Let's Talk, Seriously.

[Nillbugwtw]

A word to those with post deletion permissions, before we get started here: Any serious, mature post in this thread is not to be deleted, regardless of their opinion on the topic at hand. Posts, or portions of posts, that serve only to harass others or incite additional drama may be removed. When in doubt, don't delete the post, and seek a second opinion on the post.

A word to those who post in this thread: If you feel that your post has been deleted unfairly in this thread, send me a PM, and I will look into it and take action if necessary.

With that out of the way:

It's clear that we, as a community, need to have a discussion about what is and isn't okay to post in public settings on the forums. People are rightfully upset in both directions, either because a post of theirs has been removed, or because they're having repeated issues with something that User is posting. I'd like to have a rational discussion about what we feel, as a community, should be left up, deleted, given warnings for, etc.

I'll post a little bit later with my thoughts, as I don't have a whole lot of time to reasonably compose them at the moment.

Basically: Where, in your opinion, should lines be drawn in respect to posts & post deletion?

 

[Hunter]

i think bryan and by extension probably all ranks besides forum staff below admin should have their forum censoring privileges removed
rate if you agree
also we sorta had this thread before

 

[Aqua]

I think that, unless it's a personal attack or use of r00d words for race or homosexuality, banter such as: "what are you, fucking gay" or "enjoy the pussy" or "enjoy the cock" or whatever under the sun, shouldn't be removed unless someone actually takes offence to it VIA a serious report; which, also, shouldn't result in a warning.

 

[Jayfeather]

I am upset when my posts are rounded up by name recognition and not by content and deleted, especially when I was trying to make an actual point. This escalates me extremely quickly and I'd much rather deletions be a last resort and not commonplace. The deletions also have to be consistent if they occur, because if I respond to a real argument with a real argument, and only my side is deleted because it's in proximity to a meme I'm gonna be livid.

I think that threads need to have leashes for an undetermined length of time in this community, such as "this is about X, posts not about X will be deleted/warned on sight". This could be a header or footer on every major post, and would greatly benefit discussion considering the last thread had an entire page removed but that entire page was responding to an offtopic post.

I think argument (READ: DISCUSSION) is very important in this community as we reach a pivotal point in our history (read: this community is dying for absolute certain as of now) and since the direction of the community is ridiculously important, the playerbase needs to make clear what they want from the administration and the high staff needs to be clear about what they can provide to the playerbase. I think many of us can say that we have the same goal of having a thriving community, but differing opinions on how that should be done cause massive rifts in posters which lead to personal attacks and mistrust throughout.

Staff, though it pains my rebellious heart, need to work with bottom level and top level powers (trusted ---> admins) to find a system of warning, banning, and PR handling that is consistent, collaborative, and fair. This will clear up many of the problems with messy status/thread fights. In fact, it should not ever be tolerated (though I am guilty) that an argument in a thread continue into passive aggressive statuses, those should be instantly removed or people should be warned for those specific incidents. If the forums are clear, and flame wars are at a minimum, then the community direction discussion can be continued without the mistrust that causes high tensions we experience right now.


Edit: Small relevant thing about slurs --> Don't ever presume to speak for minorities you are not a part of, but on the whole direct slurs should not be allowed in any serious manner, and less offensive cases that aren't specifically slurs should be likely case by case.

 

[Jolterino]

Thank you, Nill.

I shall bring up a point in my earlier post I made that wasn't given a reply.

"As a reply to Mayor_Bryan's post. My status update was sarcasm but... If nobody is reporting it, doesn't that tell you about how the general community feels about these posts?"

And with that, I will bring a few examples.

1) A friend jokes with another on his profile, but make comments that can be offensive to people eg. "what are you, fucking gay?"
2) An obvious insult to another community member. eg. "You are utterly pathetic."
3) An obvious insult to another community member that is also homophobic, racist etc.
4) Low-key trolling that is clearly meant to agitate a member. eg. The shit I did.


