Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.

[Arkandel]

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

I can't accuse you of having ignoble intent but I can tell you that you're making a mistake.

It wouldn't be the first mistake I've made, and it definitely won't be the last. But if I'm wrong I'd rather it was about not tolerating open bigotry in a medium I'm the caretaker of.

Do you really think your ban button can protect you, or for that matter, anybody else?

It doesn't have to protect anyone. I just don't have any interest in running a forum protecting hate speech.

[DeadEmpire]

@apotheosis

At this point, that is all I can add to this conversation. If you can't say something without being a bigot, it just shouldn't be said. This isn't the site for that.

[Apos]

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

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

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

It would lower the workload for administrators, allow for the Hog Pit to serve its purpose, and also create a reasonable mandate of civility in other forums.

Our workload isn't the primary consideration. We also need to feel good about what we do here, and administrating an even partially racist, homophobic, etc forum isn't something I'd be interested in doing.

Demanding ideological purity always backfires. I can't accuse you of having ignoble intent but I can tell you that you're making a mistake. This policy you stated is a recipe for a purity spiral, the kind where you find yourself blindsided by a devastating dose of reality when you least expect it. Do you really think your ban button can protect you, or for that matter, anybody else?

Look. Rick. I don't even dislike you. Not really. I think your posts are often dumb, but you are obviously trying to be calm and reasonable this time. You register millions of times basically trying to participate, you keep talking about new game design approaches and you probably legitimately like this hobby. But you just have a chip on your shoulder ten miles wide about this stuff that's obvious to everyone.

It's not an even environment, man. It's not balanced to tell people what they are being too sensitive or thin skinned about, when you don't have any perspective of what they've been through. Yes, I get it, that saying, 'well okay just let anyone say anything and let the chips fall where they may', but when you're left with is only a tiny little segment of people that are cool with that. Anyone that's not just leaves. If you wanna run a game or forum like that, more power to you, but anyone that has friends that just wouldn't enjoy that won't be there.

And that's my problem with complete free for all environments, 4chan included. It really only represents people that are totally okay with it, and that's just not that many people, and it pretty much is only people of a very specific group that just haven't been or won't be effected by people punching down.

[Arkandel]

@apotheosis Oh, there you are. Goodbye Felicia.

[DeadEmpire]

@apotheosis You're referring to the election where the winner lost by 3 million votes?

[ThatGuyThere]

As one of the more vocal supporters of a more vitriolic less be friendly happy times atmosphere for the place even I think there should be limits, for example since the forum is about games stick to things that are about games. for example I have zero issue calling someone who lies and cheats on said games "a lying cheating piece of shit."
But racist, sexist and other crap like that that effects games not at all should not be around. Hell even if you want to tear someone a new asshole verbally there are far better and more creative ways to do that.

[Arkandel]

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

But racist, sexist and other crap like that that effects games not at all should not be around. Hell even if you want to tear someone a new asshole verbally there are far better and more creative ways to do that.

In many cases what it comes down is one of two things, IMHO:

1. Trolling. Just trying to get a rise out of people, and it's easier when you hit those big red buttons to see who bites. That's in fact the usual case here.

2. Trying to normalize someone's preconceptions. If I'm a racist then it's more convenient to try and argue everyone who's not is a politically correct outlier since the majority are just like me, than to willingly concede the point that well, I'm a racist and there's no but involved.

Either way though the rules are the same.

[Arkandel]

Mild necromancy here.

We don't feel the current model of shoving dumpster fires into the Hog Pit is working. I know others have mentioned it before, but it's not sufficient to simply squint at threads outside of the Hog Pit until they cross the line so much they need to get moved inside of it.

What we are considering doing instead is placing a warning into the thread itself ("Please stop attacking people here") and if it's not respected then we'll start deleting offending messages. If it keeps happening, well, we'll break out the banhammer to give those posters a time out.

I really hate deleting comments as it resembles censorship but toxic posts spreading across the forum is not better.

If you have thoughts (... hah) this is a good place to put them.

[Sunny]

@arkandel

I like the plan in theory, my only concern is that it's going to end up unevenly applied. Consistency has been a problem so far, and it's going to make things yet more toxic if particular people get come down on and others are allowed to skate by with no consequence. This becomes more of a big deal when it's not move-the-thread and is instead delete-posts and ban users.

