Gatekeeping

[Num]

your thoughts on gatekeeping in general. do you find it healthy for a community? discuss

 

[Tonberry]

No and sort-of-Yes at the same time.

I don't think you should recoil when people express an interest and desire to take part of a hobby, nor should you chastise veteran peers who might want something to evolve in a different way than you, in general. But at the same time it's good to have a foundation of the interest/hobby to lean on. For example, I wouldn't demand a gundam model club to suddenly cater exclusively to gundam funko pop collecting.

I don't consider "gaming" a community, it's a hobby like any other with communities inside it. It's too big to be considered that, imo.

In general, I think "gatekeeping" in the traditional sense fosters stagnation at best and death at worst.

 

[tenkai star]

I would never actively gatekeep anything or ask to do it but I do enjoy smaller communities

 

[RanmyakuIchi]

I've never been very big on it. I personally like knowing a lot of people engage with the stuff I enjoy. This is currently a hot button subject in one of my other communities thanks to something that rhymes with "Port Light" lol. TBH, I kinda like being in a position to show newcomer's cool stuff, but that's just me.

 

[Meekoos]

Depends on what you want to gatekeep I guess? Generally speaking gatekeeping is bad in how it can stagnate, create echo chambers and halt an evolution or progression if you make a community, genre or medium hard to throw experimental ideas. But you can see the gatekeeping as a way of quality control to maintain a certain brand or standard. I don't think it accomplishes much as things that don't fit the mold or idea it wants to join will find itself out of the loop of community/genre and find success elsewhere or spin-off on it's own degree of success.

Oh we're talking about people based communities not mediums in genres? Then I'm pretty much against it then, people will find their people no need to try police who can join or who talks in what space, just have standard rules to abide and we'll all be people enjoying the conversations or leaving them.

 

[wilddogsdivorce]

this isn't really something you can generalize, frankly.

 

[DunkeyKong]

I always thought this was a Twitter thing, I heard that they've talked about that a lot

 

[Waffles]

I see it as an exceedingly bad thing, and one that sunk many communities I was a part of as a teen.

 

[Tonberry]

I always thought this was a Twitter thing, I heard that they've talked about that a lot

I don't agree with this comic, but it's an example of how "bad it is to not gatekeep", just posting it for educational purposes.
It's a slippery slope fallacy and a strawman in general that "outsiders will always ruin your fun" and stuff.

I see it as an exceedingly bad thing, and one that sunk many communities I was a part of as a teen.

This. "Secret club" mentality is always lame, especially when it comes to something as generic as a hobby.

 

[DunkeyKong]

I don't agree with this comic, but it's an example of how "bad it is to not gatekeep", just posting it for educational purposes.
It's a slippery slope fallacy and a strawman in general that "outsiders will always ruin your fun" and stuff.

View attachment 19419​

This. "Secret club" mentality is always lame, especially when it comes to something as generic as a hobby.

That's a short yet understandable comic, but yeah I can see why you don't agree with it

 

[miguk]

Depends.
It isn't fair to gatekeep just for the sake of putting yourself above others. Oneupmanship isn't healthy for a community, and doesn't help anyone, even oneself.

That said, it helps to have standards so that values are understood and bad material does not flood the community. Too many communities get flooded by lowest common denominator junk because there is no standard set and nobody is willing to speak up about what should be the minimum standard. It ends up being a tyranny of the most aggressively sloppy people (to put it mildly) and off-putting to those who would rather discuss things of at least moderate quality rather than the lowest quality.

Consider, for example, a coffee community. Is it okay for some people there to like instant coffee? In their own lives, yes. But what if you can't even point out that instant is actually the worst coffee and that most everything else is better? That may hinder the ability of the community to achieve its goal of learning how to reach coffee greatness. You have to have some standard, at least to the extent of pointing out that, however much you may enjoy instant, it's still re-made coffee and thus loses a lot of what makes a quality coffee great. Otherwise, you just have a bunch of people patting themselves on the back for drinking Folgers while nobody ever gets to point out that a freshly-grounded cup of Sumatra would be a massive improvement. It just ends up a pointless experience with nothing gained.

