The games direction.

[triste]

Full agree, but what is our mechanism? I am thankful you give your feedback to staff and they address it, but that mechanism by definition will not work for everyone.

If our game has 10 players who believe riding mounts is cruelty and should be removed, are they enough of an interest group to successfully lobby to have mounts removed even if the vast majority of players like riding beetles and inixes in game? Or should we just tell those players who dislike animal cruelty and riding to play elves? Would refusing to remove mount code be insensitive?

[edit/context for page roll] OP believes the answer is representative staff, others kind of agree, others disagree. I want voting/elections but no one wants that. Looking for more options here!

[Saiseiki]

..

I disagree. I don't know about you, but I don't spend my days IRL being a racist, bigoted, homophobic rapist that crusades around the world with religious zeal. So, those things being in a game is escapism for me. It allows you to explore terrible, horrific subject matter with no real world consequence. I was drawn to arm for it's portrayal of all of these terrible things.

Look, if you eliminate these types of issues in both the real world and the fictional world, how will people know why they're so awful? They will have neither experienced it, nor heard about it, nor read about it. Through literature and roleplay, we can experience the truly terrible and feel the associated emotions with no real world consequence, other than reaching a greater understanding of why these things are terrible IRL.

Reading fiction about the horrors of slavery, torture, rape, racism, religious zealotry, sexism and so on is healthy.

ArmageddonMUD is not a teaching tool to enlighten people.  It's a roleplaying game that players can inhabit another body and play out fantasy within the text world.  It should be an escape from the everyday real.

This means that you shouldn't have to experience the shit you get in real life in a made up fantasy game.  And yeah, it is a safe space.  That's built into the rules of the world of Zalanthas.

There is gender equality, and you can be any gender.
There is no negative social queues of bisexual, homosexual, or polyamorous relationships.
There is no rape in game.
There is no racism based on the color of your skin.

You cannot roleplay characters in this game that don't adhere to these concepts.   The game is clear that it's a safe space the points above.

Beautifully put, Mansa. 

Heade, you said you didn't necessarily agree with all of the above policies.  Rather than make assumptions, I'd like to ask directly, which of the four core polices do you disagree with?

There is gender equality, and you can be any gender.
There is no negative social queues of bisexual, homosexual, or polyamorous relationships.
There is no rape in game.
There is no racism based on the color of your skin.

I have more to add, but I'll see if there's some clarity to be had before proceeding.

[triste]

@Saiseiki Beautifully put, but that list of rules is not comprehensive. It omits rules around the language you can use, etc. So you might need to repose that question to Heade.

Part of the problem is that list is ever growing. Mansa did not lay out the full list. Fact. Unless there is a clear mechanism for how rules end up on that list, or player representation among those making the list, how is the list of rules even valid? That is OP's concern.

[LauraMars]

So I don't post here much. I do appreciate the revolution happening and how it seems to be touching every aspect of our lives.  It's affected mine in many ways, at work and in my personal life. I think that's a positive thing, as a whole.

As far as Armageddon is concerned....so, I was on Armageddon staff for many years, and FYI when you join staff or apply for staff nobody asks you what your ethnicity is or if you identify as male or female or what your sexual orientation is.  They don't want a picture of you. They don't want your real name. They seem interested in evaluating your strengths as a team player and your contributions thus far as a player of their game, and that is all. It seems to me that you could quite easily catfish yourself into a Storyteller position. There's nothing in the hiring process (or at least, the hiring process as I remember it, it's been awhile!) to prevent it.  Anything they know about you, they know because you share it voluntarily. Otherwise, it doesn't come up.

Does the information you share voluntarily affect your chances? Yeah, I'm sure it does. It does everywhere else in the world, which is why there's so many boardrooms filled with nothing but old white dudes. And it did for me.  For instance, I was denied a chance to be on staff multiple times because of who I was married to at the time. (My husband had a bad reputation/was banned from the game and they did not like him...thus, I was tarred with the same brush for many years.) Was this fair? Eh...you be the judge. I sure wouldn't classify that choice as discrimination on a level with being rejected because my romantic partner happened to be a certain gender, for example. (They eventually gave in when I applied enough times and saw that I was, y'know, a nice and reasonable person who just really liked writing about bone swords.)

Anyway, letting voluntarily revealed personal information about a person affect hiring decisions is something that Armageddon staff could and possibly should check in with themselves about to see how they're doing because they're in a position of power - and I think when you're in a position of power, interrogating how that power affects the world around it is really important.

