Posts made by Tinuviel

@Cupcake Can confirm.

@Arkandel National stereotypes are the most overt displays of 'racism' in Europe, at least that I've ever seen. One is far more likely to be harassed for being Polish than for being black.

@Arkandel White people offending white people is different to white people offending not-white people.

Besides, that's not a stereotype, that's just a fact.

Wow. I see mention of nutjob spouses and Sci-Fi games and I think of Bryce and Brooke.

I'd no idea all this stuff was going on in the background of GoD/DoD.

@Arkandel
I can only speak to my own experiences regarding playing races, but these are my thoughts on the subject.

It's easy to play a Klingon, for example. Or a Cylon, or a Na'vi, or whatever. They're fictional, and you can spend an hour on Wikipedia looking up the broad strokes of how to portray them properly. But most importantly, nobody is going to be offended by your portrayal of a Klingon. You're not going to be racist by playing your Klingon in a stereotypical way, because they're fictional.

Playing a human being with hundreds or thousands of years of cultural separation from what you know can be daunting, and would require a great deal of work to do so accurately, or at least accurately enough to avoid offending people or being accused of racism. Playing an Aboriginal Australian, for instance, would be hard for me not because I don't know the intricacies of their various cultures. I don't know, necessarily, what someone with their belief system would do in X situation.

But the main reason I don't play people of colour in my RP is because I don't know a damned thing, compared to what I know about my own cultural heritage, and anything I do know would probably be seen as offensive at worst or a gross overgeneralisation at best.

@Pondscum said in Fear and Loathing (Official Thread):

No longer associated with this game.

Congrats?

@Paris And that requires people, us or other people, being capable of establishing why such people shouldn't be allowed to play their games. With reason and justification, not histrionics.

@Rook said in MU and Alternate Channels:

@Arkandel
So you would no-contact two players after one incident, to the point of banning public RP?

@Rook, you literally said it yourself.

@Rook said in MU and Alternate Channels:

If Bob is talking shit about a player, that player equally has every right to avoid Bob for whatever OOC reason. It doesn't matter if it was Skype or a Web Forum or a Munch that Bob was caught spouting cruel things.

It's rarely about what rights someone has as opposed to what rights should be exercised at any given point.

A game owner/empowered staff member has the right to deny access to a game to anyone. Period.
The question that needs to be asked is should they?

That is what needs to be asked more often. Not can I but should I.

@Arkandel Except me. I am a dick to everyone around me.

@Arkandel
Most cases, luckily, are as cut and dried as your one versus many example above. Those, for any decent staffer, don't need explaining.
It's the weird edge cases that I'm worried about. Those pesky problems that make you want to just get rid of alleged victim and alleged perpetrator to be rid of the problem.

I don't have specific examples to hand, mostly because if I ever staff these days I typically log in, do my jobs, hang out for a few hours to do other jobs, and then leave - thus I don't have much player contact from the staff-side.

@surreality
Agreed. Staff need to be held to a higher standard anyway, but that's just an icky, bullshitty mess. Actively planning or expressing desire to break the rules on the game should be punished, no matter where that expression or planning takes place.

@Arkandel
If you're sexually harassing someone outside of the game, that's the responsibility of the people that run the service you're using. Not game staff's. If they do it on the game then it's an issue, but that's not the point. The point is where is the limit to where staff should act, not whether they can act. If I accuse you of dog-fighting ring organisation on here, but don't do diddly on the game, why should game staff be expected to act? They can act, of course. They don't strictly need a reason to act. But should they?

@Sparks You mean Constantinople?

@Derp said in A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like:

I think that if we get into the habit of treating players differently based on past experiences or whatever, it's gonna lead us down a bad road. Players can have difficulties on one game, given that game's atmosphere and environment, that they'd never have on another. I've seen it happen before. While I don't buy into a lot of the 'hivemind' stuff, there is definitely a flow that you fall into based on a game's players, stories, environment, rules, etc, and like all social creatures we'll in some way conform to that, for good or ill.

If a person has developed a reputation for being hostile, abusive, or the like then they should be ostracized. That's part of how communities self-police. If we want to encourage new blood to enter the hobby, we need to exclude those people that cause the most problems. You don't stop the antibiotics once the symptoms go, you continue the course to prevent reinfection.

This makes some people unhappy, sure. People who have been around for awhile and dealt with the same people can be wary, and with good cause. If you don't do what they expect, then you can catch a lot of heat.

But you can also catch a lot of heat singling out players for different treatment for any reason, and not treating all players as if they were playing on a level playing field

There is no middle ground there. You either do treat them all the same, or you don't treat them all the same. No matter how you try and nuance it, it comes down to one of those two things. And either way, one side is going to be unhappy that you chose that path.

There is no right or wrong way to do it. It all depends on what you want from your game. Me, I choose to lean toward the 'all players starting on a new game have a clean slate, and will be treated as equals under the same set of rules'.

People are never on a level playing field. Some are new, some are familiar with how the various members of staff react to certain things so they appear to skirt the rules, some people are just generally better players than others. There is no clean slate, no matter how much you might want to say there is. We know peoples' reputations, good or bad, and we judge them on it - publicly or not.

It's not about being happy or not. It's about being stable, and able to build. If there's a kid coming to the sandpit to kick all the castles down, don't let them come to your sandpit. Nobody is under any obligation to put up with abuse or harassment or negative behaviours in this community. Nobody is under any obligation to let everyone play their games.

@surreality The problem with having to enforce good behaviour elsewhere is that it can be a slippery slope. I think I'm using that phrase correctly.

You and I are talking. I go onto another game to talk shit about you to a mutually known person. Is that staff's responsibility?
What about here? We talk shit about people all the time. Is posting all the vile things X person has done not harassment? Does the game's staff have to respond?

I agree with you that using alternative platforms to cheat is bad and should be dealt with as such - but the terminus of that situation happens on the game. The cheating happens on the game itself, even if the arrangements are made elsewhere.

@coin IIRC the majority of Russia's landmass would be considered Asian as well. Depending on where you draw the arbitrary lines.

If the abuse happens on a platform that the staff have any level of control over (official Discord channels, et cetera) then it is their responsibility to punish.

If the abuse happens on a platform that the staff have no control over but are present at (unofficial Discords, Skype calls, communal bonfire weekend celebrations, et cetera) then they have a moral duty to punish but not an outright obligation.

If the abuse happens completely outside the scope of staff's authority (Facebook messages, constant fucking Linkedin Emails, et cetera) then it is the responsibility of the controller of that service (be it the abused by blocking blocking or the equivilent, or contacting the appropriate officials, or whatever else) to punish.

If you, as staff, are presented with a log that details abuse from an external source over which you have no control or vague oversight, trust but verify - if it is further evidence of dickholery, then punish accordingly. If it is the first word against a person; instead of going right for the banhammer (which shouldn't always be the go-to solution), perhaps mediation or a restriction of privileges for the [alleged] offender - restrictions from channels, exclusion from earning XP, or the like as appropriate for your game.

The only strict requirements I have for poses are thusly wise:

1. Third person. "He/she/they, not I/you."
2. Present tense. "He nods and shrugs his shoulders," rather than "He nodded and shrugged his shoulders."
3. Don't force a (re)action from my character. Play yours, not mine.

Other than that it's a case by case. I can really get into some decently thought out poses that others might find a bit purple-y. Depends on mood, atmosphere, alignment of the planets, whether I've had caffeine, et cetera.

@Ganymede I wouldn't say they've forgotten, exactly. Perhaps... it stings less now, so it's less of a concern.