Regarding administration on MSB

[Apos]

@faraday said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@wizz said in Regarding administration on MSB:

I don't find the toxicity WORA was known for "entertaining" and I have a pretty low opinion of people who do, and it frustrates and discourages me that big meltdowns like the UH X-Men drama tend to draw new faces who want to see more of the same.

Yeah. I get that @Arkandel has no intention of doing away with the hog pit. That's the mods' right and it is not my intention to beat a dead horse.

But I will say this: We talk sometimes about the future of MUSHing, about how hard it is to draw in new players, etc. As someone who knows writers who might be interested, who has a daughter who some day might be interested... I can't in good conscience invite them into a gaming community that is so darn toxic. And I'm not just talking about MSB here, because the same attitude that feeds the Hog Pit pervades the games too.

Now it's not all bad. But it is pretty disheartening.

The question I ask myself now is, 'Have I helped cultivate an environment where I can be reasonably confident that any new person will have positive experiences, and that no one will randomly be rude to them?' With the community as it is, I don't think I have much choice but to be incredibly strict in order to get that outcome. I pretty much figure anyone running a game has to decide whether they are going to be forgiving, only police the big problems (if that), and accept the churn that comes from annoying microaggressions that drive people off games, or be ready to fight endlessly to stop it.

[surreality]

The question I have to ask myself is whether people are actually trying to make the case that the cause of misbehavior on games is this forum, as that really seems to be the direction quite a few posts are directed, no matter how obliquely. (And it's not terribly oblique.)

Some misbehaviors could find their roots here, sure, if for instance someone saw a bad thing go down on a game and then went to troll the game, as someone did on WORA -- only to hear how not cool this was, much like the people who suggest the same here are told every time. How many of them might have gone through with it if they'd heard the story of the horror show go down from a friend instead of reading it on a forum, without someone saying they understand the impulse, but that they really shouldn't?

I have to wonder if people realize how many people who contributed a great deal to this community over the years have left for the opposite reason; that things were too forcibly civilized for their comfort zone. These people also exist in that realm of 'others that could be here amongst the crowd, but are not'.

I have to wonder how many people staff at UH would have continued to screw over, or how many more people like Elsa or Rex would verbally abuse and exploit who had no warning, how many more people would be sending Spider cash and wondering why their games were going down in flames to a clique no one will admit exists.

All of these what-ifs swing in both directions.

That's because, like collaboration, creativity, contribution, compassion, consideration, and constructive behavior, destructive behavior, microagressions, anger, venting, and other negative traits are part and parcel of being human beings.

So long as the hobby is made up of human beings, these problems will exist on games, because that's where the problem ultimately lies.

The culture on games today is considerably less toxic than it's been for a very long time. Most of the things we talk about now as basic staples of common decency were scarcely considered a decade ago, and while it may be convenient for some to forget it, the origin of those discussions was -- yep, really -- WORA, the hellish cesspit of all evil as its presented today.

And the reason why is the same: because of people, specifically, people who were not going to tolerate horrible behavior on games from other people, even when the proportions of the community focus were completely the opposite of what they are today on MSB. (WORA had one constructive area; MSB has one Hog Pit.)

It's a galling denial of personal responsibility to claim that people being rude to each other on a forum is the root of social problems on games, because if positive and constructive things could emerge from a pile of filth and creative profanity in a place where they were neither the focus nor were they often welcome, we, as people, have no excuse here, where the focus is far more heavily weighted toward constructive collaboration than WORA ever was. Beyond this, there are many people who have never visited here, and bring their own toxicity with them wherever they go, even if they don't last so long these days as they once did.

It is especially uncomfortable to hear this come from people who have most certainly rolled around in the mud themselves; no, the forum did not make you do it. We all have shit, and we all have to own it, even and perhaps especially when we're flinging it around.

[ixokai]

@faraday said in Regarding administration on MSB:

I can't in good conscience invite them into a gaming community that is so darn toxic. And I'm not just talking about MSB here, because the same attitude that feeds the Hog Pit pervades the games too.

Its like we're in different worlds entirely. If I saw anything like the Hog Pit on a game I ran, I'd burn it to the ground, shut it down and leave it buried. I don't. I don't even kind of.

[bored]

@faraday said in Regarding administration on MSB:

But I will say this: We talk sometimes about the future of MUSHing, about how hard it is to draw in new players, etc. As someone who knows writers who might be interested, who has a daughter who some day might be interested... I can't in good conscience invite them into a gaming community that is so darn toxic. And I'm not just talking about MSB here, because the same attitude that feeds the Hog Pit pervades the games too.

