What Would it Take to Repair the Community?

[faraday]

@Ganymede said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

What do you mean by "sustain"?

@reimesu said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

Which means there are more out there that we just don't know about. Which means the MU community very much IS able to sustain two separate discussion forums and possibly more.

I obviously can't speak about other hypothetical communities I just don't know about.

My personal experience is that a discussion board, like a MUSH itself, requires a certain amount of critical mass to keep afloat. Without sufficient activity to maintain interest, people stop checking in. When they stop checking in, the activity drops even further. Eventually you end up with something like the Ares forums, which yes technically still exists, but sees maybe 1 or 2 posts per month.

Aside from that, diversity of viewpoints is important to any vibrant discussion. If you've just got the same 5 people talking about the same topics over and over again, it gets old.

A forum existing is not sufficient for my definition of "being sustained". YMMV.

To be clear, I'm not proposing shutting down any of the sites in question. I'm just sad.

[Misadventure]

In case I haven't been clear about it, the snark and righteousness I've seen here over the last decade have had a chilling effect on play, on game creation, on new players and old leaving contact with the whole of posters here (and now elsewhere as well), or the hobby.

For me, it's always been the people willing to be terrible because they are angry. It's like abusive addicts, you don't want to be near them when they go off again, and nothing positive they do can ever make up for it. They are no longer trustworthy.

[Kassien]

One of the most, paranoid things that I worried about openning my own place is the sheer amount of drama that floats around the community. I think since our community tends to be great story tellers we are also capable of being dramatic... it's the double edged sword. People take things wrong, or too serious, or various other things. Instead of just playing a game. Maybe because it is all text based we miss on those subtilty that are expressed in tone of voice.

The other thing is I think the community has a lot of gatekeepers. About all sorts of different things. I don't know why this is the case, but in my time trying to develop or when I've been staff I can't count how many times I have heard my team is wrong in the directions we're trying to develop. It's not that a personal suggest an improvement or gives constructive criticism. People get very very passionate about having to do things the way they want. I've been yelled at literally because I choose to use Evennia instead of a traditional MU platform.

I refuse to be hubris enough to not admit that I have been guilty of both these points at some time in my life. I've caused drama at a few points throughout my time playing different games. Completely unintentional, and finding out later on it was because of an undiagnosed health condition, but it has happened. And even in writing this I can see how I can be acting like a Gatekeeper.

Lastly I think people get stuck in what they want. There is no room to growth. My example above of using Evennia is a prime example.

Just my two cents.

[Arkandel]

@Tirit said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

One of the most, paranoid things that I worried about openning my own place is the sheer amount of drama that floats around the community. I think since our community tends to be great story tellers we are also capable of being dramatic... it's the double edged sword. People take things wrong, or too serious, or various other things. Instead of just playing a game. Maybe because it is all text based we miss on those subtilty that are expressed in tone of voice.

You can fix systems, mechanics, rules, policies and processes.

You can't fix people.

The problem isn't in the medium itself. Sure, anonymity and the lack of personal accountability doesn't help.

[Warma Sheen]

@Tirit said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

People take things wrong, or too serious, or various other things. Instead of just playing a game.

I'm probably repeating myself more than a few times over the last couple weeks, but it isn't just "playing a game" to many people. It is so many things to so many different people.

A good step in repairing "the community" is recognizing that this isn't just one community. Its a lot of different communities all using the same medium, and usually, the same game. That is going to have very obvious difficulties. A good step is getting everyone on the same page so they understand what site they are on and what that site is intended to be about.

[Misadventure]

@Warma-Sheen Oddly enough, people have gotten upset and even violent over "just a game" throughout history. Some are mad at the game itself and the outcomes in allows. Many are upset at the violation of social norms they attach to playing with other humans.

If one is mad that the King must move when in check, or that there is a death spiral in war games, one shouldn't play them.

If one can't communicate with other players, or stay well within the most common AND cooperative expectations of social interactions, one shouldn't be seeking them out. RL or in games.

Example: if you need to steal Thorpe's running shoes, maybe you shouldn't be near an Olympic running event.

[Arkandel]

@Warma-Sheen said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

I'm probably repeating myself more than a few times over the last couple weeks, but it isn't just "playing a game" to many people. It is so many things to so many different people.

Here's the thing though. It is a game. It's what people sign up for, unless it's explicitly stated otherwise.

