Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.

[Apos]

I really don't think that saying 'avoid personal attacks' is a good metric for trying to stop threads outside of the Hogpit from becoming super hostile. Like, Tempest's first post that started the genosha split was probably not intended as an attack but saying, 'Hey doing this will make your game fail' whether it's right or wrong is something that's pretty likely to start a fight. Basically anyone talking about anything that assigns fault or grades anyone's ability in this hobby in any way is going to be fighting words, whether it's said as fair minded criticism "I think your design choices there were flawed..." or not even remotely constructive, "your RP sucks and that's why you can't find RP."

In other words, it probably is healthier if the hog pit is just seen as the place to do criticism, because the odds of people arguing and it staying civil aren't great. Hell, most of the threads there don't stay that hostile to begin with, they change topics every page or so and keep going for way long after the original argument.

[Doozer]

How come no one has made another forum? Are there others besides TMD?

Safe space mu forum? WORA 2.5 forum?

I like MSB as it is. I don't need a safe space.

[Pandora]

@krmbm said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

Also, I don't think a "vocal few" people who want the board to be made out of rainbows should have a greater voice than the "vocal few" who appreciate having a place to call a spade a flaming piece of cunty spades.

Listen, I don't know if there's something specifically wrong with your genital area (there are all sorts of antibiotics these days, best of luck) but how about not using the word cunt/cunty as an acceptable mud-slinging insult when that's actually precisely the sort of shit that will get you slain in the Hogpit.

[magee101]

@arkandel hinestly i much prefer hogpit shove. It removes fear of censorship by allowing the content to still be visible but only in a space that is "appropriate". I definately think though that looking at people that are CONSISTENTLY causing discussions to be shoveled into hogpit should be looked at. It is also a community bad that as soon as someone makes an ass of themselves in non hogpit we follow them right up with our own bullshit which tends to cause entire pages of hogpit shoveling. Tbh, a lot of people in this community are far to easily #triggered for their own good.

Tl;dr keep hogpit moving over deleting entirely, look into temp banning ppl that derail convos to hogpit lvls extremely often

Also I judt wanted to mention this is probably the most active and earnest mod team I have seen in a forum. Sometimes maybe a bit too involved (i understand it is the hogpit but you are still mods and should try to maintain a modicrum of professionalism, being snarky dicks to your users even in hogpit tastes sour in the mouth). Especially these last couple months I have felt so much interaction and personalization from ya'll and its ty!

[magee101]

@ganymede said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

@faraday said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

OK but the way it came across was Ark saying basically "This is what we are considering doing..." which has a very strong implication that you moderators had already discussed this amongst yourselves and come up with a joint solution. So to hear you and Auspice then saying completely different things is honestly a bit baffling.

I understand.

So, I'll say it for myself: I'm speaking from my mind right now. If I'm speaking as part of the group, I'll make that clearer.

Lots of thoughts here. I think we're going to meet and confer soon enough.

TBH you guys are a team of three people. That means communication lines are very short and the game of telephone is unlikely to have dramatic results. You all three seem like people that understand professionalism. Being a mod working in this capacity even if a passion project should be professionally done. Thus to me, it looks very bad that three people are individuals and not a TEAM. With 3 people there should be no varying facets shown from the mods, you 3 should be united especially in situations like this or SIMPLY do not comment because as people are pointing out, it is confusing the fuck out of us and making us even more worried.

ETA: even if you guys dont have your poop in a group, you need to show us you do. This multifaceted approach doesnt instill confidence in your userbase it erodes it.

[faraday]

@apos said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

Like, Tempest's first post that started the genosha split was probably not intended as an attack but saying, 'Hey doing this will make your game fail' whether it's right or wrong is something that's pretty likely to start a fight.

That is a pretty serious mischaracterization of why that thread was split. Sure, it started out as "hey doing this will make your game fail", but then people started chiming in with increasingly-hostile rants about how all MUSHes are basically derivative crap and the code for anything other than Arx required no effort. That's not civil. That's not even remotely constructive. And the final straw was someone calling me "tiresome and disingenuous", which may be mild by hog pit standards but is still pretty blatantly a personal attack. There's no justification for any of that in a civil debate.

The reason debates don't stay civil around here is because a good many people around here don't value civility. They have stated repeatedly that they'd rather the whole forum be gloves-off. There's really no incentive for them to even try to maintain civility in the non-pit sections of the forum, because the worst thing that happens is the thread gets moved to the pit (which is where they'd rather everything be in the first place) . How in the world is that an effective deterrent?

We do a pretty good job keeping the political flame wars to the politics board. Why can't we keep the MU flame wars to the hog pit? Because the people involved just can't be bothered to rein themselves in.

