@ixokai Actually, that Rick Sanchez dude did that to me.
And the whole forum ripped him to shreds for it even after he was banned, including the people who he had previously palled around with on here.
Kinda says a lot about the kind of shit this community is not keen on tolerating.
@rnmissionrun said in Regarding administration on MSB:
Granted, it's much worse in the MU* community given it's smaller size but I think this is due to the fact that we, as a community, are not well people. It speaks volumes about the state of our community when the only forum for open discussion of MUs and MUing focuses so heavily on vengeance, shaming and WrongFun. It's no wonder there are so few new people coming into the hobby. Between the general toxicity of the community and the craziness of so many of the folks running games, it's a wonder there are any active games left at all.
See, I'm just not seeing this, either. I have to sit over with @ixokai on this one.
The game I was on most recently isn't exactly a stranger to drama. Did I run into some annoying people? Sure did. Was it any better or worse than in the days before WORA?
Oh, wow, there's not even a comparison. So much better, there just aren't words. And some of that is because we've become more aware as a society, but a lot more of it is because people in the hobby have grown considerably and realized certain things that once were the norm are not a good idea to allow at all.
And maybe, some day, a forum where no one is allowed to say anything negative or mean will be one of those things.
It is clearly not going to be today.
Those changes took time. They evolved. None were the result of someone stomping a foot and saying, "No one is allowed to say mean things any more because that's not OK!"
That people are even engaging in civil discourse about this is an improvement; the level of mockery and vitriol that sentiment would have stirred once upon a time would have been legendary and resulted in the kinds of stories the old farts would still be talking about today, like folks do about the drinking game, or the 'rules of good staffing'.
The wall you're going to hit is not a matter of forum culture, though, or MUX culture. It's the wall of human nature.
Maybe y'all live in a world that's sunshine and rainbows and positivity, but from the sound of things, that's not the case. Shaming or strong-arming people who have different sensitivities and sensibilities and want to engage in a different way than you do is not going to bring about that change, it's negativity in its own right and will breed negativity in return.
@faraday I don't think you see the point I'm making there. I'm not saying they are the same thing, or that only the extremes exist.
I'm saying that these things exist on a spectrum.
If 'hurtful words hurt' is the scale, you have to accept that to some, words that are anything other than praise are hurtful.
That makes 'is hurtful to someone' not an ideal scale to use here.
@faraday Both can do real harm.
The absurdity? Does no harm to me. It's so ridiculous on its face, the only response it's going to get out of me is a roll of the eyes or a laugh.
Not everyone has the same sensitivities, so it doesn't work to universalize that.
If people sensitive to certain things can readily avoid them by not opting-in to a forum area, I personally think their sensitivities are protected enough.
Some folks are so sensitive to any criticism that they actually can't handle anything other than praise -- and most can agree that's not healthy -- so if we're focusing on making every sector of the forum a welcoming embrace to all sensitivities, it would become a dead zone of silence and thread derails as someone screams about how triggered they are every five minutes by this or that word or turn of phrase and how everyone now must fall in line with their sensitivity, becoming even less useful as a discussion medium for its intended purpose. There's really enough of that going on already, in my opinion at least.
@faraday And that's understandable, and fair enough.
I feel differently about it, because one of those things is clearly untrue and cannot be possible, and the other?
Again, considering how many people here struggle with mental illness in some form or another, and I've seen how much damage insults like that can do to genuinely good people for whom that is a real, actual life struggle.
No one here can actually be mistaken for a howler monkey.
It's really easy for the internet psychologists (cousins to the internet lawyers, no doubt -- er, not the actual lawyers here, obviously -- and the internet constitutional scholars) to sell a narrative like that about somebody that sticks and does real harm in a way the absurd version simply can't.
