What Would it Take to Repair the Community?

simplications

Cullen sounds awful. I have empathy for the victims. The personal kind of empathy that comes from a shared experience. I don't feel like sharing much of my own story save the detail that the person who took advantage of me was a prominent member of a MU in-group. Telling my story would have got me nowhere but publicly blackballed. Instead I just cut ties with that person's character. That only got me privately blackballed through a whisper campaign by my abuser's in-group. Didn't spend too much time on the game, or the hobby, thereafter.

I appreciate that you've provided an example of how all of this focus on keeping the stories of certain bad actors alive can, sometimes and through significant effort and luck, result in action being taken against a serial abuser whose individual actions look less problematic until they are considered in the sum. Your post here was infinitely more compelling than anything else I've read so far on this site, so thank you for going through the trouble.

My concern isn't in protecting the super bad actors like Cullen. Honestly, I have to give my position a bit of a think now that I've read about him. Here's what I'm struggling to reconcile, and maybe you have an opinion. How do we allow a way for people like Cullen to be identified, without creating a forum that allows privileged groups to victimize basically anyone they want through character assassination? The stuff that isn't reports of actual criminals but instead the "I think this person sucks" over what are actually very minor personality conflicts, that then result in pages of someone getting dragged by the friends of the poster.

Kassien

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

How do we allow a way for people like Cullen to be identified, without creating a forum that allows privileged groups to victimize basically anyone they want through character assassination?

I've been thinking about this while reading this post and during reviewing the harassment policy for my own game. I also take this as someone in RL who had false accusations against him that nearly destroyed my life as a teenager.

The basic thoughts I had, my actual harassment policy being nearly 3 pages of collected yet to be organized thoughts;

Taking all reports seriously and investigating all reports. Any level of staff should be able to start an investigation and demanding staff to escalate it if they do not feel comfortable.
Keeping the report anonymous from any party not directly involved.
Mechanical systems. Unfortunately I feel like big brother, but I want to log everything in my game. Only to be reviewed for these cases.
Anonymous reporting system? Still up in the air about this as I'm worried it'll be a time trap. Leaning more on the side it will be more useful than not.
All parties are innocent until deemed guilty.
How to treat players that deliberate claim false accusations?

I'm such a skeptic I don't believe we can ever have a good enough system, or that there is only one system. It's got to come down to a working system. Unfortunately I don't know how to keep people from being hurt while the system is being worked.

Ghost

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

I'm calling bullshit on all of this. You're a phony. Using the language of the oppressed while siding with the oppressor is textbook fascist baloney, and while the current crop of useful idiots might eat it up, I am not buying any of it

If one was interested in making a fascist baloney sammidge, is that purchasable at a grocery store? That sounds delicious.

Oh, and could you also please communicate with other people without calling them racists, misogynists, fascists, crypto-fascists, homophobes, etc etc etc etc etc etc? I don't think everyone on the forum is a fascist.

Devrex

@Tirit I think you're doing as much as it's possible to actually do. We're nerds running games. We're not trained investigators. And even trained investigators make mistakes.

The hyperbole that anyone who makes a mistake in an earnest investigation attempt or in the crafting of a policy just loves abusers and wants to protect them is inaccurate. Sorting through the thorny tangle of the interactions of people is a very difficult thing to do. All you can do is your best.

All places will also have to figure out where they are in the spectrum between "wild west, enter at your own risk" and "big brother." All players will have to decide what steps they'll take to protect themselves in these environments as well. (This is not victim blaming. If you get hurt cause your RL information gets out there we still blame the bad guy who hurt you. I'm still going to Dad at folks and say remember you're on the Internet and giving away personal information is risky behavior. I say this having given away personal information to online people who have become RL friends).

I, too, am really struggling with "how do we call out the true dangers while avoiding character assassination" and I haven't reached a coherent philosophy on that one yet.

Only to say:

None of us truly knows the history of most of the others here and assuming that everyone who is leery of the character assassination game has never been abused or has never faced trauma is dismissive and unkind.
This is not a war of the sexes thing. Quite a few of the most famous abusers have been women. I know of quite a few men who have been abused.
It is not all on the heads of game runners. And not all game runners are equally talented in all aspects of game running.
It would be nice to make a distinction between, wow, yeah, that was a really boneheaded move you made while you weren't thinking clearly and you probably deserved to be banned from that one game, here's hoping you do better on your next and here is a person who is literally life destroying who needs to be driven out of the community. Right now they're being treated as exactly the same thing and they're really not.
Wanting to be measured about evidence or investigative responses is not the same thing as protecting abusers even if it did not work in an individual's favor on an individual game. To be clear, yes, corroborating testimony is evidence, it is just weaker evidence than logs and such. A game runner has the responsibility to thoughtfully consider all evidence and to investigate all claims, (as you, @Tirit, yourself just said). The game runner also has the responsibility to know that false accusations, character assassinations, and whisper campaigns are a thing and to do the best they can.