Which of these do you feel should be dealt with and with what methods? I want to hear opinions from every admin separately so I can see how they want to moderate it

 

[Chips]

Thanks for creating a thread that was actually polite and professional.
I just wanted to say, if something comes off kind of as a joke, and is directed towards a friend, it's probably a joke. To be fair, considering the last thread, I think a bigger problem is handling of situations like these, especially by staff.

 

[snowma]

Thanks for creating a thread that was actually polite and professional.
I just wanted to say, if something comes off kind of as a joke, and is directed towards a friend, it's probably a joke. To be fair, considering the last thread, I think a bigger problem is handling of situations like these, especially by staff.

It can often be hard to determine when something is to be taken as a joke or not. I'm not sure it's obvious at times as to who is friends with who. Not against people having jokes between their friends, I'm just pointing this out. But Aqua made a good point that maybe it should be left as it is unless it's reported and vetted that what was said wasn't a joke.

Edit: Just at occasional times people who see something posted to someone and instantly report it for it's contents instead of considering that it might just be bantz.

 

[Jivvi]

i'm curious as to which, if any, posts from the last thread and other related threads/profile threads were actually deleted after being reported then reviewed by staff, and which were just one of a few staff members deciding that they personally don't like what was said. personal bias in staff has always been present (staff applications, letting things slide etc), but when it gets excessive it's usually dealt with so it's strange to me that it's fine to act on your own personal opinions when it comes to deleting posts.

 

[Jayfeather]

Thank you, Nill.

I shall bring up a point in my earlier post I made that wasn't given a reply.

"As a reply to Mayor_Bryan's post. My status update was sarcasm but... If nobody is reporting it, doesn't that tell you about how the general community feels about these posts?"

And with that, I will bring a few examples.

1) A friend jokes with another on his profile, but make comments that can be offensive to people eg. "what are you, fucking gay?"
2) An obvious insult to another community member. eg. "You are utterly pathetic."
3) An obvious insult to another community member that is also homophobic, racist etc.
4) Low-key trolling that is clearly meant to agitate a member. eg. The shit I did.


Which of these do you feel should be dealt with and with what methods? I want to hear opinions from every admin separately so I can see how they want to moderate it

The report button is there to help staff see things they may have missed. If you don't report something and an admin deletes something of similar lack of merit, then there's a problem with the interpretation of the rules. Perhaps we should then be more clear on what is tolerated? (See my edit in my post)

 

[Jivvi]

The report button is there to help staff see things they may have missed. If you don't report something and an admin deletes something of similar lack of merit, then there's a problem with the interpretation of the rules. Perhaps we should then be more clear on what is tolerated? (See my edit in my post)

i'd be more open to the 'staff can't read every post' argument if the forums didn't average one new post a day most of the time.

 

[Jayfeather]

i'd be more open to the 'staff can't read every post' argument if the forums didn't average one new post a day most of the time.

This is a hyperbole and as such kindof useless. Specifically in Community Discussion maybe, but statuses fly by and there are a lot of threads. I don't see every status and I'm on here a lot. I missed everyone of Jolteon's "What are you gay" posts and as a gay myself I'm kinda interested in something bordering discrimination yet I didn't see it.

 

[Nillbugwtw]

1) A friend jokes with another on his profile, but make comments that can be offensive to people eg. "what are you, fucking gay?"
2) An obvious insult to another community member. eg. "You are utterly pathetic."
3) An obvious insult to another community member that is also homophobic, racist etc.
4) Low-key trolling that is clearly meant to agitate a member. eg. The shit I did.

1. The specific example you use makes me hesitate, personally - it edges close to using 'gay' as an apparent slur, which in turn makes me nervous about how it makes the community look to an outsider. In the example, obviously not everyone, especially those less familiar with who are/are not friends in the community, would take it as a joke, and this could lead to the appearance of a hostile community. I would prefer a joke like that stay in private/direct forms of communication, but overall 1 would be a case by case basis to me, given if there are reports of it, serious concern, etc.