@ganymede said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

And I'm too old to think there is anything hip, edgy, or valuable of having a website that has a section that condones and even encourages people to be shitty to one another.

That's where I'm at.

@shincashay said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

How come no one has made another forum? Are there others besides TMD?

Personally? Because I took the mods at their word that the mudslinging would be confined to the hog pit. As long as they're still trying to do that, I see no value in trying to split the community in half.

[magee101]

@faraday your first couple paragraphs here I mostly agree with. Idk why more people cannot just go "If I want to be a dick I can go to hogpit for that". Thats what I do. Non hogpit sure I can be a luttle hostile but I try to keep it constructive or at least shallow enough it isnt genuine shitslinging, yet I see people constantly not following this philosophy and I think part of it is the lack of repercussion. I think we should keep hogpit around for ppl that like to be tozic lil shitheads, and I think shit that turns toxic should go there, but I also think those that cant keep their toxicity to hogpit need to get punishments.

[surreality]

@faraday said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

That is a pretty serious mischaracterization of why that thread was split. Sure, it started out as "hey doing this will make your game fail", but then people started chiming in with increasingly-hostile rants about how all MUSHes are basically derivative crap and the code for anything other than Arx required no effort. That's not civil. That's not even remotely constructive. And the final straw was someone calling me "tiresome and disingenuous", which may be mild by hog pit standards but is still pretty blatantly a personal attack. There's no justification for any of that in a civil debate.

^ This. A thousand times over. (I will refrain from going into the 'easy is hard' argument here, and how astonishing and wonderful it is that we have people in the community working their asses off to create tools that allow others to make a game with relative ease or how hard it is to do that, but anyone who has ever touched any sort of software or development project intended for dissemination rather than an individual project already knows the 'easy is hard' maxim very well.)

The reason debates don't stay civil around here is because a good many people around here don't value civility. They have stated repeatedly that they'd rather the whole forum be gloves-off.

For the record, I don't want that.

We do a pretty good job keeping the political flame wars to the politics board. Why can't we keep the MU flame wars to the hog pit? Because the people involved just can't be bothered to rein themselves in.

This is what I think should be happening, and when it's not happening, people should be reined in.

[Kanye Qwest]

@faraday said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

And the final straw was someone calling me "tiresome and disingenuous"

literally what

[Arkandel]

@magee101 said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

Thus to me, it looks very bad that three people are individuals and not a TEAM. With 3 people there should be no varying facets shown from the mods, you 3 should be united especially in situations like this or SIMPLY do not comment because as people are pointing out, it is confusing the fuck out of us and making us even more worried.

Perhaps I'm in the wrong here - it wouldn't be the first time - but I don't value conformity very much when it comes to administrating MSB. Consistency yes, absolutely, and each time we had to actually act we made sure we agreed beforehand whether it was to decide on whether someone had stepped over the line, or to introduce a new forum or whatever else.

I just took a look at some stats for this past month, and there have been 4717 posts made in that time. Other than like 5 of the ones Lain's assorted accounts made that got deleted the fraction of the rest we even considered acting on (let alone actually did anything with) is tiny. Miniscule.

Sometimes things get blown way out of proportion and this is one of those cases. We're not trying to resolve an epidemic here but to discuss with our users how to improve. We've been working on keeping toxicity outside of the Hog Pit, and we want to do a better job at it, so instead of conferring internally to make a decision solely on our end we brought it to you guys to see what you thought.

In the process of doing so we - as members of this community - also presented our individual thoughts. Which differ, since we're not a hive mind. I don't view this as a problem, especially since moderating a forum is different than staffing a MU* which requires the regular (everyday, in fact) exercise of authority, having a united front, clear separation between what one does as staff and what they do as a player, etc.

So I disagree with you here. I do think though the messaging itself should have been clearer when I started asking for input, which is solely on me. So my bad there.

[magee101]

@Arkandel I see you points of view but I don't agree with them. I like that you came to your users rather than just soing internal but having a united front as authority is not just a MU thing, its a professionalism thing. Individualism is good and to be expected from large admin/mod teams but such a small team should be presenting a united front from the getgo and speak as a group about official things not as individuals. But these are just my opinions on professionalism in community management!

[Lotherio]

@kanye-qwest said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

@faraday said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

And the final straw was someone calling me "tiresome and disingenuous"

literally what

I think this right here is the point, its not constructive and means to belittle how insulted one felt I suppose? Its just a little stretch from actual name calling and while the words in quotes <name calling> can be switched to anything to help illustrate the differences .. at what level of worrds does it become unacceptable. Hamilton was shot over name calling; sure, it was a long rivalry, but near the end it was name calling - Hamilton called Burr despicable in their rhetoric and it escalated from there.

