Re: The politics of games.
You've also said you are sick of seeing these posts. My point is, either you'll be reading them because they are in the arena, or you won't because they aren't. Creating a backroom does not alter this.Originally Posted by Kekvit Irae
I wrote the arena's description years ago, same as I wrote the welcome topic and rules. The arena is - and always has been - for computer games, or, as they've been called by society and the internet at large for most of my life, games. Hence the way everything talks about demos, platforms, consoles, handhelds, PCs ... Conversely, board games are still called board games, card games are called card games, and war games war games. If I'd meant to refer to them then I'd have done so. On the very rare occasions someone has posted a topic on a traditional game I've tended let it pass because there is no correct forum for those topics. They show up in the front room too, and fit there equally well. If people want to talk about painting warhammer miniatures then it's mostly off-topic. If they want to talk about the evil ethics behind them then it's totally off-topic. EA's ethics still have some relation to games.
Agreed on wanting the patrons' views. It's why I posted the link; it would have been sad if people missed this topic and didn't get chance to have their say. I'm not the only one who doesn't get out and about much. If anything gets changed (or not) as many people as possible should be content with the decision.
From a legal perspective we can discuss whatever we like, provided we're not giving out links to cracks or telling people how to pirate games. From a working perspective, we've had upset messages about certain topics discussing things like secuROM.
Is it because you can play with our friendly lions and build sandcastles on the fighting ground?
How do people feel about a light compromise? Keep the games threads targeted more towards games, and keep the bulk of the DRM and similar discussion in a seperate topic in the same forum? Not a total seperation, just an attempt to reduce the way some games threads end up being more about the copy protection than the playing experience. Not heavy mod action, just a post nudging the discussion back towards the game and highlighting the other thread.
Yes, in the end it comes down to mod discretion. However it's usually easy to see when a thread is running too far off topic, and it's usually very simple to solve with a single post.
I stress that this wouldn't remove all DRM discussion from the game topic. The idea is to divert the flow if and when it threatens to drown.
And for everyone saying the arena is quiet, it wouldn't be if people spent more time talking about games and less time playing them!
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It's little different from splitting the forum. The games exist with everything related to them. We can't and should not separate issues like DRM, system incompatibilities, breaking bugs etc. from the in-game stuff. It was the whole point of my post. (That aside, self censorship is hardly the right way to go. 
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" and then a lengthy repost of the same old "The StarDocks will Valve it anyway because this Valve never works, give them 3 StarDocks and it's Valve by the StarDocks and this is screwing with their StarDock Valve anyway and I'm so angry etc. blaValve" then you end up with the same posts in every second thread which makes me think that one topic to cover all sorts of copy protection makes more sense while the game threads can mention it once or twice for those who may not know the game is protected by copy protection x or y and do not want to read the endless ramblings in the copy protection thread. That way everybody gets the vital info and them freedom-loving capitalists can get their thread to be annoyed about copy protections.
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