HOWEVER, they don't ask about your body or your personal life or your political views during the hiring process or at any time while you're on staff, and quite frankly I don't think any of them should. That's personal!

When I was on staff it skewed leftist as a whole, in terms of value systems.  Pretty sure it still does.

[triste]

Thanks for posting that Laura. That is exactly why I want elections. I am not specifically mad at Staff for taking your early applications like that because it is human nature and similar to many boardrooms as you say. I want us to proactively consider mechanisms to address the issue and this insight is valuable.

[LauraMars]

I'm pretty opposed to elected staff and would never want to run a creative enterprise that way. But it could be an interesting experiment to hire one Storyteller with an election I guess, just to see what happens. Armageddon staff is BIG, and I do mean BIG, compared to the size of the playerbase, so it kind of feels like they can afford to mess around and do some social science on themselves.

[triste]

Yeah that would be fun! Like a player representative or union organizer. I actually love this idea and could address OP's concern. Basically any idea besides formless complaints, I adore.

[Gentleboy]

I don't think voting for staff would be a good idea:

but I think nominating someone for a helper position every now and then would be good. Or like a player representative to represent an idea or change and rely on them to make the argument. I dunno. Me big brain hurt.

[Malken]

I have so many OOC friends that I would win every single elections.

MAKE ARMAGEDDON GREAT AGAIN! VOTE FOR KAWAII ^_^ MALKEN-SAN 2020 （✿ ͡◕ ᴗ◕)つ━━✫・*。 (づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ

Let me catfish my way into your heart!

[Gentleboy]

I have so many OOC friends that I would win every single elections.

MAKE ARMAGEDDON GREAT AGAIN! VOTE FOR KAWAII ^_^ MALKEN-SAN 2020 （✿ ͡◕ ᴗ◕)つ━━✫・*。 (づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ

Let me catfish my way into your heart!

Got my vote, damn. I wish I knew how to do cool emojis.

[triste]

idk your kaomoji game is pretty good. people said they wanted a meritocracy

but yeah, boardroom style meritocracy is the status quo and if that is what you want Malken you've got it. But OP is correct to wonder if it is representative.

[Barsook]

Meritocracy is the way to go. Although I was a part of the Ubuntu Linux community and those who were Members were allowed to elect/vote the Community Council members (and for the other two boards). It did work to a point though.

[Malken]

idk your kaomoji game is pretty good. people said they wanted a meritocracy

The average voters don't know the difference between mediocracy and meritocracy so it's all good.

٩(๑･ิᴗ･ิ)۶ヽ(♡‿♡)ノ٩(･ิᴗ･ิ๑)۶

[Barsook]

Maybe in this community, yes.

[Asanadas]

Armageddon is not a meritocracy. The Armageddon staff team is not a meritocracy.

[valeria]

The more the game appeals to people who aren't straight cis white men, the more diversity staff will have, just as a function of who is around and who becomes passionate enough about the game and community to devote the kind of blood, sweat, and tears it takes to do such a thankless chore.  I wouldn't ask people to disclose any kind of minority status.  I'm really uncomfortable when people ask me to disclose mine, and I'm usually pretty up-front about them!  It's different when it's voluntary.

I think the playerbase and game as a whole actively try to make this game a welcome escape for people who are discriminated against in various ways IRL, despite the presence of a few vocal kneejerk reactionaries.  Problems happen or are regoznied because society is changing and people are learning to be better, but those problems actually do get addressed here.  That's been true since I started playing over 10 years ago, or I wouldn't even be here.

Sure, sexism isn't supposed to be in the game.  Is it?  Absolutely.  I could write whole pages about how differently my male characters are treated different from female characters.  There's active pushback against it though.  Homophobia, also not supposed to be part of the game.  I could write pages about how my homosexual characters have been treated different from the heterosexual ones.  Again, people push back hard against it both IC and OOC.  Trans issues, oh boy, the last time that came up (a few years ago) there was a whole kerfuffle around andro pronouns that resulted in me, a nonbinary player, quitting the game for a while.  The problem was resolved to my satisfaction eventually.  I'd like to think the game has gotten better there, though I've never tried to play a trans character.

Anyway.  From those of the playerbase I know and who choose to disclose things, I'd say we have a pretty diverse playerbase.  I'd imagine staff is also pretty diverse, just because people who stick around tend to gravitate toward staff.  Do I think staff should self-assess their diversity?  Yes.  It's always good to know where your strengths and weaknesses are.  But if I was on staff, being asked to disclose my personal stuff in anything less than a voluntary, anonymous fashion would make me really uncomfortable.  So I wouldn't want to do that to other people.

