“Honest opinion” doesn’t grant one a right to contravene the community guidelines for keeping threads civil and tidy. If someone, say a thread owner, has asked for a thread to remain on topic and this is flouted then moderation should be exercised.
I agree with an earlier comment for all posters in general: read the room. Even if you aren’t technically in the wrong, there are better ways to approach discussion.
But there was nothing in violation of the rules. Everything within the thread was related to the use of AI as it pertains to the game. The discussion that spiraled from that was well within the rules. If the dev doesn’t want to receive honest criticism then as he figured out, he would be better off not posting his game here. It is unfair to censor the opinions of honest regular users, over nothing. Nothing was “flouted” as you say. AI is a part of the game, and so it is a perfectly valid point of criticism. Users should not be forced to censor themselves to cater to the feelings of devs.
Edit: Also, saying that his request was for “the thread to remain on topic” is very disingenuous. What he actually asked for was for people to stop talking about AI. As AI is used heavily in his games this is tantamount to him attempting to squash criticism.
This still stems from the idea that you believe that what was going on was not off topic. Our rules indicate to keep threads and posts tidy and on topic. While you can indicate that the discussion was health and nothing wrong was going on these are your opinions on the matter. That’s fine if that’s your opinion and view point. But it was off topic and was moderated according to our rules. That is the why anything happened to be begin with. Not any arbitrary biased, feelings on the matter that was being discussed, defending of the dev, shutting down dissenting opinion, or other things that were brought up by you to try to reason why something happened based on assumptions.
As stated the discussion was and always has been off topic, therefore it was required moderation.
But you are unfairly moderating. If you truly believe it to be off-topic, then why are half the posts about it still up? Shouldn’t those posts also be in violation? You are arbitrarily picking and choosing where to apply the rules. Rules that are very vague and loosely defined might I add. You have targeted specific users instead of applying the rules blanket as should be the cases.
But again that doesn’t even matter because non of it was off-topic anyways. It was talking about the use of AI in the thread for a game that uses AI, about that specific game using AI. It could not be much more on topic than that.
Actually to further that point if it “was always off-topic” as you claim it to be then why were none of the mods doing their jobs? If what you claim is true then this discussion should never have been allowed to happen in the first place.
I will put my final three cents into this debate, and after that delete any new comments mentioning this. Let’s keep it about the game and the writing I actually do make, instead of about the images I clearly do not slave over for hours.
Now, let us leave this discussion dead and buried, or make yourself a discussion board somewhere else than this game’s thread if you want to continue the discussion
I’d disagree that it’s disingenuous. Seemed pretty clear to me he just wanted it ontopic about the game - specifically the things he primarily put his work into.
I wouldn’t say he tried to ‘squash criticism’ either, he just said to take it to a different thread.
Criticism of a game belongs in that games thread. You do not get to arbitrarily choose what aspects of your game can and cannot be criticized. This has nothing to do with being off-topic. AI is related to his project, therefore criticism of it is valid regardless of his feelings on the matter.
It’s at least a tiny bit disingenuous to say “this is off topic, we shouldn’t talk about it, no one is allowed to reply to this” and then write everything you want to say about it.
He was specifically saying this was disingenuous
Actually both are pretty disingenuous.
Coming from someone who also despises AI, and thinks it severely harms the quality of whatever product is being made here (or elsewhere), I think you gotta leave it be. Having a debate about AI in the comments of something using it isn’t criticism, it’s discussing a hot topic in the place where actual helpful criticism belongs. Saying “The use of AI harms your game, here is why” and leaving it be is a way different thing (Not something everyone would appreciate, but at least appropriate) to writing 20 posts about why AI is immoral or doesn’t look good and massively derailing the conversation that really should be focused solely on improving the game directly with minimal controversial discussion. I don’t think it’s fair to rant about freedom of speech and comparing us devs who just do this for fun (or at absolute most the price of a fast food meal) to massive corporations, and I think even if we were, it still would be a little funky to act like it’s a big deal to be moderated that way. This is a forum where criticism is welcome (in most cases), not a forum to discuss wide reaching controversial topics, or an amazon page to review mass produced products, and I think that’s key to understand here.
