Backstage - OOC Forums
General Discussion => Moderation Discussion => Topic started by: Havohej on 03 Aug 2014, 17:33
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Where are we?
Where do we want to be?
How do we get there?
No shitposting. If you haven't got something useful or genuine to say about the state of the boards, which I'm almost certain can be done without naming names or pointing fingers, don't say anything at all.
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Question: Is there interest in working more closely with CCP to help raise attention towards Backstage, lorestuffs, and RP in general?
For instance, would we be interested in taking part in the SSO program?
I think it would be beneficial, but I'm not on the mod team and I can understand if they were iffy about putting in the time to do this (let alone to handle the inevitable trolling that would come with increased attention).
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Dunno what SSO is. But... working with CCP? Lorestuffs? Is that even possible?
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SSO in this case means that you would, effectively, log into backstage through your EVE account* or something like that, if I remember right. Similar to those API-based logins that some alliances and corps use. I believe it would require a fair amount of work on the admins' part to get it working, though. Likely not worth it - we'd be better off using one of the API systems if we wanted to go that route.
We had a featured community site devblog a while back, fwiw. We didn't have any bad things come out of that. Generally, when CCP does stuff that pushes attention to the RP community, we tend to gain a number of members, but we've never had a corresponding increase in what I suppose we're all just calling trolls or shitposters.
* Edit - to clarify, you log in via your EVE account, and backstage should recognize that you have done so. However, Backstage should not, iirc, ever know your account details. You're basically pointing at CCP's account login page to do this. I think.
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Where are we?
Where do we want to be?
How do we get there?
1. Dire. Look at the age of the threads that are still on the front page in several sections. Corporation development, some threads are from 2013. Eve OOC Summit is hardly any better. Activity has fallen off a lot. Look at the statistics. http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=259.msg1702#msg1702 does not apply anymore.
2. More activity, less negativity.
3. Separation of OOC/The Summit moderation from Backstage - Some people have expressed the opinion that having the same people as moderators on backstage and ingame is unhealthy. Maybe vOv. Afaik, there's 4 people who have that role - one is Graelyn who is a special circumstance, on account of being the owner of the Summit, but afaik only has moderator roles in the tiny subforum specifically about The Summit.
Remove postcounts - they only really help create the perceptions of cliques.
Clean up old sticky threads - remove sticky if it's all out of date, replace as necessary.
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Dunno what SSO is. But... working with CCP? Lorestuffs? Is that even possible?
Morwen discusses SSO above, but in general I was referring to working more closely with raising awareness as well as just posting the URL around a bit in other EVE forums to try and bring people over.
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3. Separation of OOC/The Summit moderation from Backstage - Some people have expressed the opinion that having the same people as moderators on backstage and ingame is unhealthy. Maybe vOv. Afaik, there's 4 people who have that role - one is Graelyn who is a special circumstance, on account of being the owner of the Summit, but afaik only has moderator roles in the tiny subforum specifically about The Summit.
I know MorLag is a Summit mod. Other than that, I don't know of any of the team (besides Graelyn) who are also mods here. I could be wrong. I have no bloody idea who are Summit mods (aside from Kat, MorLag and Ava, but I get the impression they are legion).
Remove postcounts - they only really help create the perceptions of cliques.
I don't see it. Why do you think so?
Clean up old sticky threads - remove sticky if it's all out of date, replace as necessary.
I can see the merit on this suggestion... it just feels wrong to obliterate them altogether. I'd rather see someone take upon themselves to make an updated version, call our attention to it (a Report of the post will do this more quickly than waiting for us to just stumble upon it - at least, that's true of me, anyway) and we'll sticky the updated version and unsticky the outdated version. There's been a couple of times where someone in an ambitious mood declares intent to update one of the stickies, then life happens.
Morwen discusses SSO above, but in general I was referring to working more closely with raising awareness as well as just posting the URL around a bit in other EVE forums to try and bring people over.
Ah, I see. I can't see where that would be a net negative - it's just a matter of folks taking it upon themselves to promote the fact that Backstage is a thing to people who might enjoy it but are unaware of it.
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So I should say I actually like the forum from a technical perspective. It is a good format, I like the moderation actually in most cases. My only issue is that the negativity flooding so many threads makes it hard to feel like this community is worth engaging in. Why bother to post a thread detailing my personal fiction if it will be either ignored or become yet another proxy battleground for some argument I don't even care about. It's pretty much the IGS at this point just with better mods.
Now I get it, I have used the internet before and am far from a wilting violet. The difference however is between a year ago when Aria puts out a thread on Achur history and we have a lively discussion on how we see that fiction and now, where virtually every thread for months with any discussion is "Why I don't play EVE #3746725....".
So why don't you post some threads and revitalize instead of complaining? Asks imaginary person I am arguing with. Because if you read Backstage every day, as I do, and virtually every single thread is either an OOG topic(and seriously fuck reading any of those threads...) or the aformentioned "I hate EVE thread" populated by pretty much the same 10 or so people why bother? Who are you really talking to? There are some awesome, fascinating and interesting people in the RP community but Backstage no longer feels like the way to communicate with them in large part.
What's the answer? Not really sure tbh. Maybe this is the doom of Internet communities of all stripes. They reach an age and then they start to die, choking with bored vets who have seen it all. You certainly see a similar malaise in EVE itself. I tried a plea to the old players a while ago to come back and use their great powers for good but that did not seem to work out sadly. In the end I really am not sure what can be done, especially in a medium where certain types of comments are expressly forbidden (and largely with good reason). Perhaps more or different moderation? I find it hard to see what changes of that sort could be made for the better though. Maybe if some of the older players just actually stopped complaining and either left or really attempted to assist those of us younger players who still care.
Is it all doom and gloom? No, I still read it every day and occasionally see something interesting. There are some people using the forum for what I percieve it's original purpose was, you know, talking about RP in EVE. I recently decided to kick myself in the ass and just post some stuff I have been working on and damn the man. But when yet another thread turns to the topic of "why I don't log in" remember this discussion and just catacomb that shit immediately.
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I really like Utsu's post. I also have bandaids all over my fingertips from several unfortunate IKEA accidents, so it's hard to type right now.
+1 Utsuuuuu
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(balls, wrong thread.)
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Where are we?
Backstage
Where do we want to be?
On stage
How do we get there?
Log into EVE and RP.
I guess I'm guilty of bringing some gloom to this forum, but considering that this is the forum where (former) EVE roleplayers speak their minds, it's no surprise to me that the forum shows how a part of that community feels and how active they are. In that sense, I'd say the forum works as intended.
And I still feel like this is the best forum I was ever a member of, thanks to the rules and moderation.
I think that nothing drastic needs to be done, and that things will improve by themselves. Of course we could help speed things along by being more constructive, creative and positive and stuff like that, and updating stuff rarely hurts.
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Remove postcounts - they only really help create the perceptions of cliques.
I don't see it. Why do you think so?
post count, like a karma score, and the like counters, are a single-axis measurement, which does not provide a useful measure.
Example: Someone that only posts on the IGS on Eve-O forums, has a handful of likes, vs. someone that posts in that "like and get likes" thread on EVE-o forums. They appear in the same thread on IGS, and first impression would be the person with more likes might have a more useful opinion.
Another example is karma scores. +1 rep for an insightful post, +1 rep for a helpful post, +1 rep for a funny post, these are not the same things, it's possible to make posts that get +rep for being funny, but are entirely unhelpful for the thread in question.
So, onto post counts, we have a discussion about something. Someone with a high post count says "I disagree with your interpretation of PF", the person they're talking to has a lower post count, but almost all of those posts have been in the background forum, while the person with high post count posts mainly in OOG. To someone unfamiliar with either individual, the tendency is to assume the person with higher post count knows what they're talking about.
The general assumption by most people, is that posters with high post counts, rep scores or numbers of likes, are good posters who fit well with the community. This isn't always true.
And when someone with high post count breaks a rule, and does not get punished for it, then it creates an impression of favouritism and cliques.
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CCP appear to have decided to put much of the future lore (in the form of EVE Source and other such things) effectively behind a paywall - you have to buy the books to discuss the content, more or less. CCP takes a dim view of people reproducing the copyrighted content online, for good reason, and this stifles any and all discussion of the lore in those publications.
Unlike the Evelopedia articles and chronicles, which anyone, even those not without an active subscription, can look at, and discuss, the material in EVE Source is not freely and readily available.
I can't really discuss the effect that CTCS has had on Sani Sabik RP, as evidenced in EVE Source, with people who don't have it. I can't say "look, at how the efforts of a tiny RP corporation have been incorporated into PF! You could do this too!", because the evidence of this is copyrighted and has to be purchased.
This Stifles Discussion.
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How about we'd start not with how to gain attention and popularity in the eyes of CCP and the general populace. If the product is broken at best, what's the point of trying to sell it?
Issue seems to be three-fold.
1. Culture of overt political correctness.
2. Pointless Bittervetting.
3. Ignoring the problem rather than deal with it, as is prevalent already in this post.
(http://i.imgur.com/yxK3aIS.jpg)
In my opinion, we need to tweak the rules away from this pussyfooting wankfest of pampering. If someone is doing it wrong, let people voice their opinions provided that they give a well formed argument on the topic of why they feel this is so. Now you spend half your post trying to dance around bad rules to make a point to someone and even then there's a danger of getting the Catacombs if someone feels snowflake's feelings have been hurt. If your feelings are hurt from a well formed argument, then I suggest you take either door number one with 'Harden The Fuck Up' or door number two with 'Fuck Off'. If you feel it's your 15€ a month and you get to do as you want instead of trying to play nice with others, then do it, fuck off and stop bitching when people won't play ball with you. Roleplaying is a joint venture, community is a joint venture. Fresh ideas are welcome, but repeating bad cliches is not. People don't have easy time distinguishing unless you can go and say to them 'no, don't do that, it doesn't work and here's why'. What to some newer blood might seem an edgy cool choice can be worn-out droll to the ten year old community.
(http://whoasusannah.com/wp-content/uploads/blogger/-f2EpfH_JQ3Q/Ua_yTIq8EDI/AAAAAAAABLc/m_i9SlI_YTs/s1600/BOSS.jpg)
Pointless Bittervetting, this should be moderated way more than doing it wrong. I am the first to admit that I have been and occasionally am guilty of this, but nothing kills new enthusiasm more than this. If your last time logging in is six months ago don't tell us EVE is dying or it's shit for this or that reason. You are unsubbed, let that be a testament of your disapproval instead of countless shitposts of 'bad game yo'. We don't really give two shits about it, some of us are having fun for their first time, some still after many years and some, like me, have found that joy once more in playing EVE Online.
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-O-h7UWmdQ3Y/U2KZeZyo6NI/AAAAAAAACDI/L1_X1f4HV-w/s1600/mistake+ignore.png)
As has already been demonstrated in this thread people like to stick their heads in the sand and discuss pointless trivialities besides the elephant in the room, the same elephant that gave the initial spark to this thread. Which is that, by the looks of it, quite a few people agree with me and are not happy with the way things are - starting at the core of it all, the code of conduct and rules. I already voiced my opinion on this matter in the first paragraph of my post. The rules were guidelines, but now they've become somewhat of an abomination. The flipside of Chatsubo's lawless anarchy, we have total anal retentive political correctness and rules lawyering. That kills the spark equally hard as the flamewars of old. I also think it's time for a bit of mod recycling in order to rehash the spirit and rules of these forums. Some people have been burdened with the job since the inceptions of these forums. I dare also to suggest that some of them have gotten their own bitterness and distinct bias brought on by it, whether they care to admit it to themselves or not. I'm not finger pointing, I'm just saying this shit is purely human nature. I am not even sure some of the original mods even play the game anymore. Those who've stuck with it, I commend you it's thankless job but it might be time to hand the gavel to someone else.
(http://i1.squidoocdn.com/resize/squidoo_images/800/draft_lens1967367module20382232photo_1236851765side_effects_cartoon.gif)
When it comes to moderation I would also like to address the topic of The Catacombs. I find them... Pointless. In many occasions a weapon that immortalizes a flat out flame, insult and graphic content without the chance of retort or explanation. I have not so subtly made use of this very fact quite often, and I think many either quietly accept this or do not recognize that. Those posts will always be there, grinding, creating tension and poisoning the community. I could understand moving whole locked threads there, but individual snipes not so much. If an individual post is simply so offending that it needs to be ganked, then gank it, do not leave it hanging around. It's like going in the shitter and then not flushing the turd.
(http://www.quickmeme.com/img/b8/b8dba0129d0dbb8d30c38128d8493c46e4dd6c8abfec7c23028bbc53ca1a2e08.jpg)
As a lesser note; There is also some dickwaving going on about their RP street cred everynow and then. Understand that it's ok to be proud of your achievements and immortalization into the game world, but after a while telling about them to everyone all the time gets trite and old. As a result people will find it - and you - annoying in the end. You are not the only one, and you will certainly be the last one to live on in Prime Fiction. While we commend you for your efforts please stop rubbing it in everyone's face in every goddamn discussion. Have a glass of humility.
(http://d3dsacqprgcsqh.cloudfront.net/photo/azL7WZm_460sa_v1.gif)
tl;dr: Stop being entitled bitter twats and release the choke-hold grip on forum rules.
MA is best Pony.
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In no particular order:
While I think most of your critique probably is more suggestive of a bad fit between your particular style and this forum, Vince, I would tend to agree that bittervetting is a problem. There, see what you've done: put it into our heads to introduce more rules. Also, overall amount of moderation is (drastically) down - due in part no doubt to declining activity, but probably in larger part due to declining moderator participation.
In terms of political correctness, I'm not sure what you mean - though I can see two possibilities (which might be incorrect):
1) In the non-eve section, we tend to lock down certain types of threads after a bit of run time. This is because this isn't really a forum for that kind of thing, and certain RL topics tend to just lead to arguments and trolling.
2) The whole point of setting Backstage up in the first place, which boiled down to essentially the idea that you can have a healthy debate or conversation with someone without dragging out insults and suggestions that they just need to 'HTFU' and otherwise belittling other users or derailing threads down into flames rather than having constructive interactions. In this case, you are confusing 'political correctness' (which rings the alarm-bells of nanny-statedom (to be fair a description Backstage might qualify for were it a state)) with politeness which is a tool that civil societies use to function and which online communities can use to have reasonable conversations.
As far as the Catacombs, the problem there is that while they are not an ideal solution, it would be worse if we just disappeared posts and threads, because then there would be no examples of what not to do, and no evidence of what we had actually done (so people could claim we were selectively modding them or what have you, when the real reason for moderation is that they were being a massive tool).
Also, decrying bittervetting while simultaneously suggesting that new people who try things you've seen before need to 'fuck off and stop bitching' if they won't listen to your (or, tbh, my) learned advice is a novel approach. Who amongst us hasn't dabbled in dark eyeliner and cannibalism in our younger days? :lol: And, as you said - and as I've very frequently said - RP is self correcting in that if people are being jackasses, noone will RP with them. Guess what: We don't need to change the rules so that everyone can announce that to them here. It happens by itself.
Anyway, the vast majority of your problems with Backstage have a simple solution: revive Chatsubo. Last I checked it was still up. It has - so far as I can tell - the exact ruleset you are looking for. The trouble seems to come when most people (though I suspect you wouldn't be one of them) really mean 'I don't want so much moderation of things I agree with' rather than a real 'I don't want so much moderation'.
I know it is very frustrating seeing people doing RP wrong and not being able to just tell them 'No, you're doing it wrong'. However, if you actually read the FAQ, there are some useful suggestion about how to point them in the right direction without veering into problematic territory. Whether you want to make that effort is, of course, up to you. As is the question of if you feel that effort is a useful way to spend your time.
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What the fuck is MA?
Anyway, let's see... going to scan back through that and highlight the points I want to engage with, but cba doing fancy quoting shit.
door number one with 'Harden The Fuck Up'
Door number one was Chatsubo. Back then, if you weren't part of a particular clique (let's call it what it was - the Jade/Revan cult of personality), you got shit on and you had to either HTFU or just not participate at all. This forum exists because a lot of people believed that HTFU should not be a prerequisite to discussing RP in Eve. Do you know what that means? That means that if you have some constructive, helpful criticism to give, you can figure out how to see it without being a complete bloody nerdraging fucking sperglord bellend cunt about it. Even if posts like that are hilarious to some/many and feel very self-gratifying (we all enjoy getting shit off our chests). Your post in the funk thread, for instance, which I fucking loved - top kek - could've been summed up with links to PF and an explanation that it wasn't in keeping with what we've actually been given from CCP regarding blooders and a warning that it would not be well received or taken seriously by a majority of people in the active RP scene. I loved your post, but it belongs where it is - in the Catacombs.
