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[Havohej]

Remind me to never piss some of you people off. Whoa.

Maybe I should re-imagine Ana as a lot less confrontational and opinionated and get on the good side of the "thought leaders"? Who should I send the candy and flowers to?

 

If you can't find these mythical beasts, I like flowers and candy.

+1 Silas.

But when I say it,  nobody gets it.   

You need to -1 on fucks you give 

Quite right.  Unfortunately, if I didn't give at least one I think my utility as an admin/mod for this forum would drop from marginal to none.   

It typically takes a lot of effort and work for someone to get me angry; don't know if that's a product of being Canadian or just my personality,

Canadians invented ice hockey.  It must just be your personality.  (I fucking LOVE hockey!)

perhaps there may have been a far more constructive and helpful approach that all parties could have taken.

It has been.  Repeatedly.

The point is to be more confident. No one needs validation in a game for RP. Validate yourself and your actions, the rest will follow.

Middle finger to the critics, Seri. Middle finger to the critics.

Is it not ironic to say exactly what some of the critics are saying and follow it immediately with advice to ignore the critics?

[Lyn Farel]

You know that this point of view is pretty tyrannical, no ? As long as you adapt and get along with the group whims and never disagree about important matters, you are going to be fine ? And if you don't, you deserved it and brought it on yourself ?

There are two schools of thought on this. Yours is one and  the other one says that it's WAY more tyrannical to expect the rest of the community to get along with one individual.

It's not "mine", I don't subscribe to that. I don't subscribe to both.

I'm criticizing the lack of dialogue on both ways and the lack of manners and basic respect shown again and again by the "community".

[Erys Charantes]

Lacking the vast flaming of before...

No Seriphyn, I don't think you should bother.  That is my honest opinion.  The reason being; every time a disagreement like this comes up, it results in nothing but blame being thrown outwards, no assessment of why it happened, and then back to the status quo.  There is no point.

[Nicoletta Mithra]

Remind me to never piss some of you people off. Whoa.

Maybe I should re-imagine Ana as a lot less confrontational and opinionated and get on the good side of the "thought leaders"? Who should I send the candy and flowers to?

 

I think my point was that there are no thought leaders at all, and the community is more of a self-regulating organism that fixes things on its own.

Graelyn had a good analogy, though.

First, I'm pretty sure - being a biologist - that 'the community' is not an 'organism'. That said, what do you think how the community self-regulates? By all of us just shrugging off problems, because 'it self-regulates'? The way it will self-regulate then is then clear.

A community emerges from individuals interacting and the character of the community is directly dependent on the character of interaction between the individuals. The community does self-regulate by individuals interacting. I could point you to a vast background on papers on social behavior among humans as well as animals. (Social arthropods are one of my specializations.) Systems theory is fundamentally agreeing with this empirical assessment.

So, I honestly think that the assertion that we don't have to reassess how we interact with one another because 'the community is self-regulating' is just a bad excuse if one is unwilling to take critcism - especially if 'the community' might exhibit self-regulating behaviour that consists in shaming people that don't deserve it and flush them out of the community.

Or in other words: Just because something is self-regulating doesn't mean that it's self-regulating in a way that is desirable.

[Louella Dougans]

the "community" would be improved if people did not give off the impression that OOC channel is their 15£ a month psychotherapist. People give the impression that any negative opinion or consequence of their RP, would result in them becoming suicidal IRL. Maybe it's just a metagame weapon, to try and avoid RP consequences, I don't know. All I know is that, I have no inclination to talk to that person IC or OOC. So.. vOv

[Silas Vitalia]

especially if 'the community' might exhibit self-regulating behaviour that consists in shaming people that don't deserve it and flush them out of the community.

Or in other words: Just because something is self-regulating doesn't mean that it's self-regulating in a way that is desirable.

Your opinion.  I'm very confident nearly everyone getting 'slammed' generally asks for it through their repeated behavior.  As we keep saying people aren't randomly selected for poor treatment out of thin air by a pack of wolves.  The new RPer who shows up to have fun and has a good back and forth with other people does great and makes friends, the one who shows up full of drama and flailing attention-seeking will not. 