What we could sure all do with a lot less of though is the virulent sarcasm, the snarky name calling, and the howling hyperbole that is coming from certain quarters. Nor do we really need to rehash non-dangerous but foolish behavior over and over again; let the banning that dealt with such behavior be the end of it. Nobody should have to wear a scarlet letter for years on end for milder bad behaviors, yet that seems to be what happens.

hobos

I don't think Kestrel called anyone a fascist, just a phony. I appreciated the rest of the post. Obviously Cullen is someone to really look out for.

If someone is trying to take on-game, mechanically-logged information to another medium in order to coerce other types personal information out of someone, I'd actually consider that very deserving of report. A pattern of that kind of behavior seems likely to indicate an abuser.

I agree with Devrex's last paragraph (maybe biasedly); I think it's actually relatively simple to distinguish between people who are truly predators and just someone people don't like, as long as a culture of 'I don't like that person, they did some questionable things, they're probably a rapist' is not encouraged.

If you're dealing with some behavior that you're not really certain of and you want to talk about it with the community to see if you're being gaslit, you can always do it without naming names and throwing out casual offhanded accusations. After a report is made and investigation done with the evidence, then it makes more sense to name people. But a culture of weak accusations doesn't make strong accusations carry more weight in any way, it actually does the opposite and provokes the kind of push-back that will end up heartening actual abusers.

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

@hobos You don't have to pretend to be someone else. You can still be you. You just distance yourself from your past by not announcing yourself as having played X, Y, or Z characters. It isn't that foreign of a concept.

I've done it. It wasn't that difficult for me. People did not like my style of playing when I first started. I changed my views and moved forward without having to worry about the people with the torches and pitchforks who thought I was a horrible human person because I had a different perspective on how funtimes game should be played years and years ago.

But regardless of all that, I definitely prefer an outlet that encourages people to change for the better and grow.

This makes sense as long as nobody finds out who you are and gets upset about it. I don't feel like it's right to cozy up to people who don't like me under a different screen name, but that might be some personal itchy problem of my own.

Ghost

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

How do we allow a way for people like Cullen to be identified, without creating a forum that allows privileged groups to victimize basically anyone they want through character assassination? The stuff that isn't reports of actual criminals but instead the "I think this person sucks" over what are actually very minor personality conflicts, that then result in pages of someone getting dragged by the friends of the poster.

Ennnh. I don't know if it's possible. I'm trying to think of a way, but if there is a way I just can't see it at the moment. Mostly because:

I think calling out people has become a side form of entertainment for a number of people in the hobby. Even if there was a better way, there would still be a desire for the wrong way.

The Hog Pit allowed a sort of "unrestricted public shaming Olympics" whether it was deserved or not. I think some of these personalities don't want a constructive, better way to do this. I think what they want is a place where they can shame people for being crypto-fascists and laugh about how stupid person X or Y seems to them. I think it's gone on for so long now that it has been normalized and (as you see happening in recent history) if you take away the place where people can do that they'll protest.

Fact is, there simply aren't enough impartial people to ensure things are handled fairly, and even if you had someone impartial enough to handle those accusations in good faith, it would still come down to "whether or not <forum persons handle> likes them".

Ghost

@hobos Yeah I just don't think it's productive to call someone a phony, throw out the word fascist, and then accuse a poster of possibly being someone like Cullen incognito trying to use the discussion as a way to clear the case about them. It's not helpful.

hobos

@Ghost

Wow, good point. I didn't catch that angle of it. (Which, re-reading, it is ...right there and obviously stated.)

Ganymede

Briefly, I concur with Kestrel.

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

If someone is acting in a problematic way on a game you're on, you should take it to the game runners.

Recently, I did this.

What happened was something that isn't close to the level of Cullen, et al. It was apparent from the response that the game runner was aware of the issue. Regardless, I brought receipts; however, I know of nothing that was done to address the situation. That lack of action was one of the reasons I lost interest in the game.

This story has occurred many times in my 25+ years.

Going to the game runners is never a guarantee of action and brings with it a threat of exposure because, as Kestrel pointed out, that person may be good friends with staff. And if you want to stay on that game, you are potentially putting yourself in a difficult spot, one that might one day lead to your departure or start a whisper campaign against you.