Current practice makes me concerned that someone can post something very inflammatory/inappropriate and be just fine, but responses to that initial thing get swatted, leaving the original nastiness to stand. If this comes in the form of actually deleting these posts, what we have is somebody saying something ugly and no rebuttals being present for it. That's a recipe for disaster.

[Roz]

@arkandel I was already on the train for this approach earlier. I tend to roll my eyes whenever people bring up CENSORSHIP on forums anyways. And especially since this is not even telling people they can't say the things, just that they need to say them in the appropriate place. You're totally gonna have hurt feelings when people lose some big involved screed they wrote, but I think eventually people will learn.

[Arkandel]

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

@arkandel

I like the plan in theory, my only concern is that it's going to end up unevenly applied. Consistency has been a problem so far, and it's going to make things yet more toxic if particular people get come down on and others are allowed to skate by with no consequence.

I mean, isn't what we are doing now prone to inconsistency as well? The only difference seems to be that at the moment we get to fence-sit a bit since if things get bad we can just shove the whole thing under the carpet.

[Sunny]

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

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

@arkandel

I like the plan in theory, my only concern is that it's going to end up unevenly applied. Consistency has been a problem so far, and it's going to make things yet more toxic if particular people get come down on and others are allowed to skate by with no consequence.

I mean, isn't what we are doing now prone to inconsistency as well? The only difference seems to be that at the moment we get to fence-sit a bit since if things get bad we can just shove the whole thing under the carpet.

Yep, it is. And it has been, which is why I'm worried that escalating the responses will not help with the actual problem.

[Sunny]

I stuck this in in an edit, so I'll just post it again:

Current practice makes me concerned that someone can post something very inflammatory/inappropriate and be just fine, but responses to that initial thing get swatted, leaving the original nastiness to stand. If this comes in the form of actually deleting these posts, what we have is somebody saying something ugly and no rebuttals being present for it. That's a recipe for disaster.

[Arkandel]

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

@arkandel I was already on the train for this approach earlier. I tend to roll my eyes whenever people bring up CENSORSHIP on forums anyways. And especially since this is not even telling people they can't say the things, just that they need to say them in the appropriate place. You're totally gonna have hurt feelings when people lose some big involved screed they wrote, but I think eventually people will learn.

I don't care about hurt feelings when it comes to administrating this forum. It's just that one of MSB's most valuable traits is that you get to come here and speak your mind - which is a luxury on many games where you specifically cannot.

It's just that toxicity is worse.

[faraday]

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

Current practice makes me concerned that someone can post something very inflammatory/inappropriate and be just fine, but responses to that initial thing get swatted, leaving the original nastiness to stand.

Leaving the original nastiness to stand has another effect of basically saying "It's ok to be a jerk, as long as you're not a jerk repeatedly in the same thread." Which is.. umm.. kind of a baffling policy to be honest.

[Ganymede]

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

Current practice makes me concerned that someone can post something very inflammatory/inappropriate and be just fine, but responses to that initial thing get swatted, leaving the original nastiness to stand. If this comes in the form of actually deleting these posts, what we have is somebody saying something ugly and no rebuttals being present for it. That's a recipe for disaster.

In my experience, other members have been quick to flag the offending post. That helps us quickly get to the offending post. That said, yes, if the flagged post isn't the offending post and is, rather, a responding post, then we've got an issue.

That requires us, as staff, to try to identify and determine what the offending post is, or ought to be.

An alternative, I suppose, is to put out the general warning post that things are, or have been, out of hand, and any posts thereafter get deleted. But I'm not sure if that addresses the problem, or if that would, for whatever reason, encourage to be as shitty as they can as quickly as possible.

[Sunny]

@ganymede

I think basing moderation primarily on reports is a really bad idea, and if that's the way it's going to be, I do not think there is any particular action that y'all can take as a result that's going to actually avoid making it more toxic than it is right now. Deleting posts is just going to make it worse.

ETA: My suggestion? Read the threads. All of them. All of you. Act based on clear criteria. Don't expect your users to report problems, or to be unbiased in that reporting. If you don't want to play mod in the hog pit, get rid of it. Otherwise, read those threads too. Be moderators, if you're going to be moderators. Quit halfassing it. Do, or do not.

[surreality]

I think this idea has merit, but I'm going to wait and see on execution to see if it's ultimately a good idea or not.

A suggestion? If you have to address something that is hostile and remove it and subsequent commentary, do so. I would rather see this done as a series of 'this post is deleted's with a followup of 'If y'all want to have a discussion in this tone, start a new thread in the Pit'.

