Regarding administration on MSB

[faraday]

@bored said in Regarding administration on MSB:

how about the fact that the current moderation regime/system/rules/whatever you want to call it seems to be incapable of supporting a thread that exemplifies MSB's purpose. At no point should we feel like our rules exist to protect the dishonest and abusive garbage-people that comprise UH's staff, and yet it seems like the rules have largely served their interests over ours, with a thread about legitimately terrible people being over-moderated, chopped up, etc.

And that comes down to the basic question @Arkandel et. al. need to answer about what is MSB's purpose.

If the purpose is to support civil discourse about MU-related topics, then no - the UH thread did not exemplify that purpose.

If the purpose is to support no-holds-barred discussions to hold people accountable and wield the power of public opinion to bring down games, as the old WORA did... then you're right.

I don't think we can have both, and this thread is illustrating that rather emphatically. Feel free to prove me wrong.

[Tempest]

I really wish people would stop waving this "bring down games" thing around.

It's wrong.

It's a lie.

It's being blatantly disingenuous and looking to be dramatic.

Firan had multiple like...10,000+ post threads on WORA. It didn't seem to have much trouble staying at 100+ characters logged on for years.

If a game is demonstrably terrible in some fashion in terms of the adminning/etc, talking about that here is a warning to people, and something that is needed. When the stuff is /really bad/ and some shill pops up to defend it, yes things will get nasty. Wow. Surprise.

It is not "omg we're gonna shut down that game!"

[Prototart]

Tbh I kind of view it as "the latest version of MU Wikileaks, this time where my descs won't get posted for the crime of mentioning that I have breasts"

[Ganymede]

@wizz said in Regarding administration on MSB:

Like, this is a forum. There is literally no reason to post your first response to something you see, give yourself a minute to breath.

You're probably right.

@Kanye-Qwest, when I jumped in several posts back, I genuinely meant that I didn't think delving further into what had been said was helpful. Your reaction was understandable, and my response was ill-timed and in poor judgment. It does give off the impression that we were circling wagons, and that was the furthest from what I wanted to communicate.

I earnestly am going to take Wizz's advice here and step back. Everyone's got their opinion, and I think that this is as good a place as any to voice it. I've made mistakes recently. Maybe I'm not ready for this. So, I'll accept what comes.

Meanwhile, we are working on new rules of engagement. I don't intend to interject anywhere in the Hog Pit in the foreseeable future, mod-wise or otherwise.

[faraday]

@tempest said in Regarding administration on MSB:

I really wish people would stop waving this "bring down games" thing around.
It's wrong.
It's a lie.
It's being blatantly disingenuous and looking to be dramatic.

It's not being disingenuous when it's quoting what other people have repeatedly touted as a reason for MSB's existence. Now whether or not MSB or WORA ever actually had that power is open for debate.

[bored]

@faraday said in Regarding administration on MSB:

If the purpose is to support civil discourse about MU-related topics, then no - the UH thread did not exemplify that purpose.

If the purpose is to support no-holds-barred discussions to hold people accountable and wield the power of public opinion to bring down games, as the old WORA did... then you're right.

I don't think we can have both, and this thread is illustrating that rather emphatically. Feel free to prove me wrong.

I don't see those as mutually exclusive. They can happen on the same forum, possibly in different areas. IE: In column A, we point out shitty games being shitty and why. We give people a place to speak out where they cannot have their posts deleted, @mailboxes raided (lol), etc.

In column B, we talk about solutions to the shit we see brought up in A.

And, as pointed out, the 'bring games down' thing is a laughable fiction. No one sane thinks that, and it's most often a straw man trotted out by game admins trying to shut up discussion here. Please don't replicate their behavior.

[faraday]

@bored said in Regarding administration on MSB:

No one sane thinks that, and it's most often a straw man trotted out by game admins trying to shut up discussion here. Please don't replicate their behavior.

Feel free to consider me insane if you like, but for me it's a very simple matter of cause and effect.

Why do you warn people about a terrible restaurant? Because you don't want people to eat there. What is the natural consequence if you achieve enough momentum to succeed? Nobody eats there and the restaurant is forced to close.

Will the recent kerfluffle bring down UH? Probably not. MUSHers are notorious for tolerating crappy staff behavior in the interests of their own fun.

But you're not going to convince me that the majority of MSB-ers grabbing the torches and pitchforks don't wish for that to happen.

ETA: I'm not suggesting that we should curtail negative reviews. There should be a way to warn people about crappy games. But there's a difference between someone posting a 1-star review on Amazon with their opinion, and a bunch of people getting into a pages-long flame war of insults and defenses.

[Apos]

I personally would just have mildly constructive a place to discuss ideas and design, and the hog pit a place to discuss specific games or people or examples of behavior. Because the latter is always going to be personal, imo. I'd just open the hog pit up to make membership standard with an opt out, even if I think the whole, 'omg moving to the hog pit is suppressing speech' is histrionic and silly. Right now I don't really notice which threads are where, frankly.

[Ganymede]

@apos said in Regarding administration on MSB:

Right now I don't really notice which threads are where, frankly.

Do you think this is an issue?

Would it help if there were a separate "constructive criticism" area for game reviews?

[Three-Eyed Crow]

@apos
It's only an issue (to my mind) when players are being specifically directed to threads about complaints that are being suppressed on the games they're on. And, like, this happens. This isn't a conspiracy theory or a thing I'm imagining. We can observe this happening. The number of new members recently is not coincidental, I don't think. MSB isn't a huge slice of the MUing community and even discussion of specific games goes right past the people actually playing there until it reaches a kind of critical mass.

Standard with opt-out would certainly be better than opt-in from my point of view, but my view of what the board should be is pretty different than the view of a lot of posters who would opt out of the Hog Pit, I suspect.

