Incoming longpost. You've been warned.
I feel that we are directing the banhammer at the wrong people. Personally, it is not slavers that I would like to see banned. I have difficulties to get into the Summit myself, more and more, precisely because of a whole different kind of roleplayers. All the emo characters that like to lurk around, and all the strawman alts that seem to pop everyday. To my eyes they are the ones spoiling the atmosphere.
If you actually spent more time in the channel watching what happens, and less time arguing for the sake of arguing, you would have noticed that the people who are having the modhammer swung at them lately are the very same people you're complaining about there. It is those people - the players who are prone to making strawman alts, drama llamas and attention whores - who fall on the wrong side of the "slaves" issue.
Not the people or characters who have even the slightest amount of common sense or respect for the other people in the channel.
What Casi said earlier is entirely true. If you think that a policy intended to curb slave presence in the Summit, and punish Holders for the misbehavior of their slaves, is a segregationist and biased policy, you might want to stop flapping your gums for a minute and take note that there are at least five people on the moderator team who are directly or indirectly involved with Amarrian slavery,
including three Holders who all own slaves.
I beg you again, do not start to shun decent slavers for what other morons do with slavery.
Again, if you spent more time paying attention to the channel (I know it's excruciatingly painful at times, HTFU) instead of arguing for its own sake, you'd have noticed this is not something we are doing or intend to do. In fact, the
decent slavers have approved of the idea, because as stated earlier, a real slave has no business being on the channel in the first place, and if they're misbehaving, that is a failure of their Holder to rein them in. As for the BDSM fetish fantasy alts, well, they're the ones calling themselves slaves. We can't really just give them a pass because we
think they're just a bunch of BDSM fetishists that call themselves slaves.
We also have
not been singling out Holders or slaves or Amarrian RP. In fact, it could be argued we're helping clean it up by getting rid of the strawmen who think :tonyg: needs help shitting up the faction even further than he's already done. We've
always been going after attention-whoring drama llamas who make the channel a toxic waste dump. The current flavor of the month for those people just happens to be strawman Amarrian or slave alts lately whose sole purpose is the very thing we've been trying to keep out of the channel, and as a result, guess what issue finds itself being brought to the fore a lot? That's right: "slave" characters and the irresponsible Holders who let them use the channel in the first place.
tl;dr: Strawmen alts, drama-llamas and attentionwhores have flavors of the month just like most other parts of the game. The current FOTM just happens to be "create moustache-twirling evil slavers that abuse slaves who spew stupid drama all over." The people who aren't causing trouble are not in danger of getting caught in the crossfire.
I believe that some of the moderators have an interest in having "rules" because it is easier for us to deal with offenders in the short term if we can point to a rule and say "...no, you violated THIS." than have to deal with the extended back-and-forth about moderator bias and what not.
At the same time, the best rules are the flexible ones, IMO.
So, it comes down to the apparent impartiality of the mod team vs. the ability to flexibly handle any situation. I'd love to lean more toward the latter, but if a mod moves without a specific rule being violated (and sometimes even with) it seems like an inevitability they'll be accused of moderator bias, arguments breed resentment, appeals will be tossed around forever, etc...
As Esna says here, the issue of using explicit rules, versus depending on moderator discretion, is a lose-lose scenario for the moderators. It doesn't matter what we do: the mods are always going to be fighting an uphill battle against people who want to game the system and cause trouble. Use explicit rules, and people will use it as an excuse to come up with and exploit loopholes. Go with the latter, and there's going to be
constant accusations of moderator bias and power abuse coupled with a whiny bleating of "BUT THE RULES DIDN'T SAY I COULDN'T" and "SHOW ME ON THE RULES WHERE IT SAYS THIS IS BAD" over a moderator even twitching an eyebrow at someone, let alone giving someone an informal warning to stay away from the line.
Ironically, the people who bitch loudest about mod bias are often the ones who are causing trouble and in the crosshairs of the modhammer. Also noteworthy: if there were actually an appreciable amount of mod bias, there would've been a lot more bannings and mutings than there have been, and it would've started a while back instead of letting things snowball to the point where the moderator team was forced to act.
In the end we do need
some rules and guidelines. We don't need a library of them, but we need something. If all that was necessary to get the point across was "if you're going to act like genitals, be aware you're going to be kicked in them
very hard" we'd probably have already gone with that and this discussion probably wouldn't be happening.
tl;dr: People are going to bitch at and about the mods no matter what they do. Some people want draconian, some people want the wild west. Our job is to keep the channel in a state that's usable for as many people as possible: this means taking out the trash when it gets too smelly.
On a more personal note, what Ava said is very true. Of the characters who have come into the Summit who self-identify as "slaves", I can't think of even
one that wasn't there causing drama and shitting up the channel. People got tired of it to the point that any one of these characters logging in resulted in a massive wave of eyerolling, facepalming, and a chorus of "here we go
again" in various channels. When I start seeing that in multiple channels at once from a variety of different people, i
know there's a problem that needs dealing with.
I'd rather
not apply the modhammer to people if possible. I would prefer to try and sort things out without needing to resort to it, as would the other mods, but when all other methods fail to produce a change in behavior, I (and, I would expect, the other mods) am not going to shy away from using the tools available to attempt solving the problem with brute force.
The only reason I came across as "the bad guy" is that I was the one being poked with the most complaints through various mediums and was the one taking action in response. If people had been poking other moderators instead, it would've been them taking action, not me. Furthermore, the people who were the "victims" of my foul, dastardly,
oppressive swinging of the modhammer were people who had repeatedly been reported, complained about and smacked for misbehavior, where "repeatedly" is an understatement of one of the highest magnitudes.
Outside of
very clear line-crossings or offenses (say, someone dodging a mute or a ban by logging in an alt), I
never took action without consulting at least one other moderator first. In other words, if you got a mute or a ban from me, I can give a near 100% guarantee that someone else signed off on it before it was put in place. Given what I've seen from the other moderators, I'd be hard-pressed to say this isn't the case for the rest of them as well.
tl;dr: We don't act unilaterally if we can avoid it, but if what you do is so obviously out of line that it requires immediate attention, yes, we
are going to shove the stick up your ass first and ask the other mods if they think you mind splinters later. Most importantly: if a mod has to resort to a mute or a ban to deal with your bullshit,
you are fucking doing it wrong. Period.
Being a moderator, either in a chat channel or on a forum, is extremely frustrating most of the time, and never easy. You always have to watch your step because no matter what you do, people
will bitch and moan about it as if it's the end of the world, and how you're terrible and should be removed. It's always about what
they want as individuals, and never about what is best for the channel/forum community as a whole. Very frequently someone will report something that actually needs to be taken care of, only to have them turn around and bitch you out as soon as it's one of their friends in the crosshairs.
Exceedingly few people ever step up and thank you for what you do. We're not here to make your lives difficult or miserable (except when you're making life difficult or miserable for the community). We're here to keep the Summit an enjoyable and interesting place for people to go for RP. None of us have to do it. But we do it anyway because we care about the community.
Something to keep in mind.
Author
Topic: Loosening the straps (ooooh). (Read 28740 times)