If that concept, which was so widely desired and agreed upon and which, I argue, is perhaps this forum's core, founding principle, is too restrictive/draconian/whatever for you... well, harden the fuck up.
rules lawyering
The rules are explicitly subjective, rather than objective, to give us as moderators wiggle room to do what we think is best in a given situation/thread. Whether that means mods gonna mod or mods gonna let that shit go, is up to the mod who's looking at it - and it only takes one of us to say, "You know what - this isn't appropriate, I'm moderating this thread/post." This prevents the rules lawyering we saw on Chatsubo, this prevents the baiting we saw on Chatsubo for the most part. However, it takes discussion amongst the whole team to press the ban button, so no single mod can have a bug up his or her ass about a particular user and press butan on them for the hell of it. I think we have an understanding with each other that, in case of "EXTREME CIRCUMSTANCES" any one of us can do so, but to my knowledge this has not ever been necessary to date.
Pointless Bittervetting,
Can we go ahead and call this a prevailing sentiment, then? Such that it should be taken under consideration for addition to the rules?
to address the topic of The Catacombs.
I'm of mixed feelings about this. I can't recall just how the winning argument, so to speak, was worded back then but I think as far back as the Smoke-filled Room it was felt that, for the sake of mod/admin transparency, our actions needed to be clear and visible to all. Part of the avoidance of cliques/factions controlling the board by having one of their own on the team. At this juncture, I think that it may be more effective if the Catacombs are only visible to the team - we can police ourselves and if a user has a grievance with one of us modding their post/thread, we can all very clearly go and see what exactly happened and discuss it/deal with it internally.
Thoughts from the community on that idea? Thoughts from the team?
EDIT: Also, Silver is best admin. :cube:
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Anyway, the vast majority of your problems with Backstage have a simple solution: revive Chatsubo.
lol (http://www.eve-chatsubo.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=5444)
Backstage was announced 24 Mar 2010. A year later, Chatsubo was a complete ghost town, some might argue it emptied out even quicker than that. The last content post was in Mar 2012 - someone looking for a corp. To bad for Rustyn, no one saw it.
I think that much of the discussion in the thread linked came to pass - Chatsubo did not survive despite theories to the contrary. Fragmentation did not occur, but two forums definitely did not survive.
Pointing at Chatsubo is effectively saying leave our community and go wander the desert.
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Anyway, the vast majority of your problems with Backstage have a simple solution: revive Chatsubo.
Pointing at Chatsubo is effectively saying leave our community and go wander the desert.
This Silver, is why I am just going to say go fuck yourself dipshit. At least I have the balls to say it outloud, wanker.
I'll make a better post if I can bother.
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A compelling argument, Vince. However, the point is two-fold:
Either your ideas have some merit, in which case it shouldn't be hard to start back up Chatsubo (or, indeed, start your own forum with rules you prefer since while this is a suggestion thread, your suggestions are probably going to be too far outside of the core ideas of this forum) or your ideas are not one that will lead to a useful forum.
And if you don't want to post within the rules, Vince, you would have to post somewhere else - but you are trying to both complain that we are too protective and inclusive when dealing with members, and then not protective and inclusive enough of shitposting. I'm not sure it works. And pointing to Chatsubo is the longstanding response to people who feel this forum is too restrictive (I think you used to word Chokehold). The fact that Chatsubo is currently a ghost town hasn't changed the fact that it remained and remains an alternative option.
Also, I want to correct a fairly important misconception: Saying 'Use Chatsubo' is not the same as saying 'Don't use Backstage' (though it is roughly the same as saying 'Don't use Backstage to post things that fall outside of Backstage's rules.') It was always an alternative - not a replacement. This was, in fact, one of the first things I recall explaining to people when we were setting up Backstage.
Edit: And in fact, it may be that Chatsubo's time has come again (or something like Chatsubo's time). People forget that while there were periods in Chatsubo's history that were(to say the least) problematic, there were also quite a few (probably longer) periods when it was actually useful and even occasionally somewhat awesome. Maybe we are at a point when the mix of folks in RP could use an alternative spot that lets them interact in a more mod-hands-off sort of way.
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I think that it may be more effective if the Catacombs are only visible to the team - we can police ourselves and if a user has a grievance with one of us modding their post/thread, we can all very clearly go and see what exactly happened and discuss it/deal with it internally.
Thoughts from the community on that idea? Thoughts from the team?
Poster A makes a post.
Poster B takes exception to one point.
Poster C, quoting another point from A, discusses that point.
Poster D discusses C's counterpoint.
Poster A again discusses with A and C.
Poster B calls everyone names.
Moderator X, removes all 6 posts, for perceived flamebaiting. Posters C and D are mystified, and ask "where did my post go ?". Poster A also asks where their post went. Poster B probably knows where their post went, but doesn't ask. Moderation team workload is higher, because C and D need to be told there wasn't anything wrong with their posts, and they are free to discuss that point again, without quoting the thing that seems to have caused a problem with B.
Having it all in the catacombs, with "removed for quoting deleted post", answers C and D's questions with little effort, allows them to continue.
Also, timezones and Rl things. Make post, go to sleep, or go to work, come back, everything's gone with no explanation.
Catacombs might not be ideal, but at least they're transparent.
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The fact that Chatsubo is currently a ghost town hasn't changed the fact that it remained and remains an alternative option.
It is not a viable alternative for conversation with the community that moved from there to here.
It was always an alternative - not a replacement. This was, in fact, one of the first things I recall explaining to people when we were setting up Backstage.
While I understand your intent, it is not what happened. Backstage replaced Chatsubo.
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I'm aware of the reality, in terms of current usage. What I'm saying is: if enough people think they would find value in somewhere with a different set of core rules, Chatsubo or something like it could be a viable alternative. I'm really not trying to be an asshole and go: 'lol, good luck, go live in the ghost town, hur hur.' I'm saying that Backstage isn't going to be able to be all things to all people, which we realized at the start, and so we committed to being certain things - if you are looking for other things, all it takes is a few like-minded people and a willingness to give it a shot (I know, because that's how Backstage happened.)
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At this juncture, I think that it may be more effective if the Catacombs are only visible to the team - we can police ourselves and if a user has a grievance with one of us modding their post/thread, we can all very clearly go and see what exactly happened and discuss it/deal with it internally.
Thoughts from the community on that idea? Thoughts from the team?
EDIT: Also, Silver is best admin. :cube:
This may be getting a bit to subjective/situational for you guys, but I liked the idea a while back where threads would be catacomb'ed, while individual particularly bad posts would be just vanished.
More specifically, in places where extended sections of a thread slowly went pear shaped and had to be excised, it might be useful to be able to see what is missing in order to provide context to later posts.
In places where there's a specific post or posts that just need to be *snipped* because they were a dramatic jump into flaming or badness - well, those don't need to stick around. As Vince said, those are often people trying to get in a potent parting shot, knowing they are going to be modded anyhow.
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I think it may be a problem of enforcement. Due to the way we handle things like warnings and bans, and the asynchronous nature of forum communication, what can often end up happening is a post gets moderated, but the person who posted (often in a situation where a warning or ban should clearly be issued, like when someone starts their post with 'I know this is going to be moderated' and proceeds to post anyway) doesn't receive any other punitive action to dissuade them in the future because mod discussion of issuing a warning or ban ends up taking too long, or one of us drops off the internet for a while or what have you. We could do a better job with consistency in making sure bans and warnings are handed out, basically. Even if people aren't convinced to stop posting the 'really bad' sorts of post, they would eventually get banned anyway (which is how it is supposed to work).
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In no particular order:
While I think most of your critique probably is more suggestive of a bad fit between your particular style and this forum, Vince, I would tend to agree that bittervetting is a problem. There, see what you've done: put it into our heads to introduce more rules. Also, overall amount of moderation is (drastically) down - due in part no doubt to declining activity, but probably in larger part due to declining moderator participation.
In terms of political correctness, I'm not sure what you mean - though I can see two possibilities (which might be incorrect):
1) In the non-eve section, we tend to lock down certain types of threads after a bit of run time. This is because this isn't really a forum for that kind of thing, and certain RL topics tend to just lead to arguments and trolling.
2) The whole point of setting Backstage up in the first place, which boiled down to essentially the idea that you can have a healthy debate or conversation with someone without dragging out insults and suggestions that they just need to 'HTFU' and otherwise belittling other users or derailing threads down into flames rather than having constructive interactions. In this case, you are confusing 'political correctness' (which rings the alarm-bells of nanny-statedom (to be fair a description Backstage might qualify for were it a state)) with politeness which is a tool that civil societies use to function and which online communities can use to have reasonable conversations.
As far as the Catacombs, the problem there is that while they are not an ideal solution, it would be worse if we just disappeared posts and threads, because then there would be no examples of what not to do, and no evidence of what we had actually done (so people could claim we were selectively modding them or what have you, when the real reason for moderation is that they were being a massive tool).
Also, decrying bittervetting while simultaneously suggesting that new people who try things you've seen before need to 'fuck off and stop bitching' if they won't listen to your (or, tbh, my) learned advice is a novel approach. Who amongst us hasn't dabbled in dark eyeliner and cannibalism in our younger days? :lol: And, as you said - and as I've very frequently said - RP is self correcting in that if people are being jackasses, noone will RP with them. Guess what: We don't need to change the rules so that everyone can announce that to them here. It happens by itself.
Anyway, the vast majority of your problems with Backstage have a simple solution: revive Chatsubo. Last I checked it was still up. It has - so far as I can tell - the exact ruleset you are looking for. The trouble seems to come when most people (though I suspect you wouldn't be one of them) really mean 'I don't want so much moderation of things I agree with' rather than a real 'I don't want so much moderation'.
I know it is very frustrating seeing people doing RP wrong and not being able to just tell them 'No, you're doing it wrong'. However, if you actually read the FAQ, there are some useful suggestion about how to point them in the right direction without veering into problematic territory. Whether you want to make that effort is, of course, up to you. As is the question of if you feel that effort is a useful way to spend your time.
I think you guys are reading a bit too much into the importance of specific forum rules on a special interest community forum against the backdrop of a 10 year old MMO really.
In my opinion there isn't much wrong with your rules here (and there wasn't much wrong with the rules in chatsubo back in the day either). I don't think the rules in either place had much overall impact on the viability of RP in eve but merely reflected the general health of RP (and interest) in the game of eve during the time's they were active.
Realistically - while Chatsubo got reviled by some as a pit of depravity and hellish flaming it was for its time a lively indicator of the health of rp in Eve - it was very active, there was lots of creativity and discussion - RP had many wars, conflicts, disputes and interesting things going on. Compare and contrast with RP now and it appears (from the outside) pretty dried up and stale. Does that mean Chatsubo moderation and style was right and Backstage moderation and style somehow stifled and killed off creativity in RP in Eve? - Nope of course not, its just the game has gotten older and people have gotten bored of it and CCP have not done enough to re-inspire new players to come along and replace the old.
There is a systematic issue with Eve being less open and less interesting today than it was 10 years ago and CCP as a company being far less supportive of their own fiction and RP. Eve is clogged with counter-atmospheric try hard external community drones glutted on half a decade of passive income who don't give the faintest shit about background RP, NPC factions, lore or quality roleplayed interactions. CCP consider this subset of players to be the most important voice. It isn't hard to figure where the core problem is.
As to this forum and what you can do about it - probably nothing is the hard answer. Certainly carrying on the ideological discussion about Chatsubo's anarchist glory vs Backstage's nanny state isn't going to solve anything except perhaps stave off a little tired ennui.
What I will say though Silver Night is that for all your manners and veil of civilization you do need to accept that when you tell a guy like Vince to "go back to chatsubo if that's what you like" it is like telling him to "fuck off out the airlock with no helmet" - because frankly there isn't enough active community of RP'ers in Eve today to keep one sub category active in this little forum let alone create rival ideologically opposed forums viable (and there was never enough for that even in the glory days).
To be blunt, I would have had a bit more respect for you historically Silver Night if you had ever come out to say "yes, I was massively offended that Cosmo couldn't be bullied into banning people from Chatsubo because they hurt my feelings and so I decided to take away his power by leaving his forum a barren wasteland after the people followed ME! as the chosen one and true prophet of the texts of passive aggressive rules-lawyering dudly do-right hypocritical politically-correct doublespeak bullshit Muhhahhahahahahahahh etc" I mean, it would have been more honest! And too his credit Havohej pretty much did come out and say that ;)
Hi by the way!
I wouldn't say I'm a bittervet so much as a political exile from eve. I actually formally quit a while ago over the Wardec rules changes that protected the largest alliances in the game from empire space harassment - but I do read Eve forums and perhaps a part of my heart still hopes one day that CCP wake up and burn the coalitions and make nullsec a genuinely dangerous hell hole again (or at least even the playing field and let old anarchists like me have some tools to fuck with them again).
Where this ties into RP really, is that to revitalize eve RP you do need a purging of all the anti-RP feeling in the nullsec player base and CCP itself. While a huge active and influence slice of the community has zero respect for any kind of in character interaction or lore and while CCP mirror that approach and tendency then nothing good is likely to come. Until CCP manages to arrest the declining subs situation in a way that allows them to again hire some background writers and events team and refocus away from out of game community try-hards being the biggest cocks they can for e-notoriety then you have issues.
Realistically you probably need an existential crisis in the game that leads to most of nullsec quitting and subs dropping enough that significant management changes (ie people with absolutely no stake in helping their mates maintain power and influence come to have a genuine look at how to refresh the playing field regardless of sacred cows) and the game gets the genuine strategic overhaul it desperately needs. Perhaps when server slides back to the 10,000 level with a smaller team what realizes that paying a few guys to run events is actually a fairly good draw and maybe event scripting tools and some dynamic conditions would be cool too - then maybe we get a second golden age of RP in eve once the people using the game as a second income and rl space empire have fucked off.
But until then the sad truth is that Chatsubo probably saw the glory days of RP in Eve and while it may have made a couple rage quit with hurt feelings the majority saw the best of what eve RP had to offer discussed and reflected in those flammable pages not because it was a super brilliant amazingly moderated forum - but simply because the time was right for it and Eve was simply more interesting for RP'ers back then.
Backstage has done okay - but its been the RP hangout during a decline in the game and reduction of people's interest and involvement (and certainly with CCP's support) of RP in Eve.
And to Vince - nope, these mods letting you tell people they were fuckwits for playing silly Eve RP characters would not have arrested that decline. All that would have achieved would be accusations of bias that you were allowed to be an abrasive wanker and others were not and eventually a bunch of politically-correct posters feeling disenfranchised from the regime would have advocated another forum split and further divided an already minuscule community.
In a way Silver Night is being honest (ish) in saying that what you want is probably Chatsubo style rules and environment but he does of course forget to mention he was one of the guys that killed that off by helping to manufacture the last crisis.
I'm not such a prolific image poster as you but I think I've got the right video to illustrate!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89Gi7N3Rxag (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89Gi7N3Rxag)
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Oh how I have missed these posts. Thank you Jade.
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Thoughts from the community on that idea? Thoughts from the team?
EDIT: Also, Silver is best admin. :cube:
I for one feel the catacombs are a very important record. Not just for transparency.
It is important to understand that even posts that get moderated for one reason or another may be someone's genuine sentiments, and they should not have their records completely deleted from public view just because they broke forum rules.
Preserving the moderated posts allows for unmoderated debate to continue off the forums if necessary, and allows late-comers to understand the context of the discussion.
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Oh how I have missed these posts. Thank you Jade.
Well you know, these days I reserve most of my posting for LARP conflicts in other worlds - but am still interested in the story of Eve (if not the day to day playing through the decline).
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WARNING: if you're a sensitive wallflower who flies off the handle because someone uses a swear word that might be even remotely headed in any direction but away from you, skip reading this post, or at least the first half of it. I'm not filtering or watering down my thoughts just for your virgin ears/eyes.
First things first: I've remained quiet on this thread thus far because I'm sick and tired of the hypocrisy of "whine at Morwen when shit you think needs to be moderated doesn't get moderated (probably because not a single fucking person sent in a single fucking report), then whine at/about Morwen again if he does moderate stuff" that happens here, and elsewhere. You would not believe the number of complaints I get over Skype, MSN, forum PM or EVEmail about shit on this forum that are never accompanied by an actual clicking of the goddamn "Report to Moderator" button, even when I tell people to go submit a report.
