Posts made by surreality

Holy shit. Hi.

I have a few things I would add to this one. But then, I'm not sure I'd ban these outright. Limit? Yes. Carefully vet in some extra way? Possibly. Ban? Not sure.

Some other things I would limit, personally?

'Lone wolf/solitary crackpot/always goes it on their own' character tropes. If a concept is predicated on doing things solo, it has limited use on a game focused on collaboration, and a game can rapidly get overrun with this type in a way that can create needless roadblocks to getting anything done/going on/keeping activity flowing.

Characters with extreme communication difficulties are another issue under this one -- when half the grid is deaf, mute, or can't read or speak the language of the realm, suddenly half the RP in the game is about their communication difficulties rather than what the game is ostensibly actually meant to be about. Fun challenge in play? Yes, but not when the grid is overrun with this trope.

@faceless said in Staff and ethics:

@arkandel, I don't disagree. You're right! For me it's a matter of consistency and transparency. An unwritten rule, that is then enforced? Is going to cause some turbulence and controversy, if it's off-the-wall enough.

Faceless gets banned because he keeps paging female players like...

...despite being told not to? No one is going to bat an eye at that. No one reasonable, anyway.

Now someone gets banned because their character was being a creep? I mean, some people play creep characters. Do you think Ramsay Bolton would have been as interesting a character if he wasn't so terrible? People play characters in MUing all the time that use their genitals to get what they want; male and female alike. These are fictional characters. Sometimes they aren't the best of people. Sometimes they're simply flawed people. How about on The Reach when a character was made that was an obese female and the whole basis of that character was basically "lol she's so fat"? Which soon after saw the character frozen. I later recall seeing someone mention that character either on WORA or MSB, the player of it even chimed in to say 'hey, I wasn't trying to be offensive, but that's how it was taken', which I can totally see as reasonable. Because what offends Player A doesn't offend Player B. Point being that apparently it was some unwritten rule that a character couldn't be that thing or made a player or group of players feel bad. Intentionally? Not by the account of the player of the character. By the offended parties? Oh, yes, it was most definitely a deliberate attack! Maybe instead of the players playing controversial characters? We start banning players who can't separate IC from OOC, make believe from reality?

@saosmash said in Staff and ethics:

I mean ... I'm not approving anybody to play Ramsay Bolton on a game I run, because that character exists to be an edgelord rapist.

@kanye-qwest said in Staff and ethics:

@saosmash Amen. People will take characters with totally reasonable sheets and dial them up to 13, or sometimes to a nice and steady 8. They need no encouragement to be edgy or confrontational, in my experience.

@roz said in Staff and ethics:

@saosmash said in Staff and ethics:

I mean ... I'm not approving anybody to play Ramsay Bolton on a game I run, because that character exists to be an edgelord rapist.

Double amen. Characters that work in a book -- and, I mean, Ramsay's value as a character is already debatable, but whatever, putting that aside -- don't necessarily equal characters that work on a MU*. Writing a book is not a collaborative*; RPing on a MU* is.

(*Yes, I mean, it is collaborative when it comes to working with an editor, critique groups, etc., all of that, but it's not the same type of collaboration. YOU ALL KNOW WHAT I MEAN.)

@cupcake said in Staff and ethics:

@ixokai Not speaking for anyone else, but I as a player would want to avoid someone who was interested in playing that kind of trope on a game I participate on. That's creepy as fuck, and distinctly unfunny to those of us who have suffered sexual assault.

...just quoting in the initial convo, which is worth it's own thread.

@roz This is kinda what I was thinking, actually. 'Let's move this cool tangent over here' == and can be done without breaking existing thread.

The 'character types that might not work well on a M*' stuff -- could we maybe split that to another thread?

Not because it's inappropriate at all but because that strikes me as a worthy discussion topic in its own right, and I've admittedly been looking at some of those things lately and was sorta thinking of starting one anyway. <coughs into a hand>

I am a wall of text gal, but endeavor to manage that reasonably: basics in a short blurb, expanded rationale behind an expansion/cut for people that need details if a situation requires details or rationale.