That's why the original incarnation of this place was created.

They have the opportunity to hear what you have to say, possibly compare it to other reports they may have heard, and get the other side of the story from the accused.

To what end?

Due process is meant to guarantee the rights of the accused; however, no player has any cognizable right on any game, save for what is promised by staff. Staff who think they can adequately or properly investigate a situation in a manner that promptly and completely addresses it is kidding themselves or lying to players. Games by design are at best benevolent dictatorships and at worst a god-fantasy out of Black and White. So the only reason anyone would want to follow an investigatory procedure is doing so to protect their own sense of self-righteousness.

If the best one can hope to be is a beloved tyrant, it serves no purpose to pretend to be anything else.

As for the value of speaking here as opposed to game runners:

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

When abusers are banned, there are always people who are like, 'Wow that seems unjust. I happen to know his cat's uncle and he's a great guy. Maybe staff are the real abusers and banned him for no reason?' But when there's a public thread full of people coming out of the woodwork to put their hands up and say, 'This happened to me too,' it's a lot less sus.

Reporting has value. And a person can report what happened here. It is not difficult to make a report that follows the forum's rules, in my opinion, like so:

The player of Cullen was banned on two other games for his behavior. On Game X, the player, who went by the name "Azazello", approached me by page complementing my PC's played-by photo. He said that he thought the actress was cute and that he always wanted to have sex with them. I stopped communicating with him at that point.

(This is a fictional account.) Even with the rules here, it is simple to report someone's behavior. Stick with what happened. Take quotes if desired. I hope that people will do so moving forward.

Devrex

To what end?

Due process is meant to guarantee the rights of the accused; however, no player has any cognizable right on any game, save for what is promised by staff. Staff who think they can adequately or properly investigate a situation in a manner that promptly and completely addresses it is kidding themselves or lying to players. Games by design are at best benevolent dictatorships and at worst a god-fantasy out of Black and White. So the only reason anyone would want to follow an investigatory procedure is doing so to protect their own sense of self-righteousness.

If the best one can hope to be is a beloved tyrant, it serves no purpose to pretend to be anything else.

I disagree with this premise. In the past, as a game runner, I tended to overreact to the first person who brought me their sad sad story, empathizing with them immediately, and bringing down the hammer with very little to no investigation...exactly the behavior that quite a few individuals say they want.

Later I discovered that by failing to get all sides of the story, I had actually played into the designs of bad actors, sent some of their victims packing, and sent a message to the other victims that I would back this person's word, making them feel even more trapped.

So maybe I'm lying to myself, I'll grant it's possible, but my particular motivation is not wanting to make that particular mistake again, and not wanting to play into the hands of actual abusers again.

It also grows out of the place where I started gaming: tabletops. Where the GM has the responsibility to adjudicate the rules fairly and to handle problem players. At heart I'm still just a GM, with a slightly different table, and to me adjudicating fairly requires that I know what the heck is actually going on in the first place. And not allowing myself to be manipulated because I can't slow down to do a little due diligience.

YMMV of course, and I'm not denying that staff often does a fat lot of nothing. Which is why I say...not all game runners are equally talented at all aspects of game running. Or equally principled. Or are even coming from the same places in where they feel they've made mistakes and created bad outcomes in the past.

Ghost

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

I disagree with this premise. In the past, as a game runner, I tended to overreact to the first person who brought me their sad sad story, empathizing with them immediately, and bringing down the hammer with very little to no investigation...exactly the behavior that quite a few individuals say they want.
Later I discovered that by failing to get all sides of the story, I had actually played into the designs of bad actors, sent some of their victims packing, and sent a message to the other victims that I would back this person's word, making them feel even more trapped.

This is exactly where I get stuck.

It is SO fucking easy to manipulate people, and even the most even-handed people approached with these complaints often get stuck in a rough spot ONCE AGAIN where the threat of retaliation is prevalent. It always seems to come down to threat of retaliation.

Honest GM gets approached by angry player who is super upset, has a list of complaints about this fascist abuser etc etc etc with minimal evidence but they're very adamant about it:

The want to act and protect people is a very real emotion. No one wants to allow someone else to be mistreated. Everyone wants to do what is ethically right.
HOWEVER failure to act for whatever reason, even a good reason, runs the risk of becoming abused yourself by angry people throwing garbage, using words like "rape apologist", etc.

I've come down on people myself based on word-of-mouth accusations only later to find that I was actually being enlisted as extra muscle in what was actually an attack on an innocent person, and I regret it. I've been the target of such things, too.