Neither I, nor any of the other moderators, have the time or patience to put on the Fascist Forum Moderator hat and read every single fucking post in every fucking thread on this forum, just to nuke that one post that might piss someone off. If you do not report things that are problematic, we may not see or respond to them in a timely fashion. We read EVERY report, whether or not we choose to act on it or not. The number of times we have to repeat this statement makes me sick.
In addition, since it isn't obvious to anyone who isn't a moderator, over the last year or so, I have been consistently going "to bat" for posts that are borderline and saying they don't need to be moderated. (It's the same fucking thing with the Summit ingame, for the record. Ask Ava or Esna how many times I've said "it's not worth stepping in over." Go ahead - I'll wait. Or you could go to that hilarious thread from Diana to see a good example. I'll still wait.) Just because I prefer to come down like a ton of bricks on people when it gets seriously out of hand does not mean that I am the trigger-happy, ban-all-the-things moderator people like to claim I am. So if you're one of those people, seriously, go fuck yourself. Whether you know it or not, I have probably defended your actions or behavior to one or more moderators either ingame or on this forum, and I don't fucking appreciate being shit on just because I don't put up with bullshit from people.
In my opinion, we need to tweak the rules away from this pussyfooting wankfest of pampering. If someone is doing it wrong, let people voice their opinions provided that they give a well formed argument on the topic of why they feel this is so. Now you spend half your post trying to dance around bad rules to make a point to someone and even then there's a danger of getting the Catacombs if someone feels snowflake's feelings have been hurt. If your feelings are hurt from a well formed argument, then I suggest you take either door number one with 'Harden The Fuck Up' or door number two with 'Fuck Off'. If you feel it's your 15€ a month and you get to do as you want instead of trying to play nice with others, then do it, fuck off and stop bitching when people won't play ball with you. Roleplaying is a joint venture, community is a joint venture. Fresh ideas are welcome, but repeating bad cliches is not. People don't have easy time distinguishing unless you can go and say to them 'no, don't do that, it doesn't work and here's why'. What to some newer blood might seem an edgy cool choice can be worn-out droll to the ten year old community.
Pretty much full-on agreed here, but I would still argue that you would still need to tone it down a bit to remain within even relaxed YDIW rules, Vince. :P
Pointless Bittervetting, this should be moderated way more than doing it wrong. I am the first to admit that I have been and occasionally am guilty of this, but nothing kills new enthusiasm more than this. If your last time logging in is six months ago don't tell us EVE is dying or it's shit for this or that reason. You are unsubbed, let that be a testament of your disapproval instead of countless shitposts of 'bad game yo'. We don't really give two shits about it, some of us are having fun for their first time, some still after many years and some, like me, have found that joy once more in playing EVE Online.
Again, agreed. If you want to bittervet, you should do it on the official EVE forums or on FHC, not here - if you've been around long enough to consider yourself a bittervet, you've been here long enough to know that those are the correct places to do it.
And yes, most of the moderators do not play actively anymore, as far as I know. I suspect Silver and I are the only ones who are actually anything resembling active, though I figure he's only active in EVE to continue widening his SP lead over Ghost.
Regarding the Catacombs: I would not object to having a dual-combs setup where things that just go off the rails and are unsalvageable go and can be read, and posts that are flagrant violations that need immediate dealing-with go into a moderator-only area for our own records. We've already got areas that are only visible to us, it wouldn't be hard to do.
As a lesser note; There is also some dickwaving going on about their RP street cred everynow and then. Understand that it's ok to be proud of your achievements and immortalization into the game world, but after a while telling about them to everyone all the time gets trite and old. As a result people will find it - and you - annoying in the end. You are not the only one, and you will certainly be the last one to live on in Prime Fiction. While we commend you for your efforts please stop rubbing it in everyone's face in every goddamn discussion. Have a glass of humility.
See, this is one of those cases where you said something in a way that shouldn't get moderated, but had I said it my way, it would have been catacombed the instant Silver saw it. :P (I agree fully, fwiw.)
In this case, you are confusing 'political correctness' (which rings the alarm-bells of nanny-statedom (to be fair a description Backstage might qualify for were it a state)) with politeness which is a tool that civil societies use to function and which online communities can use to have reasonable conversations.
The issue is that most people are confusing the two. As far as Backstage being considered a "nanny-state", this would cease being an issue if people learned to HTFU and didn't get offended with indignant rage every time someone so much as suggested there was a better way to do something, no matter how politely it was done. Comments have been made about people being criticism-averse. They are accurate.
Also, telling people to go back to Chatsubo violates Wheaton's Law regardless of how you phrase it. Seriously, not cool. Don't do it. (Not because Chatsubo is bad, but because there simply aren't enough people for it to even be a valid suggestion, as a few people have pointed out. TY to Dex for catching that immediately. Jade also said what I thought on this matter, just with more words. So predictable. :P )
I might expand on this later when I get home from work.
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I've just entered my second year of playing EVE and in the beginning, I would say I was rather excited, if a little cautious, about entering the RP community. Not because I haven't rp'ed before (I've been role-playing in one form of media or another for 23 years now), but as with any established group, being the new guy on the block I didn't want to make any critical mis-step that might ostracize me from the community.
I was impressed to see the apparent wealth of stuff going on and that had happened in the past and to be honest, that itself was intimidating...seeing and hearing about stuff that had happened and trying to come up with a concept and such that wouldn't get a "oh, another baby snowflake" comment was a little daunting. Still, that said, I found the RP community both in Backstage and in EVE itself to be mostly supportive and helpful...I think it may have been the fact that having had experience and having a natural inclination to watch and observe first, helped with that. Unfortunately, I have seen what appear to be new players jump right into the shark tank without any safety device. In most cases, people have been good enough to provide assistance after the feeding frenzy.
Anyway, what seemed to be a wealth of rp seemed to slowly drop over the last few months...I realize in some cases RL happens and other stuff, but I think the changes that have been happening at CCP and the apparent direction they want to take EVE has left a lot of the RPers feeling abandoned or even betrayed. RP in EVE seems to have gone from public gatherings to small insular groups that keep to themselves and either afraid to or have no interest in trying to interact with other groups...and I believe much of this is in thanks to CPP and the recent ingame events have reinforced these divides between groups.
My enthusiasm has diminished in that year...not sure if that is because of bitter-vetting here or in EVE, my dislike for the constant and consistent pandering to null-sec pvp at the expense of expanding and filling out a universe that has so much potential, or the fact that without rp-interaction EVE is a very boring game when you get right down to it. I keep showing up in EVE because of the friendships I've made and the hope that something might inspire me. My activity on Backstage though...part of it is not keeping up with stuff for a while and then trying to catch up felt daunting and then to see more or less the same stuff over and over again, I just stopped checking. I don't know if there is a way to fix that perception or if my perception is actually right, but it just seemed that a lot of threads would start off with some enthusiasm about something and then quickly turning into why EVE sucks.
On a side note, I have to agree with Jade...not just in general but also in the context of I truly feel that a massive shake up of null needs to happen. How to do it though, I'm not sure.
Anyway, I think I have just been rambling. Backstage, for the most part, I think works for the most part. A little less with the bitterness and coddling...I know criticism can be hard to take (trust me, I have a hard time with it at times especially when it is with something I have put time and effort into, but if done properly, critique should elevate you in the end), but in that regard, I have to say "suck it up princess". Also, if you can't handle critique, I would advise not handing out critical statements of others...I don't think that happens much here, but really, if you cannot or do not want to be under the gun, then don't make critical statements.
With the exception of the occasional HTFU or YDIW statement that creeps up from time to time, I think Backstage has given a decent place for good arguments and debates to occur and for the most part a supportive bunch of people to help with some of the preparation one needs to get into the RP side of EVE...it's not perfect, but I don't believe there ever will be a perfect solution...we are a large group of intelligent, creative, and opinionated individuals. There is always going to be some dissent and the occasional emotional outburst, but for what it's worth, Backstage and the community here seem to be able to handle it with out excessive "DIAF!" ::ragequit:: reactions.
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Make me a mod, I'll be Vince's slightly less dickish alter ego :D
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To be blunt, I would have had a bit more respect for you historically Silver Night if you had ever come out to say "yes, I was massively offended that Cosmo couldn't be bullied into banning people from Chatsubo because they were his alliance leader and his alliance leader's internet spaceships paramour" I mean, it would have been more honest! And too his credit Havohej pretty much did come out and say that ;)
Hi by the way!
FTFY ;)
Didn't watch the video, but I rarely do. CBA waiting for a video to load.
Nice condescending condensation of what happened; fortunately it's all preserved since Cosmo hasn't taken the site down. Which is a great thing, especially given his previously stated motive for deciding to continue footing the bill for its hosting.
We expressed a desire for that material to remain at Backstage's inception. We wanted the good of Chatsubo to survive. Nobody benefits from its loss.
I think it needs to be explicitly said here that we aren't taking the stance of "Our rules are perfect, nothing needs to change, if you don't like it you can fuck off to the wasteland." We're holding to the stance of "This forum exists for a reason, to support a certain atmosphere, and we aren't going to abandon that altogether."
Hi yourself! <3
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Awwww, I've been so long away from passive-aggressive Eve posting I'd forgotten what it was like to be quote-queered! Thank you for the waltz down memory lane Havohej!
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I've always loved you, Jade, you know that. I miss your posting and titan-bridge dropping fleets onto assholes in the warzone. :(
I should think you must at least respect my having the stones to stick to my guns and remove my corp from a pretty cushy OOC situation over an IC ideological despute, regardless of the OOC shit that would wind up developing. I told you then and I still feel this way: You're a decent person and I considered you a friend - still do, in that "old buddy I haven't talked to in ages" kind of way. But make no mistake, I do put the fall of Chatsubo squarely at you and Revan's four feet.
Nobody said "Come to Backstage, don't use Chatsubo anymore." People came here and for a while some were still posting there, or I assumed as much because I was still seeing links to chatsubo posts in ingame channels. I can't speak for Silver's catalyst, but the catalyst for me leaping to offer the initial hosting of Backstage was you and her suffering no consequence at all for your posting behaviours while anyone posting against your clique received moderation, warnings and/or bans.
I re-read the first page of the thread that was linked and it all came rushing back. Memory lane, indeed. I still think you're a decent guy, mate, but given the actuality of how that all went down 4 years ago, I can't take seriously your pointing the finger at Silver and/or me about being crybabies because Cosmo wouldn't ban people who hurt our feelings. I didn't want you, her or anyone else banned. I wanted some bloody even-handed moderation. We haven't been perfect on that here, but we try our best and I daresay we've done better than what Chatsubo's team was doing at that time period.
I don't like that Chatsubo 'died'. That was never anyone's goal, certainly not mine or Silver Night's goal. But it happened, and there's a clearly defined reason why. All anyone has to do to find it is to go read the threads.
So now, we have a small group of people, a 'vocal minority' if you will, expressing discontent with the way we're approaching moderation here. So, I posted this thread to open up discussion and see just how many people are feeling that way and talk about what we might need to do to fix whatever problems there might be while maintaining the atmosphere that everyone found so alluring and encouraging of participation in the beginning.
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Don't get me wrong, I'm not calling you a cry baby for setting this place up and trashing chatsubo Havohej (nor Silver Night either for that matter.)
But neither do I see it as some kind of ethical community minded generosity of spirit. It was what it was, an expression of frustration at not getting your way from the mods at Chatsubo and demonstration that you could destroy a thing (and thus had power over a thing after all.)
Doubtless to your mind Revan and I were the Devil and Consort and Cosmo a fool for permitting us to exist! (let alone post) but really, things were complicated and most complaints had many sides and many aspects as doubtless you have come to find in this place. As it happened I found it easy enough to transition here for a time and play within the rules, Stephanie decided not to. That was her choice as well.
But my point really is you decided to destroy the other forum because you couldn't influence Cosmo to have people banned at your whim and wanted a place to have that power for yourself. I don't really judge you on that, its natural for a man to want power - but I do respect people who come out and are honest about these things more than I do people who wrap it up in polite doubletalk and slithering snakery.
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You seem to have in your mind that we wanted to create an evil-er empire to supplant and destroy the incumbent evil empire. This is simply not the case. We never even viewed Chatsubo in that light. I never wanted to see anything destroyed (except the Provibloc, IC, for IC reasons).
For the record, barring spammers who do get instant permabans, our actual ban list is very small. There are a total of 46 threads in the Warnings and Bans area. These threads are generated when a formal warning is issued to a user the first time. All subsequent formal action regarding that user is logged in that same original thread under their name. This is so that if we go to issue a warning to so-and-so, we go there to log that we've done so and can thus see how much formal action has taken place involving that poster, which tells us if escalation is needed or appropriate - or not. Of these, very few have ever escalated to bans. Of those, most were temp bans, in some cases multiple escalating temp bans. In only 3 cases that I can see in the ban list, only 3, were permabans issued after a long series of moderations, warnings and temp bans. Some people, like Mizhara for example, simply stopped participating after a temp ban, giving the appearance that a p.ban was issued where one was not.
46 people formally warned. 3 permanently banned. Over the course of 4 years. Out of a total 1067 member accounts.
Most of the people who post here are IC enemies for my character. Several of the people who post here frequently I actively and openly dislike OOC. I'm in this for power? I wanted to see people banned at a whim?
:wut:
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I’m not sure debating on the basis of what you think might be in my mind is a recipe for fruitful conversation really. I can only respond to what you have said with regard to your belief that chatsubo needed to be (well, if not destroyed then humanely terminated or whatever) because of your perception that Cosmo and his mod team wouldn’t deal with myself and Revan for whatever reason. I said you wanted the power to ban at a whim Havohej (mainly because Cosmo denied you that power at Chatsubo) having the power is not the same as using it. Clearly you’ve been a benign overlord here! The point it you HAVE the power, not cosmo, that’s a pretty good safety blanket!
The thing is there is a bit of a blinkered view of what went down at Chatsubo and I think you are not immune to it. There reason I never got banned there – (as is the reason I’ve never been banned here) is that I generally play to the rules of the forum. Most of the reason that I got involved with some fairly toxic treads there was the way people would come at me (and also not get banned) I measured my interaction to threads based on just below the offense level of my enemies – it meant really nobody could get banned for those things. At Chatsubo people would call me names and I’d pull the rug out under them. At Backstage I never had to do that because the mods would terminate anyone for rudeness. I guess it show who could play by the rules of the game though.
You mention Miz and I’m glad because he was one of the worst flamers at Chatsubo but always blamed other people. At chatsubo he got away with it too because Cosmo was trying to be liberal and hands off. Here, I remember posting something fairly innocent and Mizhara rushing into the thread to flame me like he had a warrant to offend and getting moderated, he then proceeded to insult your mods and thrash about like a lunatic claiming bias. All I’d say is that perhaps your perception of what happened at Chatsubo was not particularly accurate with regard to true villains of the piece.
But anyway, we have our different opinions. What happened happened – and Backstage is now what’s left of the RP community for good or ill!
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I’m not sure debating on the basis of what you think might be in my mind is a recipe for fruitful conversation really.
I could say the same to you, because...
I can only respond to what you have said with regard to your belief that chatsubo needed to be (well, if not destroyed then humanely terminated or whatever) because of your perception that Cosmo and his mod team wouldn’t deal with myself and Revan for whatever reason.
I have never, ever stated any such belief. You are attributing things to me, then, which you "think might be in my mind." You are attacking a statement/argument that I never made. The precise name of this logical fallacy eludes me at the moment, but I know it's covered in Hurley's.
I said you wanted the power to ban at a whim Havohej (mainly because Cosmo denied you that power at Chatsubo) having the power is not the same as using it. Clearly you’ve been a benign overlord here! The point it you HAVE the power, not cosmo, that’s a pretty good safety blanket!
No, I actually don't. Our own rules bar us from using any manner of moderator privilege in threads we have been participants in. So if all of that old garbage had taken place here, I still couldn't ban Revan. Or you, for that matter, though I don't recall ever wanting to see you banned (because you were often posting either in defense of inappropriate shit directed toward you, OR in defense of inappropriate shit directed toward her - which was almost always brought on by her own behavior on that forum). Because I was an active participant in those disputes and thus biased; any action I might've taken against you or her would've been reversed and my status as a moderator/admin removed. In fact, I think there is a case of this happening on this forum already (a person joining the mod team and being removed for abuse). I was in jail at the time, so I don't know all of the particulars of that - so I'll speak no more on it. We've also made it pretty difficult to get banned here... more difficult than I'd like, at times.