@ixokai I don't think anyone would have seen that one in particular coming, I mean... WOW.

@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.

@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>

@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."

• 'Professional' behavior; this can include language, tone, spelling, etc. Is it better for staff to be aloof or to be chat with their players?

Spelling and grammar: yes, I'd like to see everyone put some effort in, but some people are simply bad this. I'm not keen on holding 'genuinely not great at this' as an ethical failure of any kind. I will side-eye a little at someone who can craft a brilliant, literate pose and is seven shades of 'lolololololol whut u say?????' OOC and on channels from their staff bit, though; not able is one thing, 'gives none fucks' is another.

Language... I swear. I always swear. I more or less always have. I would probably swear in church if I went, and I have apparently driven nuns to swear in church, so there's that. This is because I don't automatically believe profanity == abusive or rude or uncivil. That said, it should never be directed at people if being civil and friendly. "That's fucking awesome!" == OK; "You're a fucking jackass!" =! OK. That said, "You are a stupid idiot!" =! OK in the kind of environment I consider civil, so it's not about which words are being used, aside from actual slur language, which is never OK.

Tone should be positive as much as possible. In those moments in which someone has to either let off steam or has a valid frustration to express, that is always best done privately to other staff only. If someone can't keep their positive<-->negative balance skewed positive, they're probably not a good fit for staff, because they're clearly not happy with what they're doing.

Aloof? No. Approachable? Yes. Everybody's bestie? Also no. And that's a hard line to draw. I know that whenever I'm staffing, I generally do not have the time or attention span to spend in lengthy individual daily chats about somebody's art projects (and I'm including my own here) or their day or their kids or their favorite music, etc., and there are some folks that feel that unless a staffer engages in this kind of random social fu, or isn't open to this at all times, they're 'aloof'. If that's somebody's definition of aloof, well, I'm gonna be aloof and not feel especially bad about it, honestly. Channel chatter with players and OOC room chat with a group that doesn't delve into anything too personal? All well and good, and probably a net positive for approachability in most cases.

There's a positive side to 'aloof' I think staff should embrace, and that's generally the 'avoid being a petty gossip or busybody about things that aren't necessarily anybody's business IC or OOC'. Players definitely do this, or joke around about it even publicly (teasing, claiming, etc.), but when staff does this, it starts looking like bias or favoritism even when it isn't.

• Activity levels. Is a staff member doing what they are supposed to do? What are they supposed to do and how well/frequently? What's a good standard?

This depends on what job they have on the game. A coder might not be needed all the time, for instance. Same with someone who grooms a wiki once every X amount of time. Barring vacations or time away for a special purpose, I'm personally keen on 'show up at least twice a week for an hour or two to get your stuff done' as a general minimum.

That said, I'm not as interested in minimums or maximums or hourlies as I am in someone's work ethic. As in, if you're going to log in, log in ready to get stuff done, do not just log your staff bit in to socialize; use your player bit for that, dammit. I have seen too many staffers just log in and chat away merrily for hours while simple jobs that no one else can handle due to CoI or similar concerns are completely ignored, and that is just not OK. If they were on 'man the newbie channel' duty or similar, it would be one thing, but typically this is not the case. Fuck that behavior.

• Communication, following up on promises. How much transparency is a good thing? In discipline cases how much should be revealed about what happened (or the reasons nothing did)?

I am a fan of transparency, but I'm also a fan of privacy. Balancing the two is not easy. For instance, I don't believe a staffer should be required to publicly reveal their alts unless everyone on the game is asked to do so, and I'm not a fan of demanding that anyone do so publicly. That said, I'm not completely against a generic 'staff alt' label on staff's PCs that doesn't disclose which staffer they are, but I'm still not completely sold on it, either.

Similarly, in discipline issues, some targets of abuse are not going to want their names going out there due to realistic concerns about retaliation. I would say in most cases, this is undesirable. "Joe was stalking Jenny, so he got the boot." =! OK; "Joe got the boot for stalking a fellow player." == OK. I think @Sonder pretty much nails this one at FC; the basics of the negative behavior are mentioned, who did it is mentioned, and what was done about it (temp ban, full ban) is disclosed. I don't remember if she adds 'if you have any questions, direct them to headstaff' or not, but I could see this being viable and useful for two reasons: 1. all the gossipy assholes who just want dirt on somebody will reveal themselves and you get to know who they are to keep an eye on that nightmare, and 2. anyone who has a similar complaint about <name> is more likely to bring it to your attention at that time.

