@arkandel said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
For instance we've had reports in the past about too many Arx posts in a more generic thread, but being slightly off-topic isn't actionable.
(No, really, that's so dumb a gif is the only appropriate response. 
)
@greenflashlight I'm with you completely re: ensuring the confidentiality of the person making a report.
The one thing to keep in mind with something like this is... well, it's two-fold.
Different games have different structures to their staff, and rarely does one person have the authority to act without consulting another member of staff. Some will only take action about something if the whole group agrees, for example, while others, if you reported the incident to a lowly admin, they are likely going to need to discuss the matter with the headwiz or someone who does have the authority to take action if something further needs to happen.
This is a checks and balances issue; though I agree that 'the fewer involved the better' for confidentiality, some staff corps are just not designed to allow that and you run a real risk of things going much worse if only one staff member ends up handling it solo. Others may have at least one or two others who need to weigh in. That doesn't mean anyone's name goes out to the public, however. The hard part here is that the game does actually have to protect itself, too. Solo staffer action -- especially if it potentially involves removing a player from the game -- can get the rumor mill turning much faster and louder and more viciously than an actual accounting of everything that's fully public (which I agree would already be horrible), and this can end up harming everyone involved, including the person making the report (as men report, too, but as @TNP said, much more rarely -- I'm keeping my pronouns as neutral as possible for a reason), considerably more.
You also have to figure, most complaints and reports are kept fairly confidential. People who are awful tend to accrue a fair number of them, even if it's not in the form of a formal report or complaint with or without logs, though this may not be known to the person making the report this time unless people who have reported things previously tell them so. Staff have usually observed the behavior themselves, too. These patterns are often more valuable to staff than any potentially embarrassing detail or log could ever be. Very rare is the 'huh, this is the first time I've heard anything like this!' about an abusive player, unless that player is very new to the game, staff-side, because even without formal complaints, people do mention these things when they arise, even if it is just in passing, and good staff notice them when they show up on channels, etc.
The other thing is, staff actually is responsible for more than just that person who reports. If what they report having happened is NOT OK on that game, there's really only so much someone can ask to be done. For instance, someone reporting may not be demanding, asking, or even hoping that the offending player be removed from the game, but if the offending player broke the rules and was behaving inappropriately, they should be removed. This doesn't mean digging into anybody's business or prying around, but it does mean there are some limits on what can be asked for. For instance, 'don't ban this person even though they did this' would fall into that 'this could ultimately be unethical' category of requests if what the offender did warrants removal from the game. It would be the same if someone asked for someone to be banned who didn't deserve it, just flipped around -- it would cross an important ethical line that would make the whole game less safe, and the whole game is in the realm of the staff member's responsibility and concern.
You can't, essentially, ask to leave the predator out in the wild to harm others if what they've done would warrant removal from the game. Staff can remove them without exposing who reported. You are very right about one thing: that part is about ensuring there will be no next target of abuse, and that no further abuse from that offender occurs to the reporting party on that game, not about punishing that person for what they did wrong already or about helping the target get back on their feet. But that's a very real and important part of staff's job and responsibility.
Providing care and support is a separate matter entirely. There's really only so much of that staff can do, and ethically speaking, only so much they should. While a lot of us have training and/or personal experience in this area, there aren't a lot of actual therapists or counselors or victim services folk staffing -- and when staffing a game, this isn't typically on the qualifications list. People are usually there for code, for running scenes, etc. (And even the actual qualified folks who do this for a living are not likely to want to do the same, at length, for no paycheck.) The only thing worse than no support is someone who thinks they're being helpful who has no idea what in hell they're talking about, much of the time.
This is where a good RL support network -- or network of supportive friends within the hobby -- comes in, for the most part. It isn't, and can't be, staff's job to make someone whole again after something horrible happens. Staff can be respectful of the target's privacy, and they can listen to what the target wants the resolution to be, but it is ultimately not their responsibility to provide counseling and recovery services after the fact if someone needs them.
@auspice said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
Because I know you know what you're doing. I shouldn't need to tell you to back off, but obviously I have to, so don't make me break out the mallet.
...it depends. (Take a drink!)
