Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Mizhara]

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.

[Louella Dougans]

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 

here's what was left of the thread. There's about 2x as much that was catacombed, 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 ?

[Havohej]

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 =/

[Katrina Oniseki]

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.   

BRING ON THE MODS!!!!

[Havohej]

u wot m8?

 

[Samira Kernher]

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.

[Karmilla Strife]

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

[Havohej]

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.

[Mizhara]

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.

[Havohej]

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?

[Mizhara]

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.

[Arnulf Ogunkoya]

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.

[Morwen Lagann]

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.

[Ché Biko]

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.  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.

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.  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. ]

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, 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.

[Morwen Lagann]

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.

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.