Positivity Going Forward...
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@lordbelh I agree with what you said. A short while back I typed "I 100% do not intend to look at myself critically, come to the expectations/revelations that you have, and then submit my adherences to those expectations for review to you and your friends" and I think it's an important point. I always had an issue with the approach to how people blended the concepts of "alerting people to problem player" and "publicly ridiculing someone", and I think the latter always carried this very uncomfortable element of desiring one's "pound of flesh".
There is NOTHING wrong with alerting people to conduct issues with the interest of keeping the hobby safe. It's a sensible thing to do, but also runs the risk of it being used as a "vengeance engine" because it's obvious that people's willingness to believe first-hand accounts is high. Better to be safe than sorry, right? But I don't think that's exactly what was happening in the Hog Pit.
I think there were honest cases of people reporting on problem players (people like OPP, VASpider, whoever), but things went off the rails and it ventured into "...and then also publicly shame people you don't like, who disagree with you, and in some ways extort them into silence or certain behaviors by using their popularity or ability to find RP as leverage." To my perspective I always asked "how much blood are they looking for?" when considering whether or not it was malice or an honest reporting of bad behavior, and I think when you look at it that way the number of seriously bad players is far less than the number of people who were attacked using the Hog Pit as a vector. I'm glad to see that some sort of stopgap to that has been put in place.
As for "split community?"
I think it's better to look at this as simply 2 places where people from the community can gather. Personally, I think that that other place is going to be interesting because from what I've seen they're congratulating people on their insults in parting over here...so WILL people opt-in to a forum that has decided to continue to allow bullying, somewhat moderated by the bullies themselves, and subject themselves to "more of the same" that was happening here before the changes? I think you're going to find there's not going to be as much "juice from the squeeze" there than there was here 6 weeks ago. Bullies need victims.
This place has an honest chance to promote itself as the change in the community that so many people in the community want to see, and with time some people may find that really what was needed all along was a private space for those people who loved the Hog Pit for the pure schadenfreude of it to be sequestered to their (in my opinion) toxicity. Again, bullies need victims and a place where people have more controls over becoming a victim will be less attractive to a bully.
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I don't post much any more, and I've observed all the recent chaos at some distance. I have opinions on all the nitty-gritty details, but they're hardly relevant because my final reaction boils down to something very similar to the OP here and the general direction of the thread.
I have a similar history here as a combative and probably mostly negative poster, but as time as go on and old feuds have died (either by détente, as happened with one 'ancient enemy', or by people simply moving on, or both) I've found myself leaning more and more toward this kind of view. There was a previous instance where we debated the existence/purpose of the Hog Pit. At that time, I defended its need to exist, largely under the justification of the restrictive Advertising section rules. But at the same time, I basically nagged another more constructive subforum into existence (I think it was the Game Dev one, I've lost track with how things have been renamed/reorganized). In my mind, it was about balancing things, giving people the ability to vent or be constructive, and assuming the forum would somehow 'average out' on the larger scale. But this was pretty naive. I think we've all seen that it's very hard to maintain civility when the rabid hostility is a next-door neighbor. It breeds a simmering hostility, long grudges, bandwagons and dogpiles, and does very little to preserve useful discussion.
So I think this is an encouraging direction. Rather than precariously balanced extremes, it fully embraces the middle road, and hopefully that will allow some nuanced discussion that won't immediately derail into ad hominem. Or... maybe not, and it will just kill the forum, because it really was toxicity and negativity that was the main draw. If so, well, we've learned something that is pretty telling. But there's nothing inherently wrong with having two forums, and it's an interesting experiment to see how things might develop on each.
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I didn't see it until I saw it.
An active social media type place on-line where folks could discuss things with civility. The Ares discord folks are pretty civil and they have an impressive group of folks there. Its, as one would guess, focused on running Ares games mostly. However in the early years of its existence I remember Theno quietly leaving from here but continuing over there in discourse related to ideas such as game running. I'm sure at times @faraday felt like it was a bit of disagreement. But the two could express their opinions without it devolving as it has done here in the past. While disagreeing, it felt healthy. I like to believe its possible.
I'm just a surge protector doing my job, sir.
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@lotherio Yanno the BEST conversations I have had on this forum or with other people in the hobby have all been related to stuff like tech, ideas, games we'd like to see, how ARES works, and really just sharing COOL BRAINWAVE stuff with fellow people in the hobby. Sad I missed the boat on those ARES discussions. I probably would have dug those a lot, but I've also had plenty of them on the side with @faraday
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Okay. Figure I might as well throw in my .02, here...
Being a, relatively, neutral observer to the events of the past couple weeks, I'm saddened, but not disheartened.
