What Would it Take to Repair the Community?

[simplications]

The premise of a forum warning people about bad actors seems thin. These are text games that provide anonymity. Any one of the bad actors can join and make a new character. What outs their identity to the forum is the actions that they take from that point on. They do some fucked up stuff and people who hear about it go "Oh hey, that's fucked up in a way very similar to Well Known Jerkface. it must be them." People on the forum all agree. Got'em.

At what point did the forum protect someone? If Jerkface gets banned from the game he's on, it's not because he's somehow been identified as Jerkface without having engaged in bad behavior. The identification requires the bad behavior to occur. The behavior, and the toll it takes on the victimized, has not been prevented.

In order for that behavior to be reported, it has to have been done to or in the presence of someone that is reporting it. Did they skip reporting it to the game runners and instead came to the forum instead? This doesn't make any sense.

[Ghost]

@Derp I think that a lot of the time people use the term "witch hunt" in the connotation of "This person is being a zealot who will punish someone whether or not they are guilty".

I think there's a greater connotation to "witch hunt" that a lot of people don't recognize, and that's the added event of the mass hysteria that comes with normalizing this sort of "witch hunt" behavior. That being:

• Witch hunts will remove the most evil and vile scary witches to keep everyone safe!

• ...and then move on to people accusing others of being witches over misunderstanding
• ...and then move on to dozens more witch hunts that prove we need to be defensive against witches
• ...and then move on to unliked people being branded witches
• ...and then move on to pesky people who threaten to expose adultery being branded as witches
• ...and then move on to likely having ZERO witches for months but just to be sure some 20 innocent people got burned in the effort to ensure that there are, in fact, no witches.

I feel like the MU community is at some stage of that; somewhere in the middle. I think throughout time and the way people have unknowingly defended people (who lied to friends and said they weren't doing bad things and were later revealed to be actual, bad people), there's a worry that ACTUAL abusers will be left unchecked for weeks/months. It's not an unrealistic fear. Most abusers are defended by staff until actual receipts prove it, and in some cases they're STILL protected by staff, so I get why people would be so adamant to keep watch out for these particular people.

However, I think it's also created a "trial by mob" environment where the ability to defend yourself against accusations made without receipts (and without receipts to defend yourself) leaves many innocent people with an inability to prove that they do not, in fact, commune with demons. How can anyone prove that? It's your word against them, so JUST like in the "witch burning times" people spent a LOT of time entrenching themselves in little groups to create an atmosphere of "my word is greater than yours". And then, just like in the "burning times" these little groups used those "popularity currency" points to accuse their enemies, outsiders, and competitors in ways that would see them run off or harmed, leaving them further unchecked.

It's funny how humans enter these phases over and over again, only to repeat the same behaviors and mistakes in the heat of the moment like it's totally different this time and then reflexively look back and realize that they fell prey to the same mass hysteria bullshit that's driven witch-hunt cultures from the Mayan Apocalypse to the Witch Hunts to the Werewolf Hunts to the Spanish Inquisition to the McCarthyism Communist Hunts to the Anti-Dungeons and Dragons "Satanic Panic".

I just think people are caught up in a form of that in this community and forest/from trees don't quite see how bad it's gotten.

[Ghost]

@simplications said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

The premise of a forum warning people about bad actors seems thin. These are text games that provide anonymity. Any one of the bad actors can join and make a new character. What outs their identity to the forum is the actions that they take from that point on. They do some fucked up stuff and people who hear about it go "Oh hey, that's fucked up in a way very similar to Well Known Jerkface. it must be them." People on the forum all agree. Got'em.

At what point did the forum protect someone? If Jerkface gets banned from the game he's on, it's not because he's somehow been identified as Jerkface without having engaged in bad behavior. The identification requires the bad behavior to occur. The behavior, and the toll it takes on the victimized, has not been prevented.

