A Serious Discussion Regarding the Irony of our "Serious" Community, as well as Fascism.

i already have balls, no thanks

 

Most of this thread has been about how they reacted to the situation. we aren't talking about specifics here.

But I really do think AS LONG AS ITS CIVIL and doesnt drown out everyone else, arguments should be allowed in Shoutbox. Its actually a very good method of debate because of the fast turnaround and how everyone can join in.
(its not any more off topic than spamming that plump bird gif)

 

The whole "This is how it's always been" argument really irks me. Fortunately, I haven't seen it too much here, lately, but definitely in the past... Change is always good. Even if we have a good thing going, it can always get better.

Also, thanks for "3)", those ratings kinda get to me when the people who rate it dumb don't give any explanation or further reasoning as to why they think it is so.

edit: *how

 

This isn't about that situation. I have things to say about that, but it's not for this thread (probably won't be for any thread, really). I've spoken to the person you're talking about who was banned, and they don't want people to know why they were banned. Simple as that. The situation regarding this is one of the situations that I described as being rightful in the withholding of information, as the person in question doesn't want to talk about it. We have to respect his right here, as it's his privacy in question.

As for a discussion of why he was banned, well, since we do not know the reason, and probably won't find out anytime soon, we shouldn't put any blame on the staff or the player.

Now let's not turn this into a discussion about that and stay on the topic at hand (I think this is different from the censoring that I am upset about, but if not, someone can feel free to point out the irony).

 

I would like to make it clear, that my intention was not to flame you, or put you down by suggesting that you didn't read it fully. It was instead, however, me making the assumption that you didn't read the thread fully, as you disagreed with me on a specific point in which I fully agree with you on. Sorry that it seemed that way, though. Once more, as I just stated to Senpai in relation to the player banned yesterday who doesn't want people to know why he was banned, we need to respect the privacy of that player in that situation. I'm going to stress this again, as you brought it up multiple times in the post I am quoting. If a matter is private because the person(s) in question do not want it to be talked about, or it is unsettled and talking about it would possibly make the situation worse or change the outcome, then it should not be talked about, and staff can simply explain that reasoning behind why they are censoring the conversation, instead of something like "Don't talk about that" (not a real quote, but you get my point).

If instead, however, the player in question wanted us to know why he was banned, and didn't mind us talking about it, then that is where I would want us to have that freedom in the shoutbox. A discussion on it, letting people know who don't know (if they ask), and so on. Which could likely turn into flaming and harassment, but as I've stated, if such a thing were to happen, the players flaming/harassing should be punished instead of the conversation.

As for the whole Goodwin's Law thing, well, I had never heard of that until Sal mentioned it, and looking back, I can see how the relation to fascism may have been too much. Although, I am a fan of metaphors. There was also no actual relation to Hitler or Nazi's in what I said... I know this is silly to bring up, but I believe I compared it to Animal Farm, which is about the Russian Revolution.

The difference in ban appeals is that ban appeals are meant specifically for staff and people involved, whereas conversations and the shoutbox is meant for everyone.

Lastly, and I hope you do not take this as "flaming", but wouldn't your comparison of my topic being similar to people who think they shouldn't be slain for accidental RDM fall under the same category of "Goodwin's Law" that my comparison to Fascism would? I could be misinterpreting your text, but to my understanding, that appears to be what you're saying (correct me if I'm wrong).

 

My desire to reply to this thread was killed by the walls of text already posted.

However, the topic is interesting. A gaming community isn't a soap opera. We try to promote a fun environment for everyone. The more people that get more involved into the community, the higher the potential for more human interaction and relationships to form.

While this is a good thing for the most part, it brings the inevitable human element of emotions and drama. More drama = a community that is harder to run. We, as staff aren't heartless, (well most of us ) we are just looking out for the majority of the community when we try to sensor any debates that have potential to get heated.

 

I'm a soulless ginger. Don't listen to diekasta. :3

 

Good points. Drama is going to happen regardless of what staff or anyone else does, as like you said, it's an inevitable human element. Especially when combined with the way things can be interpreted incorrectly on the internet (and of course the anonymity of being physically hidden from who you're talking to). It's very important to learn to deal with that aspect of the community wisely, and I reaaaally have a lot to say on that portion of it all (dealing with members who cause drama, or specifically how not to deal with them), but that's for another time/thread/discussion.

What are your thoughts on, instead of censoring debates which have the potential to get heated, to instead temporarily censor the members who cause the debate to get heated through harassment/flaming (by warning, giving shoutbox bans, or whatever else), and leaving the discussion open? I personally feel that once it is made clear that that sort of reaction is punishable, people will think a little more about what they say in regards to when they get angry or upset, or at least take it out of the conversation into a more private matter, but of course this is in a perfect world, and I'm sure as a staff member who deals with such things, you should have some good input/criticism to provide to that idea.