So maybe the REAL issue at hand is:

Lack of a reporting system that has some kind of vetting baked into it to protect innocent people that DOESNT protect bad actors
How to deal with threat of retaliation being such a common occurrence socially in the community

simplications

I gotta thank @Kestrel again for their post, it's made something click that I just didn't get the whole time I've been participating in discussing this topic. I bet that sounds like I'm trying to cheekily throw shade given the language they used to address my posts but people get heated when things are personal and I can tell this is personal to them. No hard feelings.

Having not been a Hog Pit reader, my knowledge of what went on in there came from second-hand reports of people I knew or knew of getting dragged, Mean Girls style, over relatively petty shit that just always seemed like interpersonal issues, miscommunications, or whatever. My perspective, and "agenda" if you want to put it hyperbolically, was to address that behavior. I saw it decrease enjoyment in the hobby for a lot of people I met while playing. I saw it drive away people whose sides of the stories I heard. I saw the obvious cases where the reason someone was getting dragged was because they didn't fit the cultural norms established by the privileged group. I'm not the kind of person to engage much in the OOC community, surely due to unresolved pain from the time I was taken advantage of, which happened very early in my MU* career. I took those events personally because I kept my sphere real small and it hurt to see people go.

I'm not interested in silencing voices that are raised to legitimately try to protect potential future victims of awful people. For a bunch of reasons that could fill a whole other thousand-post thread, there seem to be a lot of bad actors in the MU community. I don't think that preventing people from raising awareness about actual bad actors will "repair the community". That would, quite obviously in my opinion, be a step backward.

The behavior I'm concerned with limiting is that that appears much more low-stakes. The jabs at people who just don't fit the prevailing cultural trend. A genuine miscommunication or hurt feeling between two people that occurs without intent of abuse or malice, resulting in someone being frozen out of a game. We often deal with intense subject matter and get into intensely intimate relationships in this hobby. Just like in real life, it's easy for wrong turns in those relationships to spiral out into negative energy that poisons the behavior of even well-meaning actors. The whisper campaigns, public dragging, or character assassination that can come as a result of legitimate miscommunications or interpersonal issues that wound pride or deal emotional damage is the entirety of what I'm interested in addressing. That stuff, though lower stakes than actual predators, hurts the community too.

(edit: a few words in the opening sentence to better express myself)

Ganymede

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

Where the GM has the responsibility to adjudicate the rules fairly and to handle problem players. At heart I'm still just a GM, with a slightly different table, and to me adjudicating fairly requires that I know what the heck is actually going on in the first place. And not allowing myself to be manipulated because I can't slow down to do a little due [diligence].

I hear you and understand, but I was not advocating for snap judgments either.

There is a distinction between due diligence and due process. The former involves investigating alleged facts; the latter involves providing equal opportunity to both sides of a dispute before a judgment is made. By all means, staff should do the former before taking an action against a player; however, that does not mean that staff needs to engage in the latter before that action.

... not all game runners are equally talented at all aspects of game running. Or equally principled. Or are even coming from the same places in where they feel they've made mistakes and created bad outcomes in the past.

No truer words have been said.

Seraphim73

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

I assume this is the general 'you'? Because I didn't actually ban a single person. I voted, with a group, on who should stay and who should come back and who should remain banned, and lest someone think we are a hivemind, the ban votes were not unanimous.

First "you" was definitely general, as in "the admin of this board at the time." The second "you" is... also general, I suppose. The folks who are being called bullies by folks on this board are gone, either because they've been banned or have chosen to leave.

As for needing popular friends to speak up, I'm certainly not anyone's idea of a popular figurehead among any group here, but right there in my example, folks defended me. We've seen people who dislike folks who have been accused still come out of the woodwork to defend them from false accusations. This community, before it was splintered, was pretty good about that. There will always be flying monkeys, but there will also always be those willing to defend the innocent.

And @Ghost, I'm with @reimesu -- just don't defend Spider. But yes, I would do my due diligence to see if the person was Spider... and also if they had done the thing my friend said they had done. And I would be one of the folks who spoke up to try to clear the person's name if the accusations weren't true, because people did that for me.

Derp

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

As for needing popular friends to speak up, I'm certainly not anyone's idea of a popular figurehead among any group here, but right there in my example, folks defended me.

...really? I mean, you only ran what, two? Three? Wildly popular games, and staffed a few others, and happen to be probably the most FS3-savvy combat coder in the hobby right now.

I think you underestimate how much support that can bring with it.

Arkandel

@Seraphim73 is a goddamn (*) Whitecloak, is what he is.

(*) Bloody, I mean.

