Staff: Don't Censor Players, Listen

[triste]

Greetings,

Just had a quick chat with Rath after Adam had a quick chat with Shalooonsh. This pertains to a thread in which Shaloonsh edited [censored] two of AdamBlue's posts, and locked the thread. Rath then proceeded to post a vague statement which left it unclear as to any action items, or if player feedback should be taken, leaving the thread locked.

So essentially while trying to discuss things, we saw a player censored, discussion closed off totally, and concluded with some vaguely admonishing statement by staff.

TLDR:
- Can staff stop editing posts from users, or if they do have a standard and professional way of doing it. What happened to Adam just an hour ago was screwed up and he rightfully voiced that he was upset in the Discord [because he couldn't here, the thread was locked!]
- If staff lock a thread, have a clear action item resulting either for staff [we will address your concerns by doing ___] or a clear action item for players [if you have concerns, submit a ____ request]

Anyone is also free to bring up any topic on staff-player comms they want, for example one thing I've wondered about is if player-electing-staff can address a lot of issues like this.

[Rathustra]

AdamBlue posted a ranting copypasta then edited it when the OP said they were leaving. When we receive complaints about posts we tend to just nuke. This is a forum for a 20 year old videogame, speech here is not protected, nor is it particularly meaningful beyond the forum itself. We will always err on the side of moderating posts and restoring them later than wasting time debating them.

I will happily alter my locking post to provide an avenue for recompense for those who feel that my actions were wrong.

We are not going to have player elected staff.

[triste]

AdamBlue posted a ranting copypasta then edited it when the OP said they were leaving. When we receive complaints about posts we tend to just nuke. This is a forum for a 20 year old videogame, speech here is not protected, nor is it particularly meaningful beyond the forum itself. We will always err on the side of moderating posts and restoring them later than wasting time debating them.

I will happily alter my locking post to provide an avenue for recompense for those who feel that my actions were wrong.

We are not going to have player elected staff.

Allow me to give you my take on what just happened. We had a thread about the theory of race and gaming. One of the few non-white players that I know of posted a good opinion that I agreed with, and was censored.

The only people you censored in a thread about people of color were people of color. So far as I can tell, I skimmed that shit as a person of color annoyed by the topic.

Now, let's take this fact, underlined examine the rest of what you just said about not having elected staff, about the excellent moderation work staff does, etc. That would be a fine position for an unassailable angel to have. But staff most certainly are not, and they tend to do hilarious stuff like ban queer players when they talk about LGBT topics [this happened last year to one of my favorite players], or humiliatingly vandalizing the text of people of color in a thread about people of color.

Before someone says "put it in a complaint," yes I did, and like all staff complaints it went nowhere.

Please stop overzealously hurting people and refusing to take our feedback. There is no such thing as unassailable and flawless judgement, the idea of an Enlightened Monarch is stale and hundreds of years old. That, for instance, is why I broached the idea of elections.

[Edited to fix pluralization, working on the side to discussing this]

[Rathustra]

AdamBlue posted a ranting copypasta then edited it when the OP said they were leaving. When we receive complaints about posts we tend to just nuke. This is a forum for a 20 year old videogame, speech here is not protected, nor is it particularly meaningful beyond the forum itself. We will always err on the side of moderating posts and restoring them later than wasting time debating them.

I will happily alter my locking post to provide an avenue for recompense for those who feel that my actions were wrong.

We are not going to have player elected staff.

Allow me to give you my take on what just happened. We had a thread about the theory of race and gaming. One of the few non-white players that I know of posted a good opinion that I agreed with, and was censored.

The only people you censored in a thread about people of color were people of color. So far as I can tell, I skimmed that shit as a person of color annoyed by the topic.

Now, let's take this fact, underlined examine the rest of what you just said about not having elected staff, about the excellent moderation work staff does, etc. That would be a fine position for an unassailable angel to have. But staff most certainly are not, and they tend to do hilarious stuff like ban queer players when they talk about LGBT topics [this happened last year to one of my favorite players], or humiliatingly vandalizing the text of people of color in a thread about people of color.

Before someone says "put it in a complaint," yes I did, and like all staff complaints it went nowhere.

Please stop overzealously hurting people and refusing to take our feedback. There is no such thing as unassailable and flawless judgement, the idea of an Enlightened Monarch is stale and hundreds of year old. That, for instance, is why I broached the idea of elections.

The ethnicity or sexuality of a poster doesn't protect them against having their post removed for bad posting.

The idea that our moderation of the GDB is excellent is laughable - it is a good job I didn't say that or oh boy would my face be red.

We are not unassailable and flawless, anyone claiming this or having pretense to staffing being anything other than a small group of former players maintaining the game to the expected degree can only be trying to tirelessly push a narrative.