Individuals can overreact to people and certainly be out of line, 'the community' has a more balanced approach and can spot the derp a mile away.  I've got faith in them

[Katrina Oniseki]

Your opinion.  I'm very confident nearly everyone getting 'slammed' generally asks for it through their repeated behavior.  As we keep saying people aren't randomly selected for poor treatment out of thin air by a pack of wolves.  The new RPer who shows up to have fun and has a good back and forth with other people does great and makes friends, the one who shows up full of drama and flailing attention-seeking will not. 

Individuals can overreact to people and certainly be out of line, 'the community' has a more balanced approach and can spot the derp a mile away.  I've got faith in them

Case in point: Foley Jones.

He's new, he sometimes makes mistakes, his character is delightfully outlandish; but more importantly he asks for and takes advice while still keeping his character his own creation. I haven't met anyone yet who doesn't like Foley and encourage him to keep trying. He's a likable sort, and certainly isn't horribly picked on by the community and oppressed. Sure, maybe some things he does IC are a bit strange and we have to politely bop him on the head and say "PF doesn't work that way", but generally speaking he's fitting in well.

I don't recall a new drama seeker off the top of my head. Even if I did, I'm pretty sure mentioning them would be a call-out and against the rules here.

[Repentence Tyrathlion]

I've avoided this so far, but since we seem to have moved into more theoretical (and thus less minefield-ridden) territory... and admittedly in a blatant copy of Steffie... I'll throw out my personal take on communities.

I'll open by saying that I am a loner.  I didn't interact with anyone my own age until the age of 12 to any meaningful extent, first went to school at 14, and now at the age of 23, I could probably count the number of IRL friends (as opposed to friendly acquaintances) I've had in single figures.  My current IRL friend list (defined as people I semi-regularly see offline, I've met a bunch of you weirdos but you're still online friends by my definition ) is... one.  I'm nowhere near as shy as I once was, but I'm not a social animal.

I'm also virtually bulletproof.  I have a lot of layers of armour and only two people in my life have seen my core - most people, even friends, are lucky to get through my shields, let alone to hull.  I am very much of the 'no fucks given' type, because a lot of the time, I don't give a damn what people think of me or what I do.  I'm quiet, polite and will happily chatter away with people, and most people seem to like me, but I do it just because that's how I was raised, not due to some need for affirmation.

My fiance is rather less bulletproof.  We actually had a talk recently about confidence and the ability to handle a new community and new group of people, and even though she is apparently a far more social creature than I, I was surprised to realise that I'm far better at integrating into a new situation (when I decide to make the effort, but that's another story).  I actually found it hard to grasp how much anxiety she was describing about simply saying 'hello' to new people.

I've dealt with a number of communities.  The gaming group that I was part of before I hooked into the RP crowd here was a bunch of people who I used to play Freelancer with (ironically enough, we were mortal enemies there.  Go figure), who were a fairly straightforward bunch.  Apart from a couple of vaguely language related snarlups (mostly a Germany-based clan where not all of the members were that good with English, cue misunderstandings and accidental rulebreaking), I don't remember there being any real problems.

But I've also been part of a freeform roleplay community which self-destructed and recreated itself at least three times, each more spectacular than the last and which was largely populated by dramabunnies, a forum-gaming setup that has been witness to a couple of explosive meltdowns, and seen a decent slice of human nature along the way.  I never witnessed this mysterious and malevolent entity we call 'the Community' at work, but to be fair, most of the situations were either less cooperative, smaller, or both.

That said, I'm inclined to agree with Silas that in general, if someone gets into bad drama, it's probably their own fault.  However, from what I've seen, this community does tend to be pretty unforgiving at times.  Whether deservingly so isn't for me to say.

For myself when it comes to Seri, I have to approaches to dealing with people.  The vast majority of the time, I take them as they come, totally neutrally.  Unless they actively become hostile, I'll be polite and just move on, and I enjoyed the interaction, might make something more of it.  If they become hostile, I jettison all fucks and whistle as I get on with life.  In a very small minority, I will take a disliking to someone on sight.  I've been vindicated in every case that this has happened as to said person being Trouble of some kind.