More than I'd care to see any sort of elected liaison position, I'd like an anonymous complaint/suggestion system.  I would like to be able to put in a complaint ticket about sexual harassment, people pushing the consent boundaries, or other issues, without having my name attached to it, so that they could be investigated without having to worry about retaliation.  I'd like to be able to put in a suggestion about something like changing a slur or addressing problematic documentation without it being attached to my account.  Would it be clear at the time who made the complaint, to the people investigating it?  Possibly.  But would it be on my account info for years?  No.  So that would be really nice.

[Cendell]

Any sort of election deciding Staff is a silly idea.

You know who will win that election? Someone people here on the GDB know. Are they the best person for the job? Who knows, but probably not.

People like me, who no-one knows, or gives a shit about (And who doesn't care to try and politic and hustle for votes for a staff position on an online text game) would never end up on Staff for any reason. This is not a good thing.

Self selecting people who can sell themselves to our player base would end with bad Staff. Only one of them? Congratulations, you're the Hlum noble of Storytellers, you're different from everyone else on Staff, you didn't "earn" your way there, you're just some person. All of them elected...Armageddon becomes a different game, maybe better? (I personally doubt it) Maybe worse. But not Armageddon.

(If there was anything to support out of this thread. I really like valeria's idea of anonymous reporting mechanisms. I believe things do go unreported for fear of reprisal, or just a snitches stitches attitude)

[Heade]

..

I disagree. I don't know about you, but I don't spend my days IRL being a racist, bigoted, homophobic rapist that crusades around the world with religious zeal. So, those things being in a game is escapism for me. It allows you to explore terrible, horrific subject matter with no real world consequence. I was drawn to arm for it's portrayal of all of these terrible things.

Look, if you eliminate these types of issues in both the real world and the fictional world, how will people know why they're so awful? They will have neither experienced it, nor heard about it, nor read about it. Through literature and roleplay, we can experience the truly terrible and feel the associated emotions with no real world consequence, other than reaching a greater understanding of why these things are terrible IRL.

Reading fiction about the horrors of slavery, torture, rape, racism, religious zealotry, sexism and so on is healthy.

ArmageddonMUD is not a teaching tool to enlighten people.  It's a roleplaying game that players can inhabit another body and play out fantasy within the text world.  It should be an escape from the everyday real.

This means that you shouldn't have to experience the shit you get in real life in a made up fantasy game.  And yeah, it is a safe space.  That's built into the rules of the world of Zalanthas.

There is gender equality, and you can be any gender.
There is no negative social queues of bisexual, homosexual, or polyamorous relationships.
There is no rape in game.
There is no racism based on the color of your skin.

You cannot roleplay characters in this game that don't adhere to these concepts.   The game is clear that it's a safe space the points above.

Beautifully put, Mansa. 

Heade, you said you didn't necessarily agree with all of the above policies.  Rather than make assumptions, I'd like to ask directly, which of the four core polices do you disagree with?

There is gender equality, and you can be any gender.
There is no negative social queues of bisexual, homosexual, or polyamorous relationships.
There is no rape in game.
There is no racism based on the color of your skin.

I have more to add, but I'll see if there's some clarity to be had before proceeding.

I'm not interested in derailing this thread from the original topic, which I think this side discussion is beginning to do. A direct answer to your question here will undoubtedly cause this discussion to go a direction that this thread isn't intended for. If you're interested in more than virtue signaling and would like to have a discussion on my opinion, feel free to PM me and I can answer you there.

I would, however, like to point out that Mansa's entire argument against what I said is the exact argument I made for things staying as they are: It's the status quo. This is how things are. Mansa basically copy/pasted current staff policy on a few things. We could do the same thing with racism in game. It's supported by the docs. So, if the best argument for not changing things is that this is how it currently is, that argument applies to the OP as well.

[Lizzie]

Anonymous-based complaint system - bad idea. My community is a prime example of why. The tl;dr version of it is: zero accountability for the people making the accusations.

So here's the situation:

We have a thing called Community Standards, and deed restrictions. We're all supposed to obey them, but it's only enforced if someone complains. Complaints can be anonymous.

An entire neighborhood (remember this is the largest 55+ community in the country - 70 square miles and over 120,000 people) might all be on board with Joe Smith's paint job on the trim of his home. It's beautiful, it enhances the neighborhood, and the painters didn't block traffic parking their vehicles or toss cigarette butts on the neighbor's lawn.

