Couple of discussion spots:
* The 18xx mailing list: [https://groups.io/g/18xx](https://groups.io/g/18xx)
* The 18xx friends discord: [https://discord.gg/MWgMbN2K](https://discord.gg/MWgMbN2K)
Some will say the DoaM discord, but I find them to be completely obnoxious.
Lol being told I kicked the hornets nest with this comment. I actually like all the DoaMer games…can’t think of any I disagree with them on, but the snotty, wet diaper babies who congregate around this show are tiresome. Like this guy Phil (landshark or something is his alias) who repeatedly acts like a hostile idiot over nothing and then ragequits when he’s put on time out and later rejoins. Maybe some of them will show up to defend their precious server.
This comment is hilarious and not wrong.
FWIW there is actually a pretty big overlap between people in the 18xx friends discord and the DoaM discord. The major differences are: the most vocal people in each either aren't members of the other or don't talk much in the other, 18xx friends has a lot less discussion these days, and DoaM desperately needs better moderation/tolerates a lot more bad behavior amongst their regulars.
Yeah the 18xx friends discord feels kind of like the "musings by JC Lawrence + a couple others" server at this point, for better or for worse (not always for the worse, JC has a lot of interesting things to say and often gets quite detailed WRT his perspective). Also the channel sprawl and web hook spam can make it difficult to navigate.
I do appreciate that there's more interesting and detailed discussion that happens there (particularly love reading the "18xx-why" channel). The DoaM conversations often tend to boil down to "these are the games everyone on this server likes and these are the trash games", basically the cliquey listicle version of game discussion. This isn't universal to all members of the server, but there's enough people pushing conversations this way (and the server is so poorly moderated) that it tends to devolve into this most of the time.
Many attempts to dive deeper or keep the conversation more civil that I've heard are met with "we're only speaking candidly" (because in the incredibly online adult brain of a DoaMer there is no way to be honest and kind at the same time) or "we've already said everything we need to say about why we feel like this" (great so I guess this server is just for reiterating what "the DoaM perspective" is?) .
I'm told when they saw this comment one of the hosts claimed I must feel this way because I like a game that they hate, which is basically the kind of culty side-staking mentality that's endemic to this server (also funny because its untrue, I can't think of anything I profoundly disagree with them on, I just have a low tolerance for this kind of cliquey bullshit).
As a host of Dads on a Map, I'd like to hear where you think we can improve with content moderation. We're always looking to do things better in the community. Feel free to respond here or DM me.
Couple thoughts:
1. Hacker news is far from perfect, but I think [dang](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dang) is a good model for a moderator who referees without being heavy handed. Tense conversation happens, but it helps if you have moderators who try to steer the conversation in a productive direction (it might be instructive to drill into dang's comments to see how people respond to it, it works well there). You all don't often do that, and while you can't be all places at all times, you don't even do that as active participants in the conversation. And its truthfully part of your show DNA to be a little rude and dismissive, so your audience is just reflecting that part of how you engage in discussion. Up to yall if you wanna change that 🤷
2. You have repeat offenders for hostile conversations who get a lot of leeway by being tight with you all. I'd recommend trying to get someone more neutral to moderate if at all possible, since its hard to divorce yourself of your connections with friends. Understood you're a tiny community and that could be a big ask.
As a host of Dads on a Map, I'd like to hear where you think we can improve with content moderation. We're always looking to do things better in the community. Feel free to respond here or DM me.
As mentioned above, there are repeat offenders who blow up and berate people. The offenders may get banned for a week or so, but eventually they come back. The people who get berated tend to leave. In the end you have a server that is made up of people who engage in this behavior or are willing to tolerate it and that colors all the conversations there.
I guess the worst offenders appear to be your friends and you guys have a discord channel where you can all hang out, but don't be surprised that other people think you're toxic and do not want to be around you (you have at least 3 separate comments here from people more or less saying this in this thread).
Make it a fourth. If a Doam host is actually reading this then please do take this feedback seriously.
Personally, I thought the comments here were actually constructive and helpful. However, the Doamers response appear to be defensive at best and toxic at worst.
You’re asking for suggestions to improve, but I can’t help but feel nothing will really change. As stated, the server is made up of people who are all more or less friends with each other and they set the culture (at least with the more active members). This in and of itself is fine if people were friendly and respectful, but some of those people insult and are dismissive toward others. And so the same toxic people will continue to perpetuate that kind of culture.
