Posts made by Devrex

@selira I'm not sure what constitutes arguing in bad faith, but of course I have my own blind spots and biases. That said, I do try hard to engage with the actual words that are being actually said. I also try not to make accusations per se, but I do see behaviors happen and I disagree with those behaviors. It sounds like you're trying to push me into shutting up by attacking my character (i.e., you argue in bad faith). Is that what you're trying to do?

And you just used the word "asshole" and defended calling people an asshole as a good thing. Is that what you meant to do? Do you mean to say that if someone yells a name loudly enough the person who gets called a name is automatically wrong and the name callers are automatically correct? Because that would be disturbing. If I suddenly shouted a name at you right now would you then step back and evaluate how you were coming across or would you want to defend yourself?

@selira Am I? Have I called anyone a name? Show me where I've said someone is a bad guy. Show me where I have even said the word clique until this very moment. I'll wait, because I know I never have. That's not how I engage with this place. And what's funny is you're putting up another Set B, because "Nuh uhh shut up" is not what anyone you're trying to call out has ever done that I've seen. I haven't even really seen that out of people who personally I disagree with on the regular. So again, we're back to "let's use hyperbole to change the narrative so we can villainize some folks" and that is, I'm afraid, a bad faith tactic.

Saying I'm doing something really really passionately does not make it something that I am doing. And if the only time you can ever think of that anyone has ever misinterpreted opinions is when it's yours that's...well that's a blind spot. It suggests that you're the only one who has ever been misunderstood. I think that sounds a little suspect. Everyone has been misunderstood at some point in their lives. That's the human experience.

@selira Well see that comes back to the Set A, Set B problem, cause what got pushed back on was Set B. And I definitely have an objection to that, because people aren't putting people "on blast" based on their actual opinion, but the fabricated, manufactured opinion.

Here's how I see this going down. Over and over and over again. This is an example, not a point at a specific discussion.

Set A: "Unless you espouse anarchy, some level of state control is required to keep people from harming one another. It's mostly just a matter of ensuring that systems exist to hold people accountable, that they're in use, and that they're effective."

The community made up Set B: "Dev said FASCISM was GOOD. Dev's a FASCIST."

Now we're going to go on for three pages arguing about how fascism is bad. Of course Set A never said fascism was good, Set A's poster...myself, I guess, in this example, believes it's terrible, but the damage is done. Now I've been painted as a fascist and now for the next 7 years any time I say anything it's gonna be all like, "Shut up you fascist." At least, that's the pattern I've watched play out. It's happened to more than one person here.

And honestly if I were a fascist it wouldn't do a dadgum thing to change me into an anti-fascist. All it does is make the shouting parties feel real good about calling out someone they've identified as "The Bad Guy" and as a bonus, identified who it's safe to treat badly ad infinitum.

@selira Put on blast if their opinion is bad? What do you mean by that? I already said that the opinion should be engaged with. When is someone "hiding behind the opinion as a defense?" A defense for what, exactly?

@greenflashlight The number of times, including a recent discussion, that I watched someone say one set of words (we'll call that Set A) and have a whole crop of folks just kinda decide that those words were actually some other thing entirely (we'll call that Set B) and then go off to argue and yell about Set B is staggering.

It happens even when someone tries to break down the original statement line by line and bring the discussion back to Set A. I don't know about 4 years ago or 5 years ago or 15 years ago, but I've sure watched it happen for about 3 or so now. It's why I used to lurk instead of speak up.

And then the dogpile begins. And folks seem to reckon that if they just say real real loudly that someone is (Fill In The Blank) and That is What They Are...and What They Are is something that it is socially acceptable to punch awhile...misogynist...rape apologist...pick your name (as I point out that name calling is still name calling is still name calling) well then heck, we can just say anything we want about that person now, right? It's totally okay, we've stuck them in a little box or category based solely on opinions that they've voiced. And while we do that we can wave the threat around...be careful! You could be the next one to be called this thing and if that's the case we can treat you however and everyone will be afraid to speak up lest they get tainted with the same brush!

Over. Opinions. And in my opinion, that isn't right.

Especially as it would be more productive to engage with the opinion. A person is not a label because they hold a wrongheaded view. They're a person with a view. Views can change. Maybe you're too tired to engage your family with that over the Thanksgiving table (god knows I am) but it's a forum. A place to discuss opinions. And engage with opinions. The original actual opinion would be a bonus.

@kanye-qwest said in The hog pit thread titled Admin Derp:

@ganymede said in The hog pit thread titled Admin Derp:

when the situation has been dealt with to my satisfaction,

How long does it take to tell Derp he should step down?

