Posts made by surreality

@bored said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

This kind of thing is trivial to code (its what, basically just an emit and maybe a staff channel echo?), but it's hard to implement culturally and see adopted.

On the upside, I think we're seeing more follow-through and willingness to be involved and take action on the staff side, broadly, than has been present in the past. The tools won't work without it.

I think a lot of the failure in the past has been due to staff reticence to take action. Lately, we see the 'go directly to staff' suggestion on account of this general sea change, but it has its own complications.

I'm definitely more optimistic re: the potential positive impact of tools these days than I would have been a decade ago, when I last saw the ones mentioned in common usage.

I miss warn existing for 'hey, what you're doing is going to result in negative consequences if you keep it up' purposes.

It is a good way of handling the 'I don't want to go to jail' player, because they are getting a concrete heads-up, and if they choose to continue? Sorry, bucko, jail it is.

I think it was Arx (I don't play there so someone else will have to confirm) that had something like an +ineedanadult command or such? Maybe not that exact wording, but even something like the graphic command described above would be helpful for 'we're getting a little too vivid with the adjectives up in here' and so on.

I wouldn't count on +warn to ever communicate 'I'm uncomfortable'. I do think +warn is great for 'you're heading into dangerous territory and should be aware there are consequences coming if you continue', and I miss it being there for that reason. It's more for 'you're heading into territory with consequences that could make YOU uncomfortable', not 'you're heading into territory that makes ME uncomfortable'.

@Arkandel Everyone's eyerolls will get skipped less often than leg day, most likely. Yeesh.

@Cobaltasaurus said in Random funny:

@Arkandel out of curiosity did it work when I reported it? Cause I saw it and went "wtf" but he was still around for a day.

Ditto this. I saw the 'hide things people' go up after that iirc, but that one never ended up behind a tag despite it being the one I think I clicked.

Labeling sites as 'adult content' for 18+ games -- not just sex games, but all games that are 18+ -- is probably a necessary step from the community side. (I wouldn't create a game that wasn't 18+, no matter the content, because I don't want to deal with being responsible for children in that space; there's enough to worry about among adults as it is.)

So is, much as many folks aren't going to want to hear it, reporting it when someone underage is playing on one of these games; people generally don't, and that needs to change.

This is important to protect everyone involved, kids and adults that may not realize they're playing with someone underage on a site where underage people shouldn't be in the first place, because neither group deserves the damage.

Seconding Sunny here. Plenty of folks wouldn't find this useful, and have stated their reasons for it. Hammering people who would find it useful because those solutions don't work for them isn't going to magically solve their problem.

All it takes is staff biting your head off once or twice -- especially if they get very personal -- to become very wary of approaching anyone.

@Kestrel said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

I don't think I'm alone in just having been badly socialised this way.

You are not. The same happens often with me, and from the staff side, I have seen endless other people with the same concerns and anxiety.

It does not matter how nice or trustworthy or ethical staff is for a lot of folks in these circumstances -- they may never find out for one (being too afraid to approach) -- but staff being nice and open-minded and open-eared about these things may actually increase hesitation in some way, because the thought of 'taking advantage' or 'wasting that nice person's time with (generic) my (not actually) stupid situation' and similar feels somehow worse than approaching a generic 'hit a button' system in that moment in which there is an issue.

Generally: making +ftb <summary pose of fading to black> a command may help, set up as something like:

The scene fades to black as <summary>.

for output.

@mietze Daquiris, whipped cream vodka*, and tasty cheese bits sent in spirit.

Also, this bat. This bat may help. It has extra nails in it.

• No, really! Mix it with some Simply Limeade for instant boozy key lime pie beverage.

@Warma-Sheen I have a full setup for this wiki-side; it just hasn't gone into use anywhere yet.

Part of the issue people keep ignoring even more is that there are bad seeds on both ends of the spectrum, in favor of complaining about their favorite flavor of bad seed to be annoyed by. The folks who refuse to ever have anything bad happen to them are shit; the folks who want to push uncomfortable extremes on others when they know the other party is especially grossed out by it or it's a major world taboo/etc. that most people are opposed to are also shit.

The real tragedy to all of this is that this is all crap we should have learned in elementary school recess. We know we're being assholes in some fashion if we do these things. It is not a mystery or a surprise. Ignorance is only an excuse for the most delusional, self-centered, or (beyond the hobby average) socially awkward souls who have absolutely NO idea of how to engage with other human beings (which is rare as hell, unlike a general level of social anxiety or awkwardness).

It annoys me that we need any of this, because... see above. But. We need things. We need things to help handle it all, be it to empower people to speak up or disempower bad actors from behaving badly. The biggest tool will always be staff action; things that help draw clear lines for staff to make solid judgment calls with less nebulous territory (like 'I have had it listed I am not willing to engage in RP involving the subject of child abuse, and this person went there anyway, and continued to press after I pointed this out') help.

