All posts by Necrotifice

@Nicholas8293 If your goal is chasing clout and interactions with your posts, maybe don't do it in a way where you invite people to vote yes to pedophilia. I hope you can see how gross that is. Like, you're anti-pedophilia... but not so much so that you won't exploit the topic to get more likes on your post. Even if done in a way the explicitly allows people to vote pro-pedo opinions.

You got over 100 interactions, but remember that 44% of those were people who said yes to pedo-bait. That's a thing that wouldn't have happened if you weren't out here just chasing the clicks.

I'm done with this topic. I don't think I can say anything more on this, and I've already wasted far too much of my own time on this. If you post another controversial poll where you let people vote yes to some obscene shit I'm just gonna ban you. If you can't see how that's wrong you don't need to be here.

@LardWad420 I can understand wanting to lock the thread, but I try not to lock threads when they are critical of staff actions because that genuinely could be seen as trying to quash dissent.

@Jayroo please learn to use a line break. This wall of text is impossible to read.

You think that people's opinions are just set before the come to a poll. This is provable false. You can change the outcomes of asking if climate change is real by changing the temperature of the room you poll them in. You can write the question in such a way to get the answer you want. There are entire fields of science that would fall apart if what you said is true.

A lot of stuff I see that huge wall of text is just provably wrong. Your gut-feeling and intuition is not truth, please go read about bias in polling, the bandwagon effect, or just kind of anything you've tried to talk about in that last post. I don't usually tell people to go read a book, but these takes are so far off base that its like reading a bot on twitter.

@Nicholas8293 the point is that it should not have been a poll period. At most a text post, because pedophilic behavior is never a valid acceptable answer. It's like asking to have a genuine conversation about people's opinions on genocide - it's not acceptable to be pro-genocide. There is not room for pro-genocide in this discussion, so it should not be a poll because that invites people to say they are pro-genocide and thus legitimizes that talking point.

Does this make sense?

@Nicholas8293 I agree with that perspective. My issue was with the framing of it and not your take on the topic, which is what we are trying to tell you. Presenting adults dating children as a yes/no question makes them seem like similarly acceptable answers.

I don't think this was your intention, as was hopefully clear in the comments to you that you linked. But when you make it a poll you're asking 'yes or no'. There's a big difference between a post saying 'I think stabbing people is wrong' and 'Is stabbing people okay? Vote now!'. One of these makes stabbing people a valid option.

@Jayroo If polls didn't sway public opinion they wouldn't be used so frequently in the news. That influence is a two-way street, and it's possible to write a poll to skew the results and/or perception of viewers. This is some basic media awareness.

I am not a person with 'too much time online'. I am a full time systems administrator, and a look at my activity on the wiki (which anyone can do) will show that I'm not typically very active. I took the time because I am hoping to get the point across that we are not out here trying to quash democracy or whatever but to moderate a forum online, and because this is a nuanced issue that is worthy of attention so long as the discussion is genuine. I take criticism of how staff run things seriously, and when I have the time do try to keep things as level as I can.

I'm sure we can both agree that it wouldn't be acceptable to actually advocate pedophilia or pedo-leaning material on such a forum, and intentional or not it is within our best interests to remove content that could do that. When 44% of responses were in favor of that, I think that's actually pretty warranted.

As you said, remember it's an internet forum. We're not the gestapo, we're not standing in the way of important advancements in public discourse or some shit. We're trying to prevent normalizing pedo-leaning attitudes on a forum frequented by minors.

Okay, so I'm gonna be blunt. We don't have to write out every single thing 100%. Our rules are not an all-encompassing list of every bad or less-than-awesome thing a person could do on the internet. Expecting them to be is entirely ridiculous - we have better things to do than enumerate every horrible thing, so we have to do trust that our users have some awareness of what is and is not acceptable.