With the setup I was looking at, and have been pondering for some time, there's more transparency in general than is typical. Sheets are public. Spends are public, along when when they were made and who processed them, since it's all on the wiki and these things appear automatically in history.

As big as 'transparency' in staff decision-making, in my view, is the kind of transparency that reduces the disparity of information power between players and staff by default.

• Playing their own game; staff not playing alts or revealing their names, or not permitting those PCs to attain important positions.

Mostly covered above. Standard CoI rules apply. If, for some reason, a staffer has to work on something that would impact one of their own characters in some way, whether it's adding a power they plan to take, a house rule change that would apply to them, etc. I am keen on having that job published to public view, in full, while it's being discussed or once it's complete. (Whichever is more relevant. An XP spend or processing XP for a log has all public data that everyone can see no matter who is doing it for who, so if something is fishy, this can be called out by anyone at any time about anybody else, so this is more 'when complete', as opposed to 'hey, we're thinking of adding this new piece of equipment, what do y'all think?' which is more viable to open to public discussion and input anyway.)

Re: leadership roles, the setup I prefer keeps leadership roles in public factions in NPC control, and (most) NPCs can be used freely, as needed, by players or staff alike, rather than held in staff control alone.

In player-created factions and groups, whoever created it makes the rules. They can make a 'no staff alts allowed!' rule for the whole group if they want, so far as I'm concerned. Someone on staff can create a group like this as well, but must do so under the same rules and limitations as any player would. If they end up in a leadership position by whatever mechanism the group adopts to decide who gets to lead, so be it, but they aren't owed one any more or less than anyone else. (Considering how often 'has demonstrated excellent people-management and creative and story-making skills as the leader of a group' gets someone considered for a staff role in the first place, being needlessly restrictive about this is destined to hobble a group or prevent someone who would be a great benefit to the game from joining staff, and that's all downside.)

• Protecting 'appearances' by not ruling on issues close to them (friends are involved, etc); what happens in small games, or if the staff is small and everyone is involved with everyone else? What are the limits?

The small games problem is more and less hard because of what you're describing. On a small game, appearances end up being less a concern when everyone actually does know you, what you're about, and what standards you hold yourself to -- which is actually good, because, yeah, these concerns are all the more likely to come up with a small game with a small staff. They're almost inevitable, even if you have measures in place to avoid them as much as possible. The best you can really do is be as transparent as you can in these cases, and let people 'see your work', like ye olde math class in elementary school. It's essentially a trade-off that balances out, at least somewhat.

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.

@thugheaven said in Reasons why you quit a game...:

If you haven’t noticed by now....not really a fan of staffers who complain to players. Especially when I know what they’re saying just...isn’t true and I’m thinking what are they saying about me behind my back?

^ This. It doesn't even matter if it's true. If staff is gossiping about someone else to me, they're violating that person's privacy in a way that person is very likely not remotely cool with, and that throws my ability to trust them out the window. They're probably gossiping about me to someone else, too.

@misadventure Is it sad that I know my luck well enough to know that if I have an alt logged in on a game, I'm such creeper candy this more or less happens without any intentional plan involved? I'm willing to take 'sad', but I'm also tempted to laugh, though I'm not sure if it's one of those 'have to laugh or you'll cry' sort of laughs.

@greenflashlight No need for apologies, it's just... you can't exactly demonize someone for not making you more important than the safety of an entire community this way to someone who is responsible for always being mindful of the community as a whole.

As for the counseling aspects, @Sunny is dead on -- this is for friends and/or professionals. This is not staff's responsibility nor can it be. Recognition of this is not 'just using you again to pursue what they want', also.

People should be mindful to not engage in revictimization, but that doesn't mean making that person more important than everything else in their realm of responsibility, taking on a personal counseling/advisory/friend bond role in their life whether they want to or not out of obligation, or provide aid that is not in another human being's ability to provide are the answer.