I had a bit more on whether MSB is actually causal... but @surreality got it (bizarro world continues). I just don't see that MSB is anything more than a sample subset of the hobby, and if anything, we at least grapple for self-awareness, whether or not we grasp it. That's better than average. I think we're better than the average.

My issue comes to this: You to want to promote this place as a center for discussion of game design etc. I'd love that! I love systems and I love talking about them. I love thinking about how to structure them to create the play you want. But (and this is a huuuuuge, Sir Mix-a-lot worthy but): even in the absence of people vitriol'ing those conversations don't actually happen all that often here, and certainly not to the point of treading novel ground with any frequency. There is, right at this moment, a thread about xp earning rates for... whatever, some game I don't care about. I only saw it in passing. Yet I could have the entire argument with myself at this point, because I (and probably we) know all the beats.

Now, you are one of the very very few people on here who can actually lay any stake or claim to having done something to meaningfully advance the hobby, so it's not on you personally, but if you want to bring other people along with you... I'm not sure simply telling them all to 'play nice' is going to be sufficient.

If we want those conversations to really drive the board, they need to produce. And we have basically two possible sources for insight: pulling it out of our ass (ie, just coming up with novel ideas, which seem in short supply) or analysis of actual play, ie, the shit people do on games. And that second one is why I think robust (and even occasionally harsh) criticism is so important, and especially why we need to allow it without automatically denigrating it by Hog-status. When we conflate those things, it makes it very hard to have any kind of meaningful conversation about the games we're actually playing.

And I think that's just as stifling as a new game runner getting some push-back on a concept.

[Wolfs]

Another thing - and this extends far beyond this form of entertainment - it's a lot easier for people to gripe and complain online about something bugging them than it is to praise something they gain enjoyment from.

Take sports, video games, movies , TV shows, news in general. Negativity about something people generally nitpick to death draws more of a reaction, whether in agreement with it or not.

I'm not saying "just be positive and stop whining." In the cases of a few well-known problem players or a game whose staff is running wild in a bad way, drawing attention to it is good so others can at least be informed if they aren't familiar with someone's crap. Things run the risk of being biased with piling on common, but people can often see logs that let them come to their own conclusions

All that said, sometimes a little extra effort to draw attention to a good thing in this medium can also go a long way. Is there a game that just does it right? A few players on a place who are excellent at who they play or are they great storytellers? Maybe we can see more of that once in a while. It might not matter to people who aren't on the same game and it might not lead to a deep discussion, but it doesn't have to.

The Hog Pit is where the entertaining trainwrecks and rubbernecking happens and that's both fun and often cringeworthy, but that's not all that's out there.

[SunnyJ]

@ixokai Indeed. The moment I see people on pub chan going 'lol **** ****lord you ***** ******* here are logs lol' is the moment I go 'nope' and bail.

[faraday]

To clarify a few things in response to @ixokai @surreality and @bored

No, I am not saying that people being rude on a forum causes people being rude on games. That's absurd. What I am saying is that a culture of negativity can bring out the worst in people instead of the best, and that attitude can spill over into games as well. Especially when it devolves into personal grudges.

I'm not saying MSB or even WORA is all bad. Both have done good for the community in terms of "outing" bad behavior. I'm just arguing that this good could be done without the mud and hostility.

• Good: A whole bunch of independent 1-star reviews of a game complete with logs and/or specific anecdotes of bad behavior. That's a public service.

• Bad (IMHO): Somebody posting a comment about bad behavior, and twenty people who don't even play there jumping in with torches and pitchforks, arguing back and forth, and the thread ultimately devolving into f-you GIFs. Then the bad staff on the bad game goes back to their players all "Yeah whatever, those MSB guys are just a rabid mob, ignore them and trust me."

For every person from MUSHland I know who posts or lurks here, there are ten more who are all: "Oh hell no" because of the negativity - either witnessed first-hand or by reputation. I think that does, ultimately, undermine the credibility and the good the site can do.

I was never a member of WORA. I created an account, logged on once or twice, was horrified, and left. MSB is better than that, but it's still very negative. Frankly a lot of the people I know who are members here - myself included - are too afraid to post new discussion threads because so many of the threads turn hostile.

Literally nobody is saying "no bad game reviews" and literally nobody is saying "only kumbaya, rainbows and sunshine are welcome, if you have anything negative to say - zip it".