In order for that behavior to be reported, it has to have been done to or in the presence of someone that is reporting it. Did they skip reporting it to the game runners and instead came to the forum instead? This doesn't make any sense.

Part of the reason I chose the handle "Ghost" is because given the anonymity of the hobby and these forums, I've always found it a little tongue-in-cheek funny this concept of "tracked identity".

I mean, nothing is keeping me from logging onto a game and claiming to be some "well known jerk" like Spider or Cullen and creating waves of panic/board postings and adding to their "legends", just like it would be so simple for someone to join a game, claim they're "Ghost from MSB" and do all kinds of shit that I wasn't actually doing. I guess it's my little version of "The Comedian" from The Watchmen's smiley face. I've joked a few times that I've given other people the login/ID information for this forum and that it may not actually be me typing this right now. This login could have changed hands multiple times and no one would have known.

In the end, all you can really do is address the actual bit in the present-tense and get rid of them, because really anyone could be anyone. Tracking it on a forum IS somewhat thin. (ex: THIS bit currently on THIS game is doing THESE actions)

[Derp]

@Ghost said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

the mass hysteria that comes with normalizing this sort of "witch hunt" behavior.

I find it fascinating that the last two years of the MU hobby, and this board in particular, have been showing all the classical signs of a Moral Panic, "a public mass movement, based on false or exaggerated perceptions or information that exceeds the actual threat society is facing. Moral panic is a widespread fear and often an irrational threat to society's values, interests, and safety."

1. Concern - MSB displays a heightened concern about certain groups or categories. Namely, the already-mentioned ten-or-so bad actors that crop up occasionally, and people that they assume are 'like them' based on some characteristic or another.

2. Hostility -The group experiencing the moral panic starts to identify people that think or act differently than they do, and start expressing increased aggression and antagonism toward them, often using hyperbole and inflammatory language to draw attention to what they feel is an issue.

3. Consensus - The group experiencing the moral panic, even if in a minority, starts to cross-talk to try to come up with a definition of Deviants. This becomes the target group, and while there can be minor dissent among the ranks, major dissent labels you another part of the Deviants, which is a socially damaging thing to do.

4. Disproportionality - Given the consequences of being labelled a Deviant, the calls for actions to be taken continue to escalate. This is where we start to see some of the performative nonsense that we've been seeing on this board in the not-too-distant past, with people making sure to be very visible and very seen despite their calls not passing any test related to common sense, so the definition of Deviant gets broader and the calls for action get harsher. You start attributing the label of Deviant to people just for the social capital that it gets you with the in-group, and since you bear absolutely no consequences for being wrong, there is nothing to stop you from doing it.

5. Volatility - It comes in fits and starts. It's not a sustained effort save in the case of a scant few people who constantly beat that drum. It can flare up again with some provocation, but for the most part it burns itself out in time. But the extremity of the situation goes down at a much slower rate, and people are quick to jump all the way up to 11 when it flares up again.

I really do think that a lot of this is just pearl-clutching in the vein of the classic moral panics. You might catch a few bad actors but at the expense of dragnetting your shit through society (see: Rock and Roll, Communists, Satanic Panic, Think of the Children, Pit Bulls, Black Crime, War on Drugs, Obesity/Fat, I could list these for days...)

[simplications]

The Hog Pit had about 150,000 posts. Even at the liberal figure of 15 bad actors to be tracked for the public good, how's that signal/noise ratio look at 10,000 posts to 1 jerk?

Obviously many of those 150,000 posts weren't about those 15 jerks. How many others were just targets of opportunity getting dragged by people who enjoy being nasty?

There's a reason that avenues of public discussion enforce rules about personal attacks. Unmoderated discussion always creates a scenario where a privileged group are able to punch down at those who aren't. The idea that this punching down occasionally hits someone that actually deserves it is a flimsy justification for making the wider community vulnerable to predation. If you're not part of the privileged group you now need to be careful not to cross the ones who are.