I'll be blunt: I've been raped more than once. I've been creeped on on games to a legendary degree, enough so that we all joke about how I must be wearing a big neon 'creepers, inquire within!' sign. I've been stalked RL and online. Somebody tried to actually murder me and almost succeeded -- the list goes on and its contents are not pretty. Not once even in any of those circumstances have I ever imagined I am entitled to any of the things you are suggesting are simply due/owed someone because of any of those things happening to them, either when they happened, or now, even when the 'someone' was me.

@auspice OK, that makes the most recent ep(s, really) of American Horror Story way more fucking creepy, for real.

@greenflashlight said in Reporting Roadblocks: Denial, Fear, Shame, Guilt, Embarrassment, etc.:

I consider 'want' a pretty useless word that I no longer treat with much respect in my personal usage.

Here's the thing: want is a useful word. It has a real purpose.

You speak a lot about what you don't want. I mean, the obvious thing here is semantic and basic logic; without want there's no don't want. The less obvious, but I think perhaps more important thing, is that boundaries can be expressed very effectively with the word want.

Example:

I don't want an investigation of this.
vs.
I want this problem to stop in a way that does not expose me to further discomfort, risk, or personal violation. I want to feel secure, comfortable, and respected here, and I want to heal.

Again, I'm not inclined to speak for anybody else here, but I'm pretty sure the folks who are or have been staff here would agree that we can't do much with the former. We can do a hell of a lot with the latter.

If you start an investigation against my will, then I'm forced to assume an investigation is the thing you want rather than to respect my wishes, since in this example they're mutually exclusive and you didn't choose another path toward your goal of chasing your prey.

No, you aren't actually forced to see it that way. You're actively making the choice to see it that way, and that is actually something you have to personally own.

The presentation of staff as predator in this instance is somewhat disturbing, though.

The accused is the end you're pursuing, and I'm the path you're stepping on to get there.

Except, to staff (by which I consistently mean 'staff who give a fuck and have an actual soul', not the lunatics with wizbits out there), this is not the case at all. Not by a mile.

The end they are pursuing is a game that is not a free-range hunting ground for predators.

The path they are pursuing is putting boot to predator ass when those predators are identified and slamming the door behind them, not grinding that boot to your neck to force evidence out of you to identify quarry on which they can then predate.

I say this as respectfully as I can: if this really is how you perceive the matter, yes, the coping mechanism of just stepping away from the entire game is probably the best course of action for you personally.

I perceive harassment mostly as a violation of personal sovereignty; as a theft of personal boundaries. My goal is to heal that breach by allowing boundaries to be reestablished under the victim's control.

Here's the thing: staff can help you with that. They can't do it for you, and there's a difference between helping and doing it for you that's important. Now, it's going to depend on the staff, and on what policies they have about such things, but many games allow for this.

Many games have things that allow someone to block pages or @mail from other players to stop private OOC communication from that person, and that's something a player can do entirely on their own to stop unwanted communication from someone.

And that is possible whether or not someone has tried 'Hey, not cool, knock that off.' From what I remember of your case, you did take the 'hey, knock that off' step, which is laudable, because it is setting a boundary. Not everyone does that, and while I don't consider it a required step nor do I think it should be a required step, it's a good one to take. (That you did this suggests you're not just leaving this all up to staff to do for you, pretty much, and that's awesome on a number of levels.)

Now, there's a reason the 'knock it off' or 'leave me alone' step is awesome -- and I think it's a way that might be especially helpful to you from what you're describing here.

While there's argument sometimes about how it gets implemented or managed, many games have what's known as a 'no contact' clause. It's basically a formal statement that (generic) you and somebody else will not knowingly communicate IC or OOC on a game.

This is something you can ask for from staff, and here's the thing about it: when it comes right down to it, you don't often need any elaborate reason or evidence. "I don't want to interact with Bob, he makes me uncomfortable," doesn't require any more than that. And most games, you don't even need that. "I don't want to interact with Bob, he's a jerk," or "I want a no-contact with Bob, he was awful to me on another game entirely and made me completely miserable" works equally well, same with plain ol' "I don't want to interact with Bob <no reason provided>." There's no investigation there whatsoever, staff's just going to slam the wall down for you and help you enforce it as needed.