All some of us are asking for is a forum with civilized discourse, where acting like decent human beings toward each other in a vanishingly small hobby is required and not laughed at as some quaint little idealistic naivete. This is the same sort of behavior we say we want on our games, why not extend it to the centralized out-of-game community as well?

But whatever. I'm done tilting at windmills for awhile.

[surreality]

@faraday said in Regarding administration on MSB:

All some of us are asking for is a forum with civilized discourse, where acting like decent human beings toward each other in a vanishingly small hobby is required and not laughed at as some quaint little idealistic naivete. This is the same sort of behavior we say we want on our games, why not extend it to the centralized out-of-game community as well?

For all Non-Pit threads, I am completely with you on this. 100%. We may have a different idea of what civil means -- there are some honest accounts of things that are definitely unpleasant and uncomfortable reads, sometimes because they're very personal, sometimes because the behavior they're describing is so gross that even hearing that it happened is disturbing -- but I'm with you on 'people should be able to relate these accounts without the colorful language.' Let's face it, the genuinely bad incidents don't need it to look bad, anyway.

I want people to be able to feel like they can post dev queries or code ideas or even culture questions outside the Pit and not be subject to a deluge of personal attacks. That's where @bored and I got into it for instance, and where shit went very wrong; it jumped over the line from arguing about ideas into insulting each other as people, and I'm not down with that going forward anywhere outside the Pit. (And I'm really not thrilled with it there, either. 'Insult the heck out of ideas and behavior and bad actions as colorfully as you like' in that space I can get behind just fine, and the reality is those are the actual problems in most cases anyway.) Pretty sure neither of us enjoyed that, we both acted like idiots at the time, and I'm not pleased with myself that I went there at all, whatever the reason. (Never fear, man, you're still my favroite almost-but-not-actually grudgewank! ...because we agree on too much shit lately for it to be for reals grudgewank at this point. <shakes a fist at the sky>)

I don't want to see that happen to threads -- but "I don't like this idea" or "what are you going to do to avoid the trainwreck that resulted from the last three games that tried <thing>?" are things that should be OK to say, full stop. (I'm not claiming you're saying otherwise, @faraday, I'm just stating my personal position on it.)

I want to see more idea threads. More new game threads. More new 'how would you handle situation X' threads. I keep asking for a constructive dev projects thread for exactly this reason, since at the moment these posts tend to be scattered amongst ads, shout in the dark, and mildly constructive; it feels like a topic area that needs a home that isn't as restrictive on feedback as what people are talking about re: the ads forum with just q&a and no reviews/etc., but is more akin to 'keep the personal attacks on posters out of it and try to keep criticism constructive', which I don't think is crazytown.

That said, I still think there's a valid purpose for the Pit. There are situations so horrible people will get colorful in discussing them. There are peeves -- things that aren't wrong but still drive people bonkers -- that I would prefer people have an off-game safety valve for. Yeah, if you're dealing with a jerk, they may see ten people agree that <peeve> is just awful and then go back to the game and be a jerk, but that's pretty rare. Usually, somebody carps about their peeve, they're done, it's out of their system, and it prevents it from building and building until they explode on someone on a game. As a bonus, somebody who does the thing that's irksome as can be to a bunch of people without realizing it may see that, hey, that's pretty irritating, maybe I should keep a lid on that behavior, or dial it down to an 8 from 11, at least. A secondary bonus is that if it's something so ridiculously petty and absurd, somebody's gonna say so; that can also be something useful for the peever (I know this is not actually a word, but it's really late) to know in regard to what they may end up spouting off at someone else about later as though it's the very end of the world.

[faraday]

@surreality said in Regarding administration on MSB:

There are peeves -- things that aren't wrong but still drive people bonkers -- that I would prefer people have an off-game safety valve for.

This is an honest question: Why do those peeve vents need to be in the Hog Pit? Can't you vent about, like, "Man I really hate it when people metapose passive-aggressively" instead of making it a personal attack like, "Man, faraday is the worst with her metaposes" ? RL Anger is venting and it's not in the hog pit.

[surreality]

@faraday I don't usually see names named on peeves, but there's no denying that some can be identifiable anyway. For instance, complaining about the ice cream candy colored hair characters, then insisting 'but really it's just this one person who does it'... it may not name a name, but it's obviously a specific person getting on someone's nerves and not actually the behavior. (I say this knowing I have an appointment tomorrow to candy-color my own hair in ways I'm way too old for, so fate, I tempt thee mightily for even using this example.)

