Make MSB great again!

Wizz

I legit love Bill and Ted and try my best to subscribe to their philosophy (and obviously don't always do so great but y'know), so I will take it literally, thank you, haha. I only asked because it's an image macro and those can be ambiguous.

Auspice

@wizz said in Make MSB great again!:

@Auspice

I legit love Bill and Ted and try my best to subscribe to their philosophy (and obviously don't always do so great but y'know), so I will take it literally, thank you, haha. I only asked because it's an image macro and those can be ambiguous.

It was the first thing to come to mind with your question and rather than merely quote Bill & Ted, the image seemed the best response.

And I'd like to think we all strive for it, but y'know. We're human. Humans are fuckups.

Paris

@arkandel This site enables harassment.

You allow known stalkers, with known pasts of stalking behaviors, to harass and slag other players. My messages blew up with a half-dozen regular posters who are afraid to speak up for fear of being further harassed here and on various games where they know those folks play, and who have mentioned other players who feel the same, by name.

You tolerate that, and it's why I mostly have stopped supporting or interacting with this site, beyond maintaining my ad thread. It's why a number of folks I know refuse to come here anymore, why even more read but refuse to post, and when this site's name come up, they assume it's just more shitposting and vendettas.

This is wora-level bullshit.

And yes, I have had to deal with players who were extremely shocked and hurt to see themselves and their friends harassed here, many of whom have never posted here at all. And you think that's okay, too. It's not okay. It drives players out of the hobby, especially new players.

I shouldn't even have to post about this, because it shouldn't be happening. If this site was genuinely good for the hobby, most people wouldn't be put off by the mere mention of it.

Paris

@arkandel said in Make MSB great again!:

When ES asked me if I wanted to keep this place running - the alternative was shutting it down - it came down to a simple realization for me; the hobby needs a place like this.

The way it presently is, no, it doesn't.

Salty Secrets

I think the proposed changes are pretty good. Keeping ad threads cleaner and making a more obvious divide between constructive reviews and throwing mud seems like the way to go to solve a number of issues that keep coming up.

For the rest, though? I think it's fine as it is.

While some people like @Paris don't seem to want to accept it, the bottom line is this: if this place shut down, someone would make a new one. If that one shut down, someone else would make a new one. If that new place shut down, you get the idea. This isn't up for debate, we've seen it happen already.

People need an outlet to voice their frustrations with the hobby, warranted or not. There'll always be abusive admins, abusive players, and this place existing doesn't change that. If they weren't being disruptive here, they'd be disruptive somewhere else. The behaviors that make this place "undesirable" are behaviors you'd continue seeing even if we closed shop. You'd see it on whatever new forums were made to bitch and on the games themselves. You'd see it in Livejournal communities like Bad_RPers_Suck. Maybe someone'd create /r/WORA.

I'd rather people be assholes here than on the games/at the players they're being assholes about. You can ignore this place, but you can't ignore a MUSH you play on without making the decision not to play on it. In fact I'd say a majority of players in the hobby do a very good job of ignoring - or not knowing - this place even exists. Because we don't advertise. Because the hog pit requires signing up for rather unintuitively, and someone who found this place by accident wouldn't know to look for it.

If you can see the hog pit - the toxic part of this place - you made a conscious choice to see it. If you don't like what you see, you can leave the hog pit group and never have to care again. If someone keeps nagging you, your staff, your players, on public or private channels, to "check out what these jerks are saying about a player/a game" you can tell them to stop bringing it up. Being obsessed about what people say here, if you don't like it, isn't healthy, so here's a novel idea: just stop looking at it.

MSB is the vocal minority in every sense of the word. Better everything that it entails be happening here than elsewhere.

WTFE

@salty-secrets said in Make MSB great again!:

If you can see the hog pit - the toxic part of this place - you made a conscious choice to see it.

The toxic part of this place is this place. The latest round of bullshit that gave me my epiphany that this is WORA, and not a grown-up version of it, was in the reviews section which is not in the hog pit. There's not a lot of difference between the hog pit and the non hog pit portions of the site; perhaps a slight shift of proportions between shitty and non-shitty behaviour.

The hog pit? It's all around us. Everywhere.