If this were a gathering where people made cakes, and everyone else tasted their cakes and then explained what they liked or didn’t like, for example. Someone makes a chocolate cake that uses unethically acquired cocoa, which, as a result of its source, is inferior to cocoa from a high-quality and ethical source. It wouldn’t be inappropriate for you to comment and say “Your cake was alright, but the cocoa tasted kind of bad and I think the brand has some shady stuff going on”. The cake creator would be right to either accept your criticism or leave it, it’s not their responsibility to do anything, but they might respond. If you start arguing with their response, and turn the cake criticism and enjoyment event into a cocoa company quality and ethics discussion, that everyone present doesn’t really want any part of in that moment, then it wouldn’t be wrong for someone to step in and tell you to get out. It’s not silencing a dissenting opinion about the ethics of chocolate, it’s just keeping focus on the main purpose of the event.
Incorrect. It absolutely is valid criticism to state that you don’t like something because it uses AI. What kind of bizarre line of logic are you following where an important aspect of a games design isn’t allowed to be criticized just because? That makes no sense. No matter how small the case is everyone should feel free to speak their minds. Freedom of Speech doesn’t only apply to the big stuff. It goes across all levels. When the wide reaching controversial topic is being used in a game, it is fair game to criticize it one those grounds. People seem to be under the impression that because this is a small forum, basic debate rules shouldn’t apply to them. Standards go across all things no matter how big or small. That’s why they’re called standards.
The example you provided is also not comparable whatsoever. We are not debating the quality of AI, we are debating the decision to use it period.
All of this feels so cherry picked on context. A line was drawn to allow no further off topic discussion. This is why 23 posts were not removed. I was aware of the conversation since it first started and chose to allow it to hopefully run its course. It was not getting any better and only further pressing on to start to target responses to specific individuals. Removing the entire discussion feels like the censorship and abuse of power that you are advocating should not happen (which of course it shouldn’t.) And removing it at the first sign of it feels no different. I don’t understand how removing the entire discussion and then stating that no further off topic comments are allowed to be made on the subject, which I assume is what you’re wanting, is better to you. But that 100% feels like completely silencing people. At this point it seems like you’ve got a problem with your comment being removed personally and no matter what is said you, you as to why or how you dismiss it by saying its not true or you don’t agree. And not only have you been allowed to share your point of view, but you’ve not be targeted one time or not allowed to say anything you wanted within this thread. I’m not sure how you can claim you were ever being censored or targeted specifically, or that your content of post was the issue.
You don’t believe something was off topic and are trying to frame it as if it was an AI thread with discussion of AI but talking about AI ethics in a thread that has nothing in it about the game because it’s brand new is not on topic. Again, as has been stated many times the problem was not the discussion it was where it was happening. You can dismiss any response given to you but it’s that simple and it feels like it misrepresents what has happened to continue trying to make it more than that.
That isn’t what I said.
I think this would be a wise decision. Even if I think the motivation for this thread is a little silly, I do think AI has an interesting position in our community at the moment and an authentic and dedicated discussion, separated from specific game feedback, would be extremely helpful in finding it’s place (or lack thereof) on this website, or just discussing people’s opinions in general. I would advise posting about it outside this thread though, there’s a lot of stuff going on here.
What I’m arguing for is consistency. Why should the rules only apply to some people. Of course I don’t want you to delete the other posts. I would greatly prefer it if you never deleted any of those posts as then neither of us would be here. But applying the rules selectively after an arbitrary cutoff point where you decide it’s gone on “too long” feels very weird. The discussion should have been allowed to continue as there was nothing off-topic about it, it broke no rules. It was a very poor decision to cut off discussion and unfairly prevent some users from expressing their opinions on a topic. Why shouldn’t I get to have a say as well. The discussion was exactly where it needed to be. It was criticism of the use of AI in the game. That belongs in the same thread as the game. Making an entire separate thread solely to criticize one aspect of a game is entirely asinine. This is very important because if the rules are being applied inconsistently then that is a sitewide issue that goes faer beyond this incident.
Untrue.
Private forums are not beholden to the first amendment, and are well within their right to ban or censor anything they want. Freedom of speech protects you from government intervention, not from the rules a private forum chooses to operate by.
They could choose to permaban everybody who said the word ‘bubbles’ and it’d be perfectly fine.
It wouldn’t help anything if the censorship issue isn’t addressed however.
Wait, so the point at which the conversation was cut off wasn’t just when you noticed it was happening, but was specifically chosen?
Sure you could do that if you wanted people to lose all faith in you, but this forum has generally abided by that doctrine. This selective censorship marks a radical departure from that.
Man we got Ai bros talking about “respect” and all that. I must have missed the part where using tech that was trained on billions of stolen images with 0 monetary gain for the artist they stole from was respectful.
The very use of ai is disrespectful to anyone who’s ever picked up a pencil before, so that argument is out the window.