[triste]

So far you have not said, under any circumstances, that you'll take our feedback. Um, great.

[Saellyn]

Staff takes the feedback of players on a regular basis, but in this instance, you're trying to make this a racial/prejudicial topic when it isn't one. Nobody was censored. An extremely baity, flamey post was deleted. I know, because I read the post. I saw it before it got edited out. Stop using this tactic.

[triste]

Staff takes the feedback of players on a regular basis, but in this instance, you're trying to make this a racial/prejudicial topic when it isn't one. Nobody was censored. An extremely baity, flamey post was deleted. I know, because I read the post. I saw it before it got edited out. Stop using this tactic.

It's not a "tactic" I just happened to state some facts of how something played out.

If you aren't comfortable with how you zealously hurt someone, don't zealously hurt people. That applies to about everyone on this GDB.

I don't have any "tactic" here besides asking for respect.

[NinjaFruitSalad]

Well let's be honest here, taking a close look at what transpired.

What was censored wasn't staff feedback.  It was a response to another poster.  And from what I understand, it was a childish copypasta, unless you want accuse Rath of lying, too.

[triste]

Well let's be honest here, taking a close look at what transpired.

What was censored wasn't staff feedback.  It was a response to another poster.  And from what I understand, it was a childish copypasta, unless you want accuse Rath of lying, too.

Adam did mention that there was an inaccuracy in what Rath wrote in this account, but no, not saying Rath's lying. Here's what I am saying:

We can let it drop. It's not a big deal. I just think staff should have been more empathetic to Adam, etc. Some random person just came on our board and made accusations about this game being racist [which it is not, as it has taken many steps not to be]. People of color who enjoy and play this game understandably got upset about this. I think the way Adam's comments were forcibly edited wasn't so kind given these circumstances. Maybe he could have gotten a message so he could change it himself, or something.

I felt like someone made this weird racist post, Adam and I came in with fire extinguishers, were doing a fine job extinguishing the fire, but then staff came in behind us with high pressure hoses and it inadvertently knocked us to the ground and broke our teeth. I understand why they had to do that to swiftly put out the fire but I am noting there were some casualties and I offered recommendations to better handle it in the two bullet points above.

edit: OF COURSE THIS IS JUST MY OPINION. We can all respect opinions. Some people with trauma benefit from seeing those topics in media, some don't, some people enjoy certain topics in this game, some don't. I appreciate diversity of opinion and do not appreciate the dogmatic censorship of opinion. Please edit or handle opinions consistently or professionally EOM.

[Pew Pew]

As a black american, I understood what the original poster was trying to say, but /everything/ is about delivery, and it was done poorly. I do not think they had any malicious intent behind it and I tend to give people IRL the benefit of the doubt.

That being said, I do agree with Triste on the stance that for discussions that are not giving out IC Sensitive information staff should absolutely give the posted an opportunity to edit their post. If the poster does not edit the post in say 24/48 hours staff can then moderate/delete it themselves. Doing this shows a bit of good will and trust on both sides.

That being said, if you are spouting off derogatory/racial slanders/hurtful speech, staff should moderate your post without question.

[Brokkr]

Unfortunately these boards, as far as I am aware, do not have workflow that makes that a manageable solution.  When we get a complaint about a post (which we did), we review the post and take action as reasonably fast as we can.  Leaving a post up, which a complaint has already been made about and verified, really isn't an option.  It has had an objection raised against it, objection seems reasonable, leaving up something found objectionable until the author can deal with it doesn't seem to fulfill any reasonable objective. There is no workflow I am aware of in this board setup to mark a post so that readers can't see it, until the original poster re-writes it.

As for the OP in the other thread, this game has prejudice against different species as one of the building blocks of the game in building a harsh and brutal world with ingrained, inherent points of conflict.  People in real life have spent thousands of years, if not longer, coming up with ways to carry out prejudice, whether against people of the same species but different skin color, different religion, sexual preference, mental development, country, ethnic origin, profession and a host of other differential qualities. I doubt we could be creative enough to come up with ways inter-species prejudice could be represented and carried out by the player base that did not echo, or could not be perceived as echoing, some form of real life prejudice.  Even if I could think of a novel way to represent prejudice that could not be so perceived or has not happened before, I have no interest in creating a new way prejudice could be carried out.

[triste]

Alright, thanks for letting us know why it would be untenable. The situation was just upsetting. I am someone who appreciates literature, philosophy and metaphor. I also happen to be a person of color, a nerd, a lot of things. I think Armageddon handles these topics well. The scenario of seeing my friend's posts edited in a thread where it felt like someone was already "speaking for me" and others was upsetting.

Thank you for the feedback my concerns are addressed