I think it's fair to say that tone comes across badly in text sometimes. That's a hurdle. It's a hurdle even for the best writers.
It's not uncommon for things to come across differently than the author intends.
And even then, I do think things get away from people sometimes as part of basic human nature. 'Step back' is the best advice, but when someone is in the moment in which they likely should step back, it's also often enough the very moment in which that advice is the furthest thing from someone's mind because they're so focused on what is going on.
Annnnnnd on top of all of that, a lot of folks assume they know what someone else is doing... and are actually wrong. Happened to me just the other day and I felt bad about it when it was pointed out. I've been on the other side of that one a lot, too.
@kanye-qwest said in Reporting Roadblocks: Denial, Fear, Shame, Guilt, Embarrassment, etc.:
if a player is doing this stuff to one person...they are probably doing it to others, too. Like, yes you should strive for comfort and understanding but at the same time the staff's job is to do the best they can for the players. That means protecting them from known shitlord elements.
^ This. And sometimes it really is as simple as just paging staff, "Dude did X, it made me super uncomfortable."
@GreenFlashlight If that's not new news to the staffer -- and it almost always isn't, even if it's the first formal report or complaint -- there's usually no need for the Spanish Inquisition, anyway.
Saying 'don't ban Joe on my account!' is just not going to work, because if staff decides to ban Joe, it's not a matter of punishing Joe. It's a matter of not letting Joe be a shit to people on the game any longer, and that's done on the behalf of everyone, not one person making a complaint.
If Joe did something worth getting banned for, Joe's gonna get banned. 'Don't ban him because of what he did to me' is no more practical or reasonable than a friend of Joe's insisting Joe not be banned in spite of what they did to (generic) you.
@templari I dunno about you, but I'm kinda mostly horrified that Twilight might have been right about something.
I don't actually know how to live in that world.
@ganymede I do believe you -- but like I said, you both participate in discussions I'm not really involved in. For instance, there's only one of the Arx threads I don't have on 'ignore thread' entirely, and even that one I only skim once in a blue if there's nothing else with new stuff -- and I know you're both actively chatty about those subjects individually, so if it happened there? It's gonna be invisible to me as anything in the politics forum is.
The mod voice thing was, actually, the time I remember you stepping in this way. The same folk had complained about the lack of distinction, then about the distinction. You said something. It made a difference. It didn't resolve it, no -- but it did remind the typically more reasonable people in that discussion that the contradiction in what was being demanded wasn't reasonable, and those people did ease down off the throttle.
Resolve? No. But a difference. And it's not an insignificant difference.
Being brutally honest? Some people just want to watch the world burn. Some people just want to wank their grudges. Some people will not see reason, or simply will never give someone who slighted them once a shred of benefit of the doubt ever again.
Nothing I'm talking about is going to change these people, but appeals to the reasonable people -- who I think are the vast majority of posters here -- that they have sometimes swayed into little hate cliques or dogpile teams or commiseration spirals or gossip circles strips support from the truly intractable hate-spewers and bullies.
That isn't a short-term gain broadly, but it is a long game well worth pursuing.
Another thing that comes to mind here is this: how hands-on and accessible are staff for other things on <game>?
It strikes me as being somewhat relevant, in that if you know you can easily approach staff with questions generally, this will be a help.
Like, I know I was looking at a default consent-based setup for all CvC RP; there’s info there noting that players have every right to ask staff to step in and mediate if they can’t agree on something as (usually) simple as a scene outcome. First, I am optimistic that would cut down on the number of incidents of someone trying something shady (due to the presnce of a neutral observer) but also it lets people know they are indeed welcome to tap a staffer on the shoulder as a sounding board or for oversight even for ‘the little stuff’ if someone feels they need a second opinion or an assist. Ideally, that would help more players get the chance to build rapport with staff more broadly, or at least develop the basics of a working relationship, which would potentially cut down on the fear of approaching a complete stranger or unknown quantity outside of the mechanics of an app process and maybe some idle channel small talk.
@dontpanda Honestly, I can empathize.
My parents live in the house next door to mine. 'Just dropping by' without notice was pretty egregious for years.
