Regarding administration on MSB

[saosmash]

Most people who post in the Hog Pit are perfectly civil and reasonable in other areas of life because context exists.

I don't buy this thing that the Hog Pit is some kind of magic curse on game society or something because people feel free to be ruder there.

[Misadventure]

@saosmash You are correct. However, some trot out issues of purity, loyalty, and authority in regards to participating in it. Game authority carries over only in limited ways, and the desire to control the story cannot be met, so the purity of desired or perceived narrative is besmirched.

For others, fairness and reduction of harm are more important.

So yeah, conservative vs liberal core values. Free press is the devil.

[Thenomain]

@misadventure said in Regarding administration on MSB:

Free press is the devil.

I think of Soapbox et al. to be more the public commons, or some bizarre mash-up of the two where the desire for "public commons" is there, but it's controlled as a privately owned place. There is the question of who is the target audience, as well as what is proper decorum.

[mietze]

I think most of the toxicity on games occurs because of private-ish eco chambers. Small restricted channels, off game chats, etc.

One of the arguably valuable aspects of the community vomitorium (WORA, SWOFA, Hog Pit, whatever) is that it is a public thing that’s beyond the control of any one partuicular small group echo chamber. Sometimes that means that people can respond or see how one sided a perspective is (whoa, I was part of x group and that’s not at all what I remember/saw).

Can it become it’s own echo chamber, yeah. Though people here will argue/be contrary just to be so/take up devils advocate. So I think it’s less personally toxic on a game than sekrit whisper campaigns, ugly chats.

[Misadventure]

To be fair, my experience is really with FreePress, the student run version of the NEWS function at my college. We wanted to be able to talk about what we wanted, with the language we wanted, and we agreed that a opt in list was better than the one that everyone was auto joined to.

It also had moderators quit over and over and over as trolls and wankers worked to see what would make them quit. My approach: It runs from my account. I will report threats. Otherwise, I do not care.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

@mietze said in Regarding administration on MSB:

I think most of the toxicity on games occurs because of private-ish eco chambers. Small restricted channels, off game chats, etc.

Yeah, this I agree with. This negativity still exists, and it's waaaaaaaaaaaay worse on Skype/Discord even if you aren't forced to acknowledge it. At least on a third-party forum, other posters can apply push-back to obvious BS.

[surreality]

I have said this before and will say it again. If I'm ever running a place, and it comes up on MSB, or a problem comes up on MSB... ? First, I'm gonna be upset that they didn't come to staff about it first, but at least I will become aware of the problem and can do something to solve it.

I had -- to the surprise of literally no one -- policy on this.

It went like so:

We don't care if you bitch about the game or the staff on game forums; that is not something we consider 'doing harm to the game or staff' and participants here should feel free to do so without fear of reprisal on the game itself.

If that's what it takes for us to find out there's an issue we can try to resolve for you somehow, that's what it takes. We'd rather you come to us if you have a problem, but understand some players are extremely wary about approaching staff at all due to negative experiences reporting an issue in the hobby, and thus might prefer to post something elsewhere as a sounding board or other outlet. We'd ultimately rather have a game with fewer problems than a public reputation for having no problems that only exists because no one spoke up somewhere, even if that somewhere isn't here.

Bear in mind, if you burn a bridge with another player by attacking them elsewhere in this way, we're not going to rebuild it for you. Similarly, if you spread nasty gossip about someone on skype or discord or a similar venue and it gets back to them -- and it always eventually does -- we're not going to demand they pretend it never happened, and we're not going to insist that they continue to interact with you if this is brought to us with a request to sever contact with you and your characters.

[mietze]

I would be upset if someone came here over my game or me.

My first reaction would be anger that they didn’t talk to me first, but to be honest, I’d also be more internally sad that obviously I had not been behaving in game or as staff in a way that the person felt that they could or would like to come to me first.

I think one of the things to strive for as staff is that you get to the second stage very quickly and don’t linger too long on the first. If that makes sense.

[surreality]

@mietze I just remember the Firan flood. So many of those players were terrified to page, and would spend like... five sentences apologizing for paging before asking a simple CG question, then were like... shocked that they got instant answers and 'that's what we're here for!' and asked if they needed help with anything else.

