[Discussion] We need to have a talk about this 'Ethics-only co-opting' issue There's been a bit of fuss about the direction of the #GamerGate tag concerning unhealthy obsession with SJW drama vs Staying on Target with ethics. To me, and I suspect to many others, this seems.. silly. Clearly, the extremes are bad, the question more seems to be about where the lines are drawn. I think that there is a completely different issue at play here. An interesting one for you sociologist/behavioral types. This is actually a sort of fascinating phenomenon to witness and how we handle it may determine how well #GamerGate floats in the future. Bear with me, I'll try to walk through this to keep it simple. First, understand that #GamerGate is a community. For better and worse, it simply is. It's a particularly diverse community at that, and for many people, it is their first experience with something like this. Second, and most importantly, there are people who, like in any community, just want to interact. Sometimes people just want to say hi, talk about things that interest them, some just want to fight, and sometimes people just want to shitpost or throw some random thoughts into the ether to see what comes out. Depending on your level of interaction on Twitter, your mileage may vary concerning whether this is an issue. The first thing to understand in tackling this is that this is perfectly normal behavior. In fact, it's actually healthy. I'd even argue that it should be encouraged to a point, as this is what will keep us alive through the next year or beyond. On the other end of that coin, it's a legitimate concern that useful information can be lost in the noise. Hand in hand with diversity is reconciling the problem of people who want to be social with the community versus people who are mostly here to 'work', as it were. As TotalBiscuit has stated, 140 is a terrible format for discussion. It's less that he's a prophet and more that he's hitting on something fundamental about expressing complex concepts in narrow space. What should be a reasonable and interesting conversation is chopped down to caricatures and arguing. So let's have less arguing and more discussion on this. I'm going to propose a solution to start with. It may not be a great solution, I'm not married to it, but it's a start for maybe hammering out something better. (I can even update this post with other suggestions if they pop up). Ancillary Tags Similar to the KiA solution, we simply add #Social (or #Gaming), #SJW or #Ethics tags to things that are strictly off-topic, predominately SJW/culture related, or srsbsns. Not a replacement, an amendment. Edit: Just to be clear, yes, I am saying we should just up and casually hijack those tags. I'm arguing that losing 5 characters is a small price to pay to provide some peace of mind. This allows people to browse and post in the general tag, or just browse a subtag. In the social/behavioral sense, it draws out borders for people who clearly need some lines/space from each other. (Again, it's natural, familiarity breeds contempt) Whether you like my proposed solution or not, one thing that is clear is that discussion of this needs to be siphoned off of Twitter. It won't happen there and the shitflinging will just get worse every time this topic comes up. Hell, this doesn't even need to be the containment thread for it, but at the very least get this shit off of Twitter, it will not facilitate a real solution. Best of luck and I hope something good comes of this.