2. An obvious insult? Deletion, with warnings/escalation if they are repeat offenders.
3. Use of the warning/infraction system, with escalation if ...
4. Again, this is largely about how the other user reacts. If they take it as a joke? It would likely stay. If they report it because they feel attacked? Deletion.

Just my personal views, as we don't really have a metric on sarcasm vs deletion as a guide.

 

[Jivvi]

we don't really have a metric on sarcasm vs deletion as a guide.

imo this is what we need so people don't get upset when an admin deleted their post because it warranted deletion under their own standards.

 

[Velzerat]

The issue of over-deleting and the resulting outrage over this is an age-old problem on webgroups, forums, and communities, and especially relevant today (a lot of people here are also on reddit, where the anti-authoritarian heavily-against-censorship ideal is very prevalent). I think the big question here is: How can we differ from censorship and moderation when the duties of (forum) moderation seem so like censorship? What’s the defining factor?

Censorship and moderation – for some users on this community, the two terms are synonyms. However, where censorship stifles speech, moderation has the ability to diversify our communication.

There is one crucial difference between the two:

• In censorship, someone is granted power to prohibit speech about a particular topic or event across a wide range of communication platforms. They can deny communication about particular topics.
• Moderation is the practice of prohibiting speech in a particular virtual community by authorities within said community. A topic that is moderation on one virtual community can be communicated elsewhere. It occurs in distinct forms in different communities.

Moderation allows for a diversity of speech, because online groups can stifle the speech of members of other groups without resorting to regulation. Like every other action one can take, communicating in a forum has its costs and benefits. It also has its network effects (Wikipedia: network effect). The benefit increases as there are more interested parties in the forum.
Censorship inhibits communication by either making it too costly to communicate, or by making the benefit of communication minimal.

Moderator
1. An arbitrator or mediator.
2. A presiding officer, esp. a chairman of a debate

Censorship:
The practice of officially examining books, movies, etc., and suppressing unacceptable parts.

A moderator steers the tone of the debate, but he does not try to rewrite history.

How many posts/complaints have I seen for a while now that the “tone” of EscapeRestart has changed, and that the “friendliness” is gone and there are too many personal attacks and arguments and dank memes are general drama? It’s an everlasting cycle, drama after drama, and now this. There are (so-called) shitposts, and something needs to be done about them.

This is a community for playing videogames. I think everyone is taking this, themselves, and the community, way too seriously. Things definitely need to get deleted and locked, but in moderation. And for God’s sake, we don’t need a reddit-like public outcry every time something gets deleted- It’s pathetic and a waste of time.

If nothing were to get deleted, we’d quickly devolve into 4chan or a similar community. Still, it’s sometimes hard to determine what content should and/or should not get allowed, and sometimes things get deleted or locked when they shouldn’t be—this is wrong, but it does not warrant this kind of drama. It’s an honest mistake. Being an internet moderator is a thankless job, and they are not flawless.

People will criticize and get upset regardless of what you do- I don’t think that this in any a fault of the admins given that this is human nature and cannot be avoided. This event/these few threads are classic examples of why open discussion does not work.

The biggest problem EscapeRestart has right now, in my opinion, is its uncertain content and it hasn't made its mind up yet as to what content should be the primary content in the community-- what should and should not be allowed. There are so many stupid memes and jokes (first answer in this thread being a prime example) and in my opinion they should get removed, BUT—this is, apparently, exactly the kind of content that people like. It’s low-effort, it’s downright stupid, but people like it. Of course, almost everyone likes jokes and memes. And if half of the posts on this forum are like that, how could one ever justify removing it?

These memes and jokes hinder discussion, which should be the prime "product" of a forum. They promote low-effort content, instead of actual thought-out messages. To be fair, the community is incapable of discussing things anyway... and it has been for many years. Every thread like this, without question, devolves into drama, hostility and jokes. This is a direct result of moderation—It devolves into that because moderators allow it. But... they kind of have to.

