What Would it Take to Repair the Community?

[TNP]

@Derp What Arkandel was referring to was. Which is what you were responding to. Which is obvious unless one chooses to deliberately obfuscate the broader picture by focusing only on the very last post made.

[Ghost]

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

Honest question, can you blame them? Our board - and by our I mean all of the community - had their board basically hijacked out from under us.

I feel like this is the most real thing said on the topic.

With the other board (BMD) people are 100% capable of creating whatever environment they please up to and including perma-banning me and anyone they want from ever posting there. They can Hog Pit, insult whoever they want, make a board specifically to WHATEVER design they please...

...BUT...

...doing so and leaving MSB behind peacefully would mean accepting the end result without returning to attack people they feel took something from them. And since people from this board aren't going there to post themselves up for attack and ridicule, there's only one way to address that, which is to, at intervals, come over and try to get that pound of flesh.

I mean this as constructively as possible, but I feel the real source of the repeated negativity despite a GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY to get away from me, Derp, whoever is not that they pushed people like Derp and Ganymede and myself out, but that they feel they were pushed out. In truth all that happened was a difference of opinion on staff, the closure of the Hog Pit, multiple people banned for repeatedly being cruel, and a few dozen people voting with their feet and going to the new place.

I feel like, constructively, there's a lot to understand there both in terms of why the negativity is being driven, and where maybe understanding the source could lead to letting it go?

Here's my MSB guarantee to anyone who doesn't like me...

You will never ever ever ever ever have to put up with me at BMD.

[Raemira]

Right then. If this is not a community, then it doesn't need repairing. There's nothing that can be repaired.

[Derp]

@TNP

You mean things like saying "these people engaged in problematic behaviors, got banned, and then went and did this other thing?" Because that's repeatedly the context that they keep coming up in. And that's a fine context to bring them up in, even under the current rules, because again, we have receipts of that behavior.

[TNP]

@Ganymede In no way am I referring to the change in software or site address. I'm referring to the change in tone and rules you decided were necessary.

[TNP]

@Derp Nope, not that. But never mind. So totally not worth the effort when there's fun to be had.

[Misadventure]

I'd strongly suggest suspending posting in this thread for about 5 days.

I do not recommend permanent locking, ever.

At this point people are just winding themselves and each other up, and that adds no value.

Is that a thing? Suspend posting on a thread? Is it possible people can let something lie for a cooling off period?

Yes, I know how to turn off notifications for the thread. I also know how to just not log in for days or weeks or months.

STRONGLY SUGGEST.

[Maythorn]

The only things I think would "repair the community" are shutting this board down and making a new one or making it private. (The second option is probably not all that helpful though since it would just create an echo chamber.)

I was part of a game community that imploded on itself much like this one has, and it just kept getting worse and worse until everyone stopped logging in and the headwiz decided finally to shut the game down. There was nothing else that could have been done to fix the game except banning nearly all of the active players since everyone was in the wrong and disobeying the rules. Banning everyone wouldn't have really fixed anything in our case except to make everyone left too scared to participate. The headwiz and the rest of staff stepping down might have helped, but then there would have been a lot of power grabbing drama. In the end, ultimately half of the community would have felt unfairly treated. So shutting down, which forced us all to move on, was probably the better outcome.

As a long time lurker, I mostly read posts here at MSB to know when bad actors were in the community so I could avoid them and also to gain insight on developing and running MUs. Seeing the community split apart has made me really sad, but I'm glad to know that BMD is carrying the torch forward on calling out injustice in this hobby. If MSB is going to stick around, I hope those left will find what they can best contribute to the conversation. Like how mentioning WORA still opens wounds in people however, MSB will have a similar effect for those who were involved for a long time.

[Bellecourt]

I don't have a terribly large number of posts for someone who has been a member of this forum for five years now. I had a lot of posts initially when I made the account. I was very excited to be playing my first mush character when I joined, and I did so because I kept hearing in oocs about this place. I was very horrified by having things like, my character being icly aggressive toward a rival covenant's pcs while oocly I was actively defending their players, combined with me not making their builds quickly enough on the heels of my having had a heart attack and being hospitalized for over a week for the ensuing heart failure turned into a wave of 'bad actor' and 'they were attacking me' (when I had receipts showing me defending them instead) turned into this whole big thing that resulted in so such discomfort in engaging with the community that I started trying to delete every post I had made and actively changed my username to try to attempt to keep ffrom being actively dragged for... I guess not being a part of the circle of winners?