The thing is there is a bit of a blinkered view of what went down at Chatsubo and I think you are not immune to it. There reason I never got banned there – (as is the reason I’ve never been banned here) is that I generally play to the rules of the forum. Most of the reason that I got involved with some fairly toxic treads there was the way people would come at me (and also not get banned) I measured my interaction to threads based on just below the offense level of my enemies – it meant really nobody could get banned for those things. At Chatsubo people would call me names and I’d pull the rug out under them. At Backstage I never had to do that because the mods would terminate anyone for rudeness. I guess it show who could play by the rules of the game though.
You mention Miz and I’m glad because he was one of the worst flamers at Chatsubo but always blamed other people. At chatsubo he got away with it too because Cosmo was trying to be liberal and hands off. Here, I remember posting something fairly innocent and Mizhara rushing into the thread to flame me like he had a warrant to offend and getting moderated, he then proceeded to insult your mods and thrash about like a lunatic claiming bias. All I’d say is that perhaps your perception of what happened at Chatsubo was not particularly accurate with regard to true villains of the piece.
But anyway, we have our different opinions. What happened happened – and Backstage is now what’s left of the RP community for good or ill!
That's a fair view, and I mostly agree. You have always played within the rules of the forum, be that forum the IGS, CAOD, IGS or Backstage. And that's what this whole thread is about, really - Backstage's rules and whether or not they are still conducive to the atmosphere we intended for Backstage to have.
I forget who it was, Disraeli maybe, who said "It is the fault of our rhetoric that we cannot strongly state one point without seeming to belie some other." I can see how it would seem or feel like I'm saying you and Revan were the only ones shitposting on Chatsubo. I shitposted, too, and Miz, and countless others. I'm sure a lot of people felt they were in the right or simply defending themselves or whatever. I don't think anyone who was actively involved in any of the dramas that took place there can have a 100% accurate perception of who were "true villains." I'd argue further that there were no "villains," per se, so much as an atmosphere where villainy was allowed to be.
But, yes. What happened happened, and here we all are now. I think our situation would be helped if there were more original content being produced, which in itself would spark more activity here, but the actual topic is whether we've still got an atmosphere conducive to it and if not, what tweaks might be made to get back to where we want to be - as a community of spaceship nerds and RP geeks.
For what it's worth (and this is a bit off-topic to the thread), I was thrilled when you started participating here and did so genuinely (unlike some, like Tomahawk, who at least at first seemed to come into it with the intention to push every envelope possible, actively trying to goad us into action to prove some kind of point or "expose" us and our supposed ulterior motives). I'm just sad that Eve has changed in ways that made it no longer fun for you to keep doing your thing in New Eden. I wish I had the time and the effort in me to build something remotely close to what Star Fraction was and represented.
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There are a lot of good insight in that thread.
I also found myself wondering where it started to be more about YDIW than just lack of respect/inflammatory stuff. Suddenly we started to see moderator comments either on warnings or catacombed posts with the dreaded YDIW stamp on them. The YDIW almost became a backstage meme all by itself. Everyone started to call on everyone that they were guilty of telling people YDIW.
Then yet we still have Silver above that maintains that you can express that precise thing as long as you remain calm, constructive, and respectful. Maybe one of the biggest issues is a bit on the formal side of the moderation in such cases. Maybe the reason invoked for moderation should not be the YDIW stamp. Why the hell are we even always summoning the almighty YDIW ? It's not even in the damn rules !
Where the hell does that thing comes from ? Maybe there is indeed a climate of criticism averse. What the hell is wrong with criticism, as long as it proves constructive and can eventually bear fruit and lead to improvement ? I am unsure where it came from, but I have my little idea. It probably naturally came from a will not to divide or stir up things in a community that was already small. So the first thought was probably "let's not be elitists shall we" ? Well, that's a decent argument I guess. I will certainly not agree with it since acceptation of cheese and rubbish is the culture of mediocrity over quality. It is also the acceptance of every kind of individualism and selfishness over the community.
It is natural for roleplayers in any kind of community of roleplayers I have been to be very averse of being seen as elitist assholes. I have been part of the core admins of a very successful RP community on SWG before, and we brought it to unequaled heights with such an elitist culture. We proved to be very friendly to newcomers (we were not numerous either), and were damn motivated to do awesome things. But we were seen as elitist assholes. And you know why ? Because some trolls in our ranks were unable to behave and constantly shat on every forum they could, and every other group of RPers they found, deeming them stupid, cheesy, rubbish, and treating them like sub roleplayers. We sure could find a lot of critics to address most of those, but the simple way they handled it completely thrashed the reputation of our community over the years, with entrenched wars between us and the "others" on every forum and every channel ingame. And at the same time, the guild I was the leader of, also basked into a damn elitist ideal, holding the Canon as sacred before all else. We were seen as crazy elitists, but people respected us. Some outsiders even admired what we did while acknowledging that it was not for them. And why ? Because the trolls and shitposters of the RP community were not in our ranks. Even with our strict and public adherence to that elitist RP community, we were seen in a complete different light than the community itself.
It's he same everywhere I go.
So, with my experience backing me up all along - and I expect that some of you might have different experiences leading to opposite views, that's really possible - I am all for YDIW stuff. But there seems to be a grave confusion between calling people out for YDIW and thrashing people (and Vince post on that blooder character thing was NOT thrashing, just borderline, as surprising as it may sound coming from me, can elaborate on that if you want).
So, all in all, what has become nefarious is not over moderation against your basic grain of civilization and education, but over moderation (or just moderation, period) against YDIW, also perceived as political correctness by some.
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Some people, like Mizhara for example, simply stopped participating after a temp ban, giving the appearance that a p.ban was issued where one was not.
You mention Miz and I’m glad because ...
FWIW, the reason Miz stopped posting was not actually that initial temp ban (he had several over the course of several years), it was that he came back on another account after an extended break, he immediately started posting in exactly the same problematic fashion as he had been posting before he left, and when the moderation team gave him a warning - and pointed out that his new account was not going to be considered a 'reset' on his record - he flipped his shit and ragequit. (I've said it a few times over the years in a variety of threads, but as a reminder, mods/admins DO see the IP address you use to post here, and we do make note of it if there's problematic behavior coming from multiple accounts at one IP address. No, before anyone suggests it, we don't use it for anything but admin/moderation-related stuff on the forum.)
Lyn: YDIW is not in the rules but it is in the FAQ, which outlines good and bad posting habits. It's close enough for the moderators' purposes, because people are supposed to read both. And as I said before, yes, I totally agree that of late there is a very criticism-averse culture on this forum and like others, I believe it is more stifling than people getting their feelings hurt because someone said their Force-wielding fairy or w/e doesn't fit within the EVE universe. (Generally, full +1 to each point in that post. Seriously.) I made a small (http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=5941.msg98588#msg98588) number (http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=5941.msg98654#msg98654) of posts (http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=5941.msg98661#msg98661) regarding better/worse ways to tell someone they are doing it wrong in the Hubris thread, for what it's worth. I think they're worth pointing out again, but some may disagree. :P
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As a note, I was in on some of the early conversations that led to the creation of Backstage (almost completely as a passive observer) and the idea that Backstage was founded to kill Chatsubo is bullshit. In fact, one of the earliest presumptions was that we might get, at best, ten or twenty people who were tired of Chatsubo. And yeah, a LOT of the people who came over did so because Cosmo and company really did seem to moderate in favor of Star Fraction members plus Revan. Hey, it was a site made by a SF member. But I know I was tired of it, and I know others were.
No one I know was elated by Chatsubo going inactive. The most egregious statements were along the lines of "well, what did they expect, with their moderation policy?"
But I think that one reason Chatsubo did go inactive was partly because of what it was: a SF-held site. SF was pretty much opposed to a lot of loyalist or pirate RP, and a lot of the most active RPers at the time were pretty tired of being told that they were RL fascists or authoritarians or whatever because they liked creating loyalist characters and content. And it seemed like, at the end, almost every thread was becoming an arena for doing that.
If you alienate those who create content, don't be surprised that they find another - heh - forum within which to operate.
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Also, while I'm thinking of it.
Jade, fwiw I cannot recall a single case where Revan actually had any serious run-ins with the posting rules here while she was actively posting (edit - since she has no entry in the aforementioned warnings/bans section, I'm still inclined to think this is the case). She might have had a few posts catacombed in tangents or threads that got nuked wholesale, but I don't remember her ever being moderated in specific. (I could always be wrong - the Catacombs don't lie.)
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Yes, for what it's worth I had full access to the smoke filled room as well and as much as was not including myself in these precise discussions (happening on the AFC forums), despite the voluntary conspiracy atmosphere it had, the almost frenetic talks were really done out of grand ideals and a will to salvage the situation on chatsubo, which was apparently not good at all.
It was a very small assembly of individuals that could be counted on the fingers of a single hand, or something close to it.
That's what I remember of all of it. But the thing the most outstanding was the feeling of emergency to create the alternative rather quickly.
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I think it may be a problem of enforcement. Due to the way we handle things like warnings and bans, and the asynchronous nature of forum communication, what can often end up happening is a post gets moderated, but the person who posted (often in a situation where a warning or ban should clearly be issued, like when someone starts their post with 'I know this is going to be moderated' and proceeds to post anyway) doesn't receive any other punitive action to dissuade them in the future because mod discussion of issuing a warning or ban ends up taking too long, or one of us drops off the internet for a while or what have you. We could do a better job with consistency in making sure bans and warnings are handed out, basically. Even if people aren't convinced to stop posting the 'really bad' sorts of post, they would eventually get banned anyway (which is how it is supposed to work).
If I get this right...the reason there might be a problem of enforcement is not a shortage of moderators? In fact, more moderators would only amplify the problem?
About the Catacombs: I was sort of in favour of removing them, even though I check out every moderated post dumped there. But after reading some of the arguments here, I'm fine with them staying as they are. And I also think it serves as somewhat of a shaming place for bad posters. And it allows me to get to know people a little better when I can also see their darker sides. And it makes discussing moderation a lot easier.
On criticism-averseness and overly thin skins...I'm guess I'm not sure what people are referring to here, in the sense that this is a moderation problem (I'm sure that the thin-skins frequent this forum too, sometimes I'm one of them). Are there any critical posts someone could link me (in a PM, if desired), where stuff was modded not because it broke the rules, but because someone's feelings were/might have been hurt?
Speaking for myself, I don't have a lot of trouble in properly formulating my critique in a way that does not break the rules. I don't think there's one post in the catacombs that's mine and was moderated for bad behaviour on my part. Don't get me wrong, the rules are a bit restrictive, and even I, a pretty polite guy, have to sometimes alter my post a bit before I click 'Post' to comply with the rules, even though I don't think people would really get offended by what I wrote, but I'm ok with that. But that's a matter of personal taste, and I can see why others find it (a tad) too restrictive.
On Silver's Go-back-2-Chatsubo comment: I can see why some people see it violating Wheaton's Law, but I can also see that the comment in question might not have been maliciously intended, and Silver's "Use chatsubo ≠ stop using Backstage" rings true in my mind. Even if using chatsubo is not a valid suggestion, I doubt it was meant to mean "leave our community and wander the desert".
But then again, maybe I just don't know Silver as well as you people. vOv
In most cases, people have been good enough to provide assistance after the feeding frenzy. [..] RP in EVE seems to have gone from public gatherings to small insular groups that keep to themselves and either afraid to or have no interest in trying to interact with other groups...and I believe much of this is in thanks to CPP and the recent ingame events have reinforced these divides between groups.
It would be even better if they had the guts to stick their hand into the sharktank during the feeding frenzy, but I think people might be afraid of losing that hand in the process.
I believe that people might also keep to themselves because else they fear being accused of uncharacteristicly being friends with everyone.
These are just some nearly baseless theories. Feel free to ignore them. No skin will be hurt. Well, not mine, anyway.
I also found myself wondering where it started to be more about YDIW than just lack of respect/inflammatory stuff. Suddenly we started to see moderator comments either on warnings or catacombed posts with the dreaded YDIW stamp on them. The YDIW almost became a backstage meme all by itself.
Woops. I think I may have had a hand in that. Although I called it The Community Meme (http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=4069.msg77793#msg77793). Or maybe it's not the same thing and I'm just pointlessly shoving my own old posts back into your faces. :|
It is natural for roleplayers in any kind of community of roleplayers I have been to be very averse of being seen as elitist assholes.
Hmm. But how to do this in a game where the default character IS an elitist asshole? :lol:
P.S. Vince, I never figured out what series that pic is from, the one above my meme post I linked to.
Also, just an observation, but there have not been a lot of new post in the Welcome section lately.
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Che: In my case, I am suggesting that it is a problem on both fronts. The posters are part of the problem because many are happy to resort to reporting posts simply because they disagree with them (or others) regardless of how constructive the criticism is (or isn't). On our end, I think that in the past we may have catered a little too much to that behavior or given the impression that even the slightest amount of YDIW would get a post moderated or was worth reporting. It shouldn't, and it isn't - there's a reason I re-linked my posts about it from the Hubris thread.
People need to be more receptive of criticism in general, at least criticism that is constructive and within a certain range of politeness. Obviously nobody should have to tolerate a wall of "omg you suck so bad biomass and quit eve already". But I don't think we should stamp on the perfectly legitimate criticism that "x trope is overdone, please don't do it" or "that doesn't work with the PF, big cluster or no" or "you're not going to get the responses you say you are looking for if you do it that way" in an overzealous attempt to stamp out what actually is problematic.
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I have not seen so much activity in so many forum threads in the past three days than in my entire time back in game.
Good work, various ranting threads! :lol:
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I didn't realize I was a member of Star Fraction. :roll:
orange is a mod on Chatsubo :s
On Silver's Go-back-2-Chatsubo comment: I can see why some people see it violating Wheaton's Law, but I can also see that the comment in question might not have been maliciously intended, and Silver's "Use chatsubo ≠ stop using Backstage" rings true in my mind. Even if using chatsubo is not a valid suggestion, I doubt it was meant to mean "leave our community and wander the desert".
As people's perceptions of Chatsubo mods indicates, intent matters less than perception.
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I didn't realize I was a member of Star Fraction. :roll:
In all fairness, Orange, I don't recall anyone complaining about you, and I do recall a few instances in which you fielded complaints about the other moderators.
I suppose you can blame everything on perception. But there were plenty of instances in which people who weren't SF got posts deleted for stuff that SF members got away with, sometimes even in the very same thread.
I know it can be a mistake to say that "where there's smoke, there's fire", but in the case of Chatsubo, there was a fuckload of smoke. The fact that you weren't on fire doesn't mean that there wasn't any.
Personally, of all the Eve RPers I've interacted with, I hold you in the highest esteem, and I think that if all the mods on Chatsubo had acted with your integrity, there would have been no desire for Backstage.
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To be clear, for my part, I don't think there was any intentional bias in Chatsubo moderation. At the same time (and I'm sure mods here, and anyone who has modded a communication medium for a community of which they are also a member can attest to this) it can be difficult to keep a perfectly objective perspective on people's behavior when you have a history with them, good or bad.
Also, Jade, I think Havo has addressed most of your general arguments, but to address a couple of things about myself specifically:
I can't speak for others involved in the genesis of Backstage, but I was actually not a target in any real way of any of the more negative aspects of Chatsubo. For me the problem was that it was extremely frustrating having the overall utility of the forum pretty much disappear due to the drama. I didn't have my feelings hurt (and while there is a perception that Backstage's rules are here to prevent hurt feelings, that isn't exactly accurate - I'll get back to that in a moment*), I was just pretty pissed that I could hardly use the forum for anything interesting anymore. At least, that's my recollection - it has been 4 years. Also, again not speaking for anyone else, I don't recall trying to bully anyone into anything (I won't deny - as I don't actually remember - that I probably reached out to Cosmo at some point about taking moderator action. I think that's a fairly reasonable first step for someone concerned about how moderation is handled, and we have a whole section for it here.) - though I feel as though if I displayed the level of megalomania (albeit apparently passive-aggressive megalomania?) you imply, I would probably much more interesting. :lol:
Finally, the idea that the folks who started Backstage purposefully 'killed' Chatsubo overstates, I think, our influence (leaving aside the fact that it utterly misstates our goal). For myself, I don't think I was particularly well known in the community at the time (and I'm probably not particularly well known now), and I don't think that the RP community had at that time anyone who wielded the kind of influence it would take to purposefully swing everyone from one place to another. I'm frankly not even sure what forces lead to Chatsubo declining as rapidly as it did - though for my part I mostly stopped using it because it stopped generating useful content (perhaps a warning, for Backstage).