If you think that "this isn't a danger to anyone who hasn't done anything wrong" then you are arguing that this privileged group's moral authority is an essential trait conferred by their membership to the privileged group. And if you're arguing that and part of this group? Check your privilege.

(edit: rephrased the first sentence of the last paragraph to be (somewhat) more clear)

[Misadventure]

@simplications who are you talking to? Are you talking generalities, or specifics?

What leads you to think that this or any other board/etc is devoted to outing predatory and destructive players? The Hog Pit wasn't designed for that purpose either. You can tell by how it's information is organized, its defining traits, and that very 100,000+ posts of content.

You've lost me.

Perhaps you could lay out exactly what you would do with your own forum?

[simplications]

@Misadventure

I was speaking in specifics to begin with (stats about Hog Pit), and then generalities thereafter.

I agree that Hog Pit was not "designed" for the purpose of outing bad actors, but the current of conversation in this thread had turned to the topic of and justification for public discussion of the character of individuals, which was something that went on an awful lot in Hog Pit, so it seems germane to me. I was not a reader of Hog Pit, and my only context for it has been the periodic mentions (on chats/other forums/discords I was part of) of who was getting dragged over there. So from my perspective, and I feel pretty confident speaking for many others who like me didn't participate in but were aware of the Hog Pit, its primary function was to engage in unmoderated character assassination.

As to why I specifically think this is an important topic to discuss in a thread about repairing the community? I think allowing public character assassination empowers privileged groups to run roughshod over the rest of the community. Arx for instance lost a lot of really good roleplayers who ran afoul of the privileged group there, and that group had strong representation in the Hog Pit. The whole reason I'm even here on this site typing this was because someone said "You'll never guess which crew got banned from MSB" and I decided to come have a look.

It's one thing for a social circle to have their own discussions about people they do and don't like. That's normal and cool. The problem is when this occurs in a wider group that has the complexities of larger social hierarchies. That's where you end up with privileged groups punching down at the vulnerable.

What would I do with a forum I had a say in the running of? I'd want to make sure that the forum kept things equitable. Most relevantly for this discussion, that means preventing the discussion of individuals by the group.

[Misadventure]

@simplications so avoid discussions critical of players and staffers at games? Or just of attaching any sort of suggestion as to motivation or psychology?

I will say that I understand why anyone would avoid the Hog Pit, but I will also say to characterize it in any fashion without direct knowledge seems difficult. If you want to say (these are made up numbers) that even 10% malicious unfounded statements are too many, that's fine.

How would you like to see someone make a post where they want to say X player on Y game created multiple characters in an attempt to secure RP with them after I told them I wasn't interested? Is suggesting a Queen Bee mentality too far? Is mentioning unwanted contact is for the purposes of sexual RP suspect?

I hope you see what I am asking here. I'm just asking you (though others are welcome to speak for themselves), because you are having an idea, and I'd like to see it fleshed out.

[Warma Sheen]

@Arkandel said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

Here's the thing though. It is a game. It's what people sign up for, unless it's explicitly stated otherwise.

Strong disagree.

What you think a MU is and what I think a MU is and what every other person thinks a MU is might be, and probably is, very, very different. What I think a MU* is now is very different than what I thought a MU* was when I first started playing. A significant majority of my issues when I started on MU* s came because I assumed it was a game and to many other people it was something else. I've read through pages and pages on MSB and whatever came before it of what different people thought a MU* was and should be. There's a hundred different ideas of what this thing is.

So if you just assume that it is one thing and people show up with their own ideas and those ideas clash, problems are inevitable. So when you ask what it takes to repair a community, I strongly suggest that a game runner doesn't assume that everyone knows that their game is just a game unless explicitly stated otherwise.

Every single site should very explicitly state what it is and what it wants from its community - the people playing or visiting or interacting on their site.