@devrex said in The hog pit thread titled Admin Derp:

I wonder if people would be so comfortable reading an unemotional statement of legal procedure as an attack if it had come from a woman.

Absolutely disgusting, my guy. Get out of here.

Why? He was essentially told to sit down and shut up. It’s a valid question. Or maybe I should be asking if an unemotional legal analysis would be taken as an attack if made by anyone but Derp.

@misterboring He gave an unemotional and pretty straightforward situational analysis. It was not good news, but he said it was not good news. People chose to read it all sorts of strange ways. He never took it personal. It was immediately taken personal on him though. If there is only one acceptable answer to a statement—“there there I am sorry you are sad”—then I am not sure a thread designed for debate or analysis is the place to post it. I wonder if people would be so comfortable reading an unemotional statement of legal procedure as an attack if it had come from a woman. Or if we are now taking the stance that if you do not tow an exact party line that everyone who does not is now “out of line.”

@arkandel That's usually how I see it, as an investment in nurturing someone who might discover the love of it but who might not, and either way for one night at least they're getting engaged and doing the thing. If they even walk away with more confidence to page some other player and say "Hey I think my car broke down on the side of the road near that highway where the serial killer's been operating and I think my cell phone is dead, your RP hooks say you're good with cars, wanna come to the rescue?" then...awesome. The serial killer need never make an appearance even. They've gotten confident enough to pitch a thing that will entertain them both for one night and won't be reliant on +events. Well worth one night spent going "I'd set a -2 mod for that" when asked.

*Nobody's running the types of things I want to play in, so I don't get to play in the types of things that I run for other people and I'm frustrated about that. (this sometimes morphs into the dreaded OMG this place is populated by people who don't take RP as seriously as I do, since they like different and less meaningful things, if one isn't careful.)

This can be so, so disheartening. It's happened to me many, many times. It's quite a lucky thing when you get to a place where two people want to run and play in the same type of stuff, so they can feed each other and keep each other sane.

*If I run something publicaly, it tends to get cluttered up fast with players I don't like. (who don't engage and probably are going to come to MSB and bitch about how boring all PrPs on this mush are within 5 minutes of finishing the 3 hour scene that I had to pester them to pose/do their action/ect the entire time or who would wait for 40 minutes to give everyone a 1 liner pose that didn't react to anyone else's pose)

In my opinion, this can be solved by staff offering support for a player's right to refuse service to anyone they feel like refusing service to.

Nobody owes anyone else their creative labor.

I'd tell any player they have the absolute right to tell someone not to show up at their scene. "You dialed it in last time and that sucked my energy away so I won't be adding you to this one," is valid and okay, and in my opinion staff needs to back that. So is asking someone to leave a scene. "This is the third time I've had to ask you to pose and you gave nothing to work with. That's disrespectful to the other participants and to me, and I'm going to ask you to leave." Policies should be supportive of the fact that someone who is asked to leave has no real choice but to do so, if the code doesn't allow you to just straight up remove them.

*I'm over here working my ass off, running a ton of stuff for people to help take stuff off staff's plate, but it looks like instead of inviting me or securing me a spot in stuff that other people or staff are running, they're just doing stuff with themselves/their usuals.

This one is harder; if what staff is running is mostly public they get who they get. I get baffled by players who say this but don't sign up for the public fun on offer, or put in +requests, or otherwise use the tools. For this I would think communicating clearly: "Hey can I get into this, hey can you save me a spot, hey can I follow up on this lead, hey do you have any mysteries coming up I can participate in, hey would you be available for some RP..." would have a favorable response. Sometimes staff just doesn't know how to include a player more directly, is staring at their sheet or their backstory and is at a loss for a hook or an angle. Sometimes staff isn't aware they're interested or care about that RP. They might just need to hear from the player in a non-accusatory way.

*The system rules/lore is confusing and I get anxiety just thinking about putting myself out there that way as a storyteller.

The solution here may be for staffers to offer themselves as "rules support". Player tells the story, staffer offers back-seat drive guidance till they feel more confidence. I've done this for players before and am more than willing to do it again...but I haven't always been good about communicating that fact. Note to self for current project!

*As a player participant I see people do no-shows, act like entitled assholes OOCly, try to run over/backtalk the ST, bitch about how they never get to do anything fun on a public channel while participating in this STed scene, argue with the ST over rolls/mock or not shut up OOCly about rolls, ect ect--fuck that, I don't want to risk having to deal with people like that.

Weirdly I've seen less of this over the years, not more. Most players I've run into and have run for have been kind, appreciative, helpful, and forgiving. Everyone's mileage surely varies there, though. I offer this not as a refutation but more to offer a sense of hope...many players are awesome!