I can't speak for other folks on this one, but a peeve to me is a peeve -- not 'this is only annoying when Suzy does it!!!' or, say, 'Suzy is my peeve!' -- it actually is generic stuff like 'snarky metaposing makes me want to make all of my characters psychic sometimes just so they can comment'. While somebody may have tripped the peeve recently, I kinda refrain from saying anything until a little time has passed just to make sure the focus remains on 'this behavior annoys me', and is less 'when Suzy did that thing the other day, boy did it ever sandblast my nethers' even by casual inference. That runs the vaguebooking risk of nine other people suddenly convinced I must be talking about them, but sometimes a couple examples can help then, since it's even less... target-y. (Unless you're really unlucky and somebody, somewhere, that you probably never knew existed, did both of those things fifteen minutes ago on a game you don't even play on.)

I can't say "people should do it like that", but I can say I wish more people did do things like that and I would consider it healthier in general.

I do think it's important for people to have an outlet to talk about things they dislike without having to monitor their language or creative hyperbole, though. In part? This is because while it's not fun to hear, "you're a shit-flinging howler monkey who should die in a fire after being hit by a train and reassembled in a secret government lab full of ex-Nazi sadists!" it's also... ridiculous. It is very hard to take that seriously. It's a lot easier to take something like, "I think your attitude is toxic and you should not be welcome in this community because of it," or "I think you are mentally unstable*," to heart, and be hurt by it, even if the claim is equally absurd in truth. That kind of thing, I've seen an astonishing explosion of in volume, and it's a lot more genuinely personal and cutting in ways the old WORA crew were simply not when generally cavorting around like idiotic trolls trying to slam together as many absurdities as possible back and forth.

• (Which is really quite harsh and ugly to sling around as lightly as it is in a community that does have a lot of members that struggle with depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses, and do everything they can to not let those things ever cause harm others.)

[faraday]

@surreality said in Regarding administration on MSB:

This is because while it's not fun to hear, "you're a shit-flinging howler monkey who should die in a fire after being hit by a train and reassembled in a secret government lab full of ex-Nazi sadists!" it's also... ridiculous. It is very hard to take that seriously. It's a lot easier to take something like, "I think your attitude is toxic and you should not be welcome in this community because of it," or "I think you are mentally unstable*," to heart, and be hurt by it, even if the claim is equally absurd in truth.

If someone called me a "shit-flinging howler monkey who should die in a fire" I would be just as hurt by it as someone saying "you are mentally unstable". Both are hurtful, cruel things to say. I frankly don't want to be a part of a community that welcomes either one.

[surreality]

@faraday And that's understandable, and fair enough.

I feel differently about it, because one of those things is clearly untrue and cannot be possible, and the other?

Again, considering how many people here struggle with mental illness in some form or another, and I've seen how much damage insults like that can do to genuinely good people for whom that is a real, actual life struggle.

No one here can actually be mistaken for a howler monkey.

It's really easy for the internet psychologists (cousins to the internet lawyers, no doubt -- er, not the actual lawyers here, obviously -- and the internet constitutional scholars) to sell a narrative like that about somebody that sticks and does real harm in a way the absurd version simply can't.

[faraday]

@surreality said in Regarding administration on MSB:

does real harm in a way the absurd version simply can't.

Both do real harm. Absurd or not, hurtful words hurt.

[surreality]

@faraday Both can do real harm.

The absurdity? Does no harm to me. It's so ridiculous on its face, the only response it's going to get out of me is a roll of the eyes or a laugh.

Not everyone has the same sensitivities, so it doesn't work to universalize that.

If people sensitive to certain things can readily avoid them by not opting-in to a forum area, I personally think their sensitivities are protected enough.

Some folks are so sensitive to any criticism that they actually can't handle anything other than praise -- and most can agree that's not healthy -- so if we're focusing on making every sector of the forum a welcoming embrace to all sensitivities, it would become a dead zone of silence and thread derails as someone screams about how triggered they are every five minutes by this or that word or turn of phrase and how everyone now must fall in line with their sensitivity, becoming even less useful as a discussion medium for its intended purpose. There's really enough of that going on already, in my opinion at least.

[faraday]

@surreality said in Regarding administration on MSB:

Some folks are so sensitive to any criticism that they actually can't handle anything other than praise -- and most can agree that's not healthy -- so if we're focusing on making every sector of the forum a welcoming embrace to all sensitivities

For goodness sake, there's a difference between "criticism" and calling someone a "shit-flinging howler monkey". And the fact that this is even being debated is exactly the thing that's driving people like me away from this forum.

