Nov 22, 2017, 7:19 PM

@arkandel said in Staff and ethics:

So while we're on the subject of rules... do you think it's better for staff to create a detailed set of policies, or keep it to generic "don't be an asshole" guidelines?

Yes.

Policies are there to create a direction, and that direction should absolutely be "don't be an asshole". When you work for a company, you can't easily claim that something wasn't explicitly written down as a reason why they can't fire you. And yet companies still have a detailed set of policies known as The Employee Handbook.

In fact, companies start with a general statement, often called a Mission Statement, and break it down by degrees from there. It works. You know that if you take a Tier Four character then you're expected to submit two scene logs a week in order to encourage scenes and RP on the game. You shouldn't need to be explicitly told that you also shouldn't use those scenes as a way to hilite your other character.

There are things you shouldn't need explicit rules about, because the implicit rules already touch on it. But there should also be explicit rules so that people can have a reference.

There are things that shouldn't even need implicit rules. "Don't be a jerk" is one, though as quickly mentioned that's an opinion as much as anything else. Every game should have a section called "What We Expect", or "What We Don't Do Here".

So yes. "Don't Be a Jerk" means ... what? Also, what else should I know?

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And for fuck's sake, people, make sure the staff are seen following the rules or someone knows they're being talked to when they're not.

I've seen this as staff and player too many times to count:

Staff: You were a jerk.
Player: I was being goaded by this other staffer.
Staff: This isn't about them.

Yes, yes it is about them. This is about staff not upholding the values that staff is talking down to a player about. Not talking to this other staffer makes this staffer complicit and undermines their ability to effectively dole out ethics-based punishments. All that the staffer would need to say is:

Staff: I'll be talking to them shortly.

Or even:

Staff: We can talk about them in a minute. For now, you were being a jerk.

That's it. Cronyism is bad enough in our daily lives; we don't need to continue it in our funtimes.