a clarification how the thread went off-topic and I clearly gave you an example with an explanation. Now you are diverging to one of my posts?!
When it comes to keeping a thread on topic, the moderators will sometimes run the ship so tight that it is actually difficult to add your 2 cents to the topic. In this case, it is almost like the staff expected every post to simply repeat the words of Dr. Fauci and the WHO on vaccines, with your own thoughts not welcome. It is very arbitrary and you never know for sure what will cause a post to get flagged.
I do agree on the concern that one post could hit a nerve which triggers a runaway train of posts, but considering the section itself is âoff topicâ, at least allow a small bit of flexibility.
Yes. I wanted to highlight the double-standard.
I have no problem to admit it when my posts are off-topic at all. That happend many times in the past and it will happen in the future as well. Now, that post was clearly about the actual topic and didnât contain politics. It contained sarcasm for sure, so what?
Same things can be said for this one as well:
The problem is wondering what defines a âsmallâ bit of flexibility, and how far that definition can be pushed.
One thing Iâve seen happen in places where politics are allowed to be freely discussed in a world where everyone is a little too highly tweaked for their own good is that you risk factioning the forum. Like you say something someone doesnât agree with, and they and their friends talk via PMâs, and start attacking all your posts here. It doesnât matter if what youâre posting is political or not. They have a grudge against you, and they want to express this grudge every chance they get, appropriate topic or not.
âŚand the people who see this happening, and want to defend you start attacking them, and blah blah blah, and so on and so on, suddenly Blenderartist isnât nearly as fun as it once was.
This is why the mods are so uptight about certain topics. Itâs something Iâve seen happen myself.
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I closed a thread that was about comparing the efficacy of the three different vaccines to each other. When the topic deviated from that a second time in a direction that historically has shown to be heated, I stepped in (again, noting that the thread was flagged more than once).
If you want to start a new thread about the efficacy of those vaccines in general, youâre more than welcome to do so. Thereâs a lot of opportunity for discussion around this topic, but because people are so passionate about it (whatever their perspective), the conversation has a tendency to broaden in scope in a way thatâs not conducive to constructive discussion. Because of that, itâs critical that the discussion remain relatively confined to the topic in the original post.
Youâll notice that I have not expressed my personal opinion on the matter in that thread⌠and I wonât. My job here is to remain objective and focus on the experience of people using the forum.
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What makes me uncomfortable is not that I canât say what I want to say on vaccines or the virus. Frankly I donât have a lot to say. And if I had something to say about that particular topic I would probably pick another forum and discuss Blender stuff here.
What makes me uncomfortable is; people were having a civil conversation over there, confined in one topic, without insulting each other etc. And then you stepped in and closed the topic, effectively telling them to âshut up!â
If you didnât do that, that topic was eventually going to fizzle away.
Do you think I would sit in front of the keyboard keep replying to myself if all these people werenât responding? (I mean asylum that I live has some rules, wardens give us only so many hours in front of the computer)
Do you think it helps your case that the thread did not go off-topic by presenting more example where it happend?
I said same things could be said. I didnât say they would be true. You choose to draw very tight borders around the topic, I see it as a âvaccine and/or virusâ discussion. Let people express their opinions in a respectful way, even if you think they are wrong. Then you can use your superior knowledge to tell them where they are wrong. Censorship shuts down the communication.
Look⌠Iâve been hanging out at this forum for a long, long time. Iâve gotten a pretty good sense of when a topic is prone to go sideways.
Did I act too soon? Maybe. But then again, Iâd already had to keep the thread on topic once before. So perhaps itâs worth considering the fact that I actually know what Iâm doing.
I apologize if that sounds condescending, but it is a little frustrating to be yelled at for doing the best that I can based on my time and experience here as a forum member and moderator. If there were a trend of moderators prematurely closing topics, then perhaps then a conversation like that would be in order⌠but I donât think weâre there.
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It is not about anyoneâs opinion (even though you repeatedly claimed it to be the case). It is about being off-topic regarding the initial post and it is about political discussions not being welcome here. You are free to disagree with those rules, you can call that censorship or whatever you want.
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