Disclaimer:  This is just a response to the original post … NOT THE OTT TEAM IN ANY WAY.  And I’ll try not to make this personal.

1)  Intolerance vs. Topics and People?  Hmm, I was literally shouted out of a live conversation yesterday (as we all saw and heard) – ironically while I was actually trying to participate in the Star Wars discussion.

Intolerant, we say?  Interesting position, when members of the community don’t “tolerate” me enough to allow the completion of a sentence.

2) Letting People Have the Conversation: Well, again … I’m the one who’s been bulldozed out of conversations week after week, so I find this premise shaky at best.  Furthermore, all my friends and I said (in the chat, not in the radio show) is that we were ducking out of the conversation.  We didn’t stop anyone from talking about Star Wars or anything else.  They talked about it for another 25 minutes.  So I find the accusation: “if someone wants to discuss something that you have no interest it, then let those that are interested talk about it and let them have the conversation,” well, a little baseless.  It feels like my friends and I are being accused of (or at the very least lectured for) something we didn’t do.

And when it comes to forums or Discord threads or whatever, I would agree 100% with your statement.  If you’re not interested, just go to another thread or start your own.

However, when it comes to things like the Radio Show, there is no other “thread” or “forum.”  There is only one show.  I have to reorganize my real-life workday to even have a hope of participating.  It comes once every two weeks.  And God bless Warren, he tries.  In the May 12 radio show he literally had to raise his voice and say, and I quote: “Everyone be quiet and calm down” so I could even begin a sentence (it’s recorded, so you can go ahead and check).

So you’ll forgive me if my spikes go up when people suggest I am squashing other people’s conversations.  The exact opposite is happening, over and over, for several weeks now.  So maybe cool it with the whole “prams and toys thrown all over the place” language?  Before we start telling the community we’re being “toxic” and implying immaturity?

3) Expressing Opinions: Here’s a radical concept … If we accept that if Person A has the right to talk about a certain topic, maybe Person B has that same right to talk about how much they don’t like that same topic?  Strange how the “right to express an opinion” always flows in one direction. I find the position indefensible at best, especially since we’re all supposed to be such “adults.”  Yet we get misty eyed and tremble-angry when someone makes fun of our toys?

4) Selfishness of the Ego:  When I finally got back into yesterday’s conversation, I tried to talk about other people’s projects and interests, i.e., Michael’s Stalingrad project.  Many here must have missed that part of the conversation.  But even that was cut brusquely short.  In any event, I didn’t wrench the subject to my own projects and interests, as so many people constantly, constantly do (do I really need to cite examples here)?

5) The “Broad Church”: Nor do I buy the idea that this community is that broad of a church, at least to the extent for which we all love to pat ourselves on the back.  There are vast areas of the wargaming hobby … vast … that this community chooses never to cover or discuss … which, yes … is completely fine (and no, I’m not talking about “historical”).  I am never going to tell other gamers what to be interested in, and I sure as hell will never tell the OTT team what to feature or where to shine a spotlight.  Likewise, you will never see 40K or Star Wars on Sitrep.  But we don’t claim or pretend to be a “broad church,” and there’s the difference, perhaps?

Yet as a fan, player, presenter, and designer of the kinds of wargames this community chooses never to acknowledge (at least not in the last three years, and again, totally fair and everyone’s prerogative to do so), I further take exception to comments like “it is not about excluding people but rather encompassing people.”

Really?!

Don’t get me wrong, be interested in what you want.  Talk about what you want.  But dispel the idea that we’re “encompassing everyone.”  I can assure you we are not.  So forgive me if I respond badly to paternal, sagacious lectures warning me “not to exclude people” when I am one of the “excluded” people, and have been for years.  Might I suggest it’s a good idea to climb down off our shaky stool of self-congratulation about how “inclusive” we are?

In summary, I’m amazed more people don’t see the quiet elitism and “cliquishness” that has settled into the roots of the community … i.e., if it’s not Star Wars, Saga, 40K, or whatever certain “rock stars” are interested in lately … well, there goes 90% of the community conversations in which you can participate.

So I agree there’s a problem.  But while I would never presume to tell the community to change or improve, I would suggest that we could all be just a little more self-honest.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go pick up all the toys I threw out of my pram.