You can choose to explain, "I was talking to Bob and asked him to stop doing X; he wouldn't stop, so I'm asking for no contact with Bob" if you want to. If you want to be super awesome, you can send a log of sending a page to Bob to that end and whatever, if anything, his response was.

There's no prying and no invasion there. There's no stepping on your neck.

Is it possible that Bob gets banned over that? Sure. For all you know, you're the third person that day asking for the same thing, possibly for the same reason. He's banned for his cumulative impact on the game, though, not because of your request.

If I have to choose between letting a predator go and violating the trust of an already damaged victim, I'll let the predator go every time, because the idea of hurting the victim more in order to buy safety for the next person is abhorrent to me. I don't believe in buying a third party's safety with a victim's pain. In my personal hierarchy of sins, that kind of betrayal is in the top three. It offends me on the deepest level.

@ixokai addressed this well, so I'm not going to repeat what he said.

One of the core principles of being a member of staff is that all players on the game are important. All of them matter, no matter who they are, what they do, what they've done, what's been done to them.

Ultimately, the target is not even more important than even the accused -- as they both have some rights, even if one is given the benefit of the doubt. (That's what an investigation is actually about, if one exists. More about that in a sec.)

What you are asking here is to make the target, based solely on their word, more important than literally every single participant on the game combined. They are now the most important person on the game, full stop; their needs and wants are placed above every single other individual present. Not just any given staff member, but all the staff. Not just any other player, all the players. Everyone.

You are asking someone to demonstrate a stunning measure of favoritism to someone based solely on their word that something -- that they do not wish to speak about, be questioned about, or provide evidence of any kind to support -- occurred, and put their wishes and well-being above those of everyone else.

No.

No, that's a mile past the ethical line.

I think that the way to get a victim's cooperation is to earn their trust by giving them back the power their attacker took.

This is not possible. I don't mean 'it's not staff's responsibility to do this ever', even though this is also true, I mean this is not actually possible.

Nobody can give that back to you.

You have to take it back yourself, claim it, own it.

That's the only way it works.

Staff can help you defend that line if someone tries to cross it again, but they can't give you that.

If you become their friend, then they will be willing to align their goals with yours if they can; to use a personal example, I never would have told the staff of United Heroes one word about my harassment if it hadn't been for my friend Prototart needing me to (not that it ended up doing any good, but I had to try).

Staff isn't there to be your friend, though. That's what your friends are for. I mean, you may have a friend who is also staff, but it's not staff's job to be besties with everyone -- that is a gross violation of their boundaries, and you're not entitled to be someone's bestie just for doing the equivalent of showing up at their front door.

Maybe I'm the only person who thinks the victim should be prioritized over the criminal

What you're missing is that the target is being prioritized over the predator. One remains welcome in the community, while the other is excised from it. The target is simply not being prioritized over the entire community as a whole in every way, which is staff's core responsibility.

There are reasonable arguments to have about 'by the numbers' approaches that go the other way, too, and people have seen damage done because of this. For instance, if the predator is an active scene runner, 'the numbers' suggest not getting rid of the predator at all, but kicking the target to the curb if they are not as 'by the numbers' generative of activity as the predator.

Again, maybe I'm speaking too broadly, but I can't imagine any of the people speaking up in this thread giving the first fuck about how much activity a predator is generating for the game if they're identified as a predator and thus are a danger to the game's community that should be removed.

So there are some objectionable 'by the numbers' arguments people have had over time, most of which boil down to the above, but 'ignore the well-being of everyone to focus on one person's needs above all others and allow an abusive party to freely abuse others' is just not one of them.

@greenflashlight I think there's something getting lost in translation here. It may just be a word choice issue -- it isn't so much something staff wants to do. Staff pretty much never want any of this to happen to start with if they, uh, have souls, more or less.

I can really only speak for myself from this point forward, but I'm pretty sure most people posting have fairly similar takes on the contents of the next paragraph, at least.

