Culture Wars continued

[jeregenest]

I've been reading a lot of folks writing about the state of on-line gaming discussion. And what I seem to see a lot of folks pointing out how terminology is divisive. One of the things that tends to bother me about terminology is the desire to capitalize everything. Drives me crazy in gaming, drives me crazy at work. So, I just wrote something about it over at 20x20.

I'll be honest one of the thing that annoys me about the whole push/pull debate going on is so much of it is a spate about terminology that is more about territory than honest discussion.

peaseblossom and I were discussing that one of the things that really need to happen is some sort of flag that says "Talk about what I want to talk about not theory or terminology when responding" or a community with some strict rule that on Actual Play we talk about the gam and if tere are terminology/theory discussions arising than we move that part of the discussion to the right forum. There is real need to discuss theory/terminology. Lets just not overshadow other discussions, or drive folks away with it.

Comments

[bruceb.livejournal.com]

Preach it, brother Jeremiah! Seriously, this need to frame so many terms as Special bugs the hell out of me, and I regard one of my real accomplishments at White Wolf the extent to which I helped promote de-capitalization. I find that, yes indeed, usage makes special emphasis clear enough almost all the time, and that if I require words to be used too specifically for simple good writing to make things clear...I ought to re-think anway.

But then oen of the most important things I found about trying to de-jargonize is the importance of looking for concepts that I can express in several ways, wherever possible, rather than trying to rely on specific words and phrases on which I impose only one acceptable reading.