Is G/N/S now a census of angels moshing on pins?

[Doctor Xero]

No arena is safe from the human element, they merely show it in varying degrees and in various creative ways. I find the forge to be a nice balance between snide academia and the crude common discourse seen in everyday life and on other forums.
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I feel that all ideas must be debated, discussed, and analysed until they are clearly understood and agreed upon, or a better solution is found.

I agree with you, Ben, but I'd think that our agreement on this matter would be obvious from the start.

My concern is that the ideals of which you write, and the original interest in the G/N/S topic, may have become temporarily lost among the snarkiness which has gone on in several recent topics.

Doc, if the Forge makes you uncomfortable, then leave. It's that simple. Your own standards of worth, behavior, integrity, and social interractions are the only ones that can inform your decisions.

I don't quite get why you would personalize my thoughts thus, but that is neither here nor there.

The Forge doesn't make me uncomfortable.  Seeing intelligent people hurting each other to the point some of them seem to have forgotten the issue and only remember the yelling -- THAT makes me uncomfortable.

Call me soft-hearted if you like.

I will also add that, in spite of my very serious reply to the original topic, this thread really smacks of being an elaborate troll. I may be wrong, but I am suspicious.

Nowhere in any of my posts in this thread or other threads have I ever come close to advocating censorship or a communal internet correctness or a thought police force.  That anyone would choose to paste such an attitude onto my posting bewilders me.

Is a simple thread courteously suggesting that we take a breath by remembering what we came here for really such a threatening idea?

Why do some people choose to misread such a simple thread as advocating censorhip, advocating thought policing, or otherwise misread it with the snarkiness of Eero or the suspicions of Paganini?

Surely a thread which is the equivalent of politely suggesting we might want to remind ourselves of our purpose here is not so subversive a thing in The Forge?

Doctor Xero

[Eero Tuovinen]

I will also add that, in spite of my very serious reply to the original topic, this thread really smacks of being an elaborate troll. I may be wrong, but I am suspicious.

Now that you mention it... Nah, why would anybody? I've never met an actual "elaborate troll" (mythic beasts if you ask me), and I'm sure the good doctor is quite serious. We just have more hardship in communication than usual.

Xero: you know what would help? You could answer my questions. Call me dense, but I'm really not progressing anywhere in understanding your goals for the thread. I'm actually starting to feel that I'm talking to myself here. (well, that is a trollish distinguishing mark, but still...)

To add to the other questions and their variants thereoff, could you point us to the snarky threads that inspired you to start this thread? I've really not had time to follow all these simulationism rehashings, although they are no doubt interesting. I must have missed the snark party.

Is a simple thread courteously suggesting that we take a breath by remembering what we came here for really such a threatening idea?

Not really, unless you count disagreement as "feeling threatened" as some people tend to. Let me answer the question of why I'm here while I'm at it.

I'm here to understand and develop roleplaying.

There, wasn't hard. Was that all there is to it, or did you mean something with your curious first post? Do you have a vision for what we should be doing, or is this all just about snarkiness in some threads?

[Andrew Norris]

I'm not really sure how helpful this thread can really be, but I'll try to answer the question. I find discussion of these particular topics to bring me to think about roleplaying theory in ways I wouldn't have come to on my own.

I really don't get your thesis, though -- I've never seen a more polite forum in my life, and we talk about issues that various members feel very strongly about. I think it's a personal issue as to whether one is comfortable with that. I know people who can engage in extremely heated conversations, then clap each other on the back and go have a beer. A lot of them are in academia, and as such, for instance, I never take Ron's more heated remarks as containing any actual rancor at all.)

(and as an aside, I think it'd be helpful to remember, as he stated, that Eero's not an American, and as such the actual meaning of "queer" doesn't have the primary usage that we're used to. I think that's a red herring to the discussion except that in a thread about perceived impoliteness, you seem by this outside observer to be perceiving it where it doesn't exist.)

[Doctor Xero]

You could answer my questions.

I have -- repeatedly.

I honestly find it beyond imagining that the following does not make it clear what I have been asking in this thread:

I think it might be useful in this thread to post why -- writing in particulars and not in abstract generalizations -- so that we remember and can use this recollection to guide our future posts.

My entire motivation for this thread has been for us to remind ourselves why we post on this topic because I find far many angry posts and angry private mailings.
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Should this forum continue?  That's not for me to say.

But I think that remembering why we post on it may go a little bit towards reducing some of the hostility I have noticed.
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I'm hoping this thread will help us remember our purposes and thereby help us have fewer hostile or defensive (as I've encountered from Eero and others) posts.

