Add option to create political threads in Steam forums; block politics by default at user's discretion

[𒐪⎝ Epylector ⎠𒐪]

Please read this full OP before posting in case your contention is addressed.

I want to not have to leave Steam and use another forum just to have a conversation about politics. This is a feature that would be convenient and benefit me personally. I am sure other users would also no doubt enjoy being able to have a political conversation with other users, getting to know them and helping understand each other's views while also not having to leave this place.

The main problems with this idea, which I will address and solve, are three-fold:

1) Many users do not like politics and do not want politics associated with Steam, a place they go to specifically to escape said annoying stressful things.

2) Steam as a brand would be put at risk by political discussions being allowed as this would make Steam socially more negative of an experience and more divisive as a platform, leading to a worsened reputation.

3) Political threads targeting publishers or games on this platform could become a serious business problem for Steam, forcing Steam to look evil when it inevitably has to either ban those threads, or lose those publishers/games over outrage at said threads.

Let's start with 1)

By default, block the political section from view of users, but make it otherwise an option to post political threads in this political section. I personally would love for a political section to be allowed by default, but since Steam has a very strong reputation for fun and gaming that avoids divisive topics of politics so as to prevent a stressful atmosphere from brewing, it is understandable if the politics section must be blocked by default. Either way, just make it a feature in 'Store preferences' to toggle on or off viewing of the political forum section.

We allow porn games, we allow political games, we have those blocked by default. Just do what you're already doing with controversial games on this platform, to this political forum section. If it works for one, I say it would finely work for the other.

As for 2)

I am fully allowed to download pornographic and political games on Steam. I can play games where I brutally murder in a realistic and horrible fashion human beings. These things would be a problem for Steam's reputation if they were shown by default, but they are not. Just as should be the case for a future politics forum section, these games are blocked from view unless you the user explicitly tell Steam to show them. Viewing such content is stressful and disgusting for many people, but if you say you want to see it, then you should be allowed to see it.

This political discussion would be limited insofar as racism and similar are blocked on this platform, and I would just bite the bullet and tolerate that such discussions surrounding racism would often be censored by this rule, even if the argument is only subjectively classified as racist even when it is not. That is a bullet worth biting, in exchange for having some degree of political discourse allowed on a great all-in-one platform like Steam.

Besides, we already have microphones allowed in online games where people ramble off whatever they want to, and we don't much care about it since they can largely be muted. Essentially, there's already politics in many mic chats, there's already politics in many games, there's already lots of controversial elements in games, and 100% of these are a non-issue because: it is YOUR CHOICE as a user to view this content that is often BY DEFAULT blocked. Since politics would also be your call to view or not on this platform like everything else, it's thus not a problem.

3) Solution???

Block politics-section threads that target publishers or games. This is not a pretty solution, but it's better than having no politics at all. If at a later time Steam believes the benefits outweigh the risks, this can always be enabled later. But, I think Steam would practically speaking have to block this specific topic in order to prevent publishers/games from leaving and in turn spawning negative PR for Valve. It is better to offer a limited feature of political discussion, than to block it completely.

Here's some benefits Steam would gain from having a politics section

1) You don't have to go to another forum just to have a political discussion, which is convenient.

Nuff said -nice not to have to open extra stuff if you don't have to.

2) If a government tries doing something that affects Steam, its publishers, its services, its games, or its users, a politics section would allow us to organize and act.

Steam, you as a corporation have to spend money lobbying or getting organizations on your side if you ever want to address such problems as things are. But, if you had a forum section that allowed politics, you could both make political posts on such matters and have it fit into the forum appropriately, AND users could quickly organized ORGANICALLY without you having to resort to tapping lobbyists or allies. Maybe I'm misrepresenting what Steam's exact techniques for addressing political issues are in a government, but I think either way it would be useful for them to have users organize on their own platform in an organic voluntary fashion.

3) Political analysis of games would be nice.

I'm buying these games, I'm using your forum, and many of these games have strong political undertones and ideas. Why should I be blocked from discussing these political themes? If the politics section is blocked by default and only has users that voluntarily agree to join it, then it stands to reason that this should not be an issue.

Now, if any of you find added issues to this idea, or believe there are upsides or other aspects worth mentioning, please 100% bring it up. I fully understand hate for politics, but at the same time, politics affects whether this platform exists and whether we as people exist, so it might be a topic worth allowing if a user opts into a politics section just as you can already opt into mature games.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Origineel geplaatst door Mr. Gentlebot:

Origineel geplaatst door Quint the Alligator Snapper:

I don't know what site you were on, but I've been on a site that's had that sort of membership numbers for years, and it's actually a rotating crop of new people coming and going.

Not sure what that has to do with people not leaving the forum purely out of disagreements in the politics section. People come & go from sites, it's to be expected, though not related to the point.