[surreality]

@faraday I don't think you see the point I'm making there. I'm not saying they are the same thing, or that only the extremes exist.

I'm saying that these things exist on a spectrum.

If 'hurtful words hurt' is the scale, you have to accept that to some, words that are anything other than praise are hurtful.

That makes 'is hurtful to someone' not an ideal scale to use here.

[ixokai]

@faraday Here's the problem I'm having with what you're saying. You're saying this culture of negativity is global and includes the games.

I don't see that.

Sure, MSB and its prior incarnations have huge negative feedback cycles, and while not good, I think they serve a necessary purpose.

That's not the part I take issue with.

Its the statement that it, quote, "pervades the games too" where I go, hold up, wait a moment.

Sure, there's bad games, bad game cultures. But that isn't automatic. I've been on many games, am ON more then one right now, where there is NO HINT of this negative feedback loop that the hog pit includes.

You're painting with a broad brush and assuming that because there is a dark place (MSB's HOg Pit) and a subset of users snark there, there is a culture of negativity everywhere.

I, vehemently, disagree. Breeding a positive culture on a game DOES take an active hand, but its very doable and has been done time and time again. No one's perfect, mistakes will be made, but if the culture leans positive, they'll nod sadly and that'll be that.

[faraday]

@ixokai said in Regarding administration on MSB:

You're painting with a broad brush and assuming that because there is a dark place (MSB's HOg Pit) and a subset of users snark there, there is a culture of negativity everywhere.

I didn't mean to say everywhere. But I have absolutely seen people leave games or start avoiding other players on games based on the negative stuff that goes on here. (ETA: And I don't mean the public shaming of horrifying behavior. I mean just the everyday 'You're an a-hole' stuff that goes on.) If you haven't experienced that, I'm glad for you. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

[RnMissionRun]

@faraday said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@wizz said in Regarding administration on MSB:

I don't find the toxicity WORA was known for "entertaining" and I have a pretty low opinion of people who do, and it frustrates and discourages me that big meltdowns like the UH X-Men drama tend to draw new faces who want to see more of the same.

Yeah. I get that @Arkandel has no intention of doing away with the hog pit. That's the mods' right and it is not my intention to beat a dead horse.

But I will say this: We talk sometimes about the future of MUSHing, about how hard it is to draw in new players, etc. As someone who knows writers who might be interested, who has a daughter who some day might be interested... I can't in good conscience invite them into a gaming community that is so darn toxic. And I'm not just talking about MSB here, because the same attitude that feeds the Hog Pit pervades the games too.

Now it's not all bad. But it is pretty disheartening.

In fairness, it's not a MUSH problem, it's merely a reflection of how entitled and self centered we have become as a society.

Go to any MMORPG, even ones like LoTRO which do not even offer PVP as an excuse to attract asshats, and you'll find the exact same attitudes. Any forum lacking determined moderation will quickly turn into an all-out 'forum PVP' zone. Work with the general public like I do and you'll find the exact same attitudes in many of your customers. It's becoming the norm, both online and off.

Granted, it's much worse in the MU* community given it's smaller size but I think this is due to the fact that we, as a community, are not well people. It speaks volumes about the state of our community when the only forum for open discussion of MUs and MUing focuses so heavily on vengeance, shaming and WrongFun. It's no wonder there are so few new people coming into the hobby. Between the general toxicity of the community and the craziness of so many of the folks running games, it's a wonder there are any active games left at all.

[ixokai]

@faraday said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@ixokai said in Regarding administration on MSB:

You're painting with a broad brush and assuming that because there is a dark place (MSB's HOg Pit) and a subset of users snark there, there is a culture of negativity everywhere.

I didn't mean to say everywhere. But I have absolutely seen people leave games or start avoiding other players on games based on the negative stuff that goes on here. If you haven't experienced that, I'm glad for you. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

... Sure, that happens, because PEOPLE.

People have personality conflicts.

They have misunderstandings.

And yes, some games do get these negative auras that drive people away. I'm not denying it.

I'm saying it isn't all games, and can't be assumed to be the case. I don't even think its the USUAL case.

But it varies.

Staff has a lot (though they don't control it entirely) to say when it comes to the kind of culture a game has.

I've been on games that burned up from the inside out due to culture; and I've been on games which never had a serious drama. It just doesn't "pervade the games too", the MSB Hog Pit/WORA/SWOFA negativity.

That doesn't mean no one has a negative experience. But I deny this pervading negative aura that lays heavy over the hobby.