This isn't quite about game development but I wanted to post under this forum's umbrella anyway just to signal the fact the thread's content needs to remain constructive.
It's in response to this:
@lisse24 said in San Francisco.:
@arkandel said in San Francisco.:
'Silencing' doesn't happen very often here - moderation is pretty damn light. I've had to give a couple of warnings for personal attacks in non-Hogpit threads, and booted that one guy who was trolling every thread.
I just want to point out that no matter how much, how little, or what sort of speech you moderate someone is going to be silenced. If you go full-SJW, you may end up silencing some people who have controversial views, or just those who are scared of speaking up for fear they'll say something wrong. If you let the classic internet "bro-mentality" rule, you sideline PoC, LGBTQ folk, and women, creating a hostile environment that effectively silences them. If you refuse to stamp out inflammatory speech, the people who like fights and drama for drama's sake will rule the day, and anyone who wants a reasonable discussion on an important topic will end up silenced and marginalized. I know I'm posting this in the hogpit and the decision about which type of speech to allow here was decided long ago, but the idea that no moderation means everyone gets to be heard is BS.
And that's a fair point so I wanted us to discuss it.
For starters a disclaimer; MSB has only two actual rules about moderation. You can't attack a person outside of the Hog Pit (attacking opinions is fine) and you can't be blatantly racist, misogynistic, etc.
The general idea is to avoid going too far with sanitizing language, so for an actual 'formal' offense to happen there needs to be no question the rules were violated; it's the difference between "kill all Jews!" and "I don't like dealing with female staff". The first will get you into our shortlist for removal, the second makes you sound idiotic but unless it's persistent and it looks intentional (which is usually the case, as troll bait) we wouldn't intervene as administrators.
This has at least a few effects:
Just because you are permitted to be ignorant it doesn't mean ignorance is protected. In the scenario above, for example, you are going to get flamed... and you'll deserve it.
Sometimes people use this clause to derail conversations just to be, well, shits. Slapping the comment in the middle of an otherwise tense but ongoing debate in the Mildly Constructive section, for instance, is pretty much guaranteed to move the thread to the Hog Pit within a few pages.
The lines aren't always clear. There's a fair question about just how SJW-y we want this forum to be, especially as the mention of some words triggers people to different degrees; the easy example would be "bitch" or "cunt" used as insults. As it stands my inclination is to leave it in the 'endangered zone' area above; it can get you yelled at by posters, but unless you're doing it on purpose just to pick on people, it's not going to get you banned.
Dealing in absolutes isn't just for the Sith; it also lets MSB admins moderate without requiring all of us to develop advanced groupthink. What I think is offensive and my life experiences and biases differ from @Auspice's or @Ganymede's as we look at a gray area, yet all three of us would nuke from orbit someone who promoted domestic violence. Do keep in mind administrators are also posters; just because we are rolling our eyes at you it doesn't mean you're in trouble (and it's on us to make the distinction clear).
I'd like your opinions on this. Please remember to stay civil, if only to escape the meta-irony of a thread specifically meant to discuss it devolving into its own discussion material.
I like it whenever I see someone unironically use 'SJW' as a pejorative because then I know I can safely ignore anything else they ever have to say and not really miss out on much.
Game Dev is a bad place for this.
It should go in Mildly Constructive.
Forum is not a game.
Bad, @Arkandel.
Saying the quiet parts out loud since 1996.
@arkandel said in MSB, SJW, and other acronyms:
@auspice said in MSB, SJW, and other acronyms:
Forum is not a game.
Citation needed.
Okay then:
We are not developing a game. This post was mis-filed. Move it, dagnabit. Do not sully the filing system! 
Saying the quiet parts out loud since 1996.
@auspice said in MSB, SJW, and other acronyms:
@arkandel said in MSB, SJW, and other acronyms:
@auspice said in MSB, SJW, and other acronyms:
Forum is not a game.
Citation needed.
Okay then:
We are not developing a game. This post was mis-filed. Move it, dagnabit. Do not sully the filing system!
FINE!
