fool of sound posted:

Yeah I'm increasingly convinced that this is the actual big problem facing D&D. Quite a few posters seem to view probations as an official marker of losing a debate; the larger the punishment, the worse the loss. As such, people try to play the refs, and lure the people they're debating into posting something punishable, then yelling bloody murder about it at the mods (frequently when the infraction is minor at worst). Alternatively, if they can't get that to work, they gather up their posting posse in a discord or whatever and pile into a thread in the hopes that the mods will refrain from punishing their shitposting and cheerleading because they don't want to toss out a dozen probations at once. This isn't specifically a "cspam invaders" issue either, it's an issue with people who have decided that they're only interested in discussions if they can win them, and mod intervention is the most common win condition when there isn't an overwhelming consensus of thread regulars to run them out on a rail.

Every new rule just gives people a new angle from which to play this stupid little game. Being wrong isn't a reason for being punished in D&D. Your debate opponent being probated is not an indication that you are correct. Ultimately most debates and discussions aren't going to have a neat, satisfactory ending in this subforum. It's an asynchronous, open medium; a single thread can have a half little mini-debates spanning hours or days, and people run out of time or energy to keep participating. The hope is that a productive dialogue develops, and that even if the poster you're arguing with doesn't come around to your viewpoint, the people reading the debate have come away learning something and refining their own knowledge and worldview.

I don't know. I'm tired and feeling poor because of my vaccine booster so my thoughts are a bit jumbled.