Seri does not give me said trouble vibe.  Everyone does dumb shit sometimes.  He's done more than some, fine.  I'd still rather interact with him than some other roleplayers I've run into in the past.  I've played with a few folks in the RP community here that I've been warned are trouble and haven't had any issues.  Quite often they were one-offs, but I have no regrets there.

If I have any point to make here, it's that 'give no fucks' can go both ways sometimes.  Otherwise, I'm mostly rambling.  Maybe that's all I'm doing.  Take from it what you will.

[Nicoletta Mithra]

especially if 'the community' might exhibit self-regulating behaviour that consists in shaming people that don't deserve it and flush them out of the community.

Or in other words: Just because something is self-regulating doesn't mean that it's self-regulating in a way that is desirable.

Your opinion.  I'm very confident nearly everyone getting 'slammed' generally asks for it through their repeated behavior.  As we keep saying people aren't randomly selected for poor treatment out of thin air by a pack of wolves.  The new RPer who shows up to have fun and has a good back and forth with other people does great and makes friends, the one who shows up full of drama and flailing attention-seeking will not. 

Individuals can overreact to people and certainly be out of line, 'the community' has a more balanced approach and can spot the derp a mile away.  I've got faith in them

So, just because I'm not quite clear on this, but you think that a community never has to reevaluate how it deals with others? Or do you just mean that this particular community doesn't have to do it? If the latter, I'd be most interested to see what makes this community so special.

If this community handles problems by exhibiting self-regulating behaviour that consists in shaming people that don't deserve it and flush them out of the community, why would it not have to reassess how it handles things?

Or is it that you simply define those that get handled like this as deserving it?

Having grown up in a post-war germany I have little confidence in 'the community' or any 'community' being infallible as the community of the 'German Volk' showed quite clearly how much more balanced it's approach was and how well it spots derp from a mile away.

So, if I see people sitting behind the screen if there have been various threads been catacombed for the opening post being too much of a flamebait and a big number of people in the community responding to it with posts that broke the rules of polite posting and say "Well, everything as it should be, community spotted derp from a mile away and reacted appropriatedly, the community is so balanced in it's approach and did totally not overreact or anything.", it is to me so full of hypocrisy that it's bordering on being rediculous and I can't help to imagine them sitting there quite smugly.

So I really am quite sceptic to the idea that 'the community' can't be out of line, is by necessity more balanced and has the preternatural ability of unfailingly identify derp only as derp if it's truely derp and not merely the community thinking that it's derp -  oh and being practically immune to being derpy in it's response as well. Two wrongs don't make a right.

And no, an anecdote about how the community can be nice doesn't change that.

The very idea that this community should be free from the need to assess and critically reflect how it regulates itself is a theme that I see arise time and again and it's really something that tells me that this community really should reassess at least that part of how it deals with things.

Also, the theme that impolite posting is time and again justified by 'but he deserved it because...' or even 'the source of all problems is...' is another thing that should be reevaluated in my opinion.

I really, deeply agreed with Silver when he recommended rereading the forum rules and especially the rules on polite posting. There is no excuse for impolite posting, nor any justification and it is in the hands of the poster whether they stay polite or impolite. It doesn't matter whether someone 'deserved' an impolite response or not, whether the impolite response is responding to a flamebait or not. If someone posts impolitely, breaking the rules, the fault is with the poster, not anyone else.

Heaping this fault onto someone else, regardless who it is, is something that I consider a failing and if the community does it at large and is reassuring itself in this then it's a failing of the community.

All this really is true independently of how much derp Seriphyn or anyone else who is targeted by those impolite, rule breaking posts actually did commit. It might very well be true that Seri comitted derp past what is acceptable in this community and also past what should be acceptable, but that doesn't excuse anyone from breaking the rules.

It turns situations like the one with Seriphyn into a self-reinforcing downward spiral of derp.

That said, I can understand how those posts came to be and no one is free from failing. I myself post impolitely sometimes. People make mistakes. But at least we should be honest enough to accept that we made the mistakes we made and shouldn't make others into scapegoats for them, regardless of how derpy they behave.