This is WORA. No more, no less.

If you don't like what you see, you can leave the hog pit group and never have to care again.

As long as you don't read the ads section. Or the various playlist threads. Or …

Arkandel

@paris said in Make MSB great again!:

You allow known stalkers, with known pasts of stalking behaviors, to harass and slag other players.

I'm unaware of any stalking. I wasn't an administrator at the time it sounds like this happened, but if you give me some details - in private or otherwise - I'll treat it no differently than if it had happened today.

@wizz said in Make MSB great again!:

@arkandel
What do you mean by help? What are you asking for and what are your expectations?

From your (generic-you) end I need more adults in the room. I need people who will show by example how we expect players to act, and that MSB isn't where you go when you just need to rant and vent your frustrations at your perceived enemies.

Or to put it a different way, if you (again, generic-you but also you) just stop participating because of badly behaved posters, the scale is tipped just a little further the wrong way each time.

As for the rest, steps are being taken. Give me a minute here, guys.

Tempest

This is Mildy Constructive, so all I'm going to say is, uh.

.....Didn't somebody accuse @paris of stalking and harassing when the F&L shitfest was going on? Or was that one of the other F&L staffers. If it was one of the others, I'm pretty sure it was somebody who @paris is attached to at the hip and not just 'random other staffer'.

ETA : It was @botulism. And @paris was involved in the discussion. It happens somewhere around here. http://musoapbox.net/topic/68/random-bitching/14693

I'd take @Paris's comments above about how horrible MSB is, with a grain of salt. Or a bucket of it.

His(her? Fuck if I know. Don't care. Its.) problem seems to stem from "my friend got involved in a slapfight that went both ways, and now I hate everybody related to MSB!"

For the record, I literally have no fucking clue who @Cupcake is.

Arkandel

@tempest I don't actually have any information here. Hopefully @Paris will provide something.

Mind you, we probably do need a robust policy on handling harassment. MSB lacks the separation of IC/OOC which is kind of a good and a bad thing - it's harder to conceal asshattery behind "oh, that was just my character, hah-hah" but also it's more direct when it happens.

Either way - abuse won't be actionable only if it's reported, and being in the Hogpit will in no way constitute an excuse. "The gloves are off" isn't the same as "carte blanche to be a raging asshole", and if that isn't very well understood then it will become evident.

Tempest

@arkandel said in Make MSB great again!:

"The gloves are off" isn't the same as "carte blanche to be a raging asshole",

Raging bitches are acceptable though, yes?

Or is MSB sexist.

Arkandel

@tempest Your question is a trap, any answer will make @Meg come after me.

Ganymede

@wtfe said in Make MSB great again!:

The toxic part of this place is this place.

If you asked me to come to your business and tell you how it could be better and I told you to burn it to the ground and start over, I am pretty sure you would not listen to me, and would, in fact, probably stop listening to me.

You're not helping.

Ganymede

@gingerlily said in Make MSB great again!:

The 'MSB effect' is on PEOPLE not games. It is damaging because not all game runners are intensely resilient and sometimes when a person is called useless and pointless or jokes are made about whether they are seeing a shrink, they are hurt, insulted, and no longer interested in running a game or dealing with anything MU* related ever again...or for a few months at least. If people posting on MSB were slightly less vitriolic it would be better for everyone.

I'm going to pick at this for a second.

If people were slightly less vitriolic in general, life would be better for everyone. If we all carefully picked our words, or kept our messages somewhere between Sunny's succinctness and Thenomain's grumpiness, the messages would be clear, cogent, and concise. But we all know this is not going to happen overnight.

There was a time when this place was different, at its inception. It was so full of good feelings and felicity that HelloRaptor felt alienated, old, and useless (although, to be fair, he is at least two of these three things, no matter what). But, the good old hate is on the rebound again, for whatever reason.

Ever wonder why?

Frankly, I think it's because we've stopped caring: not about each other, but about what and how we say things. Or, at least, we aren't taking the time to consider this before hitting that submit button. Maybe if we did that, this place would change slightly.

And then, maybe we keep on taking more and more time to consider what we're saying, how we're saying it, and if we can say it better. And then, maybe this place would change some more.