For example if I go to a soccer game, I expect to watch teams kick a ball around. If the person next to me is enraged and wants to use that as an opportunity to scream profanities or bash my head in that's only 'on me' to the extent that I should be aware such things may happen. He's still wrong.

[Seraphim73]

@Ghost said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

my only answer was to try to play as incognito as possible

If you can only avoid the drama as long as you can hide who you are... the problem may not be the environment around you.

1. Understand that the Hog Pit was a mistake, that the people who thrived in it are bullies, and to identify/cull bullies from the hobby

How is "excluding players they don't like" as bad as "abusive/stalker roleplayers who have rapey/disturbing/"in some cases illegal" behavior?" Excluding bad actors and players you don't like are entirely legitimate ways to staff a game -- I might even say they're good ways to staff a game, because why should you have to deal with players who are going to cause a personal problem for you while you're staffing a game? Staff doesn't owe anyone a spot on their game. And you clearly realize it too, because two paragraphs after you say that excluding players is as bad as all of that, you say that if you ran a game, you've exclude players for bad OOC behavior on other forums. Now, I've done that myself, so I can't and won't complain about the decision, but the sheer hypocrisy of the statements is ridiculous.

It's in staff's interest to keep as many players on the game as possible, because this affects whether or not people even try to make a bit at the game.

No, it's not. Because if you have asshole players on a game, even if they're popular within a group, they're undoubtedly driving other players away. It's in a game's best interest to remove problem players, no matter how popular they are. If you end up with 10 friends RPing together because other groups left? As long as you're having fun, that's awesome, and guess what, you no longer have assholes you have to worry about dealing with.

So a LOT of bad stuff just goes untouched, festers, and gets worse over time because the motivations behind DOING SOMETHING or NOT DOING SOMETHING tend to fall always in line with whether or not it'll affect the game, roleplay, or "popularity currency".

And this is exactly why you remove problem players from your community instead of letting them fester. More and more game runners seem to be realizing this, and to be willing to take the short-term playerbase hit to make a better community.

@Ghost said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

Paranoia of who is who, who they've played, stranger danger

You realize that what you're terming as paranoia is a response to people who have actually been tricked into interacting with people who have been creepers/abusers to them in the past, right? Denigrating that totally reasonable response like this is victim-blaming. It's horrible. You can do better.

@ZombieGenesis said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

Stop with the "red flags" attacks on new games.

Seriously? Some games are utterly filled with red-flags, and it couldn't be clearer that they're going to be toxic dumpster fires (like the one Vampire game with all the anti-Semitic BS in its theme). Calling games with massive red flags out on their massive red flags shouldn't be a problem (and if the big red flag is a mistake, a good game runner will see it and fix it).

@Ganymede said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

In the past, most people have reported creeps and stalkers like Cullen / Azazello / Surtr / whomever through DMs to me.

In my opinion, while it's good to report creeps and stalkers to Staff in private messages, one of the biggest benefits of the previously-unified community of MSB was the ability to get the word out to lots of people at once: Hey, this person who the community has agreed is a problem is back on this game, watch out for them there, and it might be good to watch any people who are showing these general tendencies on other games too. That's how we caught DWOPP over at TSS and removed him. If it's a false identification, it can be discussed with others who might have useful information.

So what do I think it would take to repair the community? In my opinion, fix the missing stairs. People you have to warn your friends about? Remove them from your circles instead of just warning the people around you. Tell staffers, share information, cut them out of the community. When they come back under a new name, find them (perhaps find out about them on a board like this) and remove them again. If you find yourself on a place that doesn't do that, or elevates their voices? Remove yourself from that circle. Vote with your feet, and let people enjoy their 10-person game if that's what it ends up being -- at least if they're all missing stairs, they won't have the critical mass to bring in other people to hurt. Find a place that will remove the missing stairs, instead of warning people about them and leaving them there to bite unsuspecting ankles.

[Kassien]

@Seraphim73 said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

Remove them from your circles instead of just warning the people around you. Tell staffers, share information, cut them out of the community. When they come back under a new name, find them (perhaps find out about them on a board like this) and remove them again.

While I understand and concur with most of your responses, doesn't this sounds a little bit witch hunty?

[Arkandel]

@Tirit Possibly. And yet it still beats the alternative.