The folks who are talking about the 'Go use Chatsubo' comment: I understand where the perception of it is coming from, I do. And I apologize if I didn't express myself clearly enough. But my point is that I see a lot of people who are unhappy with Backstage in it's current form or any form it is likely to take (even if we do modify some guidelines) and I don't see them willing to put any effort into finding any solution for that, other than rants here. It takes maybe 4-5 really active people to make a forum useful, and after that it tends to snowball. That's all it would take - enough people to have a conversation. It seems like there are at least that many people who would like an alternative to Backstage. Hell, I would probably post, if I saw somewhere else becoming active, if only because as an admin here I sometimes find myself avoiding posting in threads lest it make it awkward later when they might need to be moderated. Starting a forum (or restarting one) is not trivial, but it isn't so much more difficult than, say, starting a semi-successful Eve corporation.
*Getting back to the idea that the rules are there to prevent hurt feelings for a moment: They may have that effect, but they came from looking at what tended to go wrong in threads in Chatsubo (the things that tended to lead to derails and flamewars drowning out useful content) and working backward to remove those things. The general idea was that it meant making it so when people spoke up, they wouldn't have to worry about being attacked or immediately shut down.
All o the history and interpersonal conflict aside, the two recurring things I'm seeing in this thread are that in some ways the rules are having the opposite effect (people feel too constrained by them to post) and that the even larger problem is that bittervetting is making people feel, well, pretty much like we were trying to avoid in the start. Neither of these sound like super easy problems, moderation-wise, but it might be something we can address, and I hope people have some ideas about it (and I appreciate the ideas that have already been posted.)
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Why the fuck are you all talking about chatsubo instead of talking about improvements for this forum/community?
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Why the fuck are you all talking about chatsubo instead of talking about improvements for this forum/community?
This.
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Why the fuck are you all talking about chatsubo instead of talking about improvements for this forum/community?
Because to understand a problem, it might be usefull to look at History.
Though agreed, too much talk about Chatsubo.
All o the history and interpersonal conflict aside, the two recurring things I'm seeing in this thread are that in some ways the rules are having the opposite effect (people feel too constrained by them to post)
If people feel constrained by basic politeness and education (or civilization ?) I wonder if that's still a forum/rules issue anymore :?:
I can understand that the internet culture can tend to forget all that in favour of animal behavior, but still...
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If people feel constrained by basic politeness and education (or civilization ?) I wonder if that's still a forum/rules issue anymore :?:
I can understand that the internet culture can tend to forget all that in favour of animal behavior, but still...
I kind'a agree there with Lyn. Imho the forum rules here seem to say: "Stick to basic politness or your post will get moderated." This is in my opinion also very effective to keep discussion on topic instead of spiraling down into mud-slinging contests. So I don't think that the rules in that department are too restrictive.
I also feel that the moderator do in general a good job at putting the rules into practice, acting with sound judgment.
As to the bittervetting, it kind'a can be disheartening for those that feel enthusiastic about EVE. Yet, I think it's a reflection on the staten of the game. Then again, it'd be nice to to not have it in all threads, so maybe estabish some 'bittervet-free zones' or a dedicated 'bittervetting zone'?
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Who was the one saying sth about skirting around the rules when it comes to insults? Sounds like we hit a jackpot with it after all.
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Why the fuck are you all talking about chatsubo instead of talking about improvements for this forum/community?
This.
I think that a good precursor to discussing the rules as they are is remembering and understanding the reasons and intentions behind them. It was inevitable, then, that discussing the genesis of this forum would include discussing what happened on that forum - because what happened on that forum was the genesis of this forum.
Who was the one saying sth about skirting around the rules when it comes to insults? Sounds like we hit a jackpot with it after all.
Not sure what you're saying, here.
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Why should anyone care about this Patrick Stewart actor? Everyone knows Laurence Olivier was the best actor in Shakespearean plays.
see when people are talking about "noobs thinking something is great", while to veterans, it's a "tired cliche that has been done before".
what they're doing is saying that because Laurence Olivier was in a production of Hamlet, then Ian McKellen, or Patrick Stewart, shouldn't be in a production of Hamlet.
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Who was the one saying sth about skirting around the rules when it comes to insults? Sounds like we hit a jackpot with it after all.
Not sure what you're saying, here.
That Lyn Farel's post is not helpful and sounds like it's written by a pretentious cunt, and not Lyn Farel, because it's using veiled attacks that do not cross the rules against basically everyone who disagrees with the status quo on this particular aspect of the rules.
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Who was the one saying sth about skirting around the rules when it comes to insults? Sounds like we hit a jackpot with it after all.
Not sure what you're saying, here.
That Lyn Farel's post is not helpful and sounds like it's written by a pretentious cunt, and not Lyn Farel, because it's using veiled attacks that do not cross the rules against basically everyone who disagrees with the status quo on this particular aspect of the rules.
And ModDisc has historically been a board with somewhat relaxed enforcement (unofficially) because of a need for candor. In other words, we tend to let things go a bit more here, largely because we don't want to be moderating posts expressing opinions about how we do things lest discussion of how we do things be discouraged. Muthafuckas be gettin' emotional 'bout dese forums, yo. Let's not derail the thread with it, though.
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Agreed. Let's talk about Chatsubo and how bad it was in the end.
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Agreed. Let's talk about Chatsubo and how bad it was in the end.
With an eye toward how that shaped the rules as they exist here, sure. Except we've pretty much already done that. Who's being a cunt now? Stop and be constructive, or dick off.
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One thing I will say about Chatsubo at the end - it's probably worth reading Silver Night's final straw thread there for a synopsis of the issues ....
http://www.eve-chatsubo.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=5415 (http://www.eve-chatsubo.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=5415)
Basically there was a war going on with some of the RP community hating the others and wanting them banned from life pretty much. And chatsubo was being used as the battleground with the bullets and bombs being the petition system and the moderation team being expected to keep score and handle the executions.
I'm not going to go into the rights and wrongs of the war. People who remember the time know where my loyalties were and I pretty much stand by everything I said and did back then.
But the more interesting point was that the forum was expected to be the weapon that people wanted to use to fight. Cosmo suffered in the end by stating his intention not to be co-opted into the conflict and ended up being accused of bias from both sides at various times and Silver Night's thread that I've linked was the final declaration of secession that led to chatsubo ultimately dying. I believe in the end Cosmo and the Chatsubo mods even tried adding an ignore function to the forum - but that wasn't enough - people didn't want not to be annoyed by their enemies - they wanted their enemies functionally barred and punished. There was no room for compromise.
Now entertainingly - Backstage did demonstrate something with absolute clarity that Chatsubo could not - that is who could, and who could not, play within a rigid set of forum rules and keep themselves under control. Cosmo's liberality and desire not to exclude anyone meant this remained something of an open hotly debated point up to the end - whereas Backstage's heavy and uncompromising moderation meant it became quickly obvious what the answer was. Revan and I ended up posting in Backstage with no issue or incident whereas many of our more fervent opponents discovered that everyone being expected to be civil and polite was something they actually couldn't stomach after all.
I'll be honest, despite my doubts about some of the moderation team here - you guys did play fair and I was pleasantly surprised - it was something of a relief even for me to be able to post in threads and not have a bunch of loony-tune flamers frothing with incandescent rage more than once. I have always found it very easy to discuss matters of eve with people when there is mutual respect (even if its the kind of respect guaranteed by moderator orbital strike cannons!)
But the pertinent point even today - is there is a dark side to these moderation discussions when talk of heavy punishment or restricting the other guys goes on - its usually about trying to use the forum mods as umpires in a private war. That ultimately, is what killed Chatsubo because people didn't want Cosmo to be "fair" they wanted him to purge their enemies and nothing less than complete contrition to that goal would have satisfied the factions that ultimately left and (somewhat briefly) came here. I think on balance its probably good that it did happen because I'm honestly glad that certain individuals got what they wished for and were evidently fed to their own machine. Which if nothing else, is pretty darkly humorous!
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Vincent has given a quite solid writeup including the conclusion that has properly fulfilled itself. We've got three pages with pointless details instead discussing the more important issues, one of the other aspects has been highlighted by me. Originally I wanted to write a more conclusive post about the good, the bad and the ugly, but reading that wankery was just too much.
Add in your response that trolls back, then tell me to go fuck off, so I'm not sure who's the bigger cunt of us two here.
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Vincent has given a quite solid writeup including the conclusion that has properly fulfilled itself. We've got three pages with pointless details instead discussing the more important issues, one of the other aspects has been highlighted by me. Originally I wanted to write a more conclusive post about the good, the bad and the ugly, but reading that wankery was just too much.
Add in your response that trolls back, then tell me to go fuck off, so I'm not sure who's the bigger cunt of us two here.
I'm not entirely sure what you are talking about? Would you care to rephrase with a little less swearing?
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My response wasn't aimed at you, I'm just slow at posting. ;)
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It wasn't aimed at you but Havohej.
Ah.
Oh well, for what it's worth - I do believe the tale of two forums is probably relevant to your own discussion regardless. You could see the evolution of Chatsubo into Backstage as what happens when a liberal regime of being about to tell a fool they are a fool turns into escalation, petition warfare and weaponising the moderation process. I mean, who is judging whether you are in the right to call a fool a fool in the first place? Why shouldn't the condemned have an answer? And where does it stop when it escalates? Eve RP'ers are a peculiar mix of extremely abrasive verbal speakers with very thin skins... You can look at chatsubo to see where it ends when the image macro guy gets his way you know. Its all out warfare followed by Armageddon and then post apocalyptic dictatorship of manners rising from the radioactive dust ...
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As to the bittervetting, it kind'a can be disheartening for those that feel enthusiastic about EVE. Yet, I think it's a reflection on the staten of the game. Then again, it'd be nice to to not have it in all threads, so maybe estabish some 'bittervet-free zones' or a dedicated 'bittervetting zone'?
Maybe just to tell them to slow down a bit and take a step back when they either start rambling and repeating ad nauseam the same thing, or either when it's just pointless bitter rage not even constructive, could be sufficient at first ? No need to curbstomp them every time at the first sign of negative comment or else we are seriously going into the slippery slope of "criticism is only good when it's positive". Especially since that's a really subjective action to take, a lot more than moderating insults or whatever.
Who was the one saying sth about skirting around the rules when it comes to insults? Sounds like we hit a jackpot with it after all.
Not sure what you're saying, here.
That Lyn Farel's post is not helpful and sounds like it's written by a pretentious cunt, and not Lyn Farel, because it's using veiled attacks that do not cross the rules against basically everyone who disagrees with the status quo on this particular aspect of the rules.
Yes, it is using what can be seen as veiled attacks and for that I apologize. But heh, if insulting all along at every opportunity is not behaving like a savage, well... whatever floats your boat.
I sure ain't calling neither my friends nor people I live with, or work with, or play with, all sorts of names either because I don't like them, or worse, just because it's cool, yo, to speak like an uncouth douche. FFS, grow up people.
Do we really have to get down to that level with sexist slurs and all that flowery shenanigans that some people seem to worship ?
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@Jade
That's why we wanted to discuss the right now situation, and not why backstage was formed next to chatsubo, which is not just in the past but also irrelevant as there is no alternative board with alternative rules anymore, and either you want to encompass the remnants of ~the community~ in one place or you don't. Both decisions are valid.
@Lyn
No need to apologize in the first place. It's astounding, however, how you can apologize for one thing and continue to do the same.
For the sake of Jade's nice response: The criticism on the strict moderation in regard to HTFU especially and blunt language does not come from the desire to spew insults and burn this forum down in flamewars of epic proportions but rather the observation that the protection of opinions/conservation of discussion culture has bred a culture where bullshitting, whining, bittervetting and being too dense to accept polite criticism is prevalent and could be cured by a good dose of direct opinions, even if it makes people uncomfortable because it might not coincide with their opinion of themselves.
The very fact that criticism against that particular (HTFU) aspect is met with faux moral superiority ("As a civilized person myself I do not see the need to stoop to insults like the douches over there." /sip ) instead a proper discussion about where the line should be drawn instead is quite telling.
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Vincent has given a quite solid writeup including the conclusion that has properly fulfilled itself. We've got three pages with pointless details instead discussing the more important issues, one of the other aspects has been highlighted by me. Originally I wanted to write a more conclusive post about the good, the bad and the ugly, but reading that wankery was just too much.
Add in your response that trolls back, then tell me to go fuck off, so I'm not sure who's the bigger cunt of us two here.
Up to this post, you contributed nothing at all to this thread.
@Jade
That's why we wanted to discuss the right now situation, and not why backstage was formed next to chatsubo, which is not just in the past but also irrelevant as there is no alternative board with alternative rules anymore, and either you want to encompass the remnants of ~the community~ in one place or you don't. Both decisions are valid.
@Lyn
No need to apologize in the first place. It's astounding, however, how you can apologize for one thing and continue to do the same.
For the sake of Jade's nice response: The criticism on the strict moderation in regard to HTFU especially and blunt language does not come from the desire to spew insults and burn this forum down in flamewars of epic proportions but rather the observation that the protection of opinions/conservation of discussion culture has bred a culture where bullshitting, whining, bittervetting and being too dense to accept polite criticism is prevalent and could be cured by a good dose of direct opinions, even if it makes people uncomfortable because it might not coincide with their opinion of themselves.
The very fact that criticism against that particular (HTFU) aspect is met with faux moral superiority ("As a civilized person myself I do not see the need to stoop to insults like the douches over there." /sip ) instead a proper discussion about where the line should be drawn instead is quite telling.
Now you're sort of contributing. You feel that discussion of the forum's genesis, or evolution from Chatsubo, is irrelevant. You also insist that there is no place else to post. You're entitled to these opinions, and welcome to express them reasonably, which you finally (almost) have.
(http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BlwIFiYIAAAaWXr.jpg)
The rules, their validity and the exercise of their moderation has been called into question elsewhere on this forum. Nobody else could be arsed to actually start a thread here in ModDisc about it, even after my explicitly inviting them to do so - twice - so, since I give a fuck about the forum and its users and the idea that started the forum four years ago, I started the thread myself. Knowing that it was inevitable for discussion of Chatsubo and its "downfall" to ensue, though not knowing the topic would draw Jade (though I'm glad that it has, because I dare say that other than Cosmo himself - and I'm not sure he's even allowed to post on this forum given CCP's current policies - nobody else is as well equipped as Jade to engage in discussion, let alone debate, of the hows and whys involved in all of that).
The simple fact, Desiderya, is that without a firm understanding of why the rules exist it is patently impossible to judge whether they are serving their intended aims well or whether they are, contrary to the desired effect, creating an atmosphere just as stifling to wide-spread participation as the more "liberal" (to use Jade's description - Cosmo's as well, I think?) application of moderation at Chatsubo.
Neither you nor Vince has supplied much in the way of opinion supporting why you think that letting someone behave like a total assclown with complete impunity, insulting and belittling posters with opposing opinions, dogpiling on them until they either obey the ignorant vocal minority or leave the forum and the RP scene altogether which is the much higher likelihood is a better way to go about things.
Even Jade, an outspoken proponent of Cosmo's approach to forum administration/moderation, acknowledges with candor that there came out of our approach a positive, if imperfect, result. I think that's about as much as we could have asked for, really, but I'd still like to hear ways that our users think the atmosphere might be improved in such a way as to promote a return to the higher levels of participation and content generation that we've seen in previous years, including the return to activity of some of the folks who're still playing the game but no longer active here.
Passive aggressive sniping at someone (Lyn, in this case) about veiled insults (which do, in fact, violate our rules) while composing lengthy posts with your own little veiled insult nuggets distributed throughout (http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=5963.msg99388#msg99388) isn't going to win you any "points", Desi. Your inability to understand that any discussion of a shift in our rules and/or their enforcement must come from a place of understanding their raison d'être isn't doing you any favors, either. You come into this thread complaining about wankery and flailing your own wank about like an asshole. You're neither banned nor even warned. You have the ability to click post. That, in itself, gives you as much freedom to contribute something useful to the discussion.
So instead of insults and bullshit, put in some fucking :effort: and state, in a reasonable, mature, adult tone, what you think we should be doing to address the thinskinned or the whining or the bittervetting - but do so knowing that Backstage has not and will not ever adopt the stance that everyone needs to HTFU and put up with all manner of abuse just to post and participate on these boards.