You are correct that democracy is not the be-all and end-all. We use democratic principles when it makes sense - for example, asking about how people want to see certain pages categorized or formatted. However, there are topics that aren't up for discussion. For example, if literally 95% of people voted to allow racist content we still wouldn't allow it because we have some basic principles. You are correct that we can 'just do stuff' for the most part so long as we uphold Fandom ToS and Community Guidelines. That's how things work the world over, barring the 'Fandom ToS' bits. That's not to say we don't try to be fair, but we're human and there's not some perfect cosmic ideal or law we follow.

So, why did we do that here? Because it's not an appropriate question for this board. You were asking if it's acceptable for a character who is in all ways but physical an adult to have relations with another character who is a child, and you did it as a poll where two options (yes and no) were presented equally. That legitimizes the stance that this is in some way acceptable, which in a soft way normalizes some really awful behavior. If you'd made a post (not a poll) like "I wish they'd stop having this kind of content in shows" that's an entirely different kind of post with a very different tone.

To give another example, let's say someone made a poll that said "Is it okay for a superhero to only fight villains of a certain race?' with just the answers yes and no. Presenting both of those options neutrally makes it seem like one of these things is okay. I can show that this is true because 42% of people said yes to your poll and I'm sure most of them are not pedos. That's how people work - if you present two options without elaborating they will assume they are roughly equivalent unless they have background knowledge or have thought or learned about this issue previously.

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I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are not a pedophile. You're probably just someone who didn't know better and framed this in a weird way, which is why we deleted your post and talked to you about this. It's also why I'm spending my time here explaining this to you. That's very generous in my opinion, I think most places they would have seen it as just you talking about some pedo-bait topic and have banned you outright without giving it any further thought, and I hope you realize the genuine good will and effort being put in here if you respond to this.

In summary - consider how you frame things. You didn't hurt someone's fee-fees and get a post deleted because you made a staff member upset, you had a post deleted because it looked like you were trying to legitimize some pretty gross stuff. The effort put in to try to explain the issue to you on your wall and here is way above and beyond, and I don't love seeing users throwing a fit about how this is some anti-democracy tyranny zone when we're doing way more than we need to.

My only complaint about this thread is that Dragon basically @'d a bunch of people who he knew would probably be in agreement with him. So while the discussion appears pretty clearly in favor of Dark instead of Malefic, this discussion has also been biased. It's not very searchable/public, and a bunch of dissenting opinion has been drawn here with no effort to advertise this discussion publicly.

A poll should be made, and I'm going to trust Carcass to do that. That way anyone who wishes can discuss the issue.

I decided to go watch the death battle, and I think that's actually about how it would go. Homelander has no experience fighting anyone even remotely on his level. When he lasers someone in the eyes, he doesn't expect them to keep attacking. Meanwhile Omniman has a LOT of experience fighting people of all different sorts and some really next-level powers.

Homelander is absurdly powerful for an earthly scale, it's true. But Omniman is absurdly powerful even on the galactic stage. Homelander probably can't punch a planet apart, Nolan can.

My favorite power is Geokinesis, but Electrokinesis isn't far behind!

Oh, for sure. I'm talking about how things would go if powered individuals started doing stuff in our world today. Like out of the blue suddenly Batman, the Green Arrow, and Spider Man start doling out vigilante justice.

If we're talking about a world that's always had superheroes, I suspect the rule of law might function differently. Superheroes would be an institution within that system, likely either controlled by the government or the ones running the government. Superheroes sorta support a 'might makes right' approach for the most part, so I suspect we'd get a situation like the Justice Lords scenario from the Justice League cartoon. That's where Superman just basically takes over the world (or tries to) in order to enforce a more perfect form of justice.

Firstly, I'm not a lawyer and nothing I'm about to say constitutes legal advice. This is just my understanding of things based on reading about these topics. Also, full disclaimer, this is gonna get a little bit political because discussions on the application of force are always a bit political.

These characters are vigilantes. So yeah, the government as it exists today would absolutely come down on characters like the Green Arrow or Batman. They'd probably also try to stop people with powers, since fundamentally all the things superheroes are doing are illegal. People aren't allowed to just take the law into their own hands.