@Arkandel said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

For example if I go to a soccer game, I expect to watch teams kick a ball around. If the person next to me is enraged and wants to use that as an opportunity to scream profanities or bash my head in that's only 'on me' to the extent that I should be aware such things may happen. He's still wrong.

Perfect example. Depending on what country you're in, even what city, what is "wrong" behavior while watching teams kick a ball around differs wildly. That's culture. That's community. You can't just assume everyone knows what is and isn't okay. Everyone shows up with their own preconceived notions of what is and is not okay based on their own unique history and experiences. Without guidelines from someone, there is no right and wrong, just personal preference. Judging other people because they showed up to the same event with different expectations of what is and is not okay is what causes problems and fights. #wrongfun

If you show up to a soccer game and tell someone else they are wrong for screaming from the stands, then conflict is a given. Verbal at the least, possibly physical. Whether someone screaming obscenities at a soccer match is wrong or not is really just your own personal preference. You don't have the authority to decide how people should act. This is why it is necessary for the stadium to outline what is and isn't appropriate in their venue. And if they don't then people are left to their own devices to act as they please. And if those actions clash, then there will be conflict.

And all that's even assuming you're showing up to play the same game. What kind of equipment are you using if you are invited to show up to play football? Cleats and shin guards or shoulder pads and helmets? Is everyone around the world gonna show up with the same expectations to "playing football"? Nope. Definitely not. Which is why being explicit is good.

Some people show up to a MU* and expect a game where they try to outlast everyone else, beat all the enemies and get all the loot. Some people show up to an experience where their character is the star and is only interested in their own story. Some people show up for a collaborative story experience where everyone is working together to create interesting and dynamic stories. Some people show up to experience new and unique experiences that aren't possible in their real life by living vicariously through a character. All of these players cannot exist in the same place without clashing and usually not without problems.

Don't assume. Be explicit.

Most of the problems we run into in a text medium comes because people are not on the same page. Communication and mutual understanding is key so it would help immensely to say very clearly what a game / forum / whatever is about. What do you what your place to be? What do you expect from your players? Setting expectations is the first step to accepting outcomes.

If your game is supposed to be a collaborative experience, you need to let people know that they'll be expected to work with other players to everyone's mutual best interest. If your game is gonna be cut throat and people might literally get stabbed in the back, you need to let people know that PKs should be expected and are totally acceptable without good reason. If your game is just a game and characters can do as they choose but also be open to negative actions against them from PCs or NPCs, you need to let people know that no one should feel personally attached to characters that can go at any time.

If you are explicit in what your game is and what it should be then everyone else who shows up differently is wrong.

Most games do not want to narrow their focus because they want ALL THE PLAYERZ. Or more humble game runners are afraid that they won't reach that critical mass necessary to keep a game running. But to not be specific about what your game is going to be invites conflict and most game runners either don't realize it or don't care. And this is part of the reason why we have the community that we have with constant clashes of personalities over years or in some cases decades, all of whom think they are right and the other person is wrong. Because everyone keeps showing up to games with their own expectations of what a game should be and what's acceptable behavior, rather than the game runner laying it out explicitly from the start.

[hobos]

@Kestrel

;Harassing' is now apparently 'lightly defending a person who was accused of predatory behavior while predatory behavior was actually done to her' ... kind of like Amber Heard, since you mentioned her. I haven't been following the trial. But I was just camping at a family reunion a while back, and people started talking all the usual crap about her and then acting like I was crazy for going to bat for her based solely on the power dynamics involved. They kept bringing up all the nasty things she supposedly did and so on and so forth and I kept saying they weren't relevant to whether or not she was allowed to say in an internet article that she was a victim of domestic abuse. Power dynamics are relevant, and her ex-spouse is more powerful than her in a variety of ways -- the most obvious of which is popularity.