[bored]

@faraday Sure, in a very chain-of-consequences kind of way. But I don't think the average (again, sane) person writes a * yelp review thinking 'ahhaha I'm taking these fuckers down!'

You're also kind of generalizing from a thread like UH, which is such an extreme example people have commented on it ('I haven't seen stuff this bad since old school MUD admins' to paraphrase one) to other cases which are a lot less severe. Talking about a problem that is being brushed under the rug on-game (which is a natural defense mechanism of even non total-garbage staff) here can sometimes get it attention, sometimes not.

Do you think the people posting in the VASpider thread, for example, are trying to shut down Fate's Harvest? Arguably they're doing the exact polar opposite!

@Arkandel While you upvoted my last post, the situation I described is not one I think currently exists on MSB under your new moderation regime. Right now it feels like any attempt at criticism is harshly, unduly moderated and that column A doesn't exist, except in a dark shady corner hidden from casual view.

Or put it simply: it is currently against the rules to post 1-star yelp reviews where the public will see them.

I think you desperately need either a new forum category, or a re-categorization of some existing ones.

[Arkandel]

@bored Oh the part I was upvoting for was the last bit, about how MSB doesn't bring games down, and literally no one here thinks we do.

[Thenomain]

@ganymede said in Regarding administration on MSB:

Would it help if there were a separate "constructive criticism" area for game reviews?

This would be far better than forcing all game reviews to the "go ahead and eat where you poop" forum.

The ideology forming here from some (and I honestly don't know who; I've been skimming this thread because it's only cementing my desire to leave the hobby) that anything that is not positive about a game is inviting deeper and less constructive criticism is the kind of slippery-slope logic that I think truly constructive posts should be self-aware about not going into.

Punishing the self-aware due to the bad actors is crappy, and at least for me has a chilling effect on trying to be constructive unless I'm also being Kumbaya.

[faraday]

@bored said in Regarding administration on MSB:

Or put it simply: it is currently against the rules to post 1-star yelp reviews where the public will see them.

I'm actually with you there. I just don't think that forum software like this is a great vehicle for reviews. Would yelp or amazon tolerate one of the review areas devolving into a "You!" "No you!" type flame fest, complete with "F You" meme GIFs? I seriously think not.

Good review sites let you give a star rating and your opinion, perhaps with a chance for a rebuttal from the owner. It varies of course, but a review is very different from an ad is very different from a discussion. What we have here is discussion software trying to serve many masters.

[Ganymede]

@bored said in Regarding administration on MSB:

Or put it simply: it is currently against the rules to post 1-star yelp reviews where the public will see them.

If we were to apply the current Mildly Constructive rules to a new section, would that help? I think you could make a 1-star Yelp review that didn't immediately devolve into Hog Pit territory.

[Tat]

@ganymede said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@apos said in Regarding administration on MSB:

Right now I don't really notice which threads are where, frankly.

Do you think this is an issue?

Would it help if there were a separate "constructive criticism" area for game reviews?

I don't think 'constructive criticism' is quite right, but a 'reviews' section would be good. I don't think you should need to be constructive in your review, you just shouldn't be slinging Hog Pit level of vitriol. IE, I think it should allow for criticism without the constructive part.

Also: One thing that might help is if there were a way, design or skin-wise, to make Hog Pit posts MUCH CLEARER from the unread page. Yes, it's on us readers to notice, but... habits are hard to break, and I, too, have been guilty of not paying attention to where a thread is posted. I don't know if highlighting or bright tags or anything are possible, but I think it might help.

[Thenomain]

@faraday

Well, is it a review, or a viewpoint? "Hey, this happened." Then we talk about the thing. I'm sure this has a name. I think it's called a discussion?

Which is all well and good until someone takes it personally, or responds to it personally, or someone throws a knife then someone else throws a missile. The law of disproportionate response, because emotions are not in check.

@ganymede said in Regarding administration on MSB:

I think you could make a 1-star Yelp review that didn't immediately devolve into Hog Pit territory.

And we have.

But who devolves it into Hog Pit territory? And what is the law when it does?

[Ganymede]

@tat said in Regarding administration on MSB:

I don't think 'constructive criticism' is quite right, but a 'reviews' section would be good.

I'm sorry, but what I meant was a "reviews" section that followed the same rules as the Mildly Constructive section. You would not have to be constructively critical in the review section, no; you just have to refrain from certain kinds of unhelpful comments.

---

@thenomain said in Regarding administration on MSB:

But who devolves it into Hog Pit territory? And what is the law when it does?

I don't know. I would like to say that "offending" posts could be split off into a separate Hog Pit topic, leaving the unoffending posts alone, but that might require too many bureaucratic resources.

[Thenomain]

@ganymede said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@thenomain said in Regarding administration on MSB:

But who devolves it into Hog Pit territory? And what is the law when it does?

I don't know. I would like to say that "offending" posts could be split off into a separate Hog Pit topic, leaving the unoffending posts alone, but that might require too many bureaucratic resources.

Would you encourage a bad enforcement because you don't have the resources?

I don't think you guys have a fair answer, which sucks, but you guys are trying to shift behavior to a goal that I don't think is possible without more bureaucratic resources. Or as @faraday said, you have the wrong tools for the job you're currently trying to do.

[Ganymede]

@thenomain said in Regarding administration on MSB:

Would you encourage a bad enforcement because you don't have the resources?

I don't think this is a fair line of inquiry.

If people would like to have us open a section that is desirable and has merit, so be it. This may tax our resources further. We could always high more moderators, but that may create more problems than solutions at this time.

But inconsistent enforcement is a concern, not a certainty; it's not a matter of encouraging bad enforcement.