There was a cool Bingo game that one of the players (Maia, I think) on The Network came up with, where they rando-generated a bingo card for players with prompts like uh..."I Thought You Brought It," and "Is This Real or Is It a Simulation" and "The Book Was Wrong" and a bunch of other tropes. People rando-generated cards and put them on their profiles and tried to get a bingo.

This seemed to encourage folks to come up with wild and crazy and fun things to do for and with each other just to make those tropes happen, and everyone had lots of fun with it. Stuff like that can help. I just remembered it just now!

Folks don't have to run a whole hecking plot, either. More folks just willing to run a one-shot or two would be helpful.

Heck, it would be pretty great if more folks would be willing to come up with creative scene pitches and then start grabbing folks to go get into a one-off situation. Momentum can build off that stuff, scene-by-scene. That takes a lot of the pressure off of 'run plot' but elevates a step above 'So Danny was down at the bar today...'

Creating a one-off doesn't necessarily require people to be paragons of creativity. Just kind of asking yourself what was happening to your character an hour or two before you got there to play them can spark some cool shit. Why is Danny covered in mud and hauling around an Igloo cooler with a weird thumping sound inside? Dunno, but I bet someone would have a fun night figuring it out.

@macha Most people are just super grateful to have something to do tonight!

@faraday nods! Thanks for the heads up. I'm willing to buy more storage space if that's what it takes, that's not a huge concern to me, but that's good to know that as I'd briefly wondered whether it would become a technical issue.

In response to earnest concerns, on my own game this morning I have done the following.

• Verified that the page log history spans interactions back to the first pages exchanged on game.
• Verified that the option has been set on our system to keep unshared scenes indefinitely, an option already included in the standard code suite for Ares.
• Verified that every conceivable form of on-game communication is tracked and monitored (but available to look at only with the permission of you, the player).
• Urged players to "archive" mail rather than delete it, in case they need it later.
• Added all of the reporting commands to our "safety" policy after testing each and every one of them to make sure they did what I said they did in the descriptions, as I offered an expanded help to what was already available on-game.
• Urged individuals, both in the policy documents and in a forum post, to allow us to take a look at any communication that happens in game any time they feel uneasy, either to allow us to take disciplinary action or to begin a paper trail.
• Added a note to our off-game communication policy which clarifies that we do communicate with the admin of other games re: problems that could indicate stalking behavior or other abusive behavior and will, whenever that admin will consent to share information with us, use that information in our deliberations. We also clarified we reserve the right to use interactions we already personally were aware of from our contact with other games to ensure there is no doubt that we are paying attention to this information.
• Clarified why we do not feel qualified to evaluate Discord, Facebook, and similar evidence by pointing out we do not know the Discord handles of every player, or their RL names. Offered a link to HTML instructions posted by people who Discord spoof as (I hope) a mere hobby. A gentle reminder that already existed but which is now reiterated has been offered that urges people to keep their conversations in-game where they can be reported at a button touch unless they are very sure the other person can be trusted.
• Reiterated that we do not integrate our Chat with Discord nor do we have an official game Discord server precisely because we want to give players the ability to limit interactions to an environment where they can, at any time, report the interaction to actual people they talk to instead of faceless Discord admin. As this is posted right on policies, those who come to play know before they choose to gen and before they take the risk of using our site that this is a part of our ToS and they are agreeing to and accepting those terms, which we offer to ensure that they can make informed decisions about whether to communicate off-game or not.
• Added a line to our safety policy which made it clear that they can ask staff to issue DNCs on their behalf if they do not feel comfortable doing so. Language existed already which indicated that DNCs may be issued for any reason without need for proof: I don't want to talk to you is considered ample reason. Players are not required to provision us with any reason other than "I would like a DNC."
• Hopefully put abusers on notice that this is an environment where their every move is ultimately watched and reportable, and that we are trying to foster a culture wherein people feel a-okay reporting either to allow us to take disciplinary action or to create a paper trail that will allow us to corroborate multiple reports from multiple witnesses later, thus allowing us to take disciplinary action eventually if the nature of the interaction is not, on its own, enough to prompt disciplinary action, but was nevertheless sufficient to make a player uneasy. We want it clear that the probability of being seen and caught is very high in this specific space where we have offered to provide volunteer services as game runners, despite the fact that we have indicated that we do not feel adequately equipped to provide protection on other spaces or to evaluate off-site evidence.
• Added a line to our Removal policy which clarifies our standard of proof is "more likely to have happened than not," and not "beyond a reasonable doubt."

Hopefully this makes our commitment to stopping harassment or abuse clear, and gives some insight into how an evidence-based system could still be committed to protecting every player that walks through our doors, without requiring us to know all of them personally.