Ghost

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

And @Ghost, I'm with @reimesu -- just don't defend Spider. But yes, I would do my due diligence to see if the person was Spider... and also if they had done the thing my friend said they had done. And I would be one of the folks who spoke up to try to clear the person's name if the accusations weren't true, because people did that for me.

Sorry, I'll reiterate.

I was asking if you would do your diligence to confirm that the person wasnt being falsely accused even IF the accused WERE Spider. Not to see if the person accused was Spider.

And please don't take that question negatively. I just think that while there are people I don't like in this hobby, impartiality is a balancing act, and sometimes that balancing act means siding against popular opinion, a mob of people with pitchforks, and best friends.

I always appreciate the people who stood up for me when I was falsely accused, so I'm with ya there.

Seraphim73

@Ghost Your hypothetical isn't applicable, because if I knew that Spider was on my game, they wouldn't be on my game anymore.

Now if, after I showed Spider off my game for being Spider, I had reason to believe that my friend had actually falsely accused them? I'd do my due diligence and check out. I'd talk to anyone else involved and then it seemed likely that my friend had falsely accused them, I would talk to my friend, give them a warning, and take any further accusations from them with a grain of salt.

As for a Hog Pit thread, I would likely respond something like, "From what I can see, this accusation is not accurate. However, this player has been banned from my game because they are Spider, and they have shown themselves to be repeatedly toxic to their community." Because yeah... I don't want false reports out there, but there are people in this community who are toxic and should be removed from it.

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

I think what they want is a place where they can shame people for being crypto-fascists

If there's a place where you can't shame actual crypto-fascists for being crypto-fascists, I don't want to be a member of that community. And your continued use of "some of these personalities" and "they" is complete bullshit, you were one of those most vitriolic members of the Hog Pit, you just couched things in terms you thought were nice (sometimes). @Kestrel previously called you out with receipts for some of the many times you've done this. You were/are part of the problem, and you were/are part of normalizing it, and now you're trying to shove that all on people who have been split (some by their own choice, some not) from this community and are in no position to correct your gaslighting.

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

I think you underestimate how much support that can bring with it.

Thank you for calling those games wildly popular and the compliment.
Definitely not a coder, just someone who can play with numbers and hit locations to tell a story.
I certainly wouldn't call myself a core of either of the current two boards, nor of the MSB that came before the split.
Community members rallying to my defense came before any of this.

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

@Seraphim73 is a goddamn (*) Whitecloak, is what he is.

Some of the most fun I've had on a MU*. And that's Child of the Light, thank you.

Ghost

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

If there's a place where you can't shame actual crypto-fascists for being crypto-fascists, I don't want to be a member of that community. And your continued use of "some of these personalities" and "they" is complete bullshit, you were one of those most vitriolic members of the Hog Pit, you just couched things in terms you thought were nice (sometimes). @Kestrel previously called you out with receipts for some of the many times you've done this. You were/are part of the problem, and you were/are part of normalizing it, and now you're trying to shove that all on people who have been split (some by their own choice, some not) from this community and are in no position to correct your gaslighting.

And yet, here I am, not insulting people and calling them out, using terms like "some of these personalities" to generalize. I'm discussing the ideas and concepts and not the people themselves, which I would appreciate you doing the same.

As far as Kestrel and their receipts, a few pages in this thread (I think) they called out stuff that happened years back, which I have since apologized for and mea culpa'd multiple times, even back in the day. I'm not going to get into a conversation about whether or not I was a part of the problem, because I was. At some point I switched gears to trying to reserve that spite for people bullying on others or trying to punch down at me, which in those cases, fuck em. I prefer not to instigate things these days, but you can guarantee I'll clap back when people are being shitty.

I literally started this topic because in theory if any of these issues or rifts are going to be resolved this type of conversation should be taking place, even if I'm not directly benefiting from the results. I'm not trying to shove anything on anyone, nor am I gaslighting. Just trying to move forward like a regular human being who's sick of seeing people being treated like shit.

Let's stay on topic.

TNP

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

Having not been a Hog Pit reader, my knowledge of what went on in there came from second-hand reports of people I knew or knew of getting dragged, Mean Girls style, over relatively petty shit that just always seemed like interpersonal issues, miscommunications, or whatever

So in other words, a lot of the second hand reports you heard were told to you by those being accused of something and then declaring their innocence, or that it was being taken out of context, or that it was all a misunderstanding, or 'they' were just over reacting. Totally understandable. The guilty never declare they didn't do it or are being framed and anyone you actually know and like couldn't possibly be guilty of something.