@faraday I don't usually see names named on peeves, but there's no denying that some can be identifiable anyway. For instance, complaining about the ice cream candy colored hair characters, then insisting 'but really it's just this one person who does it'... it may not name a name, but it's obviously a specific person getting on someone's nerves and not actually the behavior. (I say this knowing I have an appointment tomorrow to candy-color my own hair in ways I'm way too old for, so fate, I tempt thee mightily for even using this example.)
I can't speak for other folks on this one, but a peeve to me is a peeve -- not 'this is only annoying when Suzy does it!!!' or, say, 'Suzy is my peeve!' -- it actually is generic stuff like 'snarky metaposing makes me want to make all of my characters psychic sometimes just so they can comment'. While somebody may have tripped the peeve recently, I kinda refrain from saying anything until a little time has passed just to make sure the focus remains on 'this behavior annoys me', and is less 'when Suzy did that thing the other day, boy did it ever sandblast my nethers' even by casual inference. That runs the vaguebooking risk of nine other people suddenly convinced I must be talking about them, but sometimes a couple examples can help then, since it's even less... target-y. (Unless you're really unlucky and somebody, somewhere, that you probably never knew existed, did both of those things fifteen minutes ago on a game you don't even play on.)
I can't say "people should do it like that", but I can say I wish more people did do things like that and I would consider it healthier in general.
I do think it's important for people to have an outlet to talk about things they dislike without having to monitor their language or creative hyperbole, though. In part? This is because while it's not fun to hear, "you're a shit-flinging howler monkey who should die in a fire after being hit by a train and reassembled in a secret government lab full of ex-Nazi sadists!" it's also... ridiculous. It is very hard to take that seriously. It's a lot easier to take something like, "I think your attitude is toxic and you should not be welcome in this community because of it," or "I think you are mentally unstable*," to heart, and be hurt by it, even if the claim is equally absurd in truth. That kind of thing, I've seen an astonishing explosion of in volume, and it's a lot more genuinely personal and cutting in ways the old WORA crew were simply not when generally cavorting around like idiotic trolls trying to slam together as many absurdities as possible back and forth.
@faraday said in Regarding administration on MSB:
All some of us are asking for is a forum with civilized discourse, where acting like decent human beings toward each other in a vanishingly small hobby is required and not laughed at as some quaint little idealistic naivete. This is the same sort of behavior we say we want on our games, why not extend it to the centralized out-of-game community as well?
For all Non-Pit threads, I am completely with you on this. 100%. We may have a different idea of what civil means -- there are some honest accounts of things that are definitely unpleasant and uncomfortable reads, sometimes because they're very personal, sometimes because the behavior they're describing is so gross that even hearing that it happened is disturbing -- but I'm with you on 'people should be able to relate these accounts without the colorful language.' Let's face it, the genuinely bad incidents don't need it to look bad, anyway.
I want people to be able to feel like they can post dev queries or code ideas or even culture questions outside the Pit and not be subject to a deluge of personal attacks. That's where @bored and I got into it for instance, and where shit went very wrong; it jumped over the line from arguing about ideas into insulting each other as people, and I'm not down with that going forward anywhere outside the Pit. (And I'm really not thrilled with it there, either. 'Insult the heck out of ideas and behavior and bad actions as colorfully as you like' in that space I can get behind just fine, and the reality is those are the actual problems in most cases anyway.) Pretty sure neither of us enjoyed that, we both acted like idiots at the time, and I'm not pleased with myself that I went there at all, whatever the reason. (Never fear, man, you're still my favroite almost-but-not-actually grudgewank! ...because we agree on too much shit lately for it to be for reals grudgewank at this point. <shakes a fist at the sky>)
I don't want to see that happen to threads -- but "I don't like this idea" or "what are you going to do to avoid the trainwreck that resulted from the last three games that tried <thing>?" are things that should be OK to say, full stop. (I'm not claiming you're saying otherwise, @faraday, I'm just stating my personal position on it.)