It was pretty eye-opening re: how some folks in the hobby really are scared of anybody with a staff bit, period, which is really depressing. I'd never actually seen that before, since the games I'd worked on previously were much smaller and everybody more or less already knew each other, and were already chill and familiar with who they were asking (or would ask somebody they were chill and familiar with). So I kinda get it, in the sense that it may not actually be (generic) you they're scared of at all.

[Misadventure]

@mietze and others:

Sometimes people may come here to vent a little, and see if they have an actual case, or maybe just having others propose alternate causation ideas is enough to remove the issue. So don't always take it badly if someone comes here first.

Now, if they complain how they could never tell staff this, well, okay then.

[surreality]

@misadventure Thank you for sparing me the dreaded double-post to add that, since my awake-too-long brain missed that bit and was about to ramble it out in likely nowhere near as concise a form.

I see a lot of '...uh, is this a thing I should be worried about?' sometimes, so I don't rule that out.

Some folks only feel they should bug staff once something is glaring a huge, and want that sounding board. I sorta hate this, because I'm one of those folks that, when I staff, I'd rather hear about little shit that unnerves or bugs someone, since even if that specific thing is not actionable, if it becomes a pattern, that's a lot more easy to see and more directly address. But if they're going to sounding board it first, I'm not gonna hold that against anybody. I've been there, too, not sure if something is what I think it might be and wanting some feedback before I report something.

[Misadventure]

@surreality That is part of why I am here, to learn how to communicate with you hoomans.

Do not suspect I am not human.

[Arkandel]

@misadventure One third of this place's administration is handled robotically, so.

[Thenomain]

@arkandel said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@misadventure One third of this place's administration is handled robotically, so.

I dunno, @Ganymede has been acting a bit...human lately. Is it possible that he's becoming a real boy...girl...thing?

[Arkandel]

@thenomain Only the kind dogs bark at.

[Thenomain]

@arkandel said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@thenomain Only the kind dogs bark at.

I'd howl for that.

[Ghost]

@surreality said in Regarding administration on MSB:

I'm still just not on board with this theory that incivility or poor behavior on games is the fault of the forum. I just can't get behind that one at all.

No one's said this. What was said was that the Hog Pit creates a demilitarized zone to take the fight off of the game server and onto a place where they can't get banned from the game for it, and by result, lends to more negative behaviors on the games.

@Ganymede You're right. If not the Hog Pit, it'll just happen in all of the other places people congregate, like Discord or Skype or Google Hangouts. It's going to happen either way. It's a shame. My main concern, however, are the people who don't partake in these games who still linger around to get in on the action when it comes to punishing people for slights.

It's a very weird thing, for me, and I think it'll spread to the Administration of the forum (bringing this back around to topic). I think that any attempt to curb that semi-bloodlust factor will only result in people being dragged into the killing fields.

[surreality]

@ghost said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@surreality said in Regarding administration on MSB:

I'm still just not on board with this theory that incivility or poor behavior on games is the fault of the forum. I just can't get behind that one at all.

No one's said this.

You may not have. Others have, explicitly.

[Thenomain]

@surreality said in Regarding administration on MSB:

No one's said this.

You may not have. Others have, explicitly.

I will back this up. I was going to say when she did that I couldn't remember who because it was a silly thing to even suggest, but then I started thinking about it: Culture propagates. If something is okay in one place, then people can start believing that it's okay in other places.

The fear of this can drive people here to call this place a hive of scum and villainy. That is, to stamp out bad behavior in one place, it's an understandable method of trying to solve the issue of stomping out all bad behavior.

I personally think that this is a bit of an insult to the ability for adults to act like adults when treated like adults, and expected to act like adults, but this is my take on the entire issue.

[Arkandel]

@thenomain said in Regarding administration on MSB:

I personally think that this is a bit of an insult to the ability for adults to act like adults when treated like adults, and expected to act like adults, but this is my take on the entire issue.

To me the really insulting thing is the implied suggestion we can only be adults and treat each other with some civility if there is some rule forcing us to. Or that otherwise we'd all be acting the way of the Hog Pit, all the time.

I really detest that idea.