May 24, 2022, 4:37 PM

@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.