I think the above makes both my overt query and its contexts clear and understandable.

I regret any confusion you feel, but I also have difficulty imagining any reason you might be confused.  One of the more effective tactics used to try to bully others into silence is the tactic of continually asking the other what he or she might mean while slipping in unkind aspersions of coercive intent on the part of the other person.  I will believe you that you had not intended for that nor for any sort of slur arising from my gender role postings, but your confusion seems unduly odd to me, and it is derailing the thread considerably.  If you genuinely do not understand after my posting here, please tell me what you think I am saying as an aid to my diagnosing your difficulties in this matter.  

Doctor Xero

[Doctor Xero]

I'm not really sure how helpful this thread can really be

Mostly it works as the online equivalent to someone's seeing five people fight and reminding them that they're all here for a reason -- perhaps friendship, perhaps an intelligent and passionate exchange of ideas, perhaps just to expose their ideas to critique -- and not here just for fighting.

The more scholarly purpose of the thread is to give me a glimpse of how many people focus on G/N/S more as an academic model and how many focus on it more as a game design model and etc.

Knowing this can help me both as a scholar-scientist interested in gaming and as an individual perusing The Forge trying to fit into his head the unusual (for this forum) level of anger he's witnessed.

I've never seen a more polite forum in my life, and we talk about issues that various members feel very strongly about.

I agree completely (though there are a few posters who indulge in snarky comments a bit frequently, it seems to me, and I've read more than a few times one poster calling another on it)!  This unusual degree of courtesy is why the rancor I recently encountered in my readings of various G/N/S threads surprised me and concerned me.

A lot of them are in academia, and as such, for instance, I never take Ron's more heated remarks as containing any actual rancor at all.

We can get rather intense in academia, can't we?  <laughter>

Thank you for your response, Andrew!

Doctor Xero

[Marco]

I'm not really sure how helpful this thread can really be, but I'll try to answer the question. I find discussion of these particular topics to bring me to think about roleplaying theory in ways I wouldn't have come to on my own.

I think that the point that there are fundamental discussions ongoing now from people who not only read but developed the theory might convince people to put an end to the "you don't get it" reflex response.

I'd like to see that.

-Marco

[Eero Tuovinen]

I honestly find it beyond imagining that the following does not make it clear what I have been asking in this thread:

Doctor Xero wrote:
I think it might be useful in this thread to post why -- writing in particulars and not in abstract generalizations -- so that we remember and can use this recollection to guide our future posts.

Your main question was preceded by the following strange and IMO foolish suggestion:

I am posting a new topic : with all this confusion and vexation involved in discussing G/N/S, and with the seeming inability to arrive at an accepted definition, is this model still worth discussing?

and followed by this IMO presumptous thought:

If no one can remember why it is worth discussing, perhaps we ought take a break from discussing it for awhile until we remember why we had used this model in the first place.

which honestly fooled me into thinking that you had an extraneous agenda here. Being that I had no idea at all what that agenda might be (Worth discussing? Take a break? wtf?), I said so. My guesses as to what I thought you might mean can be read in the thread.

However that may be, I think that the matter's cleared up. Honest difficulty in communication is clearly the case. I don't agree that your post is any model for clarity (still don't understand what quoting Ron meant) or honesty (it leaves a taste of whining behind), but that's neither here nor there. If you say that introspection is the name of the game, that's good enough for us. Everyone has bad word days, including me and you.

Now, I find that I've already said what I have to say on the actual topic - the impact and usefulness of GNS depends on individual, so it's up to him to decide whether he continues - so I'll just bow out at this point. OK?

[clehrich]

The more scholarly purpose of the thread is to give me a glimpse of how many people focus on G/N/S more as an academic model and how many focus on it more as a game design model and etc.

I've said on several occasions that GNS is not a tremendously effective academic model (I'm assuming you mean by that a purely analytical model without practical play/design purposes).  The vast majority of what I've seen here that indicates GNS's utility has to do with either practical design or what you might call diagnostic work: why is my game sick?

As to whether GNS is worth discussing, and why, it rather depends on the issues at stake.

Some posters, notably Jay (Silmenume), continue to push forward in developing the model in new directions.  So long as things are indeed moving forward, clearly discussion is valuable.

Some posters are primarily here for clarification.  Having read the essays and a bunch of threads, perhaps, they are not entirely clear on the various bits of the GNS/Big Model.  Since this forum is, like everything on the Forge, quite polite as a rule, these posters (I hope) go away with a clearer understanding.  That's certainly valuable.