Now, if someone in that community is constantly badmouthing a quality Colombian brand (or even Brazilian, if they're a particularly pretentious little brat) without any real justification, then that's a bad form of gatekeeping. In that case, there's nothing really provably wrong with the options; they are just trying to make themselves look better by being contrarian.

 

[RanmyakuIchi]

This. "Secret club" mentality is always lame, especially when it comes to something as generic as a hobby.

I understand why some people do this, even if I disagree. Any long running hobby, fandom, community etc. will inevitably change form over time as people come and go or the media at their core progresses. People who find a huge amount of comfort in these things end up feeling threatened when these changes happen, as inevitable as they are, and lash out.

There's a certain melancholy that comes with change, and people react differently. I don't agree with it one bit, but I get it.

 

[Waffles]

This. "Secret club" mentality is always lame, especially when it comes to something as generic as a hobby.

Indeed. I wrote an article about it on another board called "The Abandonware Wars" and it was... yeah, it was stupid. Destroyed an entire scene that had stood for nearly a decade at that point and had some of the largest sites on the planet as members.

 

[Nidstang]

I believe anybody and everybody should be allowed into a hobby/fandom. But people who want to "infiltrate" a hobby/fandom and change the hobby/fandom to be something else should be gatekept out of hobbies/fandoms.

 

[Tonberry]

Indeed. I wrote an article about it on another board called "The Abandonware Wars" and it was... yeah, it was stupid. Destroyed an entire scene that had stood for nearly a decade at that point and had some of the largest sites on the planet as members.

I'm very curious about this, now!

 

[otogirisou]

i won't tell you. i'm Gatekeeping my opinion.

 

[Lee__Kanker]

I love it

 

[Num]

I understand why some people do this, even if I disagree. Any long running hobby, fandom, community etc. will inevitably change form over time as people come and go or the media at their core progresses. People who find a huge amount of comfort in these things end up feeling threatened when these changes happen, as inevitable as they are, and lash out.

There's a certain melancholy that comes with change, and people react differently. I don't agree with it one bit, but I get it.

well i think its easy to see it this way on a base level, but on a more practical level i believe that gatekeeping is more often than not for the sake of change instead of being against it. just as ive seen communities ruined from basically turning into a sekrit klub, not really having any sort of gatekeeping culture can do just as much harm. the place constantly gets flooded with conversations youve had a billion times over because new people constantly join and talk about it in its place, its like the community would always be stuck at level 1 so to speak. if you ever want to get deeper into talking about your interests with each other there probably should be some sort of standard people need to rise to before joining in on a discussion. otherwise it creates this repetitive feedback loop, people will start to get sick of the repetition and leave and be replaced by newcomers just for those very ones to get tired eventually and leave. and the community stays in that very "immature" state for as long as it runs, im sure many of us are already thinking of countless places that have and are still suffering from this.
so i do agree with @miguk for the most part, in that gatekeeping does need to be in moderation in a sense for a healthy evolving community but i guess that isnt too big of a statement considering that the extreme of any side isnt exactly ideal in plenty of cases

 

[Somnia]

More or less pointless. It is kind of impossible to actually gatekeep people from trying to engage with something even if you view them engaging as a negative. They will do the thing the wrong way, they will be less in-depth than you, the culture surrounding the thing will gradually change (from your perspective, not from an objective viewpoint of course). It is inevitable and you were likely on the other end of the change at some point whether you knew it at the time or not.

Just love what you love, find people you enjoy expressing that love with and let everyone else sort themselves out. You only stress yourself out and piss most people around you off by trying to hold off the inevitable.

 

[Clippy]

I'm... conflicted on the matter. On one hand I'd never discourage someone new to the hobby who expresses genuine interest but is for obvious reasons a newbie and stumbles on things us veterans consider basic or common knowledge. We've all been there at some point so seeing someone not knowing what to do with an iso doesn't phase me, I just guide them along and show them the ropes to the best of my ability. I want people who are interested in the hobby but find its storied legacy daunting to feel welcome and enjoy it with the rest of us and I will help them get there without being a dick about it. This is why you'll see me in quite a few troubleshooting-related threads here among other things.