@arkandel said in MSB, SJW, and other acronyms:
@auspice said in MSB, SJW, and other acronyms:
@arkandel said in MSB, SJW, and other acronyms:
@auspice said in MSB, SJW, and other acronyms:
Forum is not a game.
Citation needed.
Okay then:
We are not developing a game. This post was mis-filed. Move it, dagnabit. Do not sully the filing system!FINE!
Good boy, have a cookie.
Saying the quiet parts out loud since 1996.
@auspice I feel objectified.
I am sad. I saw the thread title and thought it was going to be a lexicon, and was hoping PHB would make it on the list, since I hardly see it any more and feel old when I do.
(This is long and kind of got away from me but this is actually something I've been discussing with people RL too so I thought I'd just let loose. Feel free to ignore!)
Personally, I don't believe in moderating speech. At least not to a severe degree. I'm a believer that words are harmless, it's the intention behind the words that have meaning. I developed this mentality through a lifetime of working in phone related jobs and an extreme dislike of passive aggressive behaviors and phrases like "Oh, I kill them with kindness." Rude is rude regardless of what tone you're using.
Further, while there are certainly those individuals who see other sexes or races as lesser I think when one person calls another person a name it's not in the belief that the name in question represents an entire subset of humanity but rather they use it because they know it will inflict emotional harm on the person they are using it against. For instance, if Man A calls Woman B a "bitch" it's either because that woman is Dee Reynolds or because they know that calling Woman B a bitch is one of her triggers. It is unlikely because they think all women are "dogs" to be cowed and broken.
Finally, I think some things that should be quite clear such as racism is often not quite clear because of how each individual person perceives things (IE how they are "triggered" by things). For example, and I'm going to use things like "the n-word" instead of the actual word even though I think that is patently ridiculous just so I hopefully do not trigger people, BUT on the Big Brother live feeds (yes I watch Big Brother) there is a little person (I'm not sure if midget is offensive so I'll just use little person). He was explaining to a woman who happens to be black how the word dwarf or midget was offensive to little people (I forget which word it was). He said it would be like calling a gay person the f-word or a black person the n-word. Now he used the actual words. She did not get offended by the use of the f-word but went ballistic over the use of the n-word.
To me, I see nothing wrong with how he used either word. He was using them to explain how another word was as offensive to him as those words were to other people. He was not using them to cause emotional distress or to denigrate a type of person. He was just using it as an example of how severe another word could be considered and yet he was still roasted for being a racist by the woman on the show and the internet as a whole (well, the whole who bother to type things in comment sections).
So...in short I guess my opinion on forum moderation of speech is that you're damned if you do and damned if you don't but I think a poster's intention is much more important than the actual verbiage they use.
@zombiegenesis And it is just really hard to read inflection and intent when using words too. Moderation is subjective on that really. None of the mods are mind readers, if they are they are probably keeping it a secret because I know I would be all about asking if they knew winning lottery numbers, like all the time.
@Insomnia Absolutely, I agree 100%. It also unfortunately gives an edge to the more level headed but still rude passive aggressive types over the maybe less level headed but possibly better meaning and less eloquent types. Thus we're back to the damned if you do and damned if you don't.
I believe that speech should always be unmoderated and that social admonishment will take care of course correction, if necessary.
Coming from a place with actual limitations to what they call freedom of expression, down to and including the very necessary element for freedom of speech called anonymity, I find that calls to moderate and squelch 'undesired speech' in any way is like adding a ball and chain to one's own ankles.
Because the goalpost of what's acceptable will keep moving, the more you call for said moderation, until it's 1984 (see my forum avatar) and Big Brother is watching you for signs of Oldspeak.
@deadculture said in MSB, SJW, and other acronyms:
I believe that speech should always be unmoderated and that social admonishment will take care of course correction, if necessary.
That's my expectation. However it comes with a caveat; if a person is attacked in the process of applying the admonishment they won't get 'bailed out' by the administrators, especially in the Hog Pit.
So if General You gets triggered by a word and decides to correct the poster but they push back we won't jump to your rescue - at least not from a moderation point of view - since it's not against the rules per se.