Recently, after the forum split, I tried cross posting both here and there about a role I was looking to fill. Just to compare and see. The thread here was actively engaged with, upvoted, and interest and discussion engaged over a dozen times. The one over there didn't get a single response or upvote. Now, as someone who studied psychology at the collegiate level and has an understanding of neurobiolpgy, I am not surprised at all by the results of my experiment. After all, I was part of the 'out' group, and no one was getting feelgood brain chemicals for engaging (see:oxytocin as love and hate chemical).

There don't need to be accusations or speculation made about cliques to understand how they work and form when you understand oxytocin. I will say this: I am really happy to feel like there is a good chance that when trying to engage with other mushers here there will be some small response and probably positive in tone, after the split. Where before it, I lurked without engaging for fear of being dogpiled and wildly misrepresented again. So to me, this fixed the community. And it is unsurprising that they are continuing the pound puppy party over there. How many new people have we all been warned off of over there in the two months time the place has existed?

/my 2 cents

Edit to fix typos.

[Taika]

@Bellecourt >.> I didn't reply there cause I replied here. Just by happenstance, I saw the post here first. <.<

[Ghost]

@Bellecourt Great feedback and I'm happy to chat with you here. I also 100% agree with your approach on the hate chemical. I've believed for a while now that a certain amount of the negativity was coming from that kind of thing.

I'm a survivor of domestic abuse, but I'm also that kid who was bullied early on in grade school who mitigated the bully by becoming a bully and then later course-corrected out of it. To add to this, a lot of my nastier moments on these forums was while I was in the middle of domestic abuse, and around the time I was in therapy with my abuser I pulled back from attacking others as a direct result of revelations from those sessions.

Ultimately, I know a few things to be true.

1. Abusers will often make it YOUR fault that they are abusing you, and go to great lengths to justify their behavior not of their own aggression, but because their victims are responsible for the abuse they receive. Abusers often go through a lot of work to justify and vocalize this to excuse accountability for their assault.
2. Bullies ultimately are translating their own personal issues into attacks on others, but in the sense of the schoolyard bully they NEED an audience. The existence of the audience both gives them "positive" (airquotes) feedback from people cheering them on, but also makes sure that others are able to see what happens when you hurt the feelings of the bully: you get mistreated in front of others.

Now, I'll freely admit there are people I ABSOLUTELY think are abusers and bullies. I'll admit there are some people I just flat out don't like or occasionally have made jabs at their behavior because I think it's extreme or ridiculous. Some of those people in the hobby I used to "run with" but ultimately stopped associating with them because I didn't like seeing the way they treated others and I was starting to "get off" on the schoolyard bullying and I didn't like how I was behaving.

I do feel at least reflecting on these concepts could help people get out of those habits. There are no elites in the community; everyone is just a "regular joe", but I feel some are locked in a cycle of abuse/schoolyard bullying, so realizing what that is and setting your bar at NOT joining in on that is a balancing act, but it's important to keep your eye on that ball.

Edit: I would also like to add that I think removing posting access to the Hog Pit paired with rules about personal attacks has mitigated the concept of the schoolyard bully's audience and is ABSOLUTELY key in driving down the hostility factor on the forum.

[Bellecourt]

@Ghost glad you got out of that situation and absolutely agree about the Hog Pit.

[Ghost]

@Bellecourt Kind of you to say so and thank you

[UnlessWeSleep]

edit: nm I came to my senses. It's not worth getting hassled again

[Arkandel]

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

It was decided pretty much unilaterally that MSB would be something it never had been in any of its past incarnations. I've been here for all of them going back tot he original WORA before Nymeria got Tasteless Descs shut down.

As you know, I've been here that long as well.

If by "unilaterally," you mean "without consulting the rest of the community," then that would be an accurate conclusion.

And just to be clear. This is something I supported, and still do.

Just because MSB was ran a specific way by me that doesn't make it the 'right' way. There is no 'right' way to administrate a forum any more than there is to run a game. During my time at the helm folks had plenty of concerns about the Hog Pit, its rules (or lack thereof) and the way personal attacks were permitted to happen.

There is nothing wrong with changing that. I picked my poison. Gany picked another.

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

This point has been made many times, here and on the new board, and there's always an underlying thread that people gloss over:
we are not a community.
Or, more precisely, not one community. There are several different communities, philosophies, and ideologies lumped in that 'community', and frankly, some of them are incompatible in rather volatile ways.

On that though we need to firmly disagree.

Of course there are different points of view and philosophies. I don't think they are nearly as incompatible as you make them out to be - otherwise MSB would have imploded years ago.

Creating (or changing) policies creates friction. That should be expected, accounted for and some more patience and understanding would have gone a long way.