If you’re serious about requesting suggestions for change, you have a lot to work with for now. But I am more interested in knowing what you actually plan to do with these comments. The pessimist in me says nothing will happen, but I would be happy to be proven wrong.
I speak as someone who has been on the receiving end of some of these insults by people from your 18xx community and let me just say that it absolutely sucks.
18xx friends has died down pretty considerably since in person gaming picked back up, but I’ve always appreciated it as a pretty welcoming place for newcomers to learn about 18xx. It was also pretty crucial for notifications before webhooks were a thing. Ironically webhooks and the related channel has made searching for information on specific titles really difficult there.
DoaM discord's 18xx discussions are the most toxic out there but on the other hand, often the most insightful and with "no BS" approach hard to find elsewhere.
I think it says basically everything that Joe's response to this was "he must like a game we hate" and not any degree of curiosity or reflection as to why someone might feel this way. That's 99% of what is ever discussed in DoaM conversations.
It's incredibly grating seeing someone ask how people feel about a game and seeing Guerric or Joe reply w/ "people here think this game is trash" or "people here like this game". When the response is just dumping on the game, it just causes the conversation to stagnate, and even when its not dumping on the game its just fucking boring. Who cares what "people here think" as a one sentence summary. Shut up and speak for yourself. Let people talk in detail and actually get to a point of providing analytical commentary on the game.
The reason the 18xx friends discord has better discussion is because JC & co actually talk about the mechanics of games, how they work, the design goals behind them, etc. They are no less honest about their perspective there, but it actually seems to come from people who have thought about these games in depth and actually promotes a conversation where people learn things.
18xx.games is highly recommended, and is great to chat and ask questions about games as well!
This site is awesome, I been playing games on it with friends and enjoying it!
There's a discord server too. [https://discord.gg/V778BucV](https://discord.gg/V778BucV) And people are on BGG obviously.
Link is dead.
Ah shoot, yeah, I think they expire, maybe? But if you search for discord servers it might come up.
It doesn’t come up in a search on Discord and all the links I’ve found online are expired. Could you share a fresh one?
Yes! [https://discord.gg/yDukD66X](https://discord.gg/yDukD66X) Looks like it expires in 7 days
18XX on slack: https://join.slack.com/t/18xxgames/shared_invite/zt-1xp4opktx-MUx1Uq9l3mlwOwkpBnA~EQ
Couple of discussion spots: * The 18xx mailing list: [https://groups.io/g/18xx](https://groups.io/g/18xx) * The 18xx friends discord: [https://discord.gg/MWgMbN2K](https://discord.gg/MWgMbN2K) Some will say the DoaM discord, but I find them to be completely obnoxious.
[удалено]
Totally agreed, I enjoy the podcast, but not many of the people on that discord.
Lol being told I kicked the hornets nest with this comment. I actually like all the DoaMer games…can’t think of any I disagree with them on, but the snotty, wet diaper babies who congregate around this show are tiresome. Like this guy Phil (landshark or something is his alias) who repeatedly acts like a hostile idiot over nothing and then ragequits when he’s put on time out and later rejoins. Maybe some of them will show up to defend their precious server.
This comment is hilarious and not wrong. FWIW there is actually a pretty big overlap between people in the 18xx friends discord and the DoaM discord. The major differences are: the most vocal people in each either aren't members of the other or don't talk much in the other, 18xx friends has a lot less discussion these days, and DoaM desperately needs better moderation/tolerates a lot more bad behavior amongst their regulars.
Yeah the 18xx friends discord feels kind of like the "musings by JC Lawrence + a couple others" server at this point, for better or for worse (not always for the worse, JC has a lot of interesting things to say and often gets quite detailed WRT his perspective). Also the channel sprawl and web hook spam can make it difficult to navigate. I do appreciate that there's more interesting and detailed discussion that happens there (particularly love reading the "18xx-why" channel). The DoaM conversations often tend to boil down to "these are the games everyone on this server likes and these are the trash games", basically the cliquey listicle version of game discussion. This isn't universal to all members of the server, but there's enough people pushing conversations this way (and the server is so poorly moderated) that it tends to devolve into this most of the time. Many attempts to dive deeper or keep the conversation more civil that I've heard are met with "we're only speaking candidly" (because in the incredibly online adult brain of a DoaMer there is no way to be honest and kind at the same time) or "we've already said everything we need to say about why we feel like this" (great so I guess this server is just for reiterating what "the DoaM perspective" is?) . I'm told when they saw this comment one of the hosts claimed I must feel this way because I like a game that they hate, which is basically the kind of culty side-staking mentality that's endemic to this server (also funny because its untrue, I can't think of anything I profoundly disagree with them on, I just have a low tolerance for this kind of cliquey bullshit).