Mainly, I don't want to do this. I want this to never even come up on the game in the first place. It still will, in some form or another, because it always does.• I want players on a game I run/headstaff on/have the ability to do something on to know that if they can come to me to ask about something as completely inconsequential to real life as how much damage to take from a dice roll -- somebody trying to mess with the real person is far, far more important than that, even if the issue seems potentially small even to them. I want them to know that it's not my job or at all in my interest to judge their personal life in some fashion if something about it surfaces when they bring an issue to my attention. I want them to know that whatever they convey is not going to become fodder for gossip or rumor-mongering or snickers behind someone's back (and this goes for all parties involved) because that shit is completely beyond unacceptable. I want them to know that I wish the event had not occurred, and that while I cannot make it unhappen, I am going to do what I can to ensure it does not happen again, to them or to anyone else on the game, because of the person who did something inappropriate.

A lot of what you've described hints at some things that aren't necessarily said outright, but are reasonable fears: "Will this feed the rumor mill? Are people going to be mocking me about this? Are people going to think this is my fault because I agreed to A but not to B, and they'll think if I didn't want B, too, I should never have said yes to A in the first place? Sally told me not to talk to Joe, and so did Jane; will this just get blown off with 'you were warned and should have known better'? Joe said he knows the rules better than I do... maybe he does... maybe I don't have a leg to stand on here, will they just tell me to fuck off and that I'm the one who is causing a problem? I still can't believe I let Joe talk me into trying that, I told him no after I didn't like it, but how can I even say what we tried, it's so embarrassing!" ...and the list just goes on and on and on, and everybody -- EVERYBODY -- has that voice in their head sometimes. It isn't just abuse survivors, it isn't just assault survivors, it isn't just people who have been sexually harassed, it isn't just people who have been raped, it really, truly, absolutely is damned near everyone. The context might be different, but we've all been there, with that self-critic turned up to maximum volume, trying to 'be realistic with ourselves' about what's likely to follow.

What we're actually doing there isn't actually being realistic, though. We're instead conjuring up a bunch of worst-case scenarios, and usually trying to figure out what to do if one of those problems arises. This is a real survival mechanism and it's hardwired to help us survive when a rapid-fire fight-or-flight sort of scenario actually arises, or we recognize that we may be entering a potential conflict or risky situation.

Having just come out of a traumatic situation doesn't help matters; the fear volume is amplified, and it can push this survival mechanism (that would ideally help us prepare for a potentially difficult task ahead) into a major stumbling block. It makes the potentially difficult task seem like a damned-near impossible conflict instead, when it... actually isn't. It's still a potentially difficult task, and while that's not fun to confront, it's not a damned-near impossible conflict.

It is very difficult to not essentially get in one's own way like this sometimes.

This is not to say there have not been, or are not, completely shitty staffers who behave in the ways that would make the catalogue of fears described above more realistic. And do not mistake me here: I am not of a mind to judge a player who comes to me with a concern, but holy shit am I wearing my Side-Eye-McJudgypants face when I think about staff (or even 'friends') who fuck up in the ways that'd make any one of those fears a reality.

So, uh, tl;dr, yeah, it's what staff 'wants', but only in the sense that it's what all sane participants in the hobby (including the person who makes a report) want: an environment free of creepy asshats who are incapable of empathy and wouldn't know a boundary if it was an electrified fence they were actively peeing on at the time.

• ...and it always does because these jerks are everywhere. Some places kick them off quickly, and that means they're always looking for somewhere new to try the same tricks before they probably get booted off of there, too.

To be fair, if someone is expecting the kind of invasive grilling that someone often faces when pressing sexual assault charges, I can see how and why making sure that people know they aren’t volunteering to go under the microscope to the entire community, game, or even staffcorps would be pretty important.

But I need to STFU a bit to pack the table up as show’s closing down in a few — did want to note that and thank @GreenFlashlight for the empathy though while on ye rambly smoke break.

I think this is s good and useful convo to have and it does involve finding ways to address those fears in a compassionate way, just won’t be able to explain if needed until I can resume slackerdom at a real keyboard.