I just mean that it's not like people always talk things out nicely and come to friendly understandings and all pollyanna like that. Rather, from my observations, it's the people who don't want to continue a conflict just walking away and letting someone else have the floor to themselves.

Origineel geplaatst door Mr. Gentlebot:

Origineel geplaatst door Quint the Alligator Snapper:

The way I see it is that I personally don't care whether it exists or not. I'm unlikely to use it, since I'm unlikely to enjoy the sorts of conversations it'd contain.

I could go either way, have it, not have it. I see both sides of the coin, but managing it would still be extremely easy.

I guess I just disagree with you on that last bit -- at least, I estimate it'd be quite a bit more difficult to moderate the space to keep it civil and friendly. One could pay less attention to moderation, even going as far as completely ignoring moderation altogether, but the result might not be desirable, depending on one's objectives for the atmosphere of the place.

Origineel geplaatst door Mr. Gentlebot:

Origineel geplaatst door Quint the Alligator Snapper:

You know how you hear people characterizing places like Tumblr, Reddit, 4chan, etc. as wretched hives of scum and villainy? They're not entirely such, of course, but they get that reputation from some of the content that they contain, some of the communities that they host. I don't think Valve wants Steam to go down that route, at least any more than it's already gone (given things like the vast numbers of scammers and otherwise impolite behavior on Steam).

It's moreover of who controls it, who moderates it, & what they determine the rules are which are usually excessively one-sided. Look at youtube/google/fb/twitter/reddit/twitch; they often ban the same users within minutes to hours, on the same day, for not adhering to their political standards - yet it took them months of outrage across the planet to permanently ban & call authorities on an animal abusing serial killer.

That's...not how I've seen things go down; in contrast, I've seen ideologues across the political spectrum express their frustrations with how they're being treated oh-so-unfairly-compared-to-the-other-side (which makes it particularly amusing since they all say this). But I'm not really interested in arguing about this, nor is it really relevant to the topic at hand.

Anyhow, Steam has no obligation to be some sort of open forum for political discussion. They certainly can put up an open forum, if they so choose, of course.

Origineel geplaatst door Mr. Gentlebot:

Makes me happy knowing even in "valve time" that at least they deal with problems on their own when seeing a pattern, rather than being forced to by mass external pressure.

Ehh, they only moved on stuff like a refund policy and review bombing when stuff started happening and they were forced to deal with it. Then again, to be fair, some of those were things that had to happen before they had an opportunity to make company policy on it.

Origineel geplaatst door Mr. Gentlebot:

Origineel geplaatst door Quint the Alligator Snapper:

They can prove me wrong, and I don't really care either way.

Nor do I, it's likely never going to happen anyway, but it's interesting to see the different takes some people have around here, the not predictable ones of "but its in the rules".

Yeah, I guess so. The rules can always be changed, as well as simply not enforced, after all.

Origineel geplaatst door Mr. Gentlebot:

Origineel geplaatst door Quint the Alligator Snapper:

I'm amazed that you think that the (global) Steam forums have "super low" traffic, and I kinda shudder to imagine what you'd think is a high-traffic forum.

It's extremely low traffic compared to what I'm used to - nearly dead in comparison, I kind of miss the huge raids where you gotta be loading pages & reacting within seconds to ensure no one saw the disturbing stuff they'd post. At some points it was like cat&mouse for raids,but if you knew what you were doing you could block most of them from connecting when they try to raid :joker: :joker:

...yeah, okay, I think we have very different standards of forum activity. The Steam forums are what I'd consider a pretty high-activity forum, and a small forum with about 10 or so people active and a few posts per day is low-activity for me.

Origineel geplaatst door Mr. Gentlebot:

Though at the same time, it's nice to actually be able to keep up at one of any given thread even days later, and not be on page 45-250 for a fresh topic.

Haha yeah. I remember back in the day I actually spent some time on the TV Tropes forum I found myself dedicating entire days at a time to discussions there. It was exhausting, and while I could certainly put in the work to defend my opinion on its merits to the best of my ability, it just became, well, work, and it wasn't worth it. (I wonder if they're still like that...)

[𒐪⎝ Epylector ⎠𒐪]

Origineel geplaatst door IFIYGD:

And we can all come right back around to the fact that the way the OP describes it- a "closed" subforum, that people have to opt into, with a specific theme- is exactly what a Steam Group is.
Opt in = Join Group
Groups have their own forums.
Groups have their own themes.
There are groups on Steam for all sorts of things, politics included.
Groups for Furries.
Groups for female gamers.
Groups for pro-Trump.
Groups for Hentai.
Groups for pro-Putin.
Groups for LGBTQ+.
Groups for Pro-Biden.
Groups for pro-Modi.
Groups for Christian gamers.
Groups for disabled gamers.
Groups for Anarchists.
Groups for 420.
Groups for free games.
Groups for Shmups.
Groups for people who like kittens.
... Any subject you want, there is at least one group (usually quite a few more) dedicated to that theme or subject on Steam.

