Blog Policies: A Word From Ronald Reagan

Ronal Reagan had a policy now known as the Eleventh Commandment. Basically the policy is that as a Republican he would not speak ill of other Republicans.

The policy of this blog is similar except replace the term Republican with RPG blogger.

We are all playing Elf games. I do not believe there is any right or wrong way to play Elf games. There might be ways that we find more entertaining than other ways but in all likelihood someone else has the opposite opinion so there is no point arguing about it. Put out your version and hope to win in the arena of ideas, debate fine points, but don't make it personal.

There are toxic folk in the RPG blog world, there is no question of that, but you won't hear me bash them as I'd rather promote role playing than tear down others who also might be promoting role playing, even if they are flawed, nasty, use straw men to win debates or whatever. It's possible such folks might drive new gamers away, but that's not really my decision to make. I'm not the RPG gatekeeper so I'll step aside and let those potential new gamers figure things out on their own.

At least that's the policy, only time will tell if it lasts.

Thoughts on Blogger Comments

Jeff's Gameblog had a post about the Zak situation called re: Zak and the post got me thinking about a number of things so I thought I'd put them together. Note that this post has nothing really to do with the Zak issue per say, and I mention Zak has been accused of this or that a number of times below. This is not an indicate that I believe/disbelieve such claims but I can understand them as a rational for behaviors if others believed them. As the title says its about how the comments system on Blogger works.

1. Anonymous comments as handled by Blogger are lame. Normally I'm not a fan of anonymous comments at all but folks have accused Zak of going after folks so i can see how it might be a protective thing. Having said that Blogger needs a way to separate out the Anonymous comments from each other. Anonymous_1, Anonymous_2, or Anonymous_Black, and Anonymous_Blue. Anything so that we can tell its different people.
2. Creating sock-puppet accounts is lame. In this case Zak was accused of doing the same in the past on Reddit, and a few of the comments were actually funny, but that's besides the point. I'm not sure if Blogger should/can do anything about this issue but people shouldn't do it. 
3. Blogger really isn't very good at tracking the number of comments or highlighting which ones are new. The number of comments on that one post keep going up (although slower now) but I haven't been able to find anything new in some time. Blogger needs a way to make new comments stand out so folks can go directly to what is new. Even if the new stuff is at the end it would be helpful to know where you left off the night before.
4. Like/Dislike button. Blogger really needs like/dislike buttons so folks can agree even if they have nothing additional to say. Zak has been accused of going after people for liking posts he didn't like. I don't know the truth of that but others could do so so it might be a problem. Blogger should allow only allow non-anonymous folk to like/dislike and should keep the names anonymous, just the numbers.
5. Zak had some kind of response to all of this on his own page. he set down some rules and deletes any comments that don't follow said rules. Also, there is no way for anyone else to know if he's being honest about only deleting folks that follow the rules. I understand the intent, but it seems that nobody is following the rules so he's have a conversation with himself over there. I've been on sites before where anyone that got deleted had their post shifted to sort of a garbage dump thread That way they didn't hose up the works but were also readable. I think blogger should add such an option.
6. An anonymous person mentioned my blog in a positive way in the comments. That drove 60 page views yesterday and 10 today so far. I've done zero to advertise this blog so far beyond the Blogger About page that links to my name in posts so these new views stand out. I haven't even linked the blog so that it shows up at the bottom of posts. I was expecting to list it on Old School RPG Planet in January when I have enough content to make the place worth poking around, but that's 2020. I was currently in a rather dull progression through the Pathfinder beasts and had decided they are 90% garbage so folks that came over for a glance were looking at some of the worst stuff so it'll be interesting if anyone comes back.