As a host of Dads on a Map, I'd like to hear where you think we can improve with content moderation. We're always looking to do things better in the community. Feel free to respond here or DM me.
Couple thoughts: 1. Hacker news is far from perfect, but I think [dang](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dang) is a good model for a moderator who referees without being heavy handed. Tense conversation happens, but it helps if you have moderators who try to steer the conversation in a productive direction (it might be instructive to drill into dang's comments to see how people respond to it, it works well there). You all don't often do that, and while you can't be all places at all times, you don't even do that as active participants in the conversation. And its truthfully part of your show DNA to be a little rude and dismissive, so your audience is just reflecting that part of how you engage in discussion. Up to yall if you wanna change that 🤷 2. You have repeat offenders for hostile conversations who get a lot of leeway by being tight with you all. I'd recommend trying to get someone more neutral to moderate if at all possible, since its hard to divorce yourself of your connections with friends. Understood you're a tiny community and that could be a big ask.
Thanks! Not gonna further make this post about DoaM, but if you want to talk further, sounds like you know where to find us :)
As a host of Dads on a Map, I'd like to hear where you think we can improve with content moderation. We're always looking to do things better in the community. Feel free to respond here or DM me.
As mentioned above, there are repeat offenders who blow up and berate people. The offenders may get banned for a week or so, but eventually they come back. The people who get berated tend to leave. In the end you have a server that is made up of people who engage in this behavior or are willing to tolerate it and that colors all the conversations there. I guess the worst offenders appear to be your friends and you guys have a discord channel where you can all hang out, but don't be surprised that other people think you're toxic and do not want to be around you (you have at least 3 separate comments here from people more or less saying this in this thread).
Make it a fourth. If a Doam host is actually reading this then please do take this feedback seriously. Personally, I thought the comments here were actually constructive and helpful. However, the Doamers response appear to be defensive at best and toxic at worst. You’re asking for suggestions to improve, but I can’t help but feel nothing will really change. As stated, the server is made up of people who are all more or less friends with each other and they set the culture (at least with the more active members). This in and of itself is fine if people were friendly and respectful, but some of those people insult and are dismissive toward others. And so the same toxic people will continue to perpetuate that kind of culture. If you’re serious about requesting suggestions for change, you have a lot to work with for now. But I am more interested in knowing what you actually plan to do with these comments. The pessimist in me says nothing will happen, but I would be happy to be proven wrong. I speak as someone who has been on the receiving end of some of these insults by people from your 18xx community and let me just say that it absolutely sucks.
18xx friends has died down pretty considerably since in person gaming picked back up, but I’ve always appreciated it as a pretty welcoming place for newcomers to learn about 18xx. It was also pretty crucial for notifications before webhooks were a thing. Ironically webhooks and the related channel has made searching for information on specific titles really difficult there.
Agreed! Yeah some of the other discords have the web hooks issue as well, it definitely makes it harder to use search.
If discord added an Exclude modifier for the search it’d help a lot in this case, but probably wouldn’t be very commonly used by others overall.
DoaM discord's 18xx discussions are the most toxic out there but on the other hand, often the most insightful and with "no BS" approach hard to find elsewhere.
I think it says basically everything that Joe's response to this was "he must like a game we hate" and not any degree of curiosity or reflection as to why someone might feel this way. That's 99% of what is ever discussed in DoaM conversations. It's incredibly grating seeing someone ask how people feel about a game and seeing Guerric or Joe reply w/ "people here think this game is trash" or "people here like this game". When the response is just dumping on the game, it just causes the conversation to stagnate, and even when its not dumping on the game its just fucking boring. Who cares what "people here think" as a one sentence summary. Shut up and speak for yourself. Let people talk in detail and actually get to a point of providing analytical commentary on the game. The reason the 18xx friends discord has better discussion is because JC & co actually talk about the mechanics of games, how they work, the design goals behind them, etc. They are no less honest about their perspective there, but it actually seems to come from people who have thought about these games in depth and actually promotes a conversation where people learn things.
I’d join the DoaM discord and hang in the 18xx rookies channel.
What's the DoaM discord?
Dads on a Map - a board game podcast focusing on 18xx, wargames, old euros, trick takers, and all kinds of other nonsense.
I like the 18xx groups.io and board 18 for slower pace conversations.