Anyway, I’m rambling at this point...

TL;DR People are the problem. Moderation should be allowed but... in moderation. I don’t know what should or should not get deleted (more) because either way it’ll cause drama or steer the community in a certain direction. Shitposts are inevitable and by hammering down on them you’d lose like half of your playerbase. All I know is that I wouldn’t want to be an admin right now.

 

[Jolterino]

1. The specific example you use makes me hesitate, personally - it edges close to using 'gay' as an apparent slur, which in turn makes me nervous about how it makes the community look to an outsider. In the example, obviously not everyone, especially those less familiar with who are/are not friends in the community, would take it as a joke, and this could lead to the appearance of a hostile community. I would prefer a joke like that stay in private/direct forms of communication, but overall 1 would be a case by case basis to me, given if there are reports of it, serious concern, etc.

2. An obvious insult? Deletion, with warnings/escalation if they are repeat offenders.
3. Use of the warning/infraction system, with escalation if ...
4. Again, this is largely about how the other user reacts. If they take it as a joke? It would likely stay. If they report it because they feel attacked? Deletion.

Just my personal views, as we don't really have a metric on sarcasm vs deletion as a guide.

1) Your point is fair, however I still feel like the punishment was very severe (global 1 week ban if I did something wrong earlier).
2) Fair.
3) Fair.
4) Like all other times, I agree with you that how the user reacts is important to the decision of deletion or not. This is a good thing for all admins to note.

Thank you for your input.

 

[Nillbugwtw]

imo this is what we need so people don't get upset when an admin deleted their post because it warranted deletion under their own standards.

Unfortunately, how do we make a guide for measuring text-based sarcasm?

One semi-new feature that we as administrators should use more often while deleting posts is:

as a means to open a dialog when a controversial post is deleted. Thoughts?

 

[Hunter]

tbh deleting should literally never be a first response
just do the tested by time [USER WAS WARNED FOR THIS POST] via edit, voila

Nillbugwtw we've literally had that feature for nearly a year at least, I believe you brought it up yourself in the thread I linked earlier

 

[Marlem]

Note: If you get butthurt over this post, then too bad. Grow some.



It seems everyone keeps forgetting about the rules, so here you all go.
http://escaperestart.com/forum/help/terms

I don't get why people can't follow them, it's really not that hard.

I realize this is going to get me a lot of hate but I don't care.

Here's where I stand.

Follow the rules. Don't like it? Too bad, you're not in charge. Anything that violates the rules should be subjected by staff. Want to whine and bitch about it? Go ahead, nobody's going to give a damn. Just because you're friends with someone doesn't mean they're exempt. (Personally, I believe staff should always be unbiased towards everyone.)
If you treat the rules as being absolute and you play by them, you won't have all that many problems.

 

[Jayfeather]

These memes and jokes hinder discussion, which should be the prime "product" of a forum. They promote low-effort content, instead of actual thought-out messages. To be fair, the community is incapable of discussing things anyway... and it has been for many years. Every thread like this, without question, devolves into drama, hostility and jokes. This is a direct result of moderation—It devolves into that because moderators allow it. But... they kind of have to.

Anyway, I’m rambling at this point...

TL;DR People are the problem. Moderation should be allowed but... in moderation. I don’t know what should or should not get deleted (more) because either way it’ll cause drama or steer the community in a certain direction. Shitposts are inevitable and by hammering down on them you’d lose like half of your playerbase. All I know is that I wouldn’t want to be an admin right now.

I'll say this: meme posts are in response to threads deemed "unworthy" or ones that have no point. Prime examples are the recent post by Psycho which was stated by the poster himself to be a mistake, and the thread by Parquette which was deemed nearing insanity by the responders. So "memer trolls xd" aren't really the defining characteristic of some people, but rather a response to things that are too out there to have a direction in the first place. Whether or not the memes should be removed or not is not something I'm that interested in developing a side for, it'd be up to the moderation guidelines that get set in the coming months.