Some posters would like to make slight alterations to the model.  Some of this is useful for those committed to the model, as evidenced by Ron's development from the early essays to the most recent three.  Some of this is, if you'll pardon my putting it so, flogging a dead horse.  I don't read everything here with total attention, but I think the latter type are often what prompts rancor.

Beyond this stuff, as I have just posted in the RPG Theory forum on jargon, I do think that GNS is starting to become a kind of 800-pound gorilla that deflects or acts as an obstacle to new theoretical directions.  But for all the reasons mentioned above, as well as the presence of the RPG Theory forum, I don't think this requires that discussion here in the GNS forum cease.

As a final note, I do think that Eero had a very good point:

Could it possibly be that those of us who have no major problems with the model do not post, so only the people who have active cerebral interest in it are seen in the forum? Would the fact that I'm content with the model for what it is indicate that it should be discarded? After all, only people who are discontent with it seem to man the forum.

This hits the nail on the head for me.  As I increasingly find that GNS does not suit my needs in terms of an analytical model, I post less and less to this forum.  This does not mean I think the model should be discarded, only that it's not something I'm very interested in right now, except as a sounding-board against which to bounce other concepts.

Paganini made the point that if the GNS forum discussions aren't working for you, then you shouldn't participate in them.  I'd agree.  As I say, I don't find the various intricacies of the model terribly interesting, as a rule, so I don't get involved in the discussions.  For me, that's why this forum is separate from the RPG Theory forum: despite the lack of clear focus, that forum generally has more that interests me.

Doc, let me be blunt.  I gather you've been kicked around in one of the periodic shouting-matches that happen around here, and I'm sorry that happened.  I don't know or care who was "right," if anyone, nor even who was involved.  But if this GNS forum isn't producing good discussion for you, bow out of it gracefully and let them all stew in their own juices.  Come over and play in RPG Theory instead, since apparently what you've got to say doesn't work for more hard-core GNS folks.

[Doctor Xero]

The vast majority of what I've seen here that indicates GNS's utility has to do with either practical design or what you might call diagnostic work: why is my game sick?

As to whether GNS is worth discussing, and why, it rather depends on the issues at stake.

Some posters, notably Jay (Silmenume), continue to push forward in developing the model in new directions.  So long as things are indeed moving forward, clearly discussion is valuable.

Some posters are primarily here for clarification.  Having read the essays and a bunch of threads, perhaps, they are not entirely clear on the various bits of the GNS/Big Model.  Since this forum is, like everything on the Forge, quite polite as a rule, these posters (I hope) go away with a clearer understanding.  That's certainly valuable.

Some posters would like to make slight alterations to the model.  Some of this is useful for those committed to the model, as evidenced by Ron's development from the early essays to the most recent three.  Some of this is, if you'll pardon my putting it so, flogging a dead horse.  I don't read everything here with total attention, but I think the latter type are often what prompts rancor.

Thank you!  The above is exactly the stuff for which I have been looking.

I think that the point that there are fundamental discussions ongoing now from people who not only read but developed the theory might convince people to put an end to the "you don't get it" reflex response.

I'd like to see that.

As would I!

Beyond this stuff, as I have just posted in the RPG Theory forum on jargon, I do think that GNS is starting to become a kind of 800-pound gorilla that deflects or acts as an obstacle to new theoretical directions.

That thought had occurred to me, although I think that alternate models have been accepted more often than not on other forums.

Doc, let me be blunt.  I gather you've been kicked around in one of the periodic shouting-matches that happen around here, and I'm sorry that happened.

Actually, while I've had my share of suspicious or uncharitable misinterpretations, I can take care of myself ; no, I was motivated more by my discomfort at watching usually polite Forge participants making repeatedly rude comments to other posters.  As I wrote earlier, call me soft-hearted if you wish -- I've always been the teacher who refuses to let students pick on or gang up against an unpopular student.

Come over and play in RPG Theory instead, since apparently what you've got to say doesn't work for more hard-core GNS folks.

<laughter> Thank you.

I do not think this thread will accomplish anything further, either in reminding people why we all enjoy reading and  being read by each other nor by restating our purposes in looking at the G/N/S model, so I think it's okay for this thread to close now.

Thank you to everyone who responded to my query.

Doctor Xero

[Doctor Xero]

Now that I have read RPG Theory forum on jargon, I must agree it makes a lot of the points I was considering.

Doctor Xero