I want to see more idea threads. More new game threads. More new 'how would you handle situation X' threads. I keep asking for a constructive dev projects thread for exactly this reason, since at the moment these posts tend to be scattered amongst ads, shout in the dark, and mildly constructive; it feels like a topic area that needs a home that isn't as restrictive on feedback as what people are talking about re: the ads forum with just q&a and no reviews/etc., but is more akin to 'keep the personal attacks on posters out of it and try to keep criticism constructive', which I don't think is crazytown.
That said, I still think there's a valid purpose for the Pit. There are situations so horrible people will get colorful in discussing them. There are peeves -- things that aren't wrong but still drive people bonkers -- that I would prefer people have an off-game safety valve for. Yeah, if you're dealing with a jerk, they may see ten people agree that <peeve> is just awful and then go back to the game and be a jerk, but that's pretty rare. Usually, somebody carps about their peeve, they're done, it's out of their system, and it prevents it from building and building until they explode on someone on a game. As a bonus, somebody who does the thing that's irksome as can be to a bunch of people without realizing it may see that, hey, that's pretty irritating, maybe I should keep a lid on that behavior, or dial it down to an 8 from 11, at least. A secondary bonus is that if it's something so ridiculously petty and absurd, somebody's gonna say so; that can also be something useful for the peever (I know this is not actually a word, but it's really late) to know in regard to what they may end up spouting off at someone else about later as though it's the very end of the world.
The question I have to ask myself is whether people are actually trying to make the case that the cause of misbehavior on games is this forum, as that really seems to be the direction quite a few posts are directed, no matter how obliquely. (And it's not terribly oblique.)
Some misbehaviors could find their roots here, sure, if for instance someone saw a bad thing go down on a game and then went to troll the game, as someone did on WORA -- only to hear how not cool this was, much like the people who suggest the same here are told every time. How many of them might have gone through with it if they'd heard the story of the horror show go down from a friend instead of reading it on a forum, without someone saying they understand the impulse, but that they really shouldn't?
I have to wonder if people realize how many people who contributed a great deal to this community over the years have left for the opposite reason; that things were too forcibly civilized for their comfort zone. These people also exist in that realm of 'others that could be here amongst the crowd, but are not'.
I have to wonder how many people staff at UH would have continued to screw over, or how many more people like Elsa or Rex would verbally abuse and exploit who had no warning, how many more people would be sending Spider cash and wondering why their games were going down in flames to a clique no one will admit exists.
All of these what-ifs swing in both directions.
That's because, like collaboration, creativity, contribution, compassion, consideration, and constructive behavior, destructive behavior, microagressions, anger, venting, and other negative traits are part and parcel of being human beings.
So long as the hobby is made up of human beings, these problems will exist on games, because that's where the problem ultimately lies.
The culture on games today is considerably less toxic than it's been for a very long time. Most of the things we talk about now as basic staples of common decency were scarcely considered a decade ago, and while it may be convenient for some to forget it, the origin of those discussions was -- yep, really -- WORA, the hellish cesspit of all evil as its presented today.
And the reason why is the same: because of people, specifically, people who were not going to tolerate horrible behavior on games from other people, even when the proportions of the community focus were completely the opposite of what they are today on MSB. (WORA had one constructive area; MSB has one Hog Pit.)
It's a galling denial of personal responsibility to claim that people being rude to each other on a forum is the root of social problems on games, because if positive and constructive things could emerge from a pile of filth and creative profanity in a place where they were neither the focus nor were they often welcome, we, as people, have no excuse here, where the focus is far more heavily weighted toward constructive collaboration than WORA ever was. Beyond this, there are many people who have never visited here, and bring their own toxicity with them wherever they go, even if they don't last so long these days as they once did.
It is especially uncomfortable to hear this come from people who have most certainly rolled around in the mud themselves; no, the forum did not make you do it. We all have shit, and we all have to own it, even and perhaps especially when we're flinging it around.
I'd certainly be on board with 'frothing diatribes, whether aimed at someone or not, should be pit-only'. I mean, I know it's more of a pain in the ass to split the hairs to define what that means than the simple statement suggests, but I do think that's in the 'good ideas' column.