I think the core issue at hand has been freedom of expression vs. the responsibility that comes with freedom. There are people who want freedom, but not the responsibility. And as the meme says, that's called adolescence.
It is possible to have debate, even fundamental disagreements, without resorting to personal attacks. But there are some that feel that they have to 'win' at any cost, including burning things to the ground; and when they don't win an argument, the personal attacks come out.
We need to distinguish between criticizing someone's actions and criticizing the person directly. I'm not immune to this; I've walked the line between calling out problematic actions and behavior (VASpider/Elsa, Clairmont, Levitz) and piling in on attacking the person themselves. I haven't always been successful, but I'd like to think that I've been able to do this more times than not.
Going over the new policy changes, I think that the Code of Conduct is a better policy instrument for allowing good faith debate, argument, and disagreement, while holding off more personal attacks. And as we've already seen in this thread, there's going to be people that want to 'push the envelope' and try for work-arounds when asked to behave in a civil manner.
In short, I think the 'I'm not touching you...' crowd departing isn't going to break this place, and will help us forge a stronger community.
Do I think there could be more transparency from Staff in how decisions are made? Absolutely, but I feel that way with almost any administration/moderation involved in a community. I also believe that when Staff requests that a conversation be halted so that they can review to better understand the situation, the conversation needs to be put on hold.
Anyways, for whatever my opinion is worth...
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Your opinion is worth more than you probably think.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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What will be will be. I am exhausted with life at the moment and not sure I have any great words of wisdom on this all, but I will try, because why not, what could possibly go wrong from posting on MSB!
IMO a more positive town square with less personal attacks is a very good thing. While some attacks were certainly justified the temptation to strike pettily could be quite the draw
The momentary satisfaction of going into the pit to tell people just how one really feels about so and so or such and such a game is rarely worth it. I learned that the hard way and certainly have posted what I shouldn't have before.
This community might get smaller, it probably is a lot of smaller already. It might fade into nothing, but everything has a cost and a price. And if it there is a nothigness MSB left, so be it.
Nothing draws a crowd quite like a train wreck, many want an excuse to pop their corn and brew their tea. It is hard to resist peeking on to see if one is the latest target when mud is being flung.
If the bans are justified or not, I am too exhausted to suss out and glad it isn't my choice to make.
I have faith in Gany and yes I have rped with her before, so maybe I am biased. But I believe that she attempted to do the best she could with a difficult situation.
Life goes on. I see no problem with two boards. We we will see what new msb becomes. We will see what old MSB is. Time will tell and bigger isn't always better or so guys keep telling me.
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@ganymede Oh, I can guarantee that I think my opinion is worth less than what others might think. Introvert self-deprecation and all that...
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@runescryer Well stop it. Don't listen to the brain weasels.
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From my perspective as a long-time lurker and very occasional poster...
This has all appeared extremely silly, ngl. That might seem dismissive to some of the people who were involved in the very heat of it, but I don't really intend it to be. Overall, the optics from a largely outside observer on all of this haven't really been great, but I feel like that starts to tread into water that's not terribly relevant for the original point of this thread, so I'll attempt to stay on topic.
First off, if you genuinely want to make MSB a positivity-focused environment, you have to understand that you're going to be fighting an uphill battle. The reputation that MSB inherited from WORA and further refined with the Hogpit isn't one that goes hand in hand with 'calm and measured discourse.' You're undoubtedly going to have a lot of people who will try to continue to foster the more hostile environment the place has been known to be for a while. It feels a bit like an Applebee's just bought out a biker bar, so expect the bikers to keep showing up for a while, either in protest or ignorance. Honestly, if I hadn't been watching what's been going on, if someone told me that MSB fractured and a new place opened called Brand MU Day, I definitely wouldn't be putting money on MSB being the one all about positive discourse from here on out.
Anyway, that's just one of the two main hurdles I see going forward. The other is that... like... You're humans, too. You are not immune to tribalism and cliques anymore than the Brand MU Day people are. Be wary of the urge to label any criticism or opinion that you dislike as being hateful or insulting. This is the internet, disagreements are going to happen and they will get heated. Think hard about where you want to draw the line and make sure you make it clear where that line is.
Mind, none of this is to say I've seen evidence of any of this so far. It's just a general warning as someone who has seen and sighed his way through repeated fractures and merges as a comic game fan. Generally speaking, I'm all for a positive environment for discourse. Once upon a time I would have thought it was impossible on the internet, but over the years I've seen a few examples of it (mostly) working so... I'm rooting for you guys, but I wouldn't say I'm totally convinced of the viability of this experiment yet.