They'd just come right in, and literally walk into my bedroom to wake me up to bother me about whatever, even when I was long since in college and They Knew I Might Not Be Alone.
This eventually shot them in their own collective feet, when my mother just sauntered the heck in and found me sleeping with my then boyfriend, dead to the world, both of us fully dressed in totally proper PJs and everything...
...at which point we awoke to her shriek of uber-Catholic terror and the sound of her retreating footsteps as she fled the house, complete with flailing jazz hands, as we stared at each other, wondering what in the actual fuck just happened before collapsing back to sleep.
Now, this was ultimately pretty funny, and they never just barged into the house again (or my bedroom even, goddamn!), but what they were doing was super invasive and absolutely not at all OK. They had ignored all polite notifications of boundaries and me telling them this was not OK, and even my mother's shrink repeatedly telling her this was not reasonable behavior for her to be engaging in.
If my mother hadn't scared herself out of the house, there definitely would have been some a whole lot of yelling.
So I can empathize, rather a lot.
@ganymede I try to do this now when I see it, for what it's worth, and will sometimes comment with support directly.
I'm more careful with the latter because 'in that bucket of people it's OK to shit on without social consequence' is a thing, which means comments may equal 'oh if that stupid bitch agrees with it it must be wrong omg'.
I have zero qualms with upvotes. I'll upvote people I don't get on with at all when I think they said something valuable, called out bullshit well, or did this or that hard-but-right thing. I'd upvote people three times over for these things if I could.
Re: professionalism, it depends on what someone means by it, IMO.
To some, this means civility.
To a smaller some, this means the customer service mentality of 'the customer is always right' + 'I am free to be abusive to a customer service representative and they have to sit there smiling through it'.
I'm down with casual (read: not super formal/detached/distant) conversation in which everyone recognizes that everyone in said conversation is a person worthy of respect and the benefit of the doubt regardless of their position or role on the game. I am not down with the 'free to be abusive to' interpretation, but that also goes in all directions, as that's not acceptable from player -> staffer, staffer -> player, staffer -> staffer, or player -> player, so far as I'm concerned.
@aria My brain does similar things, especially with road signs passing too quickly.
I live near too many 'Penns-'things for this to not be giggling to myself in the car a whole lot, since my brain is convinced we pass the Penis Grove Winery at least once a month or so.
I'm not terribly fond of the popularity thing, either, and I've been in the top 3 for like... ever.
That we've had people calculating popularity metrics here and arguing their status based on it, and how people should react to them accordingly, is not something I think is a net positive.
I like the 'avoid the ME TOO' aspect of upvotes.
I wish we had a different metric, which may or may not be possible with nodeBB. I like the more 'agree/disagree/click if this was helpful' sort of setup that I've seen here and there. That feels less about 'cheering people on' or 'telling someone they should be down', and more practical and useful on the whole -- and it's less personal somehow. It's harder to mistake that for 'I just don't fucking like you', or 'I will always cheer on my buds no matter how horrible or wrong the thing they said is', which the more nebulous setup does get co-opted for often enough.
I forget which site has it, but there was one -- it's not a forum so this may be totally unhelpful -- that has a number of things you can check like 'agree, disagree, helpful, funny, sad, happy, gross'/etc. I suspect they get a much better read on things from that data than any of the options we've had. If there's a plugin or feature that could allow for something like that? It'd kick some serious ass, I think.
@arkandel The example's in there, really, for 'guilty'.
"<name> has been <banned/temp banned> for <behavior>. If you have any questions about this, direct them to headstaff."
Not guilty, if there's no action to take, there's nothing to report to the public. The people bringing the complaint need to be told why no action is being taken. Anybody asking independently should be told, "The allegations in the complaint could not be verified," or similar.
If you find out a verifiably false complaint has been filed for malicious purposes? That goes out as above: "<name> has been banned for filing a malicious false complaint against another player. If you have any questions about this, direct them to headstaff."
@auspice I want to see a sketch some day now of a 'welcome to the team' party of all the evil queens from disney flicks welcoming the alien queen to tea.
@thatguythere You don't see it as a bad thing. A lot of us who are trying to get shit done sometimes really do.