 

[Jolterino]

Note: If you get butthurt over this post, then too bad. Grow some.



It seems everyone keeps forgetting about the rules, so here you all go.
http://escaperestart.com/forum/help/terms

I don't get why people can't follow them, it's really not that hard.

I realize this is going to get me a lot of hate but I don't care.

Here's where I stand.

Follow the rules. Don't like it? Too bad, you're not in charge. Anything that violates the rules should be subjected by staff. Want to whine and bitch about it? Go ahead, nobody's going to give a damn. Just because you're friends with someone doesn't mean they're exempt. (Personally, I believe staff should always be unbiased towards everyone.)
If you treat the rules as being absolute and you play by them, you won't have all that many problems.

I don't think this post helps accelerate this conversation at all. There was an entire discussion about how the rules were unspecific in earlier threads. A rule book is much less flexible than an admin's word.

 

[Vino]

Note: If you get butthurt over this post, then too bad. Grow some.



It seems everyone keeps forgetting about the rules, so here you all go.
http://escaperestart.com/forum/help/terms

I don't get why people can't follow them, it's really not that hard.

I realize this is going to get me a lot of hate but I don't care.

Here's where I stand.

Follow the rules. Don't like it? Too bad, you're not in charge. Anything that violates the rules should be subjected by staff. Want to whine and bitch about it? Go ahead, nobody's going to give a damn. Just because you're friends with someone doesn't mean they're exempt. (Personally, I believe staff should always be unbiased towards everyone.)
If you treat the rules as being absolute and you play by them, you won't have all that many problems.

Disagree. If you follow rules too strictly it creates more problems. Besides our rules are very vague so it's already pretty much a case by case basis.

I personally believe that cursing, profanity, and insults shouldn't be a problem unless used to directly attack a member. Although n***** and some of the extremely offensive derogatory ones should not be used publicly. No one should get butt hurt over reading profanity if not directed at them aggressively.

 

[Nillbugwtw]

Nillbugwtw we've literally had that feature for nearly a year at least, I believe you brought it up yourself in the thread I linked earlier

I suppose semi-new isn't the right word, more.. hasn't-always-been-there-and-many-admins-don't-use-it-myself-included.

 

[Enderfive]

Okay, the way I'm gonna do this is I'll first tell you what the problem is and then tell you why it's a problem.

The previous thread had legitimate discussion, it had valid points from mostly everyone that put in even the slightest effort to contribute, even if I personally disagree with some of the opinions put forth there. That's okay, people sometimes disagree and argue about opinions and interpretation of facts and such. Through those disagreements and the arguments that they spark, we get different opinions, different points of view and therefore, different scenarios which we can take into account when making decisions. Freedom of speech is totally cool, guys, and it does involve the occasional argument, so far as it's constantly progressing, not devolving into ad hominems and cirklejerking the same sentence in ten different ways without ever addressing the points brought up by the other side.

Now, the problem I believe we have right now, among other problems, which have been addressed in separate threads or will be addressed in the future, is that censorship (or moderation or however you want to call it) has evolved to such heights in this community that some admins who are for whatever reasons more sensitive to some content have been able to modify, delete or warn content that simply isn't malicious. They justify it by interpreting that said content as offensive even if there was no intent and the targeted user was not offended the slightest.

This is what I don't get. Why is a word offensive just by existing? Why is it offensive to use that word in a clearly non-offensive manner? Why do some select staff believe it's their duty to moderate all content that uses these words, regardless of context? Why do these staff members believe it's their duty to decide to be offended in the name of the community, just in case? To put it simply, why do some staff members think that we should moderate words and actions instead of intent?

