I agree that we need to find a way to make this communal rather than individualistic, but government backing isn’t that. It would be nice if that happened and all, but with a thesis like that it feels like it’s missing the mark calling state-hosting "community ". How do we make self-hosted services something that can serve at the level of the community? Like a load balancing reverse proxy that points to the servers those in the community can use, and everyone invites their friends and neighbours.

No shade to Civ 5, it was just a case of I realized my tastes had changed. It took me a few games to be really playing it for that to be able to sink in.

It’s perhaps not the best example of the broader point, but I would have to write a literal essay to say why I’m lukewarm on Rimworld, and it would probably piss off the gamers.

Sometimes you can spot a critical design decision that experience with the genre can tell you right off the bat it won’t be for you.

Sometimes you have to play through it to realize it doesn’t meet expectations. A lot of the games I play are deep sandboxes that if I like I’ll sink hundreds of hours into, and often come with a very steep learning period. With those the problems can be subtle and take a depth of experience to understand. I have 108 hours in Civ 5 because that’s how long it took me to realize I didn’t like it at all, despite previously being a fan of the series. There are other games I’ve played for longer and wouldn’t recommend if asked because having developed a nuanced understanding of the systems I see how some design decisions undermine the fantasy the game is trying to sell. Sure I enjoyed it well enough at the time, but for someone who likes to engage with depth this sort of perspective can be appreciated in a review so you know the time is better spent elsewhere.

There’s definitely problems with that option. But in the situation you described I’d just say fuck you and close the page rather than support that. People immediately leaving is probably worse than bad questions don’t get answers.

An abstain, maybe? Would also be useful for questions that you won’t know enough to answer. Then if you keep getting hung juries you know you’re asking bad questions.