On the other hand, I feel that gamers have always had a complex about gaming being a legitimate hobby and as such we've allowed just about anyone to not only participate but also try and shape the hobby and it has been to gaming's detriment. Gaming has gone downhill in the last 15 years and if you really think about it's because we've let our standards slip. How did it happen? Because normies who simply have to have the latest shiny thing are outnumbering the old guard now. We used to be able to hold big publishers to some standard. DLCs, lootboxes, microtransactions would have never flown in the 90s not just because of the technical limitations on implementing them but also because we simply wouldn't allow it as customers, or so I like to think at least.

I don't even want to talk about people who 'got into gaming' to pervert it and have it serve their political causes. They were never gamers to begin with.

All in all, I don't like the idea of gatekeeping the hobby. I want everyone to enjoy it and I'll do my utmost to help them do so. At the same time I understand that some people are bad apples and should be kept away from gaming lest they destroy it. They simply have to be blacklisted not because I have a bone to pick with them or anything but because I know that allowing them to run rampant will be a net negative for the hobby as a whole.

If you think about it, we keep neo-Nazis from spewing their BS on the forum for the same reasons, no? They can enjoy the games, the forum and the repo but we don't want their antisemitic crap here. That's kinda how I see gaming as a whole. Enjoy it. I'll do my best to help you enjoy it. Don't try to fuck it up for your moronic ideology or hostile business practices that don't belong.

As I said, I'm conflicted. Drunk Clippy would've handled it better probably but you're stuck with me tonight.

 

[MasterEn]

gatekeeping should be about keeping the thing in question from changing too radically in any direction. let any subset of the group get to much power or if it falls into malicious hands; it will be destroyed. star wars, marvel comics, star trek, lord of the rings, velma. people with hate in their hearts got ahold of theese properties and destroyed them.
i was excited about star wars. watched the movies countless times, played kotor 1 and 2, read about 40+ novels, some several times over.
then disney took over.
got rid of the stories that everyone liked. gutted them out and reused them without care or respect.
luke became hopeless and cowardly, han's dead, luke too.
ray meets yoda? [why? did she even know that he existed?]
grand admiral thrawn is a moron in the ashoka show.
anakin isn't the chosen one, ray is, apparently.
there's been like 5 games in comparison to before disney where there were like 80 of them.
and now, i don't care about star wars.
i'd rather make my own than pay attention to it now.

 

[DunkeyKong]

As I said, I'm conflicted. Drunk Clippy would've handled it better probably but you're stuck with me tonight.

I kinda like this…version of you. Let's not get drunk tonight

 

[Tonberry]

I don't even want to talk about people who 'got into gaming' to pervert it and have it serve their political causes. They were never gamers to begin with.

let any subset of the group get to much power or if it falls into malicious hands; it will be destroyed

I really don't think this particular part is as bad as people make it out to be, personally. At the end of the day, most of it is largely just entertainment, and this discussion also also occurs mostly around very casual, entry-level branches of entertainment too, like Star Wars, for example.

Of course, you're entitled to your opinions on the matter, but I generally disagree. AAA/Hollywood were never our friends, and were always run by suits who tries to trick creators into making things they believe are meaningful, because the suits know it aligns with the zeitgeist and thus would generate the most amount of money.

And of course, I'm not trying to tell you you're wrong for your stance, but for the love of god, stop getting opinions from amateur youtubers (who're just as much consumer as us, they don't have any insider info) who bait people into outrage wars about entertainment, and instead spend that time on broadening your horizons. You will never ever ever run out of new games, comics, movies, whatever, to explore and love.

EDIT: That last part came out as way more confrontative than I intended due to poor formatting (I'm tired)
I mean in people general, not anyone of you specifically, sorry!

 

[ciro64]

I guess it comes down to enforcing standards, but not being a little bitch about it?