The OP want Valve to start a group, inside the Steam Community Discussions forums, and deal with moderation, so they do not have to form their own group and eal with members and moderation on their own.

It isn't going to happen. Valve has their own groups already, all of them about Steam and Steam Client. They aren't going to make one for politics. There is a reason why they have Steam Groups, and allow people to create their own, about whatever subject they want to theme the group to. And discussion rules, word-filtering and and content rules are pretty relaxed in them. The rules are much more basic, and up to the group owners and admin to set, moderate and enforce.

The OP can create their own group about whatever theme or subject they want to. The OP wants Valve to make a potential hellthread dumpster fire forum and do all the work, with modified rules. I don't see GabeN or the legal dept. at Valve being too gung-ho to do that.

Make your own Group, OP, and have at.

This was a somewhat compelling line of reasoning on your end before I looked into some details.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=4045-USHJ-3810

"Rules and Guidelines For Steam:

Discussions, Reviews, and User Generated Content
These guidelines apply to all places in the Steam Store and Community where users can post content. This includes, but is not limited to, discussions, comments, guides, product reviews, screenshots, artwork, videos, tags, Steam Workshop, and Steam Greenlight."

Steam groups are part of Steam, and specifically are part of the Community. While Steam does not specifically name the groups, this pretty conclusively says nowhere on Steam or in the Steam Community can anyone break the Steam guidelines. Here are the guidelines for Steam, as stated a couple paragraphs down in the linked article:

"Content Rules
Do not post any content on Steam containing the following:

Porn, inappropriate or offensive content, warez or leaked content or anything else not safe for work
Discussion of piracy including, but not limited to:
Cracks
Key generators
Console emulators
Cheating, hacking, game exploits
Threats of violence or harassment, even as a joke
Posted copyright material such as magazine scans
Soliciting, begging, auctioning, raffling, selling, advertising, referrals
Racism, discrimination
Abusive language, including swearing
Drugs and alcohol
Religious, political, and other “prone to huge arguments” threads "

It is true there are groups for Putin and Trump on Steam.

How is this possible, given the current rule wording?

I believe the answer lies in the bolded sentence at hand, and this belies the problem of your suggestion, to: prone to huge arguments threads .

Steam in other words is saying, by virtue of the fact political groups are allowed while there are little to no broad political discussion and debate groups, that politics is not the problem.

Steam does not actually ban politics or religion. Steam bans prone to huge argument threads, which just happens to typically include most mentions of politics and religion . Though naturally, moderators will enforce against politics except in niche cases as you outlined where the group is all unified around a specific set of agreed-upon politics.

Your suggestion is reasonable enough, but I must say it does not fix the issue in the OP for reasons two-fold:

1) I want a discussion between everyone regardless of differences, not a circlejerk of forced agreement further enforced by group mods that would doubtlessly purge dissent more often than not.

2) I want to be able to comment in 1 opt-inable sub-forum that contains all the political discussions. I don't want to have to hop between 50 different groups -it's plain inconvenient and stifles speed and flow of communication in a coherent unified manner everyone involved in politics should be able to see but can't because it's all divided and hidden in pieces, not one piece i.e. one hidden sub-forum.

Though, these reasons were not stated in the OP and were added here just now, so I certainly did not expect you to read minds and am thankful you added the thoughtful ideas you have.

[crunchyfrog]

Absolutely no. There's no call for it here.

The problem is this is a GAMING PLATFORM, or more exactly the forum for a GAME STORE. The reason there are a few slightly off-topic and wayward forums is purely because they're relevant knock on sections.

Politics ain't this. Nor is knitting, fishing, underwater stockbroking, nor hedgehog wrangling or squirrel nonplussing.

This really is not the place.

As others have said, if you have like minded people then make a group and bash it out there.

Not only this about it not being within Valve's remit, but they REALLY are anti-anything that leads to arguments and flamebaiting. Can you not see the obvious tinderbox there?


Politics as a subject very much IS the problem. You're mkaing daft assumptions to try and wriggle around it.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Origineel geplaatst door EpycWyn:

I believe the answer lies in the bolded sentence at hand, and this belies the problem of your suggestion, to: prone to huge arguments threads .

That's pretty much exactly what I told you.

Origineel geplaatst door EpycWyn:

:papyrus: Your suggestion is reasonable enough, but I must say it does not fix the issue in the OP for reasons two-fold:

:papyrus::shoob: 1) I want a discussion between everyone regardless of differences, not a circlejerk of forced agreement further enforced by group mods that would doubtlessly purge dissent more often than not.