Something to keep in mind here is that the MU* community at large, as hard as it is to accurately count its members, is certainly in the range of several hundred players. The number of creeps among us, going back years, is vanishingly small in comparison; under 10, possibly half that.

And still their impact on games has been absolutely massive. Entire MU* were completely derailed off their course trying to compensate for their negative impact. Many affected people stopped playing either on those specific MU* or even in general.

You can't coddle that behavior. You can't allow it to take roots. It will be a major net negative if you do, whether you mean well or not.

[Kestrel]

@Tirit said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

@Seraphim73 said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

Remove them from your circles instead of just warning the people around you. Tell staffers, share information, cut them out of the community. When they come back under a new name, find them (perhaps find out about them on a board like this) and remove them again.

While I understand and concur with most of your responses, doesn't this sounds a little bit witch hunty?

Call me old-fashioned, but when I hear the term "witch hunt", I tend to think of the hostility women are frequently subjected to, in hobby spaces and in the real world, for refusing to adhere to a gendered social hierarchy. For calling out misogyny when they see it; for setting personal boundaries; for refusing men who feel entitled to their time, kindness, labour and therapy; for trying to warn others about powerful and popular abusers, and exposing them for the charlatans that they are.

You and @Ghost are living in a fictional world if you think that doing the above is ever easy, let alone rewarding, that it involves coasting by on "popularity currency" and doesn't carry serious risks and consequences for the accuser. A smear campaign that was launched against me, to discredit the thread I made about Cullen/Azazello/Surtr, has yet to be recanted by a then-advocate of his, even though she's since come out as a victim; it cost me a real-world friendship at the time. A staff member on the game I was playing used her position to consistently grief and troll me for exposing him. I can't imagine how much worse all of this would've felt had I been one of the many women he'd harmed more directly, or lured into an RL relationship. I can't imagine what it's like to be Amber Heard right now.

An inkling is perhaps why I myself never told anyone about the well-liked Chad in this hobby who abused me personally, not until he was long gone, and even then only to a select few. (Some of whom still managed to disappoint me, based on how they responded.) I would also point out that Azazello coasted by for literal years in this hobby before he was banned anywhere, his reputation very well known, by which point the harm he had already done was immeasurable — and that he was able to continue committing harm for his sick pleasure long after that, too. The backlash against his accusers, however, has always been instant.

A very mild example of the above happened on TSS, too; but because of these boards, and because of excellent staff policies on that game, it didn't go very far. This guy didn't like being privately told no, so he tried to publicly torch me. Thanks, @Seraphim73 and @GirlCalledBlu, for not putting up with that. Thanks for conferring with other witches to kick a witch-hunter off your game.

Even typing up this post, I feel the exact same way I've felt every time I've been in that position before. Does this make me look dramatic? A mean girl, a bully, just plain crazy? And worse, because until my name was brought up in connection with it very recently, I hadn't realised it's what I'm now mainly known for on these boards — will that lead others to question the validity of other claims I've made before? Because that would now carry consequences for more than just me, and it already has.

I'll give @Tirit the benefit of the doubt, actually, because I don't know them, and maybe I'm misattributing sentiment to their relatively few words on this topic.

@Ghost, though? I'm still waiting for receipts. Who have I bullied on these boards? Because I've found myself rereading old threads as a sort of post-mortem for MSB, and realised I was actually incorrect when I claimed I hadn't responded to most of the conflicts you've initiated with me over the years; in point of fact, I have never responded to any of them until the last few days, after you'd decided to label me a bully.

I can recall exactly two people I have ever antagonised on these boards: one is Azazello, and the second is Discordance, a staff member on Haven, for abusing her position to antagonise his detractors. I'm no longer terribly confused by why you see me and so many other "mean girls" as villains, however, because I think the safety of this newly witch-free space has allowed you to start making your agenda entirely clear.

It's curious that we're told "the clique" can't be named, and their crimes can't be listed, because so many people fear their terrible retribution, and therefore receipts can't be produced, either. It's to protect the victims, mostly from women witches.

It's curious that a dearth of receipts seems so much more suspect, and so much less understandable, when it relates to at least a dozen women (and I really think that's an understatement) who have things to say about a single man.