Are there still going to be situations in which this is not going to go the way of the 'no child abuse' person? ABSOLUTELY. Like, say, a PrP that says up front 'contains elements of child abuse'. Duh, right? This is really not hard. Slapping a label on a game is less effective than slapping that label on a scene or plotline. Allowing people to engage or avoid on this level is also extremely useful in preventing difficulties for those with sensitivities and those who wish to run things on tense or edgy subjects for people who are able to comfortably engage with that material.

@Derp That's why I like the hybrid consent approach described.

The 'person stirring shit who isn't willing to take consequences' factor is easy enough to resolve with boot to ass. (Them being shown the door.)

Sadly, the people who just love to dish it out, but can't/won't take it (or any form of consequences) without playing poor persecuted victim are not in short supply. The only real way to deal with them is eviction.

@Derp That's really only necessary if it's described as a PvE game. If you're making a PvP game, yeah, that's a good way to handle it, or as good as any is going to get.

@Pyrephox That post deserves several hundred upvotes.

The 'turns the game into a PvP environment' thing re: 'willy nilly nonconsent' is something that's been tumbling around in my brain all morning, but I couldn't put it into words. You nailed it.

Part of the issue is that the majority of games that are nonconsent are also PvE -- and the nonconsent factor really does change this paradigm dramatically away from PvE and into instigator-favored PvP.

I am 100% down with the idea that staff-led/metaplot story, or elements of the game world (specific consequences for doing X in org Y, etc.) are not something that people should be casually noping out of, but this is, IMO, best suited to a hybrid consent environment. Namely, those things are nonconsent, but PvP interactions default to being consent-based.

If nothing else, in that situation, the people 'starting shit' or bringing down hammers are vetted to some extent and are going to have multiple eyes on them when they take action, which discourages 'rando wants to try to get away with something shady' significantly.

The 'didn't think of it' is likely the most common issue with this not appearing in files.

People thinking it's fine to 'haggle' it lose their protection/excuse for this behavior when it's explicitly stated, and the people who may not realize this isn't to be haggled once they say it -- and may be further pressured or coerced -- get the full force of staff behind the 'no'.

There's a decent article about some of the concerns with this, and some of the forms it currently takes, in the NYT today.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/07/us/video-games-child-sex-abuse.html

Definitely worth a read.

@Derp Yes, that is a huge help, but I still wouldn't feel comfortable unless there was a list of 'nope, not happening' (ex: rape, child rape, etc.) listed as 'can't be thrown at people without permission'.

'Anything lasting longer than a single scene' is pretty important; hopefully this will include things like 'this mentally fucks someone up for life' in practice.

@Derp The only people whose motives you've been questioning are the people who wish to say 'no'. I love ya, man, but this is consistent. This is the first time in memory I have seen any acknowledgement that 'yes, the thing the instigator is trying to press for may require examination'.

I am a huge, huge fan of 'call a judge', and if staff, for being willing to be called.

My personal inclination here is to have any 'red' do something by default: 'ping the staff channel that X has called red in a space with <list of names>'.

That gets more useful; staff can check in if needs be, they're alerted to a potential issue or someone contacting them, and if there's a pattern of the caller or someone in the room when something's called, it starts to become more apparent. This is useful info to have to keep the peace on a game regarding trends in inappropriate behaviors, or bad actors.

@Pandora Not you saying it; it's Carex + Derp.

FTB is useful, but as BlondeBot says, it isn't enough for the other extreme end of abuses.

As it stands, with FTB, any unreasonable or extreme someone can imagine is permissible, it just isn't explicitly RPed.

Also, some folks -- when hearing 'FTB' -- will escalate the extreme awfulness of whatever it is in order to try to force the RP and leave the character more viable afterward.

Example: Someone asks to FTB being slapped around and insulted; the other player really wants to RP humiliating the FTB-requesting character, so after the FTB request, they decide that 'slapping around' now includes carving insults all over the other character's body in visible places they'll walk around with for the rest of their RP experience on the game, and throwing acid in their face, mutilating and blinding them in the process.

Questioning and grilling and default-doubting the person saying, 'wait a minute, that's a bit extreme for someone who took your barstool or didn't want to fuck you and that's not the kind of RP I have interest in' is pretty ridiculous when there's zero examination/suspicion given to the people who come up with over the top nonsense, and these folks are by default given full benefit of the doubt and all possible protections.

Stop acting like people who say 'no' are the only people worth side-eye or suspicion. It is so far from being a balanced or reasonable perspective, it's ridiculous.

@Pandora This feels like a more nuanced version of the 'X Card' concept -- and it was something that needed more than a little nuance added, so that's a good thing.