EDIT: OH, about there not being an alternative forum to post on. You and Vince have both insisted that Chatsubo is not a viable alternative, I think? Well, as has been stated, the board's still up. It's not locked or archived. You can, in fact, post there. I would even go so far as to explicitly state that I have no problem with threads there being linked here, as I assume Cosmo would not have a problem with the reverse. You have dozens of chat channels in game in which to link Chatsubo threads. If you want to post something that won't fly here, post it there and link to it wherever you think it will receive the most favorable attention. If people are interested in what you have to say and/or interested in participating in the topic with the Chatsubo ruleset, they will.
Chatsubo is not a viable alternative because you have decided it is not. There is no other reason.
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@Lyn
No need to apologize in the first place. It's astounding, however, how you can apologize for one thing and continue to do the same.
For the sake of Jade's nice response: The criticism on the strict moderation in regard to HTFU especially and blunt language does not come from the desire to spew insults and burn this forum down in flamewars of epic proportions but rather the observation that the protection of opinions/conservation of discussion culture has bred a culture where bullshitting, whining, bittervetting and being too dense to accept polite criticism is prevalent and could be cured by a good dose of direct opinions, even if it makes people uncomfortable because it might not coincide with their opinion of themselves.
The very fact that criticism against that particular (HTFU) aspect is met with faux moral superiority ("As a civilized person myself I do not see the need to stoop to insults like the douches over there." /sip ) instead a proper discussion about where the line should be drawn instead is quite telling.
Oh yes, sorry for the pastiche. It was definitely not intended /sarcasm
For a more constructive answer, cf Havo's above. I don't feel like repeating what he already wrote for brevity's sake.
I feel like this is going nowhere for me. I have carefully made my point in my first post in there in a - I hope - constructive manner, and now, I am really sorry that you have to resort to your usual ad hominems instead of a more constructive way to deal with the matter at hand. Calling the messenger a hypocrite with 'faux' moral superiority is certainly an interesting way to go, but how does that address the point ?
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That post you've linked took a few good hours of work/research over two days. It was quite clear at that point that A) debunking bullshit properly takes more effort than just c&p from some blog and B) there was a layman talking about things he does not fully understand (I'm sorry if I'm doing the poster an injustice, but it is my subjective opinion).
Let's agree to disagree, I was wrong with my perceived problems on this board and am going to HTFU a bit. Thanks for pointing me towards chatsubo. It is very helpful.
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Having read a few pages of this, decaffinated, I start with..
"What the fuck ..?"
I think I've been generally good at pointing out flaws and offering constructive criticism with out calling people assholes *and* I get to curse while I do it (yes, my father was a sailor, thank you very much, and cursing as an adult isn't done to make one cool, it is done because they are an adult, and they are finally allowed to use cursewords.)
When it comes to discussions and etc, and the important part for me is especially with the influx (regardless of size) of new people...
One should not approach a situation in the YOU ARE BAD AM I AM GOOD! mindset, the I AM RIGHT AND YOU ARE NEW AND THEREFORE WRONG AND IF YOU HAVEN'T READ ALL OF THE CHRONS AND THE 27,000 LINKS OF PLAYER WRITTEN LORE YOU MUST BE SHIT AND NO I DON'T EVEN LINK THEM IN MY ARGUMENTS TO HELP YOU BECAUSE YOU SHOULD KNOW! way.
That example in all caps is how the passive agressive shit starts. Not the person writing in he caps. That person is usuually just making a statement that criticising but not constructive that boils down to "No, because Lore" regardlss of its length. And I'd seen tons of em. I'd *run into them* as responses to my own posting. And I'm almost of the mind that they're not even the capslock poster's purposeful fault.
The posts smack of the metaphorical intellectual quite accidentally speaking in the assumption that they are reminding someone of something and just *simply don't realize* the person never knew it - so in an attempt to treat someone as an equal (allbeit a slightly absent minded one) the pebble rolls down the snowslope, because it ends up looking patronizing/condescending .. take your pick of the multisyllabic term for "being a an uppity know-it all dick" that you like. Fortunately I don't take shit personally enough cept on bad days, and my response would be, "Do you have the links for that for my reference?"
I'm not even going to dig through my old ass posts for examples. Because I'm lazy.
If someone can't read 'internet tone' (and I'll be egotistical here - a lot of people can't, at all, and a lot of being are only passable at it, and I'm pretty good at it) the passive aggressive shit arrives as a response to capslocked example. Then capslocked person, quite rightly, sees passive aggression. And then it bounces back and forth getting worse and worse, derailing the purpose of the thread and getting personal, until finally one of us snaps and pretends we're in localchat.
There's going to be frictioning and fractioning no matter what as time goes on cause that's what people with the ability to spread out and make their own tribes do. There is a level of rules that need to be handled - not to make people's feelings feel better - but to make people feel like they're part of an actual human community. A person's ability to fight doesn't make them weaker than someone else, or stronger than someone else, just different than someone else. A person's inability to follow a rule, same applies.
So the main issue I see is that all of the people who have been posting for the past few years have been doing it wr..
*is violently jerked out of view*
(in all seriousness, eve lore etc is a DAUNTING PILE to wade into. When new people post Things, a safer bet would be to instead of pointing out all the shit they've done wrong and getting to flex intellectual muscle BECAUSE YOU KNOW ITS TRUE CAUSE YOU HAVE THE SOURCE LINKS ARR ARR, its usually better to send them the links to all the stuff first that would help them put their story more in line with Lore without saying which parts are wrong first because 9 times out of 10, the person you are talking to is indeed also intellectualy muscley. THEN if they don't get it, or flatly ask "Eh, can you just tell me the pertinent bits (aka they TRUST YOU) play college professor with people.
Just my personal opinion.
And the three of you? Stop derailing the thread with your passive agressive shit and go kiss.
Edited to add: http://www.wimp.com/brainstormingwork/ .. watch it. I SAID WATCH IT! You need cristicism AND construction. Only one, or the other, or neither, is useless.
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And the three of you? Stop derailing the thread with your passive agressive shit and go kiss.
I don't think I was being passive at all. :(
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Yes you were. Instead of responding you should have instead wildly cackled with glee at your powers and abused the full extent of them.
(and in the second sentence after /Samuel L Jackson's epic voice-over.)
Either way I am running out of memory on the camera's memstick so start the damned kissing.
And none of this is constructive so this is my last post on this thought.
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faction war killed chatsubo.
live events killed backstage.
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faction war killed chatsubo.
live events killed backstage.
I did read that live events thread trainwreck in the catacombs earlier ... that was an interesting 180 from some of the people involved.
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faction war killed chatsubo.
live events killed backstage.
I did read that live events thread trainwreck in the catacombs earlier ... that was an interesting 180 from some of the people involved.
That was such a train wreck.
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I don't remember which thread that might be.
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If you don't mind a recommendation from a long dormant eve player with no active accounts...
• Create a 'RETIRED' title for those of us who aren't active in-game. It might be handy for moderators and other participants to get some perspective on the responses from retired players and gauge the vibrancy of the roleplay community. For example, if a vast majority of your forum participants aren't playing eve, it could identify another problem.
• Having immersed myself in the EVE community for many years, it's been my experience that forums in general have been a draining experience to be a participant in and glean something positive from. Individuals can't simply express their individual perspectives or vision for the world of New Eden because there are strict adherents to PF who will argue that individual license will interfere with others. There are also those who have different perspectives on the same area of interest who will argue their perspective because they 'invested so much time and energy' and thus feel like they should be the primary spokesman for that subset, and eventually it either breaks down because no one wants to listen or individuals will take a side in support of their friends or a faction. It's by this time that the original posters of the idea drop out of the conversation, because they feel like the scope of the discussion has diverted millions of miles from their original point. There's a persistent tone of apathetic apprehension, where the original discussion fails to deliver solid input from the community, but a minor point of controversy sparks a wider debate that ultimately never gets resolved. Is it the forum's place to resolve these differences of opinion that spread dissension between members of a community? Not necessarily, but I think it's worth recognizing that it has an impact on discussions here. What can you do about it? Well, despite the population of the game, the RP community is and always will be small in comparison. Perhaps making less of a personal investment in your 'concepts' of New Eden RP will allow you to be less critical or inflexible of other viewpoints? (That might not be possible for some people)
• In the later years of play when I was much less active due to RL and such that I saw a different side of actual IN-game RP. Specifically, very tight-knit groups of RPers who were suspicious of new faces (for a variety of good reasons), carried intense IC/OOC rivalries with other groups that were more than willing to spread to the new people they did accept, and a general sense of apathy toward people who may not have been established who tried to get their name out there only to receive static in the depths of space. I've suggested this before, but perhaps rather than simply organizing RP groups around specific factions or channels, instead organize troupes of roleplayers like a theatre company, who all abide by specific standards, rules, or perspectives of New Eden RP, then advertise their group in search of people with like-minded interests. It may not be as organic as people would appreciate, but it could open up some opportunities outside of the standard RP channel/faction dilemma that RPers are have been faced with for a while.
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Some people, like Mizhara for example, simply stopped participating after a temp ban, giving the appearance that a p.ban was issued where one was not.
You mention Miz and I’m glad because ...
FWIW, the reason Miz stopped posting was not actually that initial temp ban (he had several over the course of several years), it was that he came back on another account after an extended break, he immediately started posting in exactly the same problematic fashion as he had been posting before he left, and when the moderation team gave him a warning - and pointed out that his new account was not going to be considered a 'reset' on his record - he flipped his shit and ragequit. (I've said it a few times over the years in a variety of threads, but as a reminder, mods/admins DO see the IP address you use to post here, and we do make note of it if there's problematic behavior coming from multiple accounts at one IP address. No, before anyone suggests it, we don't use it for anything but admin/moderation-related stuff on the forum.)
Good to see that shitposting about absent people is alive and well in this place, from moderators even.
I quit these forums because moderators/admins gave out user information to others. I was hounded twice by non-mods in-game using the information only available to mods/admins on this forum. Which mod decided to give out the admin logs from Backstage to others, I don't know but it most certainly happened.
The thing about fresh starts are that they're not really fresh starts when moderators and admins of a place decide to hand these things out to anyone and everyone. Of course, it's up to Backstage's mods and admins to decide what's appropriate behaviour in these situations but at least you can be decent enough not to make shit up about people when they decide to leave a community behind. There's no need to take it personally when they decide to excuse themselves from somewhere. I would have thought it was a welcome decision, no?
Bans, temporary or not, annoy me greatly when I see mods and admins get away with worse (example up above) but they've never been enough to rile me up for long. Giving out personal information I trusted the Backstage team with keeping confidential like any decent place where there's a user registry? This kills the participation.
Please stop making shit up. It's unbecoming.
ETA: It's somewhat flattering to still be the subject of Jade's and Morwen's grudges, even after such an absence of course. It does seem a bit obsessive though, does it not?
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Your signature still makes me smile though, Miz. :cube:
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It's hardly a grudge Mizhara - I just found it somewhat amusing that a person who was vocally in favor of an extreme moderation regime at the end of Chatsubo was amongst the first to discover the consequences of such a regime at Backstage. Even you must admit some surprise and irony that it was you, not Revan or I who managed to get banned first from Backstage forums!
Or on a more serious note. Perhaps its worth re-evaluating some of your opinions and views Mizhara? My only issue with you really was I felt you were too fast to accuse others of rudeness and disrespect while you to often gave that precise perception through your own posting. I think historically you have been too blind to your own faults (most of us are of course).
Backstage is not my personal preference of forum - its not how I would ideally want moderation to be carried out. But it is how the admins and founders decided it should be and they did write a plain set of rules and guidelines to follow - perhaps in the end they were right and I was wrong - because it has seen virtually all of my long-term debating foes from Chatsubo vanquished in various ways - still the nub of it is : I can follow the rules as a requirement for entry here - why couldn't you?
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The Catacombs largely being composed of my posts in the early days of Backstage is and was no real issue for me, Jade. It's really not any part of why I left these boards or the RP community in general. Having my real life impacted by something very close to doxxing by an unknown admin/mod is on the other hand an egregious issue which shouldn't surprise anyone when it results in leaving. Or "ragequitting" as mods seem to prefer calling it.
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Nobody handed out any information. People figured out it was you ingame first.
You are just particularly bad at hiding your alts ingame because the way you talk and respond to certain things does not change.
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Yeah, that's why they quoted IP addresses at me. I tend to throw them into the conversation every once in a while.
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I do remember people saying Miz's IP address and the IP address of the accused alt were the same. I don't recall who said that to me or how they got the information, but I'd be willing to bet it came from Backstage - and I'd also be willing to wager only mods can compare IP addresses. So, if my hunch is correct, somewhere along the line a moderator let loose that Miz and [alt/person] were using the same IP address, and told someone else about it. Presumably, the grapevine carried it to me.
That itself isn't really "handing out personal information", as the IP address itself was never given. It is however using moderator abilities to determine and publicly 'out' an alt. Grey-area, imho.
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My actual IP address was quoted to me by non-mods. It was given out.
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Eve RP and RP discussion forum moderation / in-game channel administration has always been serious business.
One of my lingering regrets over eve is that people didn't spend as much effort building in-game organizations to fight in-game wars as they did socially-engineering feuds in the RP community to ostracize and outlaw their foes from decent society as a means of fighting the meta war without fighting in space.
If a mod betrayed confidence to out your alts Mizhara that's meta and might (depending on the ethical vision of the forum be "shitty play", but its hardly illegal or breach of personal info - its just Eve's metagame as practiced by its leading lights and grandest powers from top to bottom of the system.
That said, we ran SF's forum and we'd compare IP's of people applying to join back in the day - I don't think it ever came up if we could cross reference with Chatsubo - but I have an inkling Cosmo wouldn't have had a problem with that. As an organization we wanted people to be loyal to us and the cause and didn't want crappy infiltration alts stealing our stuff. Eve as a system doesn't really give many tools against corp theft and infiltration so it is left to the people running organizations to use things like IP checks to ensure one is who one purports to be when signing up.
edit-
I'm trying to remember the argument from years ago where I rolled up a disposable alt with a satirical signature to mock something Merdeneth was doing on IGS and I used my personal domain to host it (same one as the usual signature etc) there was some explosive threadnaught about it and people going on about how they'd exposed my nefarious alt use because i was image hosting from the same domain etc. Well yes, I guess they had. *shrug* but its probably on the same level as your complain about mods sharing your IP Mizhara. What we put on the net isn't really private info any more is the point. (I can't remember the exact chatsubo thread btw, but would be interested to look back and see what your opinion was on it back then!).
Anyway ta ta for now, I'm off for a weekend larping ... have fun all!
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I agree. As I run a community in a game where there's practically no infiltration danger or dangers of intel leaks etc and still do exactly these things on the forums, synching TS3 and forum user identities and more simply out of old habits and "better safe than sorry" mentality I have no issues with community managers keeping their own internal security checks and logs properly under control.
I take issue with giving out this information to others. Especially actually giving out someone's IP address to non-mods. If it had just been "Yeah, we can tell these two characters are from the same user" it'd be annoying but acceptable.
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Mizhara is your IP address 192.168.1.1?
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Well, I've got no idea who handed out the IP address if that actually happened. :ugh:
But people had pegged the alt in question as you ingame well before you made a forum account for it here (in fact, as I recall, pretty much on day one), and were absolutely convinced of it. The posting behavior here sure didn't help you either. The IP addresses may have been concrete confirmation for the staff of it, but frankly none of us likely even thought to look until after you had already started posting in what was probably referred to as a 'problematic' fashion.
As far as us giving a flying fuck about your IP address or any OOG details, we simply don't, unless you are breaking rules and moderator action is being taken. This is an OOC forum, so we don't really give a damn about your characters when it comes to moderation stuff - we are going to deal with you, the player. If you want to have an alternate account on the forum, that's fine, but if you don't want anyone (mod or otherwise) to know, you're probably a lot better off trying to stay under the radar than making lots of noise. People are smart and pick up on the ways people write and say things, and compare them. It's very easy to spot people that way.
And when it comes to how the admin tools on the forum work, in the event we need to check the IP address is actually the last thing I care to look at. I just click on the link that shows it in the bottom-right corner of the post, and it spits out the names of other accounts that have been used at that IP address, which is the only piece of information the staff even need.
Edit: Also, no grudge here, tbh. Someone else brought you up, Havo got the details wrong, I corrected him. When you weren't having posts thrown into the Catacombs left and right, you were usually a pretty productive poster. It's too bad you couldn't (or wouldn't, idk) manage to do less of the former.