In my opinion it behooves anyone in an administrative position to be at least willing to account for the fact they could have handled something differently, to see things from someone else's point of view even if they are prepared to stand their ground, and to be patient when a plan doesn't go well.

However what concerns me here, and I'll be honest, is that you don't seem to think the plan went wrong.

[Ghost]

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

However what concerns me here, and I'll be honest, is that you don't seem to think the plan went wrong.

As opposed to what about removing the Hog Pit and instituting an anti-attack policy that they thought might have gone right?

I think there's a huge difference between "changing things and accepting the results, even if a number of people don't like it" and "changing things and it being the wrong decision", which I think ultimately is what some people are trying to browbeat the MSB staff into admitting: "We fucked up".

I don't think the staff at MSB are "refusing to admit the plan went wrong" at all. I think the staff at MSB are refusing to adhere to the opinions of a select number of angry people who want to see them admit to being wrong.

[Derp]

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

Of course there are different points of view and philosophies. I don't think they are nearly as incompatible as you make them out to be - otherwise MSB would have imploded years ago.

I suppose that I'll firmly disagree with you on this as well, then. Because plenty of us had noticed that there was a growing incompatibility on this forum, and that one group was routinely shouted down for not agreeing with the more vocal group. Several people in this thread alone have mentioned it.

That isn't a difference of opinion. That is, as someone on the other board put it, a fundamentally incompatible philosophy about what these games are about, how they should be run, and who should have a voice in them. Debating the standards of exclusion isn't just academic. The people in these circles hold grudges for literal decades filled with harassment for slights both real and imagined, and usually on nothing more than the social currency of which-group-dislikes-who.

I don't expect you to see it, because of where you're situated in the community and the ideals that you hold to when it comes to administration, but it should be telling that every administration after yours reined in some of those policies to offset some of those volatile excesses. Until you've been on the receiving end of the results of those policies, you can't really claim enough experience with them to call them compatible. It's easy to say that "they aren't that incompatible." You're not the one constantly being attacked and browbeaten for refusing to get on board with the normalization of ostracization based on nothing more than an accusation.

[Arkandel]

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

Until you've been on the receiving end of the results of those policies, you can't really claim enough experience with them to call them compatible. It's easy to say that "they aren't that incompatible." You're not the one constantly being attacked and browbeaten for refusing to get on board with the normalization of ostracization based on nothing more than an accusation.

Do you think I ran MSB for nearly a decade yet I had not experienced personal attacks?

[Derp]

@Arkandel

The occasional personal attack isn't really what I'm talking about here. The sustained campaigns of character assissination that those personal attacks allowed are.

Show me yours. I can show you mine.

[hobos]

Whether administrative action was 100% wrong or not, there are definitely things that could have been handled better and it may be valuable to speculate on those things in order to try to do better if there ever is a next time.

That was partially already done with the reversal of some of the bans. And I don't think anyone who is desirous of someone else adhering to their opinion will ever be happy unless the other person entirely capitulates to their opinion (and even then, probably not). So this isn't about making anyone else happy, but about general self-improvement.

I'll go first. I'm not anyone in charge but I still feel that I made some mistakes to admit here. I should not have gone over to the other forum and tried to talk to them there. Naturally they were smarting from a wound, and I am not a reassuring friend, and I didn't help anything at all. It was not the time to question their approaches or encourage any sort of social change. That was just like rubbing salt into a wound. Further, I shouldn't have taken their reaction personally and used it as an example of the type of behavior that I don't like seeing on community forums. Obviously they have no problem with behaving that way and this is just a cultural clash. What I should have done is recognize earlier that there is a reason human beings behave in tribal ways, and I should have acknowledged that it was about people feeling safe sooner rather than later. I'm embarrassed by how long it took me to get to that conclusion.

Cliquery may not be how I'd prefer a community forum to act, but it is a perfectly legitimate way to act given the political atmosphere of current times. I personally don't think it is wholly effective in terms of actually guaranteeing safety. I think it just encourages actual real predators (like Cullen) to come back incognito over and over with new attempts at conquering the fakery that is required to blend in. But what can you do? We all try to get along in life as best as we can, and it's okay to have different perspectives, and like Derp says... this split is probably a good thing, after all. And if people -feel- safe, that's really enough. Life's already too hard.

To those who have been upset in the past due to being unfairly character-assassinated, is it possible to realize you are just collateral damage to a society struggling to keep itself safe? The personal attacks are difficult to stop taking personally, I know. But realization where it comes from and why might be a good step towards healing -- on an individual level, at least, if not a community one.