I have to say though, as a veteran of this site and the forums, the vitriol has indeed become worse as the years progressed. Back then people were just as self-righteous, but their tone was much more lighthearted. You didn't use to see people being maligned in every thread they posted. I don't recall krellin being harassed about his unusual views in every thread unrelated to politics. Even mapleleaf, the resident troll, did not hound people as closely as he does today.

I think the kestas strictly-no-moderation rule had served well in the previous years, but this year I get the feeling that it's not working anymore. People have become such dicks that their crass dickwaving is putting people off.

FUCKING KEEP YOUR ARGUMENTS TO THE RELATED THREAD

Haha, we can all feel fortunate that Bohonk has taught us humility and maturity.

@ SYnapse: " it is a criminal offense to post grossly offensive electronic communications in the UK. Jamiet's post is incorrect, many cases have been tried over Twitter and Facebook resulting in convictions."

Notwithstanding the fact that the site is not hosted in the UK, and most of the site users are not from the UK either, I'm still not sure you're right about this even in terms of UK law, SYnapse.

In most of the cases from Facebook / Twitter that I'm aware of, charges were brought because the posted messages were inciting violence, etc - not because they were generally "offensive".

Can you post links to any of the cases you're talking about? It would help if it was clear from your links that the charges were brought under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003, as this was the basis of your claim.

I may be wrong, and you may be right - but do you have any evidence of these convictions you're referring to?

You can't outlaw thread de-railing ..... maybe it can just be done in a 'reasonable' way

Anyone like pigeons or candy floss or religion an' shit, what's your favourite food, movie, actor, actress, meal, MILF, colour, subject at school, Tea Party candidate?

See above Jamiet. I'm not going to do your research for you. There are at least 10-15 cases brought about Twitter. One was making fun of a dead person exactly akin to maple's post.

Sharia Law ..... discuss.
Is your general disposition Sunny or Shi'ite ..... it feels like the answer should naturally be the former

When you answer, bear in mind that both the Crown Prosecution Service, and the Director of Public Prosecutions, issued significantly updated guidance in late 2012, as a direct result of complaints that prosecutors were trying to use the Communications Act 2003 to bring spurious prosecutions for crap that people were posting on Twitter.

In December 2012 the Director of Public Prosecutions said that Section 127 should *not* be used to bring charges for online comments which were: "offensive, shocking or disturbing; or satirical, iconoclastic or rude; or the expression of unpopular; or unfashionable opinion about serious or trivial matters, or banter or humour, even if distasteful to some or painful to those subjected to it"

So it would seem to me that until 2012 it was possible for people to be charged under Section 127 in the way you have claimed. I would suggest however that this is no longer the case, because the official guidelines have changed, and it is clear that such prosecutions were *not* what the Act was intended for.

Any links to cases, if you can provide them, should therefore be based on charges brought *after* December 2012.

^ Sorry, that was for SYnapse ^

I've done some research, SYnapse, and I can only find one case brought after the prosecution guidelines were changed.

K. I'm happy for you.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/30/twitter-abuse-man-arrested_n_3677596.html this is 2013, over twitter.

Here is the BBC story on the outcome of that case:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25641941

You are right that it was brought under the Communications Act 2003. However, the two defendents in this case were guilty of more than just posting offensive messages. They both threatened Caroline Criado-Perez with actual physical harm. The man involved threatened to track her down and rape her. The case was about actual threats to cause harm in real life - it wasn't just because the messages were somehow "offensive" - they included actual threats of violence.

That is in no way analogous to what Mapleleaf has done on this forum. Not the same at all.

Late to this thread, so like my wife, read the first two pages, found the prose wanting, so skipped to the end. I will say with Krellin muted, Jamie's point of butchering a thread unfolds right here in this thread.

I agree with Commander that threads should be categorized to Game Play and General Community so one could filter - is this a matter of technology, funds or time? Can we bring back to the forum the dev priorities and work thread?

The current light moderation and mute functions are fine for the speech question, but I believe the real community problem is the current format makes it hard to have diplomacy threads as they get buried quickly or the forum noise chases away people from even trying.

Prioritize filtering Game Play from General Community posts...

Maybe a few more people need to get laid, then they can bring a bit more levity to the forum rather than all of their pent up frustrations ..... that should be in the rules !!

Are you offering your services, Nigee?

In a nutshell ..... yes.
Only downside is, nutshell is very small..... story of my life :-)

Regarding splitting the forums, I can understand the appeal, but the demand question is curious. Obviously there's interest expressed in this thread in it, so to say "there's no demand for this" is incorrect and, honestly, kind of insulting in a thread specifically inviting comments and suggestions.

Yet at the same time... I don't see the drowning-out effect some of y'all are mentioning here. From my view of the forum, it looks like we don't see Diplomacy-related threads on here because no one posts them, not because they get posted and then drowned out by the Diplomacy-unrelated threads.

On this particular front I tend to be more of the DIY school of thought: if you want to see more Diplomacy discussions, ask a question or post a premise about Diplomacy in a new thread on the forum, and it'll almost surely happen. When they're posted, these discussions tend to go pretty well in my experience. They just don't happen because no one really bothers. Again, obviously demand is being expressed in this thread, but outside of it I just haven't seen it.

Indeed the fact that the forum is predominantly unrelated to Diplomacy speaks more to me about the essential character of it; people just plain want to talk about things that aren't related to Diplomacy more than things that are. I think splitting the forum would just lead to one barren section with sparse discussions of Diplomacy and then another section essentially unchanged from what we have now. The issue seems more to be that Diplomacy isn't discussed than that it's crowded out, and while I can understand that point of view, there's just not much in the way of a top-down solution. We could ban non-Diplomacy discussion like other sites, but that would just kill the forum and thus a large part of the site overnight. We could split the forums but that won't affect the supply & demand of Diplomacy threads. Honestly I think the only solution is bottom-up, create more Diplomacy threads and the forum will feature more Diplomacy discussion. In that respect I'd be happy to help, I love a good Diplomacy discussion.

My oh my, PE has grown up all of a sudden ..... all of that silly behaviour was just pretend, let's make Ghug a Mod and see if lightning can strike twice on the same forum :-)

I could see splitting it when trying to start up new games. Those threads often get bumped regularly because it takes time. So a "private games forming" forum might be useful.