Anyway I'm... so tired of this. What I've been trying to do in this thread (since my original plea for impartiality from everyone involved was largely ignored in favor of debating whether or not someone is a sexual predator for sending an email to a person he had no idea wouldn't appreciate an email) ... has been this: to outline exactly how easy it is to paint people with unfavorable rumors in a way that is unfair and untrue, just based on who is or is not in the dominant friendship circle.

For my part, regarding any rumors that anyone might be worried about, I have not spread any rumors. I don't even spread them in private, okay? It is none of my business and it is unnecessary and I am not even 100% sure about them. I am not engaging in any nasty little social assassination games; I am trying to speak against those games and shed light on how harmful they are.

And you know what... I am looking at Apos' policy of excluding people based on discomfort caused to the community, and thinking about this some more, and...

It's perfectly fine. The near-opposite of impartial, really, but -- if that is what it takes for people established in a community to feel safe and happy, then it is well within their rights. Safety is a human need and there is so precious little of it in the world for most of us, that it is actually commendable to have created a pocket of the internet where some people feel safe. Play the social assassination games if that's what you need to do. Maybe as a global society, we will eventually grow out of the many other negative 'isms' that make insular tribalism feel necessary as a defense of our basic human need for safety.

[simplications]

@Misadventure said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

@simplications so avoid discussions critical of players and staffers at games? Or just of attaching any sort of suggestion as to motivation or psychology?
...
How would you like to see someone make a post where they want to say X player on Y game created multiple characters in an attempt to secure RP with them after I told them I wasn't interested? Is suggesting a Queen Bee mentality too far? Is mentioning unwanted contact is for the purposes of sexual RP suspect?

I wouldn't want to see any of these as posts. If someone is acting in a problematic way on a game you're on, you should take it to the game runners. They have the opportunity to hear what you have to say, possibly compare it to other reports they may have heard, and get the other side of the story from the accused. This protects all parties.

The person reporting the issue is protected from having what may have been a distressing situation made public. They may also be accusing someone who is popular or a member of a privileged group, and might face retaliation if they were exposed publicly.

The person accused is protected from premature judgment. For bad actors, especially privileged groups punching down at someone they don't like, merely putting doubt into the minds of the wider community about someone does damage to their reputation that will last even if the accused is exonerated.

Your game community (and the hobby community at large) is protected from the chilling effects of a normalized culture of character assassination. If you let this type of behavior go on long enough you're going to find that the people who thrive on drama are the most active and the people who don't have gone on to pastures that are safer, quieter, and more collaborative.

People who thrive on drama find it useful to characterize their behavior as justice-seeking, and then insist that it's the duty of everyone else to enthusiastically participate lest they be lumped in with the problematic. This is nonsense, but insidiously powerful nonsense nonetheless. If, driven by a privileged group, it is allowed to become the normalized mode in a community, it has the effect of driving away everyone who doesn't share the perspective and enthusiasm of the privileged group. You'll end up with a community that is comprised of the privileged group lording over a transient population of newcomers and some other portion who are oblivious to or uninterested in the OOC goings-on. People in the latter groups can at any point find themselves in the crosshairs of the privileged group. Those who thrive on drama and passing judgment, eventually lacking further obvious and acute bad actors, will not cease in this behavior but instead lower the bar for what passes as undesirable activity so that it includes new targets.

This is the mechanics of curating in and out groups. There's nothing revolutionary or equitable or just in doing this. People who are advocating for it have not discovered this one trick that community managers don't want you to know. It is just and only the most basic, tribalistic behavior humanity is capable of.

(edit: Changed an instance of "Players" to "People")

[Ghost]

@hobos said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

how easy it is to paint people with unfavorable rumors in a way that is unfair and untrue, just based on who is or is not in the dominant friendship circle.

Pretty much.

Last night I was alerted to that one of my fans took a reference I made to the literary use of Comedian's smiley face button^ in Watchmen as support for a rapist. Yikes. That's how hard some people try to stretch things.