I'd rather see the real vitriol focused in one place, and either constructive and/or honest review crit elsewhere. Ideally, with a few productive/collaboratively-focused spots much like we have now for how-tos and whatnot (which have generally remained civil and ideally should just stay focused on positive growth/creative brainstorming on code or concepts/sharing created things/etc., same as it's been).
Honest reviews can address serious issues. It's possible to relate an account of a bad experience with someone doing a bad thing without calling them a shit-fucking bag of dicks that should die in a fire in the process. "I was <place>, and I wouldn't return, because <name> made me really uncomfortable when s/he wouldn't stop paging to ask me to write a sexy nude desc. It was creepy." <-- This would be perfectly reasonable as an honest review crit, from my perspective.
I mean, being realistic, this isn't perfect either; some folks will see any criticism of any kind as the utmost of brutality. Others will cheerfully pervert anything into a soul-rending attack on their very core identity, no matter how trivial, or not even related to them in any way. (Realistically? That's not fun to deal with. Not here, and not on a game. If somebody's going to behave that way, I'd rather find out on the forum, personally.) Some people visit that attitude toward life, other people live there full time -- either way, that's not going to be fun to deal with -- but with some basic guidelines for civil crit posted, it should ideally keep the legitimate causes for grievance down across the (pun not intended) board.
I think taking a look at the IGU posting standard for any potential dev section is worth considering.
gamers should have a place to gather in order to discuss various aspects of MU*ing in a constructive, if critical, manner without worrying about being flamed for their opinions. Constructive criticism is not never disagreeing with another's opinion, nor is it praising that which is sub-par so that you don't hurt someone's feelings. Instead, constructive criticism looks at a story, an idea, a post and offers suggestions to help improve whatever one thinks needs improving.
Think of English papers you've been handed back, what would be more helpful to you? "Sloppy work, do over!" or "You need to work on strengthening your main point, you should provide more evidence to support it." The latter is what IGU is looking for.
I would strongly support that.
@ghost said in Regarding administration on MSB:
@surreality well, then perhaps alongside the actual serial harassers, people shouldn't use the Hog Pit as a means to conduct mob justice warfare against people theyre upset with, or were inconvenienced by, or don't like their poses, or descriptions, or PB choices, or differences of opinion, or choice in games, or opinions on how their apologies are worded?
Bluntly: I don't especially care what crusade you're on this week, man. I am trying to keep my mouth shut in this powder-keg of a thread while being pretty horrified by a lot of what I'm seeing go down, so please leave me alone when you're picking targets to pin the 'somebody I feel like singling out for blame for everything I think is wrong with the universe this week' routine, because it's never ended well.
I do not deserve to have that all thrown in my face personally for simply and politely answering a question from @Ganymede that had nothing to do with any of what you're complaining about, and it's not OK with me.
@tnp said in Regarding administration on MSB:
That... was before my time, actually. I wasn't a member then (though I was on various games).
That one wasn't a forum -- it was just a generic website with a couple logs and a few random rants from one person. I think the only other content there for a long time was a thing I sent the owner that was a deliberately silly 'how to not write the world's most ridiculous (usually nude) desc' thing that talked about the old 90s trend of 99DDD boobs and why that made no sense, and similar stuff.
@ganymede With the "X is a serial sexual harasser" example... well, on one hand, you have that, and that's easily construed as a personal attack.
"There are multiple accounts that X has sexually harassed them, you can find the logs/evidence/accounts here: <link> <link> <link>" (where the links may be in a different area of the forum, pastebin, or whatever, obviously).
The important message is conveyed and there's backup to it, so it's not just talking out of the wrong orifice, and it's not name-calling.
I would like to quietly request a 'constructive dev' section for game feelers/development questions that are not general, all-purpose topics, such as those in mildly constructive.
I will add pleases and cheese if it helps.
@ganymede I saw this actively from the staff side over a period of six months. It was a real problem.