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I am well aware the alt was/is known as mine. Nor do I have problems with piling both accounts' merits/demerits into one. My posting style and subsequent moderation wasn't an issue other than the annoyance at seeing moderators go without consequences for similar things. (This thread contains several examples, but it'd seem you've made the decision to give everyone a free pass in this particular thread?)
Anyway, I'm not here for any sort of restitution or anything for the release of my IP address. I was just told moderators and admins made claims of why I left Backstage that was simply erroneous.
On the actual topic itself, I have had some experience in the RP community over the years here and Backstage's rules and goals are not and should not be the focus of discussion. It has zero impact on the state of the RP community at the moment and will not change anything. If anyone has issues with the moderation and rulesets here, they can do exactly what we did and make something else and see if that proves better. In our case, the smoke-filled room proved very successful and created a venue that pretty much killed the lesser alternatives and that's exactly how these things should go. Marketplace of free ideas.
It's not going to do anything about the more important issues though, which is the in-game RP community and its challenges.
I have no solutions, only personal experience. The main hang-out for the community - the OOC channel - frankly became toxic. Disagreements with the echo chamber results in personal derision and even flat out attacks and even flexing of authority muscles to quell said disagreements. I am moderator. Don't argue with me. I'd certainly accept and understand that in actual cases of moderation issues but when it's used for suppressing conflicting views in issues unrelated to moderation (RP etiquette, PF discussion, etc). Well. This kills the community.
There were also examples of if someone had an IC issue with someone popular, they'd reap the consequences OOC. In fact, most conflicts IC in this game led to OOC conflicts and this is just flat out tiresome and depressing. Looking back through my Eve history I can plot a direct correlation between IC events, conflicts and the following OOC drama and the bouts of periodical depression I had to struggle with in real life. In fact, just today's revisiting of old issues I had considered dead, buried and behind me has had a significant impact on my day.
I suspect I'm not the only one. The Eve RP community in general makes shit personal, no matter what the conflict is. IC or OOC. The general mood of every larger segment of the community is combative, authoritarian, personal and negative. The reasons why aren't entirely easy to nail down, but the utter incapability to separate IC and OOC seems to be a factor. In my personal experience, I also feel the major venues are dominated by cliques that intentionally or unintentionally repel a lot of people if they're not toeing the line.
When these major venues are for all intents and purposes the only venues, this becomes a problem. This kills the community.
I have no solutions. I can't even say my experiences actually hold to be true, only that it's how I've experienced these things. The community is in-bred, incestuous and at times flat out toxic. When the major influential players in such communities perpetuate this, intentionally or not, this is what happens.
Of course, it doesn't help that the game itself remains unchanged and there hasn't been anything interesting or new to fuel RP in years.
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I'm trying to remember the argument from years ago where I rolled up a disposable alt with a satirical signature to mock something Merdeneth was doing on IGS and I used my personal domain to host it (same one as the usual signature etc) there was some explosive threadnaught about it and people going on about how they'd exposed my nefarious alt use because i was image hosting from the same domain etc. Well yes, I guess they had. *shrug* but its probably on the same level as your complain about mods sharing your IP Mizhara.
I know that argument. it was dire :ugh:
here (http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=995.0)'s what was left of the thread. There's about 2x as much that was catacombed (http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=1004.0), because the angry posting was even more angry.
anyway
it's one thing to suspect someone of being an alt. It's different to witch-hunt for one, and to torpedo someone's RP.
Scenario: someone makes new character, attempting to turn new leaf and all that, including a new forum profile. Admin says "aha!" and informs people. Great job. Now no-one can un-know that A is B, and thus, B's attempt at turning a new leaf is ruined. What was the point in that ?
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Havo got the details wrong, I corrected him.
And thanks for that. I don't remember where I got the idea from (that Miz had been t.banned and chose not to return to the forum after it), but someone told me that as part of my "welcome back from prison, let me bring you up to speed" crash course last year. There were several of these, which is why I forget who told me what now :p
Anyway, I'm not here for any sort of restitution or anything for the release of my IP address. I was just told moderators and admins made claims of why I left Backstage that was simply erroneous.
Sorry to misrepresent; without having had any contact with you this whole time (which I find quite unfortunate), it was all I had to go on =/
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Since we all have a free pass to be rude and unreasonable here, I would like to state:
Havohej is a sexy man beast and I shall ravage him. Rawr. :twisted:
BRING ON THE MODS!!!!
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u wot m8?
:cube:
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In fact, most conflicts IC in this game led to OOC conflicts and this is just flat out tiresome and depressing. Looking back through my Eve history I can plot a direct correlation between IC events, conflicts and the following OOC drama and the bouts of periodical depression I had to struggle with in real life. In fact, just today's revisiting of old issues I had considered dead, buried and behind me has had a significant impact on my day.
I suspect I'm not the only one. The Eve RP community in general makes shit personal, no matter what the conflict is. IC or OOC. The general mood of every larger segment of the community is combative, authoritarian, personal and negative. The reasons why aren't entirely easy to nail down, but the utter incapability to separate IC and OOC seems to be a factor.
Word. It's rather disappointing. Sadly common for RPers in general, but EVE's environment makes the IC/OOC divide even thinner here than it is in other communities.
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Hi, trying to be on topic here.
Backstage has been very helpful to me as a RPer. I was interested in RP before I participated. I watched the SF/Kimotoro Directive war with glee while I shopped for a home in nullsec to make my spaceship fortune. I actually had Jade Constantine blued 3 years before I ever RPed because I read the forums and thought it was cool that someone, anyone, could do things in this game.
When I first started RPing, I did it wrong. Oh man... I did it wrong. I had cliched tropes for my character, I would watch RP channels and use what I saw there in my own RP - even if I wasn't there, and best of all, I even had a skull background.... oh yeah, total badass cred there... SKULL BACKGROUND!
Some people were very helpful and told me to settle it down. Some even told me I was doing it wrong. Thank you.
No, seriously. Thank you Aldrith, Shalee, Raphael, Mitara, Eran, Vince, Esna, Ashar, Laerise, Koro, and anyone else who put up with my spazzy bullshit and made me the halfway decent RPer I hope that I am today.
Telling people they are wrong is ok. I think if you take the message from people like Vince and Desiderya aside from how they bluntly (and honestly) present them, you may actually have something. There is something to being honest.
I personally hate passive aggressive bullshit. I used to make propaganda for the US Army, so I'm pretty familiar with bullshit in general. While I've noticed that the rules of backstage have done an admiral job of cutting down, generally, on shitposting, they have also created a breed (if you will) of members who carefully toe those lines and shitpost away, within the boundaries of the rules. You can tell anyone how shitty you think they are and how wrong they are if you generalize your statement enough.
I almost felt relieved when I told someone from another Sabik corp that I didn't like what they did. It was honest. And this forum, while civil, seems to encourage dishonesty. Why? Because lets face it, RPers are against each other.
I think honesty is a good thing. I think we should be honest with each other even if feelings are hurt. I think maybe the "YDIW" rules should be dropped. Other than that I'm pretty ok with where Backstage is 4 years from when it was started, and about 2-3 years from when I found it.
MA is best pony
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Telling people they are wrong is ok. I think if you take the message from people like Vince and Desiderya aside from how they bluntly (and honestly) present them, you may actually have something. There is something to being honest.
The core of it, to me, is that yes, there is something to being honest. There's also something to not going all :effort: to be unnecessarily mean about it. There's a difference between saying, "Your whole thing is so contrary to existing PF or long-held and widely-established convention that it's impossible to interact with your thing IC at all," or something like that... and saying, "You're a stupid moron, you're bad and you should feel bad, have some pancakes."
Even if it is hilarious and entertaining, it isn't necessary or constructive, nor does it invite the person to a discussion about what they could improve about their thing. Just the opposite, in most cases, it either pushes them out of the RP scene altogether, or makes them withdraw to their small "echo chamber" group which then sticks to themselves rather than gaining a better understanding of IC New Eden and generating content for the rest of us to engage with.
I feel that this is what our approach is designed to (hopefully) prevent.
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Karmilla Strife brings up a good point that I think would be a good change for Backstage. Right now, the "No urdoinitrong" rule encompasses even constructive criticism. Even the most friendly advice can be construed as urdoinitrong and fall into moddable territory. This isn't conducive to a healthy community as it raises the threshold for engaging with the derpery in question, rather pushing people into ignoring or dismissing people who could become quality contributors to the community.
Alter the rule. Only make asshole criticism moddable and err on the side of "eh, we'll allow it" when you're in a bit of doubt.
None of this fixes the overall problems mentioned earlier, but it might slightly improve Backstage.
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Karmilla Strife brings up a good point that I think would be a good change for Backstage. Right now, the "No urdoinitrong" rule encompasses even constructive criticism.
But it doesn't, imo.
Alter the rule. Only make asshole criticism moddable and err on the side of "eh, we'll allow it" when you're in a bit of doubt.
This is actually general practice; there're dozens of reports of YDIW where we look at it and two or three of us will comment "I don't see it." or something similar and leave it be. I'm not saying there're never instances where we're too strict/sensitive on the trigger, but ideally we're supposed to be subjective about these things on a case-by-case basis. Constructive, non-asshole criticism and advice are what we want to see.
Perhaps we need to review our practices internally, rather than actually altering the rules?
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This could very well be the case. Perhaps make the rule about urdoinitrong clearer by emphasizing that constructive criticism is promoted and encouraged? I don't know, haven't been here for a long time.
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If it's any consolation. Even the most bitter opponents here pale compared to the raging inferno of hate & loathing I sometimes see between opposed Ingress players.
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Telling people they are wrong is ok. I think if you take the message from people like Vince and Desiderya aside from how they bluntly (and honestly) present them, you may actually have something. There is something to being honest.
The core of it, to me, is that yes, there is something to being honest. There's also something to not going all :effort: to be unnecessarily mean about it. There's a difference between saying, "Your whole thing is so contrary to existing PF or long-held and widely-established convention that it's impossible to interact with your thing IC at all," or something like that... and saying, "You're a stupid moron, you're bad and you should feel bad, have some pancakes."
Even if it is hilarious and entertaining, it isn't necessary or constructive, nor does it invite the person to a discussion about what they could improve about their thing. Just the opposite, in most cases, it either pushes them out of the RP scene altogether, or makes them withdraw to their small "echo chamber" group which then sticks to themselves rather than gaining a better understanding of IC New Eden and generating content for the rest of us to engage with.
I feel that this is what our approach is designed to (hopefully) prevent.
It might be what the intent is, Havo, but you have to remember there's two parts to rule enforcement on this forum. This rule has bred a culture where a very large portion of posters kneejerk violently to any kind of criticism, constructive or otherwise, and either flip their shit or report it for YDIW when it really shouldn't be. And then if/when we choose not to act on the report because it is, bluntly, a stupid report to make, there's even more shitflipping. It doesn't help that because of how people are with any kind of criticism, others have said "fuck it" to the (apparently) massive amount of effort involved in telling someone they are doing something the wrong way in a fashion that gets past the filters of even the most sensitive of kneejerking wallflowers, and either post like Vince and serve up a nice steaming cup of "listen here, you little shit", or engage in the passive-aggressive kind of line-dancing that Karm speaks of here:
I personally hate passive aggressive bullshit. I used to make propaganda for the US Army, so I'm pretty familiar with bullshit in general. While I've noticed that the rules of backstage have done an admiral job of cutting down, generally, on shitposting, they have also created a breed (if you will) of members who carefully toe those lines and shitpost away, within the boundaries of the rules. You can tell anyone how shitty you think they are and how wrong they are if you generalize your statement enough.
How we enforce the rule itself may not change, but the perception of the rule, even to this moderator, is that criticism is generally going to get reported no matter how politely or constructively it is given, and that posters will expect that action be taken.
Our enforcement of the rule is only part of the problem. Other people need to get it through their skulls that unless someone is going full Vinski on someone (love you to pieces Vince but you're the best example here) or otherwise being a dick about it, they should HTFU and accept that not everyone is going to like or accept what they do, and that, god forbid, they may actually be wrong.
I'm not sure which is the bigger problem, but given how the discussions on posts reported for potentially YDIW posts usually go, I think it very slightly edges into the poster side of things. I'm not exactly sure how much of the internal stuff can (or needs to) be changed, since we can say "no, we're not moderating that" all we want, but it doesn't stop people from making further reports that we're going to say "no" to, or stop them from spinning around and raging that we're letting someone dare to criticise them.
And as I said my first long post in this thread, I'm usually the one going "that's not YDIW" or "this person needs to HTFU and get over themselves, it's nowhere near the bounds of 'we need to moderate'" in those kinds of reports.
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Karmilla Strife brings up a good point that I think would be a good change for Backstage. Right now, the "No urdoinitrong" rule encompasses even constructive criticism.
But it doesn't, imo.
Alter the rule. Only make asshole criticism moddable and err on the side of "eh, we'll allow it" when you're in a bit of doubt.
This is actually general practice; there're dozens of reports of YDIW where we look at it and two or three of us will comment "I don't see it." or something similar and leave it be. I'm not saying there're never instances where we're too strict/sensitive on the trigger, but ideally we're supposed to be subjective about these things on a case-by-case basis. Constructive, non-asshole criticism and advice are what we want to see.
Perhaps we need to review our practices internally, rather than actually altering the rules?
I had been thinking about posting the following before this post was made, so I guess I should do so now.
Two memories surfaced. The first was a response I made to a discussion about a post modded for YDIW, in order to perhaps make it more clear where the line lies:Perhaps it would be helpful for the discussion to explain why the post below was not moderated, as it could still be interpreted as YDIW?
Istvaan Shogaatsu : I would make him behave with cool and less crazed. Give him some more dignity. 8) He deserves it. I lost quite a bit of respect for the character both IC and OOC after Silas' Festus.
I didn't see it, and that post would indeed probably qualify for moderation. We don't see every single post, or when we do we might not read closely enough to realize it needs moderation.
:eek:
In the light of this new knowledge, I've edited my post:
Istvaan Shogaatsu : I would make him behave more cool and less crazed. Give him some more dignity. 8) He deserves it. I lost quite a bit of respect for the character both IC and OOC after Silas' Festus. [Edit: In no way should this be taken as YDIW, it's just that my perception of Istvaan was altered after the Festus. Can't argue about tastes. :bear:]
Better?
I still feel like that if I have to put disclaimer on a post like that, then the moderation may be too...sensitive. I also wonder what is "closely enough". Because if you look for something, you're more likely to find it, even if it's not there.
This second was this thread (http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=4568.0), created not too long after the first thread, discussing another post that was modded for YDIW. As I commented, I did not see the YDIW in this one as well.
I get the impression that there are more discussions about posts that are modded for YDIW, than discussions about posts NOT modded for YDIW. If this observation is correct, it may also be an indicator wether moderation IS DOING IT WRONG!....or not. ;)
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I totally just spent a half-hour looking through all the reports trying to find one on your post because I misread what you said. :oops:
IDK why Silver would've called that YDIW considering there was a similar post in that thread that after a short debate about whether it constituted YDIW or not we decided it didn't - for the same reasons I wouldn't have said your post there was YDIW: you were suggesting what you would do but not making a positive or negative assessment of what you would do compared to the other person.
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I've found backstage extremely useful as a tool for learning how to format 3000 lines of text.
It is my eventual dream to become the forums' equivalent of Quackbot.
Sometimes I may even use it for RP reasons.
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@Che: I agree with Morwen, I wouldn't have found that post in its original form moddable, even if it were reported.
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Karmilla Strife brings up a good point that I think would be a good change for Backstage. Right now, the "No urdoinitrong" rule encompasses even constructive criticism.
But it doesn't, imo.
Alter the rule. Only make asshole criticism moddable and err on the side of "eh, we'll allow it" when you're in a bit of doubt.
This is actually general practice; there're dozens of reports of YDIW where we look at it and two or three of us will comment "I don't see it." or something similar and leave it be. I'm not saying there're never instances where we're too strict/sensitive on the trigger, but ideally we're supposed to be subjective about these things on a case-by-case basis. Constructive, non-asshole criticism and advice are what we want to see.
Perhaps we need to review our practices internally, rather than actually altering the rules?
Havohej, you may recall that an alternative moderating approach was discussed in the smoke-filled room. One where moderation largely stood back, people were permitted to express their opinions. If things got out of hand, discussion with those in private was preferable to public evidence of moderation. If things still spiralled out of control with people playing forum games moderation could be swift and arbitrary.