I don't really know what else to say anymore other than that there are people engaging in ACTIVE attempts to belittle, smear, and slander others, and a number of them apparently (mind-bogglingly) do so with the entitlement of being the moral authority. Maybe people should start to pay attention to those who are unwilling to stop this unethical shit.

^ Alan Moore is a fucking genius.

[Hella]

@hobos said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

@Kestrel

Anyway I'm... so tired of this.

I've seen the toll it's taken on your mental health, and while I don't intend to speak on the details in public, now or ever again, just know that I have appreciated your support. But on my behalf, I hope you don't feel the need to engage with it any further, to the detriment of your own balance and well-being. I said what I needed to say and people will believe or disbelieve according to what feels right to them. I think it's okay to just let them do so.

[Seraphim73]

@simplications said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

I wouldn't want to see any of these as posts.

I absolutely do want to hear about the person creating multiple characters to avoid a do-not-contact request. I don't really care if the unwanted contact is for the purposes of sexual RP, but if someone wants to add that detail to the story, I don't mind. I absolutely think that they should go to the staff on the game too (first, actually), but I think the community should want to hear about it. That's the only way that we repair the missing stairs in our community -- shining a light on them so that we can see that they're missing.

And if it's a false report? Then if it's made to the community as a whole, it can be addressed. The person being accused of these actions can defend themselves, other people can speak up for or against and people can make up their own mind.

One of the first things said about me on WORA was that I was only made a staffer on a game because I was TSing another staffer. Is that the kind of bullshit accusation that used to be thrown around in order to slut-shame people? Yup. Was I TSing that player's character? Yup. Was that why I got the position? Nope. Folks could speak up and describe what I was doing as a staffer, and people could see that even if it was why I got the position, I was being active and good for the game. Done. Was it annoying to deal with? Yup. Do I still remember it a decade later? Yup.

But unless we as a community out the assholes among us, so that we can remove them from the community, I don't believe that we can ever repair the community.

[Ghost]

Hrm. I dunno.

I think the one thing everyone in the community can agree on is that if there's evidence of serious misuse/abuse that making that available to the public as a "stranger danger" warning is a good thing.

Outside of that, there are assholes, and plenty of people spend a lot of time performing assholish behavior whilst pointing the finger at others claiming that other person is an asshole. It's a highly secular environment where entrenched people get away with bad behavior, and it all comes down to which camp you're in, which person's feathers you don't want to ruffle, etc. The number of cases of players simply being shitty towards each other and then camping up to avoid accountability for it far outweighs the actual number of cases of "stranger danger" type alarms.

I think I'm in the camp that until specific people leave or "age out", this is simply the way the hobby/community is going to be until the inevitable point in my lifetime that this form of entertainment will expire due to knowledge loss (inability to stand up hosts) and lack of player life cycle.

Edit: My general point was "ousting the assholes from the community" requires behavior change to a good number of people, not just the "usual suspects". There are too many people who behave badly who comport themselves as untouchable. It's a no-win situation.

[Derp]

@Seraphim73

I don't disagree that it's good to hear about these sorts of things. I think that boards like this can be extremely helpful in a variety of ways. My concern is the same as that of a number of other people -- that without some kind of evidence, this at best gets overexaggerated and inflated beyond its actual proportions, and at worst gets actively weaponized to be used against people just based on personality conflicts.

I'm not saying it has to be a precise mathematical formulation pointing to this-and-no-other conclusion, but I'd like to see something that backs up that theory if people are going to make the accusation, you know? Give me something.

[Ganymede]

@Derp said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

I'm not saying it has to be a precise mathematical formulation pointing to this-and-no-other conclusion, but I'd like to see something that backs up that theory if people are going to make the accusation, you know? Give me something.

Preemptively banning someone is not something I do lightly, but when I do I can assure anyone that asks that I have done my homework. No one has to believe me when I say that, and my word as a person is on somewhat shaky grounds these days -- or so I have been told.