It's curious that @hobos can continue to publicly harass someone who's publicly told him to not contact her, and to cease giving life to malicious and unfounded rumours about her, but that publicly calling him out for doing that is apparently against the rules, and invites hostility from admin voices. Incidentally, the "receipts" he presented, which have since been spun into "omg someone falsely accused him of a literal crime, how damaging", were of a woman — not the one he was harassing — stating that based on his observable behaviour, she would personally distrust and feel uncomfortable with him. I wholeheartedly share this view. I would never trust my drink in the hands of anyone who defended a predator, who has multiple accusers, on the grounds of, 'But my friend from another game knows him and he's a really great guy, it's just the mean girls who hate him for no reason, because they're jealous!' Personally I wouldn't trust my drink in the hands of most men, because we live in a society, but definitely not with someone who shows repeated, continual disregard for others' right to their boundaries, while feigning remorse and vilifying them for it.

I personally have no association of any kind with @Roz, the main "mean girl" I've seen insinuated as a presumed leader of this clique, but I've frequently upvoted her posts on MSB, because I've generally found them eloquent, classy, and intolerant of misogyny or abusive behaviour without herself needing to resort to aggression in the process. From the sidelines, it strikes me that this is what it takes on these boards to now be labelled a "mean girl".

I refuse to take this thread seriously because it's a lie, an exercise in public gaslighting, and a witch-hunt.

I think the way "we" fix the hobby (tbh, not you, but people who are actually walking the walk) is to take the approach I saw outlined here by @Apos.

Lastly, I would just like to commiserate with @Sunny and @GreenFlashlight for prophesying the future of MSB with Simpsons-like clarity two years before we reached this state, even when we were at its peak. You both knew better than me.

[GreenFlashlight]

When I think of this forum, in its current incarnation more than its previous one but even so, I think of the Room. Have you ever seen that movie? It's a movie about literally the best human being in the world who has never done anything wrong in his life, whose girlfriend cheats on him, emotionally blackmails him into falling off the wagon, lies about him physically abusing her, and tricks him into thinking she's pregnant just because she finds it amusing to hurt him that way. She has literally no reason to do any of these things, as the supporting cast of the movie repeatedly says to her and to the audience, but just does them anyway because she is a woman and women are evil.

The movie isn't very complimentary to men either, since the author-insert main character literally never gives any reason this sociopath is worth "loving" except that she's beautiful and sexually available to him. It never displays any qualities she might have that are worth treasuring or would make her a good life partner, and never has the author-insert main character compliment anything about her other than how she looks good while he's thrusting atop her. Neither the author nor the main character show any signs of seeing her as a full human being who has an existence separate from what he wants of her. If she's hurting him, then it must be because she's an evil bitch who just likes hurting men for fun, because he can only perceive her in terms of how he is affected by her. And of course the movie takes for granted that the author-insert main character is blameless in all things because how could there possibly be two sides to this story about a break-up? That's obviously ridiculous. The only side to the story, which she even admits to her mother and friends, is that he's perfect, she's an evil slut, and his only fault was loving her too much to admit she's an evil slut and kick her to the curb where evil sluts belong.

And it's not just the evil sociopath slut who's out to get the author-insert main character. His friends and employers all betray him in various ways too, some of them more nonsensical than others because it's a badly written movie, but the general thrust here is that nothing the author-insert main character did provoked the behavior he received. They were all just jealous of him for how perfect and moral he is, and decided to tear him down because they have evil hearts that love doing evil, like Saturday morning cartoon villains.

Anyway, you should probably ignore me. I'm just here to back up Kestrel's post because as a part of her clique of witch hunters, it's important to me to try to turn this board into an echo chamber where only the thoughts approved by our collective are permitted to be expressed.

[Misadventure]

If "witch hunt" is too sex based for ones taste, House Un-American Activites Committee may work.

Not sure if it's a stand out exemplar for people from the US, let alone anyone else.

[Ghost]

@Seraphim73 said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

You realize that what you're terming as paranoia is a response to people who have actually been tricked into interacting with people who have been creepers/abusers to them in the past, right? Denigrating that totally reasonable response like this is victim-blaming. It's horrible. You can do better.

Calm yourself down there, guy. No need to carpet-bag and escalate that. So horrible.

Of course people who have been actually stalked and harassed shouldn't be tricked into the kill zone of their prior abusers. There ARE some pretty crazy and dangerous people in the hobby. Sure. Watch out for them. There are, however, people who take this to extreme ends and stalk/track the whereabouts of people who disappointed them, which games they're on, which PBs they like to use, etc.