 

I'm going to politely decline joining this debate any further. I ain't about endless arguments.

 

Transparency to a certain degree is absolutely necessary to keep a community successful. This is a game server, but it's also a community full of wonderful people who also happen to be very intelligent, and by human nature, curious. It's my opinion that a certain amount of discussion/unrest is needed. Communities and ideas evolve with criticism and obstacles, and sometimes those storms in a calm sea are certainly necessary for us to move forward. Serious TTT has continued to grow not only because of positive things like suggestions and new people, but also due to the learning experiences from more negative experiences in the past, a lot of which involved the entire community, not just staff. Shielding the community from "unrest" completely isn't the right way to go about things, as it's preventing the community from growing as a whole.

People grow stronger and wiser by facing obstacles throughout their lives and learning from any challenges that are put up against them. If there's always someone or something following them around to make sure they breeze by the obstacles or that they never have to face those challenges in the first place, they'll never grow stronger or wiser. Similar to this, 'shielding' the community and completely shutting down any and all discussion that seems a bit "iffy" prevents the community from improving. This is all irrelevant to what seemingly occurred yesterday, as I was not present when it happened and do not think I'm in a position to discuss it.

However, I also believe opacity to a certain degree is necessary. If everything was open to everyone, things would be chaotic, and I highly doubt the community would have survived or prospered to the point it's at now. Regardless of where you go, you will find drama, and you will find people who get very involved emotionally into debates. These are natural human traits, and are perfectly normal and expected. Nevertheless, because of these omnipresent characteristics, there needs to be censorship to some degree. Some discussions are outright guaranteed to snowball into drama, and I think some discussions simply have to be closed if they reach a point where arguments become volatile.

In my opinion, the issue with simply removing toxic people from a discussion is that eventually, these discussions develop negative connotations and in a way, remove the 'friendliness' of the forums. Many people, including myself at times, will browse through almost every unread thread, and if certain arguments continuously show toxic comments or make people feel uncomfortable, it degrades the positive, healthy environment we aim to create for the forums and people may stop visiting. You can say that people have the option to stop reading if they don't like the discussion or comments being made, but sometimes a single read is enough to drive people away. Many new players read through threads when they first visit to get a feel for the forums, and "iffy" threads with negative connotations don't reflect on the community well. A very large amount of people stick around with the community because of friendly players and the welcoming environment that encompasses the forums, which is a direct result of the censorship of certain topics. To a certain point, I think removing specific people would work, but some discussions will spiral to the stage where we have to close it before it begins affecting the forum environment.

In general (TL;DR?), yes, I do think staff can be a bit quick to jump to closing out discussions(I'm sure I'm guilty of this myself), but this is because we are humans and interpret things differently. I don't think this occurs out of ignorance or malicious intent. I'm sure most, if not all, staff members have good intentions and simply wish to prevent harassment or stop those who do enter the discussion with ill-intent/bad taste. I do think, as staff, we should put a little more trust in the community; I'd like to believe most people here are intelligent and perfectly capable of holding discussions reasonably and responsibly. Outright denying to give reasons as to why things are closed only serve to isolate staff from the community and creates a wall between staff and players, which is unhealthy, makes the environment a lot less friendly, and is not something we want if we wish to progress as a community. Like I said earlier, I'm certain there were no ill intentions when making those statements. Other than desisting from the "don't talk about that and we won't tell you why" statements, I'm not so sure there needs to be any huge changes.

As a side note, the issue with long discussions in the shoutbox is that they tend to drown out other users who don't care for/want to participate in the discussion but still wish to use the shoutbox. Making a thread and letting people who are interested in the discussion read and take part in it is often much less of a hassle and doesn't bother those who don't want to see it.

EDIT: Sorry for wall of text.

 

​

 

Just because it's the internet, doesn't mean arguments/(heated) discussions need to happen everywhere you go.

 

By the way; one of the points you mentioned about shoutbox posting was the fact that "If we can't talk about sensitive topics, why is Darktooth allowed to post pictures of video game characters?" <--- What? How does that relate?

A good amount of the time when people complain about shoutbox censoring, they always go back to the fact that the goofier members of the staff team/community (Me, Kenny, Toxin, etc) post ridiculous pictures and say dumb things all the time. However, I really don't understand this argument in the slightest.

I assume you made this thread because you're upset that you can't find out what happened to a previous member of a community, and you're upset over the fact that we're respecting the wishes of said community member in his leave. If we wanted to talk about what went down in the debacle, don't you think we would have made some sort of statement about it?

The administration is not stupid, and we don't do things for no reason. People can complain and moan that they feel left out about certain things, and to be honest, I really, really don't care. You should not feel like you deserve to know everything that goes on.

