Rat King → Gender Critical - Board transfer discussion

Status
Not open for further replies.
Null

Null

Ooperator
kiwifarms.net
Joined
Nov 14, 2012
I am considering moving this board under the Beauty Parlor Lolcow Salon (the category), renaming it Gender Critical, and putting it under the general guidance that the girlboards have to make it friendly towards female users.

Rat King is a very old board with a strange history. The site transferred to me in 2013 and by 2014 the site was shifting away from CWC to broader discussion of weirdos online. Many of those weirdos just so happened to be crossdressers. @introman identified that many of these 'trannies' (as they were called back then) were actually friends with ties to Chicago. They inured each other from charitable events for the LGBT and generally started to grift off social media and brand new crowdfunding platforms like Patreon. They became known as the Rat King. Then, in 2015, Donald Trump descended down the escalator and the world tore itself in half. What was a small, unusual demographic transformed into one of the most divisive socio-political issues of our time. The definition of Rat King did not change, and I left it mostly under the guidance of Ride and Zed for years. These days, it's basically on autopilot.

THAT BEING SAID, staff has raised concerns that broadening the scope of the board will cause threads here to reduce in quantity. In particular, there is a concern that a 'Gender Critical' board will invite politi-sperging and derail threads with off topic venting.

I am curious about the thoughts of users who frequent this board are about this change and what can be done to encourage self-moderation.
 
Last edited:
I am all for this. BP is TERF gang central, and by and large we are very welcoming to anyone that comes to us. You, yourself has mentioned to us that we are very different compared to the rest of the site. I can understand the concerns regarding politisperging, however, but as long as people can try to keep personal politics out of it (because literally none of us cares) it should do fine.
 
People ask for a more general tranny board in troon threads all the time (they constantly devolve into politisperging so it needs to be easier to find the main threads for that) and rat king as it is doesn't really work for that. I also like the idea of putting it under BP because then I can see BP chat while I read my tranny threads.
 
Would Gender Critical also absorb the tranny sideshows thread or would that stay in community watch?

I think it’s a great idea, it’ll replace (some of) the hole that the ALR board left.
 
I guess actively avoiding most of the trans stuff is getting harder everywhere. No strong opinions though.
 
In particular, there is a concern that a 'Gender Critical' board will invite politi-sperging and derail threads with off topic venting
Click to expand...
This is an inherently, intractably political topic, though. It would take a fuck ton of work and culture building to keep threads on topic to prevent it from becoming The Thunderdome: Beauty Parlour Edition. Maybe a containment thread therein for politi-sperging?
 
Having the name changed will help some people, especially newer ones, know where to put some threads instead of shitting up other places where they don't belong. A lot people still don't understand what a Rat King is, most people on this site know what Gender Critical means, especially in the context of the Farms.
Also women shitting on "women" is always funny in my book, so I fully support it going to BP.
 
People in this board tend to be fairly civilised, and I know of several female posters, so I don’t see the BP guidelines being a problem.

I think a couple of general threads could be useful. A little bit of politisperging is inevitable when so many of the people we talk about also go on about politics, but a general rants thread could be a useful place if things go too far. Perhaps it could also be a place for troon-related news.
 
I like the Rat King name even if it's not as relevant anymore, it has its own history. It's a bit like troon, most of the people we call troons aren't actually Something Awful users.
 
I'm for it, mostly because if more people have eyes here the incredible amount of powerlevelling from some BP regulars might be toned down.
 
While I do not frequent the Rat King stuff, I do freqnet Peetz thread.
I think the concerns of political ..... derailment can be remedied by our willingness to bond on how bad for society these people are in general.
I can get behind that.
 
Not fond of the idea, for a few reasons:

Rat Kings runs on autopilot these days, by your own admission. Why the hell would you want to alter something that both works and gives minimal trouble while it is doing so into something that is almost guaranteed to cause headaches?

BP has it's own culture, different from the rest of the site. Why dilute or break that? Different cultures in different spaces is good. OK, I'm biased here because I like the BP culture.

The name Rat Kings itself is part of forum lore and should be preserved.

That's it. Wouldn't normally speak up about fairly minor concerns, but you did ask.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom