a pretty good suggestion

[Dar]

sorry to add to the drama.  I've been reading the shadowboards after all that recent weirdness.  This guy is making a pretty good suggestion.  In lieu of 'how to improve relationship of staff and playerbase."

One thing I will say about this situation is that staff should always post evidence when they ban people. There would be essentially no unjustified bans if staff were actually willing to put their case out there every time they permanently cut someone off from the game. This is one of those things that other games do when they ban people, and is a cornerstone of transparency in those games that Armageddon has never had.

The OP is generally keen on warping everything Arm related negatively.  But the part I quoted could actually be pretty key.

[Halaster]

What games publicly state who they banned and why?

edit:  I'm not saying that to be argumentative or dodge the question, but rather I'm curious where that comes from.  Other games I've personally played don't do that, asided from like "We banned 1000 cheaters today via BattleEye"

[Dar]

Hmm. if I dig I'll find a few MUDs that do that.  I remember one straight out, but there is likely more.


correction: Found a second one in 2 min.   it's a thing, Halaster. For real.

[Patuk]

Armageddon is a tiny community. It shouldn't change things up too much.

[Dar]

well.  consider this.


We are a tiny community, the bannings won't be that common anyway.

when we ban someone, the fact doesn't stay unknown. It just allows the banned spread their version of events and in that story they are the innocent victim and Halaster is a Tregil Worshipping Abomination.

The very recent experience demonstrated that while highly uncomfortable and distasteful, standing in front of a problem can actually garner support and understanding. Even from people who are dead set on chaos and destruction.

And yes. The idea that one would need to explain the motivation for a ban would make a staff member pause and rethink other alternatives to that problem resolution.

[cnemus]

I don't think there is any one solution that fits all situations.

I think there are times, particularly when an individual is spreading misinformation, that staff clarification is warranted.

In most cases when someone is banned there is an offense that has occurred. This could involve other players and situations in game that victims do not want to have to endure announcements and open discussion about.

Choosing not to publicize details allows people who have made mistakes to potentially learn and grow without facing public ostracization and side-effect consequences beyond the banning while also protecting others who may have been involved, but done nothing wrong.

I feel the line can only be determined by asking what are the consequences of action and inaction, to the individuals affected and the game as a whole. Each circumstance is unique and has to be evaluated on its own.

I generally support private adjudication unless a clear reason demands otherwise.

[dumbstruck]

I can't speak specifically to muds, but it's pretty common practice on mushes to see it posted what happened and why when a player is banned, on more or less every mush I've ever played.

[LXXXVIII]

+1

While the banning of ibusoe was obviously justified, we've had people get recently banned for reasons that seem unjustified (EG, Delirium and others getting banned merely for trying to constructively discuss problems this game has).

As it stands, we seem to have public executions and back room executions. Neither public executions nor backroom executions are the hallmark of fair governance. The lack of transparency and fairness doesn't exactly build trust or credibility. Becoming more transparent or at least consistent in handling matters like this might build trust and credibility.

[mansa]

I am reminded of the old SomethingAwful dot com forums, where Moderation and Discipline was public - it was partly to shame those idiots who managed to get banned - but also to moderate the community to show what people did that deserved the ban.

It is a tricky subject, since any action isn't automated - if you ban someone, you then need to remember to post 'why the ban happened'.  Things can fall through the cracks.


But it's also something that can eliminate any second guessing about it, from the point of view of the outsiders.  When things happen, and the community only hears about it from one party, the rumors start to fly.

[Dar]

those were my thoughts.

I fully understand the idea of privacy. You don't want to shame a player into never returning. And temp bans are likely unnecessary to publicize. Or better off just make such bans anonymous.

Player Banned for 7 days. Reason: Kept making Giants Ball NPC yell Teks Balls. Ignored requests to stop.

there is no need to actually name the person who was banned.


Ultimately we gotta remember. That the old way of doing things, while comfortable, has clearly proven to no longer work in an era of dissipating mud players.

We should find better, or at worst, different ways.

[LXXXVIII]

Even better if it is required to link a specific rule which was broken. If no rule was broken, the ban shouldn't occur.

If a staff member finds they banned someone because "They posted something I disagree with," the ban should be lifted immediately because it couldn't be tied to a rule which was violated.

[Halaster]

How do those other MUD's handle it?

[Dar]

I spent sometime actually 'reading' these announcements. And to be honest not well! They are not handled well.  They are used as a chance to 'say the last word' by staff, with player in question is unable to easily respond to.  They still do on other channels perhaps.

I'd say we can do better! Be less vindictive and bitey and more objective, and lawful. It is still a practice that I think is more appreciated by the playerbase, it seems. Even if illusory.

I'll pm you two links to two different games that announce. Please read and draw your own conclusions.

[Halaster]

Yeah, I'm not going to link directly to another one because I don't want to call out my disagreement with another game for how they do things.  But the one I saw listed the players, the staff banning them, what they did - just putting it ALL out there, heh.  Thanks for the links Dar.

[Dar]

we don't need to go that far.


I'd suggest not identifying the player, but identifying the specific bannable offense. You'd think it to be a tiny matter, but it genuinely isn't.

in terms of "Transparency and mutual respect between players and staff"  it's a step. We might just do a little better then others.

[dumbstruck]

On the MUSH I've played most recently, there was typically a tendency to use the in game board system to make a post, so about like making a forum post, often with a rough outline of why. I can only think of 1 person who was banned offhand and it was for coming in and playing someone who was acting underage and being sexually provocative and making passes at a bunch of people and it made a bunch of people uncomfortable leading to mass complaints and the players subsequent ban, and the board post said something to that effect. I think though, that it's really something where the exact approach should be handled on a case by case basis, because different situations are different, and one blanket solution is probably not going to be universally applicable. While some situations, like the Ibusoe one, might warrant logs, others, like the one from the MUSH referenced, might not, but both involve a level of transparency and communication, and I think that mature individuals who aren't overly close to the situation can (at least most of the time) make a good judgement call and usually find themselves come out right as to how much is too much. Some things are more sensitive than others, every situation is unique.

[LindseyBalboa]

Arx has a public board for bannings and people are consistently banned for things like "Don't be a fucking creep why do we have to say this. They did XXX and XXX." The MUX it was based on did something similar iirc.

[Lotion]

There is a mafia forum which has a public thread for perm+temp bans: https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=12139&start=700

[tiny rainbow]

That's horrible... Just pillorying them like that, on someone's arbitrary judgement, just... That's the face of evil, right there.

I can't publicly shame this idea because it was done already
https://wjccschools.org/jhs/resource_guides/lord-of-the-flies/

[Inks]

I strongly approve of posting the log and name, since the player was relying on it not being posted in order to make it look like a conspiracy. Transparency like this goes a long way and it was handled well by staff.

[tiny rainbow]

Yeah THAT case was obviously not really the normal kind of thing, doing it in every case.. That's a lotttt different, that's a nasty path to go down I think.

Sometimes people manipulate this kind of stuff to get the results they want, a lot can go wrong - giving people chances to appeal is important...

[Dracul]

I support this.

It could help with my perception of staff, and it would make me feel more a part of the community, even if I was only a witness.

Post anonymous, with vague details etc. State the topic clearly (player banned for rule x), and allow for discussion by the community.

[Barsook]

I also support this.

[zealus]

Allow for discussion by the community.

Please no. That conversation is never going to be a pleasant one. Either dogpiling or fighting. Would rather not.

[Tuannon]

How do those other MUD's handle it?

One makes a major witch hunt out of it, or used to.

Some of the smaller DIKUs I have staffed on would just go ahead and ban out. Because usually every player knew why the ban was enacted.

[Barsook]

Allow for discussion by the community.

Please no. That conversation is never going to be a pleasant one. Either dogpiling or fighting. Would rather not.

Same, but having a thread on who/why/how long is what I'm supporting.

[mansa]

It also is a lot of fun as a spectator to watch the drama unfold.

[betweenford]

Bans becoming a spectacle isnt really something I support.

[Halaster]

I'll go ahead and go on record and say this now:  this is not happening.  And by this I mean, publishing a list of who gets banned and why.

I get that it works for some other MUD's, good for them.  But we are not doing it.  We will not publish a list of bans, who was banned, why they were banned.  Nor will we seek a larger community input or discussion on why a ban happened.  I believe that there is some desire for accountability and transparency, but I also believe a lot of people just want to watch the drama.  They see their neighbors being arrested by the cops and want to find out all the gossip and details.   And, as Cnemus put it earlier, some people may make a mistake, get themselves banned for a while, but that doesn't need the public exposure so they can be mocked or made fun of.  It's a private matter.

If a situation arises where it needs to be made public, like with the recent one, sure we'll publicly talk about it.  But there will not be a list of who is banned and why.  Amos the player gets caught cheating and we give them a 30 day ban, that's not the business of the community (unless it somehow affects the whole community).

[Dracul]

Disappointing. I appreciate transparency.

[Barsook]

Fair enough and I respect the choice here.

[Dar]

I feel a little guilty by swaying this decision by giving an example to a list of ban announcement that was exceptionally toxic. lol. I didn't actually read them before linking them.

[Tranquil]

Yeah, I feel like this would bring more bad then good - and I am generally appreciative of transparency. It'd look like show trials, because it's not like the offending party could defend themselves publicly.

[Halaster]

I feel a little guilty by swaying this decision by giving an example to a list of ban announcement that was exceptionally toxic. lol. I didn't actually read them before linking them.

It was actually a fascinating read for me.  I went through some forums of theirs, etc.  I guess I should have known this, but it was interesting to me to see how similar many of the issues are with Arm and these other games.  They have the same kinds of communication issues between players and staff, they have the same kind of shenanigans going on by a tiny group of players, they have a lot of wonderful players, etc.  It actually made me realize how much alike we are to those, which I was fascinated to read.

[LXXXVIII]

Disappointing. I appreciate transparency.

Same.

This is the core of why this idea was alright by me and why I still think we need a change, of some sort: this game hasn't been fostering a culture of psychological safety. I usually dislike hippie dippie terms like psychological safety. But oh my isn't it apt in describing what this community needs more of.



The chart speaks for itself. The evidence speaks for itself. We've had three or so people banned in the last month simply for speaking different viewpoints that the staff found disagreeable (chart on the left). These people didn't metagame, didn't threaten other players, and didn't break any known rule. Delirium, Delirium's husband, and even that dwarf: they broke absolutely no rule besides expressing their views on difficult situations which hurt players. These players were trying to help other players and should not have been banned. Staff has never admitted a mistake in banning these people. They would rather blame others, or leap on opportunities to publicly cast out clear offenders like ibusoe to reinforce a false notion of common knowledge, create an illusion that their decisions to ban people are always justified, when the fact is that not every action Staff has made to ban people has been justified.

We need a transparent culture where decisions are not made to punish people on a whim. We need to more closely resemble the chart on the right. We need transparency similar to what this thread advocates.

It would help us all if we stopped settling for a culture resembling the chart on the left.

If I am somehow punished for posting this, it will completely prove my point that we operate like the chart on the left.

Thank you, and I hope we can all grow and become better people here.

[Halaster]

We've had three or so people banned in the last month simply for speaking different viewpoints that the staff found disagreeable (chart on the left). These people didn't metagame, didn't threaten other players, and didn't break any known rule. Delirium, Delirium's husband, and even that dwarf:

To be clear:

Delirium was banned by me because I got frustrated.  I apologized, lifted the ban, admitted my mistake.  She is welcome back at any time of her choosing.

Her husband was NOT banned - he has chosen not to play.  He is welcome back any time of his choosing.

"the dwarf guy" was a player who had been previously banned from the GDB and that was a GDB alt account they made to get around the ban.  They were banned for some pretty serious flaming, trolling, and general awfulness on the GDB.  They made several alt accounts that were also banned.  They were warned to stop making alt accounts to get around the ban.  They did it again anyway, so then their game account was banned.

[Brokkr]

I am going to be blunt here.  This is not a decision the community gets to make.  This is a decision the owners of the game have to make.

There are a significant number of bans that are the result of player behavior that essentially comes down to them going through a rough patch in real life.  Some of these cases involve very real mental health issues.  We know this because some players self-divulge these reasons.

There is absolutely no way underlying issues like this are going to be put in front of the community as a whole.  There is no valid reason the community needs to know any of that.

[kahuna]

Dealing with trolls is a herculean effort and kudos to the staff for showing a small peek behind the curtain of what you have to deal with running a mud. Until federal laws on cyberstalking start come in effect you'll always have people whose sole purpose is to manipulate, disrupt, and be inflammatory. It is a colossal waste of time and energy and I think that in certain circumstances they don't deserve anonymity. You don't need a list but it's important to address it like you did in the most recent example.

[Bebop]

I don't get why we're saying public bans aren't going to happen and a public ban just happened.

[HazelHomewrecker]

I don't get why we're saying public bans aren't going to happen and a public ban just happened.

The ban on Ibusoe was forced to be public specifically because Ibusoe was threatening to MAKE it public to trash on Armageddon and its Staff on various sites like the Shadowboard/Reddit and whatnot. So, by taking the initiative and just publishing everything themselves, they've saved themselves the hassle--and have provided the necessary proof--to show that he's unhinged, and that (most of) what he claimed were baseless lies conjured to harm the game out of pettiness for being banned.

Though, I've certainly seen staff jump into threads and be like "locked, you're banned" which is definitely more public than it should be, but that's just my opinion.

EDITED TO ADD:

All-in-all, I don't want to see bans become a public stoning situation, where everyone sits in a thread and jabs at them every time something happens. It's not necessary for us to be provided a player's name and a reason for why they were banned, not even for "transparency," because THEY deserve the privacy. I won't say the same for what happened with Ibusoe given the situation, but for people who might be going through a hard time and are letting it affect their playing experience? Or people who would LIKE to keep it private? It's not fair to them, not in the slightest.

[Halaster]

I don't get why we're saying public bans aren't going to happen and a public ban just happened.

We're not saying that.  We're saying we're not going to publicize a list of bans with who, why, what.  To quote myself:

"If a situation arises where it needs to be made public, like with the recent one, sure we'll publicly talk about it.  But there will not be a list of who is banned and why.  Amos the player gets caught cheating and we give them a 30 day ban, that's not the business of the community (unless it somehow affects the whole community)."

[Lotion]

This is a decision the owners of the game have to make.

Who owns the game?
In my mind the notion that ArmageddonMUD is a thing to be owned is truly boggling.

[HazelHomewrecker]

This is a decision the owners of the game have to make.

Who owns the game?
In my mind the notion that ArmageddonMUD is a thing to be owned is truly boggling.

I think he meant like.. the staff at-large--Producers, Admins, etcetera.

[Halaster]

This is a decision the owners of the game have to make.

Who owns the game?
In my mind the notion that ArmageddonMUD is a thing to be owned is truly boggling.

At any given moment, the Producer team owns the game, it's been that way since soon after inception.  All games are owned by someone.  Blizzard owns WoW, Nintendo owns Mario, etc.

[Miradus]

Who owns the game?
In my mind the notion that ArmageddonMUD is a thing to be owned is truly boggling.

It's a physical box sitting somewhere and someone is paying for the electricity, the floor space, the hardware itself, and the bandwidth you use to connect to it.

Of course it's owned.

[tiny rainbow]

Authority can go wrong. Authority can make mistakes. Making structures that have the presumption that anything an authority says can never be challenged has another word for it - fascism. It all sounds a great idea until you've seen the kind of mistakes that can be made.

Give you an example - my most RECENT request, trying to organise a plot:

• I mentioned happily something I really enjoyed in Armageddon one time, finding something out one time in the same place. It also helped make my point to prove that I knew what I was talking about when it comes to the lore of the area, and notice things sometimes staff don't I wish this was more a rare weird thing to be proud of!

• They said the link to the report didn't work even though it had a correct ID, I linked it again the other way, and also copypasted as they asked. It clearly had a (hundreds of days ago) bit at the start.

• But then I get a pretty random-seeming reply to this vaguely related hundreds of days ago copypaste from the resolved request (which I'd linked to properly twice beforehand) instead, and the original request is closed! AND a weird statement about it not being important that something that was removed hundreds of years ago IC is mentioned as being visible from other rooms (which is also disregarding the idea of lore/the game world making any sense) - worse was it was also completely untrue, it was fixed literally hundreds of days ago (and easy to see in game by any staff that is able to move around in the game world), I thought that was the whole point of keeping old requests It didn't make me enthusiastic about trying to organise new plots in future, at all.

It's just like there's no sanity check before things get decided and locked forever with no reply - I've had this feeling a few times that no one really checks entirely into what is going on with situations (players can be incredibly manipulative when they want an IC leadership position etc - I found out later one player I had an issue with in a complaint turned out to have given hard drugs to teenagers to get them to appear in music videos which is like some kind of Weinstein horror story), and it makes me feel really bad, because you should be able to rely on staff with stuff like that.

Applying this same kind of model to punishments is a horrible path to go down.

[tiny rainbow]

It's also for these kind of reasons that most countries don't engage in the practice of pillorying people anymore. Some countries like to publicise everything, but it's just one of those weird things since it seems like the decisions that are more grounded in research seem to support that it doesn't help society overall to treat people like that, and most only publicise in cases of severe, incredible wrongdoing (like the case mentioned) - it's the norm in most places to deliberately forget things after a certain amount of time, even. To try give people chances to change instead of condemning forever unless the danger is too high, because no decision can be assumed to be truly infallible and without bias.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Sq12wl37WQ - this kind of thing can also make people who have genuine (not faked, like this recent thing, which is one of the few examples I can think of where it's justified) grievances into villains, because they can't get justice any other way. It turns it into a massive us and them situation, where the path for talking gets burned and salted - it's not good for communities or anyone that has to deal with it - Armageddon seems like it's ahead of a lot of places in allowing us to talk about these things, when you see how bad things can get.

[Dan]

Glad it's not happening. Mind your business people, someone else's ban isn't your problem and it doesn't affect you... unless it does somehow, then take it up with staff.

Dragging out and publicly broadcasting negative behavior and subsequent bans on a regular basis does nothing good for the community. They should be rare, quick and clean. If additional information needs to be provided for the good of the community because something is higher profile, so be it.

[creeper386]

I completely agree with dragging players out into the open for public humiliation isn't a good thing.

There is benefits to knowing how rules are being applied and how. Allowing and documenting expectations and showing shifts in how policies are applied. These are all beneficial things that can also allow input if things are going in a direction that the populace doesn't support.

Otherwise, and I've seen this happen before, you end up with a staff that might be shifting in one direction, ostracizing parts of the player base to the point where there are just a small niche of players that the game might as well be dead.

[Filthy_Grey_Rat]

oh man, this got long and quickly.

Um, I don't think it's a good idea for bannings or other punishments to become public by a change in policy. That psychological safety chart proves it. If I can't make a mistake without the entire GDB commenting on it, dissecting it, drawing inferences from it, and claiming they have science to prove their theories about it, I can't safely learn from my mistakes. There's a lot of posts in here that reaffirm my fears of even posting at all on the GDB, because, I mean,  look at all them replies. Nope.

And when it's necessary for the community or the game to make it public, clearly, it will be.


ETA: Wow I got sidetracked.

The Good Suggestion in that clip or quote, was 'Keeping evidence'. Ban a player? Enact a punishment? Tuck the receipts away with a clear label filed under 'Don't even look at, these are just for security, not for skimming' or something. Or just the top tier printing a copy, idk. Surely you all know what I mean.

[Lotion]

This is a decision the owners of the game have to make.

Who owns the game?
In my mind the notion that ArmageddonMUD is a thing to be owned is truly boggling.

At any given moment, the Producer team owns the game, it's been that way since soon after inception.  All games are owned by someone.  Blizzard owns WoW, Nintendo owns Mario, etc.

Comparing ArmageddonMUD to Mario or World of Warcraft doesn't seem appropriate to me. It is not a product created by a corporation who owns it and produces it in order to obtain monetary gains.

[Dar]

This is a decision the owners of the game have to make.

Who owns the game?
In my mind the notion that ArmageddonMUD is a thing to be owned is truly boggling.

At any given moment, the Producer team owns the game, it's been that way since soon after inception.  All games are owned by someone.  Blizzard owns WoW, Nintendo owns Mario, etc.

Comparing ArmageddonMUD to Mario or World of Warcraft doesn't seem appropriate to me. It is not a product created by a corporation who owns it and produces it in order to obtain monetary gains.

is this actually important?

[racurtne]

This is a decision the owners of the game have to make.

Who owns the game?
In my mind the notion that ArmageddonMUD is a thing to be owned is truly boggling.

At any given moment, the Producer team owns the game, it's been that way since soon after inception.  All games are owned by someone.  Blizzard owns WoW, Nintendo owns Mario, etc.

Comparing ArmageddonMUD to Mario or World of Warcraft doesn't seem appropriate to me. It is not a product created by a corporation who owns it and produces it in order to obtain monetary gains.

is this actually important?

I think this is a disagreement over terminology. Own, administer, or even run could all be used. The overall sentiment is they decide the policy and direction here, so it doesn't seem like an important distinction to me at least.

[Brokkr]

The distinction I was trying to make in using that specific word was in relation to the increasing use of political oriented terminology.  The mud is not governed via a political system.  The mud ownership, power and decision making structure is much more similar to a corporate.  Specifically a non-profit corporation without share ownership.

This is relevant in the context of some of the recent conversations such as this this one, one about a player outside of Staff authority to review complaints, etc.  Ultimate decision making and policy rests with the owners of the mud. Some of the suggestions, or at least the language used in them, was using terminology that hinted either folks didn't know about this structure, or were envisioning something else.

[Pariah]

The other problem with publicly listing this type of shit is that people change.

I used to play the forums more than I played the game, enjoying messing with the people and not the characters as intended and was banned from the forums for a long while.

I feel like I've changed to fighting the point instead of the people, in the system you're putting forward it would make it very hard for people to come out from that shadow of douchebaggery.

I think it's better the way it is where if someone stirs up shit the staff can choose to respond publicly or not.