@kanye-qwest I call that the 'If we have to make a rule because of you, you probably really screwed up creatively' clause.
It's one of those standard catch-alls for 'welp, there's one nobody thought of before! I don't know whether to be horrified or impressed' things, like the 'we reserve the right to make additions, clarifications, or amendments to policy as needs arise', and is essentially one of the unspoken components of precisely that. It just doesn't typically require any outing of anyone's laundry unless the situation is dire, agreed.
<random staff confession> Though it is never announced with a name, and I would never even say it on a private staff channel, these always somehow get nicknamed in mental shorthand after whatever crazy person inspired them somewhere in the back of my brain. 'The Joe Clause', etc. </random staff confession>
On a scale of one to ten, how sad is it that I looked at this and my first thought was, "Oh, mah gawd, that kitchen is fucking amazing!!!"
326543 is, I feel, an acceptable answer, maybe...
ETA: I am not entirely sure what is going on in this picture but I am having flashbacks to this, and now I cannot stop laughing. Dammit!
@faraday said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
Just wanted to note that nobody is suggesting that negative reviews be shunted off to the Hog Pit. Reasonable adults should be able to post a negative review: "I cannot recommend playing on this game because staff did (this bad thing, with facts)" without the entire thread turning into a freaking dumpster fire complete with people posting popcorn GIFs and random snarky commentary to egg on one side or the other. Sadly we've seen more of the latter.
It's the latter that gets moved, and should be moved -- because it has no place in an ad or constructive thread.
I'm not sure how I feel about deleting things. I don't think completely unfounded accusations about others (read: deliberate attempts at character assassination with zero basis in reality) should be allowed to stand anywhere on the forum.
This is not OK and it's gone on a whole lot.
I should not be able to post something like:
Jane is a useless slut who just whores around for attention and doesn't give a shit about cheating if it benefits her but she'll scream bloody murder if somebody is given something she isn't because she's so insecure she can't stand anyone else ever getting attention so she'll stalk and abuse them in pages because she's a narcissistic rapist.
Joe is a soulless piece of shit who should be locked up, he makes little kids fuck dogs and tries to convince people he's the smartest person in the room when he's actually a dumb piece of shit.
Sue tries to deliberately sabotage any game she's on because her family life is crap because her husband cheats on her all the time and she can't stand being anything but the center of all male attention on every game she's on, this is mostly because she's a rotten person and it's no surprise he cheats because she's such a slovenly cow and so self-righteously full of herself.
Jack is always lying about everything and is in cahoots with Jody. They can't be trusted. They pretend to be enemies but it's really a long con and you stupid shits are all just fooled by it because you're so fucking stupid you can't see through their transparent ruse. They go to games together and then fight all over the channels thinking they're being so clever and funny but this just proves they're sad shitsacks that can't hold a job or they wouldn't have time to do this over the endless games they've done this shit on.
I mean, seriously. We have someone this past week making similar claims about me and most of them are still there. All of them are patently false. But this is OK? No, it's kinda not. And it wasn't OK when he did so to Ghost or Cupcake or any of the other people he did it to, either, and I said so then, too -- but the poster was allowed to stay around continuing to do it over and over and over with the insistence the rules just didn't apply to them, they didn't respect the mods, and had every intention of continuing on in this way no matter where they were on the forum, without any proof of their fucked up claims, and so on. This is the kind of raving, unsubstantiated, patently false bullshit that doesn't deserve a home anywhere on the forum.
@ixokai Weirdly... I think I would have that one covered. Not the specifics, because... I... <spikes the shit out of her coffee> ...really. Wow.
There's the standard rape clause (can't involve someone in rape-related RP without their consent), which would cover this, ultimately.
There are also 'informed consent' (make sure the player reasonably knows what they're getting into if it's known to the person initiating the scene, she clearly knew, he clearly didn't) and 'no bait and switch' (agreeing to mild sexytimes != agreeing to perpetrate sexual assault) as things under the consent policy, and really... I'd call that one hitting both of those right on the nose.
<goes back to gibbering in Even Cant and reaches for the vodka bottle> Goddamn, hobby. Just... goddamn.