@wizz Putting words in my mouth. I have said nothing about holding what happens next against them. Again. We are not talking about every MUSH ever. We are talking about a specific code base where everything is logged and pull-up-able, where the receipts are kept automatically.

On the places that don't have that? I would work things a different way, and have done, because you go with the best you've got.

And I have never once advocated for victim blaming. So again, you are making personal attacks where none have been lobbied at you in turn.

@wizz You don't know me. I have made no attacks on your person. I'll thank you to make none on mine, nor to make assumptions about me. You are welcome to think what you wish of course, but the last feeling I feel is contempt. If you want to engage with the point let's engage with the point. If you just wish to call me names because you do not like my position, then there's no point in continuing. I have in fact engaged in no attacks on anyone's person, other than to say I thought @GreenFlashlight was making an unfair argument. An argument, not stuff about them personally.

@wizz But doing guesswork based on gut feeling is not equally arrogant, just in the other direction? If the premise is, "manipulators are very good at fooling people" then how do I know the person who flings the accusation isn't trying to manipulate me into kicking someone off my game so as to ensure some evidence they have doesn't get out? If they're really this masterful, then an approach of "Ok, someone said someone else is bad, they gotta go" is just as bad.

We all gotta draw our baselines for how we will protect our communities and if there were a perfect answer there would be no room to have these discussions, but there is not a perfect answer. And again, letting me see the log where the person was being manipulative and giving me the chance to pick up on it doesn't hurt. Sometimes these victims aren't sure if they're being wronged and in fact need someone to say "Hell yes, now let's talk about how we deal with it" and by asking them to submit what the hell went on, we can then have that conversation.

@greenflashlight I think you are being unfair. I think you took that straight to the most extreme hyperbole possible. It certainly doesn't match up with the reality of how I have seen Derp handle people who need help. If you meant it to be a demonstrative example, or to get your own back somehow, then we've moved far afield of the point. We have gone from a civil discussion about principles and best practices and the pros and cons of two approaches to basically just attacking Derp. Heck, a few folks have said this is now just about attacking Derp for some past threads, and we have now moved so far past "constructive" it's not even funny. I have watched Derp be the first to jump in and defend people who need help.

Since I'm AFAB, and didn't start transitioning into well into my 40s, I hear you when you say, as you seem to be, if I try to give your words their most civil possible reading, that you are concerned that asking people to provide some sort of evidence of wrongdoing is accusing someone who has been hurt of lying, and this is a systemic thing that often happens to women, and that's something that is a societal problem. And I suppose, taken to its worst possible extreme that people could indeed do that...but that does not do anything but say "things taken to their worst possible extremes have bad results."

A measured, careful, moderate, and quiet attempt to discern truth while asking people to hit a report button on a system that literally tracks your pages all the way back to the first page you send and can pull them up and send them on is nothing like that worst extreme. Especially when "hey, this is the way things work around here, please be prepared to at least do that much and this is why" is right on the tin.

This is why isn't BECAUSE ANYONE WHO CLAIMS ABUSE IS A LYING LIAR WHO LIES.

"This is why" is I believe, I believe, because I wrote the policy and asked Derp to help me enforce it, that an evidence-based society is one I want to live in, not a mob rule society.

I believe it having gone through all sorts of the same sort of stuff y'all are talking about, feeling all alone because there was nobody to help me, knowing that, knowing I had nothing, and still believing in that principle. I believe in it strongly. I believe in it to the bottom of my heart. I believe that most of the time, these asshats are just not that clever, that the trail is there if people will just share it.

@icanbeyourmuse The files urge people to report, even if they aren't sure. The files urge people to tell people in no uncertain terms to stop behaviors that are bothering them and if they do not stop, then they are out of there. We have already addressed one stalking situation and have made it clear that say, moving to our game from another game, when we can prove it, to try to pursue a person who has already told you to get lost is a bannable offense, and the person who did it is no longer on our game.

If saying "hey this is the Internet and it's a bit rough out here" is bad then yeah, I guess so? But I see it as saying, "Hey this is a part of town where there is some crime, keep your purse close and don't flash cash." We don't blame you if you get mugged, and we'll certainly go after the mugger, but we would like you to be safe, and here is a way you can be safer.

They also say hey we're going to need you to use all the oodles and oodles of tools Ares gives you to bump that stuff up to us so we can see it too before we act on it. It's spelled out. I hope that it is spelled out in a way that is friendly and empathetic, but who the heck knows?

@krmbm VA Spider was referenced multiple times, and I believe that example is more than famous. But yes, at this point, you and I have a 180 staffing philosophy difference. I'm fine with agreeing to disagree about it...and agreeing that we would not enjoy being on one another's games.