We could trial this type of moderation in a separate section, move any threads that are getting very hot there. If you're interested, I'd prefer to discuss this further in private.
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Other people need to get it through their skulls that unless someone is going full Vinski on someone (love you to pieces Vince but you're the best example here) or otherwise being a dick about it, they should HTFU and accept that not everyone is going to like or accept what they do, and that, god forbid, they may actually be wrong.
In my humble opinion, just catacombing those posts that are 'full Vinski' or 'otherwise being a dick about it' (which sounds to me like there's a similar quantity of impolitness implied), is by far too little. People should, in general, be able to stick to the rules of simple politeness. Honesty is a good thing, yes, but no one needs to be impolite to be honest, really. And if one thinks that someone is a dickhead, there really is no need to communicate that: Not saying that isn't dishonesty, especially if no one asked for that opinion.
Point is, as soon as somone starts with attacking one of the other posters, be this directly or indirectly, chances are that conversation spirals away from the topic at hand and towards a heap of dickery of one kind or the other. If the aim of the forum here is to discuss and debate topics instead of people piling over one another angrily, then impolitness shouldn't be tolerated.
And I say this even though I have been moderated and didn't see at first why. But after some people did some explaining to me, I saw that I did in fact say something that insulted people - not intentionally, but none the less. Stuff like that will happen, especially as there are cultural differences between users that can lead to unintentional insults (and that's I feel what happened to me, there). But still I agree, in hindsight, with getting moderated as a) it was a post that apparently insulted people and b) it gave me the chance to learn something about other people's mentality and to avoid unintentionally insulting them in the future (hopefully).
Tl;dr: One can criticise positions honestly, without being impolite to the person holding them. Thus, people should stay polite, if necessary motivated by force of rules. If people aren't swayed by civilized debate, insults won't convince them either.
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What Nico said.
Like most people here I have found backstage of incredible help as a bridge between core RPers, RP factions and groups of the community, and a bridge that allowed people to enrich their respective RPs to incredible highs sometimes, with a produced content that was quite exceptional. So yes, it is a forum on steroids. Or was.
While some people might bask into contentious discussion and dialogue, I have to admit that reading and taking part in a forum where people can't just stop being uncouth, rude, or veiled passive aggressive, is extremely tedious. You basically spend your time trying to speak about content, to find yourself glued into OOC conflicts, either through old fashioned insults (ala chatsubo), or either as Karm pointed, through that new culture of passive aggressiveness targeting groups vague or general enough to get away with it, when it actually targets someone in particular, but since it's most of the time between those two players, and with a few witnesses aware of the issue, even if you report it for passive aggressive flamebait because you know you are the target, nobody will mod it since the mods will simply retort "I don't see it".
Of course you don't. The offender was precisely hoping for you not to see it.
Well I don't know for you, but it is indeed extremely tedious to take part into that kind of atmosphere. Instead of mods acting on weird stuff like Che's example (where the hell was anything wrong with that post ? I didn't understand it when it happened and still fail to see it) for obscure YDIW reasons, mods should act a lot more like they use to do at times, putting warnings to calm down at the first sign of bullshittery and passive aggressive.
Mods should also be reviewed fully for freely and continuously voicing their opinions of people violating the rules or circumventing the rules or whatever by using full derogatory sentences and words without any repercussion for them.
Mods should be held at the same, if not higher, standards than anyone else.
Note : by the way, what I did above is exactly what Karm and I are precisely denouncing above, and also something that I probably have done here and there again, is to point at nothing special while not naming who is the target, and getting away with it. And in my case here about mods, it is Morwen of course. In any case, if you don't listen to me for whatever reason - that I could be coloured by my background, which may be true - just listen to Nico above with the same basic criticism about the same issue, that can be found in the quote and the first paragraph of his post.
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(https://31.media.tumblr.com/adc15505a5890005c03fb721b9cbdac4/tumblr_inline_n9uoxvEnfc1rqjgh8.gif)
EVE RP/Mods summary.
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The problem with moderating every single accusation of "veiled shit targeted at me" is sometimes it's really not and someone is just being overly touchy and we, very subjectively, have to do our best to tell the difference. It isn't perfect, but reporting a post also can't be a programmed response (i.e.: I report you, you get ban! I win forums! Yay!)
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Well, Havo, I see that it's a difficult thing with veiled insults and what is percieved as such and that in the end it boils down to the (inetr-)subjective judgement of the moderators. But as I said in my first post in this thread:
Imho the forum rules here seem to say: "Stick to basic politeness or your post will get moderated." This is in my opinion also very effective to keep discussion on topic instead of spiraling down into mud-slinging contests. So I don't think that the rules in that department are too restrictive.
I also feel that the moderators do in general a good job at putting the rules into practice, acting with sound judgment.
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The problem with moderating every single accusation of "veiled shit targeted at me" is sometimes it's really not and someone is just being overly touchy and we, very subjectively, have to do our best to tell the difference. It isn't perfect, but reporting a post also can't be a programmed response (i.e.: I report you, you get ban! I win forums! Yay!)
Yep. It's something that you can't do much against. And people don't hesitate to abuse this as much as they can since they can't insult each other openly.
All in all it's mostly criticism against the userbase (including mods as users), not the moderation team in itself.
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You know you are creating waves when your post wakes the antediluvians from their slumber. Good to see you are still alive Jade.
We are eight pages long, still skirting the issue. Nothing has been resolved. Those whom cared have left the conversation, some deleted their accounts. That my friend is failure of intent staring you straight to face - no matter how you much you like to indulge in denial. Instead mods, apart from Morwen (Morwen, like bowties, is cool), hide behind their egoistic attitudes and passive-aggressive bullshit - or sit silence in the shadow of the more prominent personalities. If you call them out for it, you get smugged or banned as the Tolerance Hammer smites those committing thought crimes. You say you wanted to get away from cliquishness and egos. YOU are the clique and the ego. YOU have become what you tried to get away from. That, my friend, is why I am saying what I am saying. I was a proponent of Backstage, of heavy moderation and strict conduct. However, the original soul what we set out to create is gone from these forums. Your behaviour is an everlasting testament to it.
Silver, you are an obtuse cunt. You weren't always like that but you've slowly but surely turned sour like milk. You may dress your opinions in droll dribble of words and behind a thick veil of passive-aggressive dickery, but I call it out as it is. It's easy to skirt the rules when you have no accountability, no? Not only do you miss the point of my post, but you hang up on merely on the language. Here, let me he help you a little and spell it out for you; I could, and would, post my criticism in non-offencive language. I am fully capable of doing so. The reason why I not not doing so is because it does not matter if I do. The end result is same. This way when the train to Tolerance Camp comes I can at least be entertaining on my way there. My opinon on you really boils down to this fact: Someone disagrees with you, and you retort them with essentially what amounts to "GoBk2WoW". I find it just sad that when put against the wall, that is all you surmount to behind your wall of text.
Havo, while I do like you, you are riding the same dick train to buttfuck county as your best mate Silver here. You, more than him, get powermad with the your rights. You spew a shit ton of passive-aggressive bullshit and if someone gives you a dose of your own medicine it's off to banville with them. Someone doubts this? Ask Andy how'd that work out for him. I don't have time to watch you play princess with Silver in your ivory castle, so get the fuck over yourself and take it as you give it, or stop posting.
To end this post, I'll go out with something positive. I'd like to thank all of the people who've taken my criticism, my bad attitude and still stuck with me and been able to listen to what I've had to say. I would also like to say it's been a pleasure and a privilege to help you out with your respective conundrums or bumps in the road. Those able to listen and learn, you da real MVP.
I think I will do as Silver suggested and go wander the desert. You know where to find me.
I leave you with this post Backstage;
(http://www.quickmeme.com/img/11/11fb22e667374a49cd0aced462da433573558ce4ffd4f36ac82de410f78df01d.jpg)
(http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view4/1324222/mic-drop-charlie-murphy-o.gif)
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^ Drama queen.
Inb4 catacomb.
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^ Drama queen.
Fukken lol
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For the record, I was not entertained. Just an observation.
It didn't even make me laugh. There was no humor, no punchline, the delivery was bad, and it earned "I will probably be banned for this BUT.."
3/10. Could do better.
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So obviously that post was reported. In this board (that is, ModDisc), we've traditionally had more relaxed moderation so that people who join in a discussion about the forum and its moderation can speak freely - understanding that most of the time, if a person feels a need to start a thread here, nerdrage is going to be involved.
So I'm not going to Catacomb the post, or the trollish replies to it.
Vince has been behaving like Ashar did in the early days, lately. Provoking moderation, pushing the envelope, etc. I don't really care to comment on any of that, besides saying it's been entertaining but that sort of posting really belongs on FHC, 4chan, I dunno, Reddit? 9gag? One of those other internet shitholes? (The only one I frequent is 4chan, so fuck Reddit and 9gag. Oh, and tumblr #trigger)
Three specific points I'll respond to, though:
That's the second time I've been called passive aggressive. I'm not. People who know me well, I think, will tell you I'm pretty straight forward if I really have a problem with you. I expect Miz, Jade, even Andy himself, with whom I had an IC war with years ago, would agree with that (though Andy's not posting here anymore - which brings me to the second point of address...). If you think I'm passive aggressive, fuck you. Direct enough?
Andy has been banned several times from this forum for being a fucking asshole. Our bans escalate. 3-day, 7-day, 30-day, PBAN. Andy's last ban was 30-day, putting him in line for a PBAN on the next fuckup. He got moderated for trolling - a post which was reported, which I had no intention of moderating (and I stated as much), but another mod expressed intent to moderate at their earliest convenience. On Backstage, it only takes ONE of us to say "That's inappropriate, it's getting moderated." So, to save that person some time and effort, I went ahead and catacombed the offending posts and the replies directly to those posts.
Then Andy comes to troll me for moderating him for trolling. Now, generally, if a ban is going to be activated, there's discussion about it. I looked at Andy's warning/ban tracker thread and saw that he'd already had his 30-day and immediately started shitposting as soon as he could post again - at which point, the PBAN was discussed, but nobody pushed button (despite apparent consensus on the subject). So, yeah... call it what you want. If I see you troll any moderator for moderating your shitty post, I'm going to ban you. Don't care who you are. That ban is going to be the next step up in the escalation of bans, according to your warning/ban tracker thread.
The final point I'll address is this:
I could, and would, post my criticism in non-offencive language. I am fully capable of doing so. The reason why I not not
I've seen similar sentiment expressed by even worse posters, here and on other boards where shitposting isn't allowed.
I cut the quote off because in the end, the reason why doesn't matter. I don't particularly give a shit what convoluted, self-serving, whiney fucking cunt rationalization a shitposter has to "justify" their shitty online behaviour. This forum has specific rules and detailed guidelines explicitly posted telling you not to behave that way here. We do our best, by design, to subjectively give everyone who posts a fair bit of leeway/latitude/whatever you want to call it.
All we ask is that you act like a fucking grown-up and don't be a raging shithead. For some people, apparently, that's an unfair requirement.
Was that passive-aggressive of me? If you think so, then you are one of the people who has too hard a time avoiding being a shit spewing, nerd raging fucking spaz of an internet spaceship neckbeard and you need to grow the fuck up.
I don't have time to find cute gifs of comedians dropping microphones.
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(https://missdreamymarie.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/tumblr_mmi198ciub1qasthro2_250.gif)
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It's very early in the morning, so forgive me if this is a bit disjointed:
I try to be polite and post in a restrained way. I know that that can come off as passive-aggressive - and I suppose in the sense that I am certainly sometimes frustrated or annoyed or angry and try to remove that from my reaction or posts, perhaps it is. Certainly I am sometimes passive when I wish I could be aggressive. More emotive posting, while satisfying (see my final post on Chatsubo, for example) are for me the opposite of useful for moderation. I take the role of moderator here seriously, and I think I would be doing the job a disservice if I didn't try to keep an impartial view and maintain as much objectivity as possible. I'm interested in maintaining this forum as a place people can talk about Eve things - and that is more important to me than getting caught up in whatever my personal feelings are on some subject, poster, etc. I'm sorry that your opinion of me is so negative. While your lack of consideration for the rules here has been a problem for me as a mod here, I always liked and respected you as a fellow player. I've enjoyed those occasions we interacted in-game.
I don't think moderation here has been perfect, and I doubt it ever will be perfect. I think that the mod team has done they best that they can, as honestly as they can, which in a community as old and interconnected as Eve RP can be a challenge. I'm sure we sometimes go too far, or not far enough. Sometimes we let discussion get in the way of taking action, or take action too hastily. No doubt we will again in the future. It's the nature of the thing. I can only hope that we continue to do our best.
I think threads like this, now and then, help us calibrate things a bit. Certainly I think this section has been simultaneously one of the biggest pains and one of the most valuable parts of the board from a moderation standpoint. Both the good and bad feedback tells us something about how we are doing our job.
One recurring theme we see when people are upset about moderation is the idea that it doesn't matter how you say a thing, so long as the core information is the same. That's not really the case, words have power (particularly in a medium where they are the sole avenue of expression) and people use specific words to say the 'same' thing for a reason. I'm not talking about using profanity here, either. While it has a lot of potential to cause problems, it isn't a problem in and of itself.
Last thing, I would encourage everyone to read the Mission Statement, Rules, and FAQ. I've put that in moderation posts often enough, but seriously. If you haven't, or haven't lately. It's something that I frequently refer to when deciding on how to moderate. I think it can tell you more about the idea of what Backstage is than most anything else.
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I'll give you some Advice Silver: courtesy of my mother, ok?
"A man will only flip out and call you a cunt if he can't manage to fuck you."
My mother is a wellspring of wisdom.
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I thought that the ruleset here might stifle discussion too much, born as it was as a reaction to the less rigorous rules of Chatsubo. Perhaps it has stifled discussion, but the decline of Eve itself, and particularly the RP niche, has done more to put a dampener on things. It was rough at times, but I do miss the cut and thrust of the arguments that were had on Chatsubo.
What this place really needs more than anything else is more active contributors.
Perhaps a way forward is to acknowledge that Eve is entering its twilight years now, and consider the games that might be potential successors and try to embrace them. For example, I'm betting a fair few old Eve players will be poking around in Elite Dangerous, which has plenty of sandbox PvP scope it seems.
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I had another random thought..
The slowing of EVE RP could also be considered a measure of 'stability' as opposed to 'decline'. After all, the "adventure" ends eventually and it becomes day to day. With "new" people I could RP quite a bit - characters my char has known for years its much like a RL "hey whats up / not much / not much here either" synonym.
For me this isnt bad or dull. We don't need to be consistently living in EVETV's Real World! House where as producer grabs people of opposing factions and tapes them living in a house every season. ;) I remember once there was sme long drawn out argument on IGS once, and (did I mention this already?) Ava sighed and wen, "Screw it guys, lets drink and have a barbecue" which led to the oddest collection of people in the same location being rather civil and .. in a strange and beautiful way, *human*, which with all the random black and forth verbal sword play of IGs and summit talk not beingincluded in this - though it started as a little .. nervous is the wrong word -- stiff maybe, strange? -- what developed that RP-evening was a level of humanity not often seen in capsuleers (that didn't involve love or porn. YES, TWO WOMEN HAD COVERSATIONS THAT PASSED THAT WHATEVER TEST!!)
But at the same time we have to remember, new people DO come in. And maybe as jaded as our characters might be, hey, flick a little ember bck into the ashes of their interest oft the world for these people's sakes. This way they get to have some fun as well. :)
And s for thr backstage aspect... as much as it may look like sheer snarky DUMPAGE is happening on the idea of amarrian dinosaurs as the first (and hilariously interesting example that comes to mine)... I have this .. sneaky suspicion.. actual thought is going into it as well that just isn't leaking through the generic bitter as we're crystallized into this decade of lore.
Cause hey, why not? ;) There's always got to be at least ONE weird planet SOMEWHERE. and that sort of idea is intruguing. I have undefined 'homeworlds' described in some of Ari's stories that have freaky weather patterns, deadly dangerous oceans, etc. Though we cant exactly make sweepingcvhanges .. lets say.. *anymore* in the sense of a generalized copncept ideal, there is room for quirky fine tuning *everywhere* still, in every faction.
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My post is not on topic, I have not read most of these posts, I just saw that Jade had posted in here though and wanted to say -
My sec status is still negative from our fighting you in the Amarr/Minnie warzone. Goddamnit.