They enact violence on people with little to no oversight based entirely on their own arbitrary understanding of right vs. wrong. They might deliver villains to police, but they do so outside of any kind of due process. In fact they may actually end up getting cases against these villains thrown out because their involvement might hamper legitimate investigations. For example, villains could claim that they were 'set up' by the 'heroes' and because the 'heroes' act in secret it'd be pretty hard to disprove that.

As for 'why' the government would want to control this - this is because the Government has a near total monopoly on the application of violence. It is legal for a police officer or member of the military to use violent force in pursuit of the goals of their organizations (which are part of the govt.), but it is not legal for anyone not affiliated with the government to do so (outside of some limited cases such as self defense). Even security guards have few if any rights beyond that of a regular civilian and aren't allowed to do much (at least here in the US). It is in the interest of the government to be the only one allowed to dole out force because if there were other entities capable of doing it those entities could provide competition in establishing law and order.

For example, let's say there were a group of 'superheroes' that were mostly stopped regular crimes and super villains and whatever else a normal superhero does... except that they were also KKK members. A lot of the KKK genuinely believe that they are protecting their community, they just have a really warped sense of moral values. So in their own eyes they would be 'heroes'. Because they could enforce their own values, they could enforce racist laws they make up which would compete with the government. There's not much of a difference between this and a gang setting up their own conflicting rules you have to follow in your town. The government operates on the same rough ideas, basically like a gang that shows up and enforces certain rules and demands regular tribute, except that they operate at a much larger scale. That's not to say that all groups who wield force (gangs or governments) are inherently 'bad', just that they do play by a surprisingly similar set of rules.

@Meta-Magician Yeah, as Inferno said this isn't actually a legit vote anymore. And as it stands, even if it were, I don't think there'd have been a strong enough consensus to implement such a policy. I'd want there to be a strong consensus for anything major like this, at like 65%+.

@GMikey I mean the biggest problem is with determining what 'canon' is for a lot of contemporary faiths because there's not strict agreement on that. The most you can get is accurate to within a certain sect, and even that can vary from believer to believer. Granted, this is a challenge posed by mythology as well since in certain interpretations you get weird stuff like Persephone being the actual goddess of the underworld and not Hades or Loki being a god of fire (though that one is based on a common misunderstanding and not on a legit interpretation of the text).

It's just that when we're talking about differences in mythology it tends to be more scholastic, but when we're talking about differences in contemporary religion it does get more heated sometimes. However, regardless of whether or not it sometimes gets heated I think that's just gonna be within our accepted level of argument and that we'll just deal with problem users when they are a problem instead of trying to handle the issue systemically.

After some consideration and input from those who were critical of the proposal, I now think that this proposal would ultimately be discriminatory and so is unsuited for the Superpower Wiki. Regardless of how the vote goes we will not implement this policy because it would be unjust to do so.

I'm going to leave this discussion post unlocked because I think that there's still the possibility of worthwhile discourse here.

@TheNerdEternal1 worshippers of the Greek pantheon are called Helenists, and followers of the Norse tradition are called Asatruar. My wife is a Helenist, so there absolutely are still followers of those faiths. Inferno's point isn't a moot one.

@TheMightyIronCaptainHulk I am not 'the head honcho' in the way you might think. Wikis run on consensus, not the authority and dictatorship of the person with the star next to their icon. I help to build consensus and to organize, but I don't run this show. My opinions aren't more valid than other people's.

So it affects everyone, and so its not just my choice. Which is just the way it should be. And honestly, while I'm the one who has posted this I'm doing it more because of discussions I've had in the past. I have serious reservations about this policy, and if someone can present something better that doesn't result in us having to, as Inferno put it, pick-and-choose which religions we allow on the wiki (while still doing something to quell religious flamewars) then I'm all ears.

Mm, that makes sense. I suppose that way I think of it is that people already do that anyways, this just gives them a space where they are allowed to do so if they want and we can keep the main space clear of it. Maybe we should also make a new category for the Discussions, for discussion of Fanon powers? Because I can definitely acknowledge that a lot of people on this wiki aren't really here for fan powers like that.