I believe that the staff should be allowed to use their own minds when making a decision, yet required to remain objective and unbiased, regardless of their personal feelings towards the issue. Right now it's all about what the moderating staff member personally thinks about the issue, and that simply can't be objective because everyone has their own personal biases that will affect the final decision, whether they try to remain neutral or not. What I believe is that we should moderate intent. When it's abundantly clear that a user is trolling and attempting to get a reaction out of others, moderate them, warn them, ban them, do whatever you feel is proportionate with their offense. But when it's abundantly clear that the offender didn't realise they were offending, or had no intention of doing so, show some leniency, especially when no one was actually harmed.

And it's a fact that some staff members don't share that view. As I already said, that's okay. If they would put forth their arguments, maybe they'll convince me or we can reach some middle-ground, right?

Right, but the other side, that believes in censoring, utilises censoring. It's understandable, they think it's legit, but by silencing the opposition, as those few staff members have so far, as the locking of the previous thread and deleting of completely valid, on-topic and civil posts in that thread evidenced, they are shutting down any discussion that could have a different outcome than the one they want. They're not even giving us the chance to present our arguments and refusing to try to reach a common understanding, yet they haven't given us much either, because why should they, they can just delete anything they don't like, right?

I certainly hope that with this new thread we will manage to avoid that last paragraph from happening, but ultimately I think that a serious shift in the overall staffing mentality for at least some people is required. If this was a clearly authoritarian community with the staff making all the decisions without regard to the other members, the tone of this post would be slightly different, although the points I'd be making would remain the same, and even so, we have always maintained that this community is, well, a community, driven by all of its members, so the fact that there even is a discussion on the scale as we see right now shows to me that something needs to be done, either clarify the rules to the point where we get a clear idea of what is allowed and what isn't, or make sure that the staff remain as objective as possible and if they don't, we can at least appeal to somewhere. Because let's be honest, the people that we're talking about when discussing moderation and censorship are the most active head admin and a director that apparently has no server to direct, yet comes on the forums to moderate according to his own personal opinions and personal (in my opinion, overly) sensitive interpretation of the unclear ruleset that we have. And we can't really report these guys to higher staff, because they are the higher staff.

 

[Vatumok]

I was watching the thread for a while and when parq posted a rather extreme opinion it sparked a lot of back and forth arguing, and IMO from both sides it was 95% shit. I believe everything of that got deleted and I think Major was in the right to remove the posts because it was clogging the thread and preventing discussion. I don't think the forum moderation is too strict and on the contrary I'd like to see more moderation (hear me out before y'all rage)

A lot of it is in the way you bring the message and not just the point/meaning behind the message. There's nothing wrong with using memes if you're into that but it's wrong when you use them to shut down someone's opinion with 5+ diffferent people. Take for example parquette's message on swearing, his opinion is extreme and very little people agree, but that doesn't mean he's not a cool guy. We should also respect his opinion and easily shut it down by saying that their way is too extreme WITHOUT everyone piling on and memeing. This goes for many other threads.

To be honest there is not much to discuss here because everything seems overexaggereted. Forum moderation isn't that bad nor is it a safe-space. I think we should rather discuss what to do about the yuge difference in ideas and structure of what to do with the community, because that seems to be the root of the problem.

Regarding the report button, a lot of people don't think about it. It's a fallacy to say that just because someone didn't report it, it means that nobody found it offensive.

 

[Jolterino]

Regarding the report button, a lot of people don't think about it. It's a fallacy to say that just because someone didn't report it, it means that nobody found it offensive.

If the person found it offensive, surely they would complain somehow? Even if it was not through the report button.

I was watching the thread for a while and when parq posted a rather extreme opinion it sparked a lot of back and forth arguing, and IMO from both sides it was 95% shit. I believe everything of that got deleted and I think Major was in the right to remove the posts because it was clogging the thread and preventing discussion. I don't think the forum moderation is too strict and on the contrary I'd like to see more moderation (hear me out before y'all rage)

Even if 9/10 posts deserved to be deleted, the 1/10 should not be grouped with the others. My post that was deleted had no reason to be deleted and nobody has given me a reason as to why it should've been if the original post by Parq was not deleted either.