Not move the existing posts, but leave a record (even with the text blanked) with who was going there and crossing the line, even it's all blanked out.

We talk a lot about patterns of behavior here, and being blunt? More or less everyone understands that patterns are relevant. If the collective group sees the same names blanked out on the regular, that's not nothing.

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

An alternative, I suppose, is to put out the general warning post that things are, or have been, out of hand, and any posts thereafter get deleted. But I'm not sure if that addresses the problem, or if that would, for whatever reason, encourage to be as shitty as they can as quickly as possible.

I don't agree with this idea at all. It goes precisely how you fear it will and we've seen it already. There are people who have been banned at this point for ignoring all the rules and making completely unfounded attacks and accusations all over the forum, and while the posters in question are gone (for now, since none of the problem children ever seem to stay that way), their attacks on others remain.

That's really not OK. That's not 'speaking truth to power in a neutral space when the powers that be are corrupt and something needs to be said for great justice'. That's intentional personal character assassination of a poster based on absolutely nothing but a desire to do harm by another with zero facts or evidence, only an excess of bile and hate.

So long as all of that bile and hate gets to stay? No, all that's going to do is make the place look awful. For those of us who have become punching bags -- and there are quite a few of us -- I think I can safely say we're sick of being treated like canaries in the coal mine on this front, and having all of the attacks on us grandfathered in to remain forever in perpetuity, while all other posters will be safe from this going forward.

Yes, that's going to require some house cleaning. No, that's not any fun. It doesn't mean it isn't a real issue that creates not just an appearance of unfairness, but actual unfairness unless it's tended to.

[Ganymede]

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

I think basing moderation primarily on reports is a really bad idea, and if that's the way it's going to be, I do not think there is any particular action that y'all can take as a result that's going to actually avoid making it more toxic than it is right now. Deleting posts is just going to make it worse.

You flag posts. We go to it, we look at it, we talk about it.

Other members do this too. Most of the time, they are finding our good friends that just won't leave us alone. (Thank you!) Other times, it is to identify posts that they believe cross the line. I can assure you that I read these when I get online to do so. And reporting members have good eyes and good minds, and often aren't even involved in whatever kerfuffle is being perpetrated.

If you read my post, then you should have picked up that my concern is that we have to figure out what the offending post is. Sometimes it is the flagged post; other times, it is a post to which the flagged post is a response; and other times, I can't figure out who the asshole is that started the dogpile, or if any post even crosses the line at all. And, if you can't tell, the three of us don't always agree on what crosses the line and what doesn't.

We have given the members the ability to report posts. We have never said "we will never act unless a post has been flagged." We have acted many times without prompting. So, we don't expect members here to report problems. That said, if members do flag the posts, we get that notification, and it allows us to hop to the post at issue immediately, which saves us some time.

We're not stupid. We know there are biases. And I'd like to think we've been careful not to act where we believe biases may be at play.

We do what we can. We're not perfect, and demanding constant, prompt vigilance is absurd. You say we're half-assing it, and that's your opinion, but I don't often stick around doing things with my free time (or, in this case, work time) for other people without compensation where I get the impression that: (A) people don't think I'm putting effort into what I do; and (B) people think I'm incompetent. In fact, I tell my paying clients that if, for any reason or at any time, they are unsatisfied with my performance, they can notify me and I will find them alternate counsel.

If you want the keys to the car to drive this thing, then I'll talk to Arkandel and you can have my set. If whatever sanity or insanity I have brought to the job is intolerable, then I would rather remove myself than to point fingers or discuss further.

---

@surreality

I see what you're getting at, and I understand the concern. That's why it was a suggestion only. I don't think it's a particularly good one; if it was, we might have already tried it.

[Sunny]

@ganymede

I was basing 'read all the posts' on the REPEATED times that @Arkandel has directly said that if we don't report something, it's not necessarily going to be acted on, because you won't necessarily see it, because you guys don't read all the posts. I am not digging through the forums for quotes, but you guys aren't even towing the same line here. This is the type of thing I mean when I mention consistency. Great. If your way of doing things is the way that it's going to be, then my objection doesn't apply. That's not what's right now happening.

I'm not asking for constant, prompt vigilance. I'm asking for consistency and clarity. Dialing it up to eleven here is a little ridiculous.

Also, feedback was asked for.