We hold all merit and right to be able to control what goes through shoutbox, and we do not abuse such right. We disallow anything that would break the rules of in-game chat, and we disallow anything sparks controversy. Shoutbox turns into a mini peanut gallery every time there is a drama-related discussion or a juicy detail about something that's going on, and I don't like it at all. It brings out the sides of people that I don't appreciate seeing, from even some of our moderators and admins.

I understand that you feel like we might be limiting discussion, but seriously, we don't really. We don't allow discussion of things that can just end up bad.

"Don't talk about your ban appeal" - Waste of time. Nothing gets resolved in shoutbox, only on appeals.
"Don't talk about your application" - Can be seen as advertising. Not needed.
"There's no need for you to know that." - Staff related situation or a confidentiality agreement.

Also, you've possibly made one of the most sensational titles I've ever seen. Where's the facism? Where's the "irony" of our "Serious" community? Why did you write so much when it could be said with so much less?

Your nose can stay on your face, not in other peoples' business.

 

I am disappointed that this was one of the most (but not the most) hostile posts in the thread.

However, I really don't understand this argument in the slightest.
You should probably defend that opinion or else it is essentially wasted words in an argument.

and you're upset over the fact that we're respecting the wishes of said community member in his leave.
This is the part that was being focused on. This was never stated to the community and its such a small thing. All that I think needed to be said was "He has asked that the situation remain private
I personally feel that if you had said that his wish was for the situation to remain private then there would be little issue.

I assume you made this thread because you're upset that you can't find out what happened to a previous member of a community
Also (as it has been cleared up many times) he was NOT speaking about what happened this time. He was speaking in a larger sense, merely using this event as a catalyst for a civil discussion on this thread.

We hold all merit and right to be able to control what goes through shoutbox
That is true. All that is being asked is (at the very least) a small concession that would ease the mind of a lot of long time members and newer ones as well. The idea of staff is to facilitate a fun environment (opinion) and secrets make it feel more like a government and less like fellow players (also my opinion).

we disallow anything sparks controversy
I understand that you feel like we might be limiting discussion, but seriously, we don't really.
This is contradictory. I prefer not being limited but you are limiting to some degree (Whether or not its good or bad is the rest of the thread's discussion).

"Don't talk about your ban appeal" - Waste of time. Nothing gets resolved in shoutbox, only on appeals.
Agreed.

"Don't talk about your application" - Can be seen as advertising. Not needed.
I think people are overly sensitive on the subject but, again, agreed.

"There's no need for you to know that." - Staff related situation or a confidentiality agreement.
I do not think you should state that as fact in this thread since its the basis of the discussion. Although as one of the legislators of the server its your right (responsibility?) to make the rules elsewhere on the forums. For now, here, we are just debating.

Also, you've possibly made one of the most sensational titles I've ever seen. Where's the facism? Where's the "irony" of our "Serious" community? Why did you write so much when it could be said with so much less?
Title was super weak, I agree. He wasn't too wordy though, and terse arguments appear weaker often.

Your nose can stay on your face, not in other peoples' business
Uncalled for. Just because you are orange doesn't mean "civil" discussion does not apply to you and being condescending spits in the face of that idea. (This applies to more of your comment than just the line above.)

 

So the only thing he was somewhat hostile about was that he shouldn't butt into peoples' business?
By the way, his first point explains itself. I don't know how you can dig deeper into something you don't understand.

 

I specifically said it applies to more places in the post than just that. The overall tone comes of as condescending and rude.

If he does not understand that is fine but if he says the point itself does not make sense he has to defend that. If he merely does not understand then it is wasted words (as I also said).

 

It's his opinion. He's allowed to voice it as much as anyone else in this community, Lead or not. Drunk asked for opinions, and from his argument, I don't know what you could expect

I don't wanna do a back-and-forth with quotes and spam the thread with how DT's tone was, so you can comment to this or not, I'll just be goin'

 

You can take my tone whichever way you'd like. It doesn't matter to me if you think of my point differently because of how I conveyed it.

This is my last post in this thread, since I'd rather leave this to die and not draw more attention to how I chose to convey my opinion. Peace.

 

This is getting dangerously close to become a Shitposting Thread rather than a 'Discussion' thread, I request either things be tone down, finished and locked, or moved to a new section of the forums where we can 'Rant/Shitpost' all we want.

 

I think this whole thread speaks to exactly the kind of thing I mentioned in my post on the first page.
Look at how this thread went down: You wanted to talk about a sensitive issue, but the problem is that with so much input from so many different people it quickly devolved into berating each other and flaming.
And at the end nobody came out with a greater understanding or feeling of resolution, it just frustrated everyone as a whole. This is why certain topics aren't openly talked about, because it's bound to end up in arguing.