They are "usual suspects." As has been pointed out, the number of actual, serious threats have been few and far between. I can count on my hand the number of folks I have or would have done this to. In each case, I have made a simple calculus: is the damage that may be caused by a pre-emptive ban greater than the damage that could be done in the absence of the same? Said another way, I like to make sure that the value of "I have done something" is greater to the community than the price of "I have done nothing."

But ultimately, it was my choice. If people did not and do not like it, so be it. I have long abandoned any ruse or delusion that this place was a haven of free speech or a marketplace of ideas. If it wanted to be so, it failed years ago, and I made no conscious effort in the past two years to change it.

---

@Seraphim73 said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

One of the first things said about me on WORA was that I was only made a staffer on a game because I was TSing another staffer. Is that the kind of bullshit accusation that used to be thrown around in order to slut-shame people? Yup. Was I TSing that player's character? Yup. Was that why I got the position? Nope. Folks could speak up and describe what I was doing as a staffer, and people could see that even if it was why I got the position, I was being active and good for the game. Done. Was it annoying to deal with? Yup. Do I still remember it a decade later? Yup.

Funny story: when I received an IC position on Liberation, I was immediately accused of using my position here to sway Sunshine, a person who was lambasted here frequently and heavily. I nearly fell out of my chair laughing at how ludicrous the accusation was.

Anyhow, to your point, I concur that the way you remove a cancer from the community is to exclude them from every point of entry, and I hope that the two boards will cooperate to do this going forward.

[Ghost]

@Ganymede I hear you on the preemptive bans, but still over time I'd asked myself "If I were running a game would I preemptively ban people?" I think I've even said once on these forums that I'm not entirely sure I'd ban Spider. Oh boy did I get some heat for that.

I think you have some very abusive players with a history of behavior that borders on the illegal or unsafe, with activities like stalking, blackmail, etc. But I'm not entirely sure I'd enforce a perma-ban on a player who was disliked for being overbearing or unfair (such as Spider was accused of) if they seemed genuine in understanding the past and just wanted to play nice with others. I'm a forgiving sort. I'd rather treat a person like a person, but then act when they got out of line.

In fact, over the years in the hobby I kind of learned that the people who are able to mea culpa and openly commit to doing better may be worth betting on more than the people who threaten you if you associate/allow X player around under penalty of being called some kind of rape apologist on a forum.

[Seraphim73]

@Derp If an accusation isn't accurate, it can be challenged. History on this very board shows that it will be, often successfully. How many times have we seen someone accuse someone of crappy behavior only to have multiple people come in and provide evidence that the original poster was the crappy one?

Are accusations better with evidence? Absolutely. Are accusations better with non-corruptible evidence like Ares logs sent to staffers? Absolutely-er. Do some people not feel comfortable sharing evidence because they've been drawn into actions or RP that is banned from the server as a means to tie them to their abuser? Absolutely-est.

You've banned or driven off most of the people you claim were bullies. Shouldn't this board be able to handle being a clearing house of bad behavior now?

[RightMeow]

Hi.

Once upon a time I got caught up with a person that was not nice. It's public records on this board. One of the current female characters he was involved with he pit against me. I was not aware of this. I was just confused by icy commentary.

That person made a comment here about how I was trolling for TS and a horrible person, etc. Which hey nothing wrong with TS. Because it was made in a PUBLIC place, other people were quick to jump to defense. One in particular stated they RPed with me on an alt they had that fit the definition and I never once did these things.

Also, it allowed communication between me and this other person. Where we compared notes and went yeah, nope okay they were lying. If this was not made public; this would not have resolved. I may have believed what I was being told about her. She would have continued to believe what she was being told about me.

I'm all about calling out the bad behaviors when it involves this sort of stuff. It also helps as someone who was on the receiving end to see I'm not insane. -- That's my only thought to share at the moment.

Thank you.

Remember to be kind.