 

[Somnia]

I'm... conflicted on the matter. On one hand I'd never discourage someone new to the hobby who expresses genuine interest but is for obvious reasons a newbie and stumbles on things us veterans consider basic or common knowledge. We've all been there at some point so seeing someone not knowing what to do with an iso doesn't phase me, I just guide them along and show them the ropes to the best of my ability. I want people who are interested in the hobby but find its storied legacy daunting to feel welcome and enjoy it with the rest of us and I will help them get there without being a dick about it. This is why you'll see me in quite a few troubleshooting-related threads here among other things.

On the other hand, I feel that gamers have always had a complex about gaming being a legitimate hobby and as such we've allowed just about anyone to not only participate but also try and shape the hobby and it has been to gaming's detriment. Gaming has gone downhill in the last 15 years and if you really think about it's because we've let our standards slip. Why did it happen? Because normies who simply have to have the latest shiny thing are outnumbering the old guard now. We used to be able to hold big publishers to some standard. DLCs, lootboxes, microtransactions would have never flown in the 90s not just because of the technical limitations on implementing them but also because we simply wouldn't allow it as customers, or so I like to think at least.

I don't even want to talk about people who 'got into gaming' to pervert it and have it serve their political causes. They were never gamers to begin with.

All in all, I don't like the idea of gatekeeping the hobby. I want everyone to enjoy it and I'll do my utmost to help them do so. At the same time I understand that some people are bad apples and should be kept away from gaming lest they destroy it. They simply have to be blacklisted not because I have a bone to pick with them or anything but because I know that allowing them to run rampant will be a net negative for the hobby as a whole.

If you think about it, we keep neo-Nazis from spewing their BS on the forum for the same reasons, no? They can enjoy the games, the forum and the repo but we don't want their antisemitic crap here. That's kinda how I see gaming as a whole. Enjoy it. I'll do my best to help you enjoy it. Don't try to fuck it up for your moronic ideology or hostile business practices that don't belong.

As I said, I'm conflicted. Drunk Clippy would've handled it better probably but you're stuck with me tonight.

No one can destroy gaming, that's all in your head. You can't stop them from coming into the space and doing what they want to do anyways, it's silly to even pretend you have any level of authority there. You can make them feel unwelcome within the small spaces you personally occupy based on your own biased and unfounded notions of what "gaming" needs to be saved from, but you're ultimately powerless.

Hell, the idea of anyone thinking that they know what is best for an entire form of art is just ludicrous on the face of it. You can't define that any better than the people you hate most can.

The idea that you used to have any power over publishers is a total farce, whether we want to believe it or not. Voting with your wallet has always been a concept, but the ecosystem and market have evolved drastically in the last 30 years. DLCs existed in the 90s, microtransactions and lootboxes didn't have the means to exist. That's about it. Do you really think if publishers who's job is to make the most money had the means to try those things that they wouldn't have?

Market incentives have poisoned the industry, nothing more. There is truth that people who are newer to the hobby are just sort of used to the way things are and thus more susceptible to accept scummy practices, but the same is true of gamers that are older and more entrenched than we are. This stuff has slowly been trojan horsed in as the market grows and the means of delivering predatory practices evolve.

Did "new" gamers with perceived lower standards hurt the industry, or is it the fact that most AAA games used to be made by a couple dozen people in a year and some change at most while middle market and independent games could stay comparable in terms of production values while nowadays it takes a team of 300+ half a decade or more for a single game? How are ballooning budgets and advancing technology the fault of "new" gamers not being gatekept?

Besides, how do we even gatekeep people who are susceptible to this? Do we just stop people who are too young or just too comfortable with MTX from being allowed to play? The youth know nothing but the modern hellscape, people with more money than sense don't care if their MTX practices hurt those around them. But what could you ever do to stop them? The concept of gatekeeping doesn't exist, it was never possible to begin with.

I'm rambling and there is sosososososo much more to talk about here but it really does just come down to the concept of gatekeeping being pointless. If someone you perceive as a poison wants to come in and make a game, all you can do to stop them is not buy it if you feel it won't appeal to you. You can make them feel unwelcome in your social spaces online, but they will simply find their own.

Gatekeeping requires someone to feel some sense of ownership over the thing itself as well as the silly notion that they have some sort of power to stop others from engaging in ways they deem unfit. Just ain't a real thing outside of super niche communities but even then its a dubious concept at best.