[faraday]

@lotherio said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

I think this right here is the point, its not constructive and means to belittle how insulted one felt I suppose? ... at what level of words does it become unacceptable.

Yeah that's it in a nutshell right there. There was more to the insult than what I quoted, but regardless of the words it was an insult. It wasn't constructive. It wasn't civil. It was just name-calling for no better purpose than to say "shut up, your opinions aren't welcome here" -- in the specially-marked-as-constructive Game Development forum no less.

@Arkandel may believe that stuff like that makes up a "tiny, minuscule" fraction of the posts here, but that is not my experience. If this crap only happened once in a blue moon, we wouldn't be complaining about it.

[Apos]

@lotherio I think that was more because saying I mischaracterized an argument is similar to saying someone was disingenuous, so if the latter is an insult then the former would be also. I think this underscores that it is difficult to talk about this stuff in a civil way that doesn't spiral.

It is very understandable that any accusation of not doing work or that their creations are derivative is insulting and unfair. I really think that sort of thing is unnecessary and very unfair to creators, and you and Faraday in particular do tremendous work, but it is also extremely difficult to talk about any of this in a way that someone doesn't take personally.

[krmbm]

@pandora said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

Listen, I don't know if there's something specifically wrong with your genital area (there are all sorts of antibiotics these days, best of luck) but how about not using the word cunt/cunty as an acceptable mud-slinging insult when that's actually precisely the sort of shit that will get you slain in the

I object to the assumption that I have genital areas, and I find your post to be personally insulting and mud-slinging.

[Lotherio]

@apos said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

@lotherio I think that was more because saying I mischaracterized an argument is similar to saying someone was disingenuous, so if the latter is an insult then the former would be also. I think this underscores that it is difficult to talk about this stuff in a civil way that doesn't spiral.

It is very understandable that any accusation of not doing work or that their creations are derivative is insulting and unfair. I really think that sort of thing is unnecessary and very unfair to creators, and you and Faraday in particular do tremendous work, but it is also extremely difficult to talk about any of this in a way that someone doesn't take personally.

I am not in all threads. Just someone saying 'I was called disingenuous' with a reply of 'literally what' reads in straight forward context as the reply being confounded that someone was insulted by being called disingenuous. I don't have the full context of course.

And of course to further the point of how these things lead to dumpster fires, in comes jokes about genitals and mocking what is insulting and mud-slinging. Like, in a few pages, there will be popcorn gifs to help further illustrate the slippery slope that is being discussed.

[Ganymede]

@apos said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

I think that was more because saying I mischaracterized an argument is similar to saying someone was disingenuous, so if the latter is an insult then the former would be also. I think this underscores that it is difficult to talk about this stuff in a civil way that doesn't spiral.

There is a difference between saying that someone is mischaracterizing an argument and that someone is disingenuous. In the first instance, I'd receive that comment as an invitation to re-state; in the latter, I'd receive that as a comment on my character.

But that's me. I'm the butt of many jokes and lawyers, sharks, and the bottom of the ocean. I don't expect people to be a Dreadnought of Thinly-Veiled Insults, as I've been constructed to be.

Changes are being discussed.

[faraday]

@apos said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

I think that was more because saying I mischaracterized an argument is similar to saying someone was disingenuous, so if the latter is an insult then the former would be also.

I don't want to spiral off into a grammatical debate, but mischaracterization != disingenuous. One just means I think you made a mistake - the other has synonyms like "lying, duplicitous, hypocritical". I certainly meant no offense.

[ThatGuyThere]

@thenomain said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

Entry level community theatre is the exact same way. It's easy to spot a stable influence once you see what happens behind the scenes.

I will agree with this analogy, each theatre is a community, and I do see each of the actual games we play on as communities, but I wouldn't see a board on-line where people talked about theatre and community theatres to be communities either just like here.
Though as an interesting bit of data I am part f message boards that discuss pro wrestling, general sports, and Big Brother (reality TV show) as well as here. The wrestling and general sports ones don't have any pretense of community while here and Big Bro one do but there is far more contention on the Big Brother one and here. I am honestly curious at to weather the topics are natural more contentious which causes the desire for communal feelings as a response or if the sense of attempts at forcing community lead to contention, or if it is just random small amounts of data my brain wants to force into a pattern because that is what brains do.

@arkandel said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

People in general don't dislike each other. I don't believe that.

Believe it or not, I genuinely dislike people in general, not just here or in gaming but in life. I don't keep track of who I argue with from one point to the next in 90 percent of cases but trust me my baseline view of humanity is thinly veiled dislike.

[Haven]

This thread delivers.

You lunatics are awesome.