People would hit the cap and stop running things or going IC, this was observed and openly discussed as the reason for it.
People would wait until the rollover.
If staff didn't process things quickly -- and in this case, the two staffers actively running things couldn't be the ones doing it -- it relied on the one lazy fuck who did nothing but whine about their bloodline's conversion on the staff channel and ignore +jobs for weeks at a time to get people's awards out, which screwed people over more because it interfered with when things processed before/after rollover, etc.
There are real, tangible problems with that system that caused Reno1 to abandon it as the worst idea on the game. A higher cap could be arguably reasonable, but that? That objectively did not work.
@zombiegenesis That kills participation fast, and ultimately has STs running things for people with no reward.
This is especially troubling if staff is slow to process something, and one week's XP isn't processed until the next, potentially screwing people over double.
Reno1 tried this. It failed horribly for many reasons, all of which pointed toward an activity cap, especially a low activity cap, being an astonishingly bad idea.
ETA: Capping at 2XP/week is exactly what Reno1 tried that didn't work on any level at all.
I really can't watch this continue at this point.
If someone wants my opinion on anything until this is resolved in some form (doubtful), grab me on skype, the id there is muxfoo.
I honestly think daily/weekly is a bad idea in 2E. I would get rid of it entirely.
Stick with CG XP -- can be done in tiers, especially if you allow alts (one can start with 25 as your 'elder', the rest start with 10, or whatever) -- and then for the rest, stick with activity. Ideally, uncapped activity from direct participation in doing and running things.
To my understanding, she did not come in to silence the discussion as a poster or a mod. The suggestion to move it to a new thread to contain discussions like it -- since they arise often on many games (which is unfortunate) -- that could be found more easily based on the subject matter.
It's important to a lot of us, which means it's to everyone's benefit that it not be lost in the middle of a thread about a game that will likely be so dead inside two months that no one would think to look for any valuable information there of any kind.
That was how I read it, anyway. I've made the same suggestion for the same reason on a number of topics, especially those about things we'd really prefer to only have to describe once and not have to repeat or spend forever searching out a link for with the forum's normally craptastic search capabilities. 
@Arkandel I get what you're saying here, and I don't think it's an unreasonable ideal to ask people to aim their attacks at an idea, a behavior, or an action, and not the person.
If that's what the intent is board wide, it's probably a good time to say so, and I don't think that's an unreasonable expectation to have of adults. It's really just not so hard to type 'you're acting like a real shit right now' vs. 'you're a piece of shit' and there's a non-trivial distinction between the two.
Then, it's just a case of extremely hostile and vitriolic verbiage doing so in one place and one place only. What to do in cases where there's a lot of harsh shade being thrown implicitly rather than explicitly outside the Pit, I couldn't tell you what to do. I see more than a little of it that I would personally put under the umbrella of personal attacks, and it'd be nice if ostensibly constructive discussions weren't replete with that nonsense.
I think a lot of it, as you described in the clarification, is going to emerge from out of various cultures and be somewhat specific to them.
In the alt-earth world I tinker with, there's an over all connection amongst these things that's can best be described as 'belief brings things into being'. As in, enough people believe in a thing long enough, it's going to become real to some extent, in some way. You can find references to things like this in some world faiths -- a tulpa is probably the best and most direct example -- but there are parallels in some 'faith in X can manifest in miracles/etc.', and various game systems have used a version of this for cleric powers and such. (A really fantastic example of how this could be used in a game without being crazy over the top obvious fireballs and whatnot? The film Frailty. Holy shit. If you haven't seen it, do. It nailed mystics in surrWorld right to the wall, at least.)
You can even see manifestations of this in the use of propaganda; enough people believe a thing, it may as well be true, and people react accordingly or act in accordance with that belief. @ixokai's example of the barrier people believe in being effective only because people believe in it and what it represents is also excellent and fits into the same (very big) bucket really well; it's essentially a genre shift away from being a holy symbol in this way.