There are absolutely valid cases, but there are also cases where it does more damage than good.

But, of course, you're welcome to take that as an intended malleus maleficarum-level insult to abuse victims or whatever...

[Ghost]

@Kestrel said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

@Ghost, though? I'm still waiting for receipts. Who have I bullied on these boards?

<groan>

Give it a rest.

Slow news day apparently.

Edit: AH. I see what happened, here. Since the Hog Pit was made available for viewing again Kes went back into the history to grab links and recant previous arguments and try to renew them as current arguments. Not a slow news day, but a lot of free time and an "oh I should have said this <types up OH YEAH! EAT THIS post>

I think you're putting entirely too much work into trying to scry and unveil the super nefarious secret agendas of people chatting on an internet forum on their cell phone in between WWE2K22 YouTube clips.

[Derp]

@Ghost said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

@Seraphim73 said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

You realize that what you're terming as paranoia is a response to people who have actually been tricked into interacting with people who have been creepers/abusers to them in the past, right? Denigrating that totally reasonable response like this is victim-blaming. It's horrible. You can do better.

Calm yourself down there, guy. No need to carpet-bag and escalate that. So horrible.

Of course people who have been actually stalked and harassed shouldn't be tricked into the kill zone of their prior abusers. There ARE some pretty crazy and dangerous people in the hobby. Sure. Watch out for them. There are, however, people who take this to extreme ends and stalk/track the whereabouts of people who disappointed them, which games they're on, which PBs they like to use, etc.

There are absolutely valid cases, but there are also cases where it does more damage than good.

But, of course, you're welcome to take that as an intended malleus maleficarum-level insult to abuse victims or whatever...

Ghost, keep it about the thought, not the person expressing it.

[Ghost]

@Derp Gotcha.

[Seraphim73]

@Tirit said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

While I understand and concur with most of your responses, doesn't this sounds a little bit witch hunty?

Without some due diligence on the part of staffers, yes it can become something used against "good" players. But like @Arkandel said, it's better than the alternative, of letting problem players lurk in the community, waiting to harm other players and drive them away.

[Arkandel]

@Seraphim73 said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

@Tirit said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

While I understand and concur with most of your responses, doesn't this sounds a little bit witch hunty?

Without some due diligence on the part of staffers, yes it can become something used against "good" players. But like @Arkandel said, it's better than the alternative, of letting problem players lurk in the community, waiting to harm other players and drive them away.

Also I think that's a bit of a strawman argument.

Although now and then things get exaggerated ("you're as bad as <X>!") it's rare for witchhunts to get anywhere near that level.

For the game-killing folks, there's a hall of infamy that mere besmirching by even a few folks from a clique cannot induct false targets into. Those people are a shit-class of their own, and have the track record to prove it.

[Derp]

@Seraphim73 said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

@Tirit said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

While I understand and concur with most of your responses, doesn't this sounds a little bit witch hunty?

Without some due diligence on the part of staffers, yes it can become something used against "good" players. But like @Arkandel said, it's better than the alternative, of letting problem players lurk in the community, waiting to harm other players and drive them away.

I think that I would personally disagree with this particular take. I don't think it's better to excise anyone accused on the grounds that they might have done something wrong, but I suppose that's where the due diligence part comes in.

The problem is that not everyone agrees on where that diligence should be. Here, we've seen this kind of behavior weaponized. At least two of the admin team has seen this happen in real time, and so we've chosen the path of 'if you make an accusation, bring receipts'. We feel that's more than fair in a hobby where everything is text based and able to be logged.

Some people have said this makes them feel unsafe. Well -- ok. I suppose that depends on your definition of 'safe'. If your definition of 'safe' is 'able to make accusations against people with no evidence and expect that action be taken based solely on my word alone' then no, this is not a space wherein that would be acceptable behavior. If your definition of 'safe' is 'here is what happened, here is the evidence that I have for it, here is the action I would like to see taken', then it's a perfectly safe space. That's the standard that we operate on here. Other boards and other administrations and other games have other standards.

It's impossible to find one way of doing things that is going to make everyone happy. And frankly, some of the same people that advocate for 'remove people from your game if they are a general pain in the ass' also decried Ganymede's decision to remove people being openly and actively hostile toward her on a space that she ran and paid for, so trying to divine a good standard from those kinds of conflicting viewpoints is a losing game anyway.