But some angry resident of the town this neighborhood is in - who has a beef with the senior community as a whole - spends all her time driving around this neighborhood every day, and sends complaints in the SECOND she discovers something is out of compliance. She doesn't live in the neighborhood. She doesn't even live in the community. But she's allowed to submit a complaint because who's gonna stop her? It's done anonymously.

So the ARC (the compliance people with Community Standards) has to follow up on it. They have to follow up on ALL complaints, because they have no way of knowing which are valid and which aren't, until they do. They don't have any way of knowing that it's this angry non-resident who bitches about everyone and their brother. They can't ban her from submitting complaints, because it's done anonymously.

So poor Joe is forced to re-paint his trim because the shade was 1 degree warmer than the "allowable" colors in that neighborhood, according to Community Standards.

Even though EVERYONE in the neighborhood loves it, and it enhances the entire neighborhood.

One outsider spoiled it for everyone.

Meanwhile - the angry biddy is submitting complaints about all kinds of things that aren't even true. And the ARC has to waste countless hours following up on dozens of complaints that have zero merit at all. Like Sue Jones' tacky pink flamingo in the front garden - even though she doesn't own a tacky pink flamingo. And the for sale sign on the front lawn of Malik Tor's house - even though his house isn't for sale and he doesn't own a for sale sign.  And the religious statues in Talia Fale's back yard - even though a) back yards are supposedly safe space, and b) it'd require someone trespassing on private property to even see those things and c) there aren't any religious statues on Talia Fale's back yard.

Dozens and dozens of complaints against people who haven't violated any of the deed restrictions, haven't even tried to toe the line, haven't done anything wrong - and all because one griefer decides to submit anonymous complaints and the ARC is required to follow up on ALL of them so as not to be accused of favoritism.

The above situations are all true.

For that reason alone - I'm 100% against anonymous complaints.

[Heade]

I agree with you Lizzie. Anonymous complaints would be potentially problematic. That said, I would love to see a simple anonymous voting system implemented in the game to poll the players on issues staff is considering implementing. It wouldn't be complicated. Just make it a prompt that you have to select an answer to before it allows you in the game, with customizable question and A, B, C, D answer section. Then, if staff is considering changing something major in the game, such as removing elements of racism from elves, everyone in the game would get a prompt that says something to the effect of:

NOTE: Your vote will be ANONYMOUS!

"We are considering altering the game documentation to remove elements of human racism against Elves from the game. If done, this would also, by extension, remove the stigma regarding breeds from the game. There would no longer be any negative racial slurs, opinions, or racist behavior allowed. Do you:"

A. Agree with this idea.   B. Disagree with this idea.  C. Not care one way or the other.


By making sure the votes are anonymous, it removes shaming people for an opinion that doesn't necessarily match up with the individuals here that like to try to shame people, or frame their opinions in an unflattering way. This will remove virtue signalling from the voting process and give us a more raw sample of what people would prefer in their game.

We could also make it so that only accounts that are at least 30 days old get the voting prompt, so that people can't just create new accounts to sway the vote on a topic they are particularly passionate about.

Doing things this way would give you 100% participation in votes from the currently active playerbase, which is far more than you can expect when you poll people on the forums, or just try to gather community feedback from a discussion thread.

[Doublepalli]

I've been silent since I started this and I feel I need to elaborate as to the why behind my ask the staff thread and me asking all of you collectively to voice your opinions on this matter.

I'm of the firm belief that demographically, if there IS discussions about race inside of our community and our game world, we need to be sure that those in power are even capable of empathizing with the playerbase concerns. And it's a fact that this has been a recurring topic regarding race, inside the game world.

To give example, I don't think a man can empathize with a woman giving birth. They could never be in their shoes, so, how could they possibly understand? And their reactions, in a situation they cannot understand, could come off as very ignorant. Just like Brokkr posting a very opinionated response about race in a thread that was locked due to the topic of race, they clearly were not empathetic, so it provoked the bigger question. Can our staff accurately represent our diverse playerbase. If it's a council of dominantly middle aged white males, I say not regardless of intentions. So that's why certain demographics do matter. We have a diverse playerbase. Of men women, LGTBQ, non-binary individuals, people of color. But is our true standings represented in our staff? Presently, from what I have witnessed, I think not. A level of empathy and responsibility needs to be represented, and our staff taking opinionated responses on a public, scale is unacceptable. We need people who consider the consequences of their actions, the message they portray. Especially in high-risk topics such as race, sexism, rape etc.

So does our staff have voices, or is it a closing ranks frat boy conglomerate? Pardon my French.

[triste]

WRT Lizzie and Heade: Yep, good idea. Last time I asked about voting, manipulation of votes on the GDB came up. But as I mentioned back then linking it to the account solves the issue since staff already enforce account uniqueness. Could possibly be built into the request tool too.

Seems like a really small but powerful change. Of course there are flaws like "what if you do not like either option" but having a say in matters at all is better than a complain-ocracy.

WRT OP: it's a good idea but it is still unclear how to achieve it. Not everyone might be on board here due to constraints such as our community being small, but generally yes, I agree that people from a given group should have say on matters that pertain to their group.

[Lizzie]

I agree with you Lizzie. Anonymous complaints would be potentially problematic. That said, I would love to see a simple anonymous voting system implemented in the game to poll the players on issues staff is considering implementing. It wouldn't be complicated. Just make it a prompt that you have to select an answer to before it allows you in the game, with customizable question and A, B, C, D answer section. Then, if staff is considering changing something major in the game, such as removing elements of racism from elves, everyone in the game would get a prompt that says something to the effect of:

NOTE: Your vote will be ANONYMOUS!

"We are considering altering the game documentation to remove elements of human racism against Elves from the game. If done, this would also, by extension, remove the stigma regarding breeds from the game. There would no longer be any negative racial slurs, opinions, or racist behavior allowed. Do you:"

A. Agree with this idea.   B. Disagree with this idea.  C. Not care one way or the other.


By making sure the votes are anonymous, it removes shaming people for an opinion that doesn't necessarily match up with the individuals here that like to try to shame people, or frame their opinions in an unflattering way. This will remove virtue signalling from the voting process and give us a more raw sample of what people would prefer in their game.

We could also make it so that only accounts that are at least 30 days old get the voting prompt, so that people can't just create new accounts to sway the vote on a topic they are particularly passionate about.

Doing things this way would give you 100% participation in votes from the currently active playerbase, which is far more than you can expect when you poll people on the forums, or just try to gather community feedback from a discussion thread.

Griefer still gonna grief. Former player with valid account gets all his other former player pals to log in and vote B. It's anonymous so - there ya go.

Zero accountability is always a bad idea, no matter who is doing the voting, no matter how "fair" the questions are, no matter who tallies the votes, no matter what the subject matter is. Always. Without exception. Bad idea.

[Doublepalli]

In regards to Lizzie and Valeria, I do not support anonymous decisions either. Historically that ends in one way, and it is never a balanced and fair decision

On top of the new OOC era...

[Heade]

I agree with you Lizzie. Anonymous complaints would be potentially problematic. That said, I would love to see a simple anonymous voting system implemented in the game to poll the players on issues staff is considering implementing. It wouldn't be complicated. Just make it a prompt that you have to select an answer to before it allows you in the game, with customizable question and A, B, C, D answer section. Then, if staff is considering changing something major in the game, such as removing elements of racism from elves, everyone in the game would get a prompt that says something to the effect of:

NOTE: Your vote will be ANONYMOUS!

"We are considering altering the game documentation to remove elements of human racism against Elves from the game. If done, this would also, by extension, remove the stigma regarding breeds from the game. There would no longer be any negative racial slurs, opinions, or racist behavior allowed. Do you:"

A. Agree with this idea.   B. Disagree with this idea.  C. Not care one way or the other.


By making sure the votes are anonymous, it removes shaming people for an opinion that doesn't necessarily match up with the individuals here that like to try to shame people, or frame their opinions in an unflattering way. This will remove virtue signalling from the voting process and give us a more raw sample of what people would prefer in their game.

We could also make it so that only accounts that are at least 30 days old get the voting prompt, so that people can't just create new accounts to sway the vote on a topic they are particularly passionate about.

Doing things this way would give you 100% participation in votes from the currently active playerbase, which is far more than you can expect when you poll people on the forums, or just try to gather community feedback from a discussion thread.

Griefer still gonna grief. Former player with valid account gets all his other former player pals to log in and vote B. It's anonymous so - there ya go.

Zero accountability is always a bad idea, no matter who is doing the voting, no matter how "fair" the questions are, no matter who tallies the votes, no matter what the subject matter is. Always. Without exception. Bad idea.

Not true at all. There is a reason US elections are anonymous. If you think anonymous votes encourages griefing, try public votes. People will get murdered.