But you can't legislate that any more than you can legislate Bill & Ted's Prime Directive.

What we can do is just consider it.

Sunny

@arkandel

I do not think this site should touch on handling issues that happen anywhere else but this site. So if the harassment can be pointed at here and whatnot, yes, please, deal with it. But certain people like to make accusations of harassment against people who they have extensively harassed, and also accused people of harassment for things like leaving their game. Too much potential crazy. But the PM thing, where people repeatedly message folks after they say stop, that should be actionable. And traditionally has been.

Tempest

One of the inherent problems here, and why the answer is not just "moderate everything", is the fact that it is usually pretty clear that the vast majority of people who have some 'omg MSB is so terrible' complex, are also people who, at some point....

Had an argument of some sort here, and either "lost", or did something to make themselves look even worse, and rather than just realize they fucked up or accept they're not exactly an angel, they shift gears to "DOWN WITH MSB!"

I really, really have trouble believing things like @Paris's claims about "omg there are 20 players who are terrified of being harassed by some person from MSB, actually ON GAME". It sounds fake. It sounds like any generic "we're victims, so forget/ignore every bad thing we ourselves do!" cover up.

I've yet to play a MUSH where you can't literally decide when and who you RP with.

The only cases of actual, genuine stalking & harassment I've ever seen, tend to be performed by people who are ostracized from the entire community.

Cases like @Paris's are almost always grey area "he said, she said" incidents where it's pretty clear neither side is really innocent, but they make it a "ME OR THEM, PICK!" scenario and then take their ball and wander off with some "oh I have so many friends who think like me too! they think you guys are all the worst!"

That's nice.

Kanye Qwest

@tempest I think there are two discussions, here. A general "how can we make MSB a more useful and somewhat more pleasant place to engage with" and "someone is making wild accusations about harboring stalkers or something something vague something".

The latter doesn't really negate the former.

Arkandel

@sunny said in Make MSB great again!:

I do not think this site should touch on handling issues that happen anywhere else but this site. So if the harassment can be pointed at here and whatnot, yes, please, deal with it.

Oh that's what I meant. We can't act on things that happened elsewhere, for the most part, if for no other reason than that we won't be privy to any kind of confidential information staff there may have, and not all people involved are necessarily on MSB to defend themselves or present their case.

But if it happens here, then it needs to be handled here.

Lithium

@arkandel And it /does/ happen here, upon occasion. Thankfully @Glitch was on the ball when it happened to me. I can only presume @Arkandel will be good about it too.

Sunny

@arkandel

Cool. That is good enough for me.

Lotherio

@ganymede said in Make MSB great again!:

But you can't legislate that any more than you can legislate Bill & Ted's Prime Directive.

You can, its the future, its the totality of future law. We totally saw it when they went to the future. Be Kind To Each Other & Party on Dudes.

@Thenomain may be grumpy at times, but part of the 'reform' should really look at a few words from the grumpmeister that has come up a few times late.

Wrong Fun. Some cute gif of cheering fans while one fan looks in disbelief at the camera like they're in the wrong place all together with that caption; I'd rather type then use gifs.

When a critic comes on and spouts off nonsense and hate from some rhetoric that is easily seen through by some basic fallacy learned in some rhetorical writing class, its just what it is and easy to look after. But under the veil of flames (or vitriol which is a word enjoyed about MSB), there seems to be lots of wrong fun laced into things lately too. Don't mix OCs and FCs, don't use that system, the timeline is wrong, if I did that canon it would be X instead of Y because Y ruins it.

I don't mind hearing that as a reason, but when that breaks into a catfight, it gets Ludicrous (insert a gif of Ludicris with some lyrics or something, 'Get Back You Don't Know Me Like That') . Maybe the wrong thread for it, I'm over wrong fun arguments though.

Secondary to this, Ice Guardians (documentary about enforcers) is on Netflix now, just saying. Getting word out there as far as skilled veterans go ... early on there is props in comparison between Gretzy and Crosby, noting with a good enforcer how many less concussions would Crosby had suffered (or how better he would be) to date. Maybe with Reaves, Crosby will play a full season this year.