It's up to the community to regulate itself, which I'm hoping we can do, but which also puts everyone at the relative mercy of cliques. I might agree with General You and I can even post to that effect, but I won't save you from the people grouping up.
@deadculture
I mean nobody's government is going to come to MSB and say we can't call each other nasty names (or, if they do, that'd be pretty amazing). I always cringe at the conflation of laws curtailing freedom of speech and the moderation private companies and groups like a bunch of fucks on a message board should or shouldn't engage in.
@arkandel It comes with another caveat: 'the process of social admonishment' == 'popularity contest'.
Right and wrong are very rarely determinative; 'how many friends you can rally to all scream at the same person at once or attack them', on the other hand, frequently does.
@three-eyed-crow I can be arrested for saying something that an NGO thinks it's racist even when it isn't.
Such as, I know a professor who lost his job and got arrested because he posted the picture of a dark beer, and said:
'For those who said I don't like the dark ones.'
Now he's in jail because some people decided that, a beer joke, was outrageous and racist. In a country where judges have a lifetime position and even when they screw up, the most they get is compulsory retirement. To the tune of, I don't know, 100K USD a year.
So yeah, I could be arrested for things I post here if someone finds it objectionable based on the standing law. In fact, they can subpoena MSB to break my anonymity, get my email, subpoena Google or whatever other provider for my real name, and then keep going up the chain until they get my address and I'm in handcuffs for something I said on the internet.
@three-eyed-crow said in MSB, SJW, and other acronyms:
@deadculture
I mean nobody's government is going to come to MSB and say we can't call each other nasty names (or, if they do, that'd be pretty amazing). I always cringe at the conflation of laws curtailing freedom of speech and the moderation private companies and groups like a bunch of fucks on a message board should or shouldn't engage in.
At the same time we get people expecting us to read every single thing posted somehow.
Shit, I've had paid full-time jobs for moderation and even then no one expected us to read every single post made. We were expected to check reports, emails/messages to the moderators, and read "hot spots." Not every single thing.
Even on paid moderated sites, there was an expectation that the community could handle itself to an extent. That it'd function as a sort of ecosystem.
Look, when it comes down to it: I don't give a shit. I don't want to police people. But a fairly large portion of these boards wants to attack people for the sake of attacking people and for whatever reason they can't go to 4chan or reddit to get their kicks. No. They wanna do it here. And once you're into the 'ha ha I'm just gonna be an ass even though no one is having fun except me' it's gone beyond free speech and into the equivalent of pulling one fighter off another because the fight is fucking over goddamnit.
Hence the: attack the idea, not the person.
But at the same time, people... learn to identify when someone thinks the idea is bad and isn't going after you. Learn when 'That's a fucking ridiculous concept' is different from 'You're a fucking idiot' so you don't lash out at them and oh look your thread is in the hog pit.
We play text based games. 'Tools Required: Reading Comprehension' is on the tin.
Unless somebody is like actually directly intentionally attacking somebody - which is more an issue of harassment than speech I think - then usually Im p securely on the side that it's better to just let them say all of their stupid gross bullshit and expose themselves to ridicule and their ideas to being torn apart by people who, like, live in reality and aren't in terror of the lizard jews at the center of the still somehow flat earth
IMO when you just refuse to let somebody speak even when its noxious ridiculous bullshit I think you run a risk of letting them scream "see people ar censoring me for telling the truth" w just enough of a hint of an air of legitimacy that stupid people will sometimes fall for it
and then you get breitbart
@surreality said in MSB, SJW, and other acronyms:
@arkandel It comes with another caveat: 'the process of social admonishment' == 'popularity contest'.
Right and wrong are very rarely determinative; 'how many friends you can rally to all scream at the same person at once or attack them', on the other hand, frequently does.
with everything i said, yeah also this is v unfortunately often still the case
@arkandel It comes with another caveat: 'the process of social admonishment' == 'popularity contest'.
Right and wrong are very rarely determinative; 'how many friends you can rally to all scream at the same person at once or attack them', on the other hand, frequently does.