And to get this, you're gonna need mods who are willing to deal with...well, huge arguments, or more accurately, preventing them from happening.

I mean, nothing's stopping you from creating a group and attempting to moderate this yourself. To be fair, you'd probably need to wait for some critical mass of interested people to join, but once you have that, you can try out this hypothesis on the mod's side of things.

Heck, for that matter, you can actually join many groups that don't prohibit political discussions or huge arguments, and see how well it works on the user's side.

Origineel geplaatst door EpycWyn:

:papyrus::spycon: 2) I want to be able to comment in 1 opt-inable sub-forum that contains all the political discussions. I don't want to have to hop between 50 different groups -it's plain inconvenient and stifles speed and flow of communication in a coherent unified manner everyone involved in politics should be able to see but can't because it's all divided and hidden in pieces, not one piece i.e. one hidden sub-forum.

Y'know, now that you say this, this makes me think that you might want some sort of group to which all the political arguments are simply redirected. The mods around here have been doing this with most threads criticizing the new Steam UI (i.e. the one released in October 2019), posting a link to the Steam Client Beta forum or marking someone else's post of that as the solution to the thread, and then locking the thread. (I disagree with this practice, but that's not the point here.)

[Gus the Crocodile]

I’m glad it’s been pointed out that the rules apply to Groups too. If Valve think “make a group” is an appropriate response to this kind of suggestion, they should state that the Community rules don’t apply to Groups.

[Nx Machina]

Origineel geplaatst door EpycWyn:

:papyrus::shoob: 1) I want a discussion between everyone regardless of differences, not a circlejerk of forced agreement further enforced by group mods that would doubtlessly purge dissent more often than not.

:papyrus::spycon: 2) I want to be able to comment in 1 opt-inable sub-forum that contains all the political discussions. I don't want to have to hop between 50 different groups -it's plain inconvenient and stifles speed and flow of communication in a coherent unified manner everyone involved in politics should be able to see but can't because it's all divided and hidden in pieces, not one piece i.e. one hidden sub-forum.

Though, these reasons were not stated in the OP and were added here just now, so I certainly did not expect you to read minds and am thankful you added the thoughtful ideas you have.

Like I stated this is about what your "want" and want is neither a suggestion nor an idea in fact when the guidelines and rules forbid political discussions then your "want" is irrelevant.

[IFIYGD]

Origineel geplaatst door Gus the Crocodile:

I’m glad it’s been pointed out that the rules apply to Groups too. If Valve think “make a group” is an appropriate response to this kind of suggestion, they should state that the Community rules don’t apply to Groups.

The rules have always applied to discussions in Groups the same way they have on game hub forums, and on Steam Community forums.
The main difference is moderation may not be applied the same way in groups, since the moderators, officers and admin in Groups are appointed by the group owner/creator, not appointed by Valve. You can still report anything that violates Steam Discussion rules & Guidelines, but some toxic stuff will slide through because the Group Owner and moderators may not care to or bother to actually moderate it. The same way some game hub forums on Steam will be full of "problematic" behavior and posts that are not dealt with, because the devs/publishers who own the forum don't want to moderate it, or don't care, while other game hub forums are strictly moderated by the mods appointed by the game's developers/publisher(s), who strictly follow the Rules & Guidelines.

If you feel that a group you come across has serious violations going on, you can report it to Support via the "Report Group" button the the group's overview page. Feel free to report every single group on steam that you think violates any of the Rules and Guidelines. Cancel all plans you have to do anything else, there are a ton of Groups to go through, the same way there are a ton of game hub forums to go through if you want to find and report every single post that might violate one of the rules. Have at. That'll be like going through your entire town trying to find every single ordinance violation that you can report, and then reporting them all.

[Gus the Crocodile]

Yes, I am aware of how the site works.

[miku]

Origineel geplaatst door cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Create a group and have at it.

:qr:

Is that really allowed? Thought those rule were universal for all sections of Steam.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Origineel geplaatst door 39sdev:

Origineel geplaatst door cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Create a group and have at it.

Is that really allowed? Thought those rule were universal for all sections of Steam.

Read post 14 and 24 again.

[miku]

I agree with OP, I like to talk about this kind of topics aswell & Steam is kinda my main platform.
Would surely be a nice addition.

[Nx Machina]

Origineel geplaatst door 39sdev:

I agree with OP, I like to talk about this kind of topics aswell & Steam is kinda my main platform.
Would surely be a nice addition.

You can discuss a game about politics on it's own forum but not politics on any of the other forum on Steam.

There are also various websites to express your opinions freely.

https://debatepolitics.com

https://www.debate.org/debates/politics/

https://www.kialo.com/tags/Politics