[Havohej]

If this community handles problems by exhibiting self-regulating behaviour that consists in shaming people that don't deserve it and flush them out of the community, why would it not have to reassess how it handles things?

Two things.  This isn't the first time you and other posters have mentioned undeserved shaming.  Nobody's going to shame someone that they don't think deserve it.  That's the first thing.

The second thing is that if some participants in a community are aware of a particularly bad act or set of acts on the part of an individual and some participants aren't, those aware of the act(s) will be inclined to shame the individual while those who aren't aware are likely to post something along the lines of "LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!!!!"

In the end, nobody involved has any moral highground left - not the individual who's behaved so badly, not the shamers of the individual, not the wannabe shamers of the initial shamers.  Which makes the self-righteousness of the third group so bloody comical.

[Silas Vitalia]

I just got snipped! You bastards 

Following my own snipped advice though, see


Rephrasing a bit:


We would be better served as a group if everyone relaxed a little bit, maybe stopped picking over the smallest details, and allowed things to bother them less instead of everything insulting all the peoples all the times.   Spaceship RP is seeerious bisness and all, but maybe remember that it's not.

[Nicoletta Mithra]

In regard to your second point:

Well, I don't know if you're familiar with how the conditional works, but it's not implying that the antecedent is actually true. My point stands regardless of whether the antecedent is true or not and my point isn't about whether or not it is actually true.

The point is that IF it is true, then one should reassess those ways of 'self-regulation. If the antecedent is not true, then the conditional is logically true regardless of the truth value of the consequent. Which means of course that if the antecedent isn't true, there is no need to reassessment.

To your first point:

Yes, I'm quite sure they think that the ones handing out the shaming did think that the ones shamed deserved it. Thinking that someone deserves something alone doesn't make it true that it is deserved. I hope you acknowledge the distincktion between thinking that somethin is and something being the case. Especially the one that in thinking there can be error.

That said, it's a convenient way to simply define those at the recieving end as invariably deserving of that kind of treatment.

And then there's the point of the rules, Havohej. As I pointed out, it doesn't matter whether anyone deserved to be shamed. Posting that is against the rules shouldn't be done. If you are responding to a post by someone really deserving of being shamed by breaking the rules in your post, then you do something that is outright wrong.

That you, as a moderator stand here and defend your rule-breaking behaviour, while you rather should do quite the opposite behavior is quite sad in my opinion. This includes your defense of saying I'd have no moral high ground. Even if I have no moral high ground, the point I make remains valid. I need no high ground for that.

[Havohej]

In regard to your second point:

Well, I don't know if you're familiar with how the conditional works, but it's not implying that the antecedent is actually true. My point stands regardless of whether the antecedent is true or not and my point isn't about whether or not it is actually true.

Fair enough.

That you, as a moderator stand here and defend your rule-breaking behaviour, while you rather should do quite the opposite behavior is quite sad in my opinion. This includes your defense of saying I'd have no moral high ground. Even if I have no moral high ground, the point I make remains valid. I need no high ground for that.

My "defense" was no defense at all.  I've admitted fault.  My "comment" was about self-righteousness and its usual unwarrantedness.  Not yours specifically, either - everyone's who's exhibited it in this series of topics and others...  usually, it isn't really justified, the self-righteousness, but yet there it is anyway.  And I find it funny.

[Silas Vitalia]

Mithra,

Most of us are plenty polite, patient, and easy to get along with in most circumstances.... and I see people continue to give difficult people all sorts of 2nd, 3rd, 4th chances to improve how they interact.

I think the difference Mithra is that a lot of people are perfectly happy being impolite and not treating friendly other players who continue to cause issues and difficulties with lots of other people.


I feel no obligation to hold my tongue or treat somebody nicely in the slightest or with kid gloves if they are having a repeated negative impact on my play experience.  Someone else being a jerk doesn't mean I have to be extra nice, or polite, or patient. 

[Nicoletta Mithra]

So, what you're saying is that you give a shit about the rules of this forum - which you agree to by using them - if you feel people deserve your impolitness?

Of course you don't have to be extra nice with them - but you should stay within the rules. If you don't and the community doesn't and everyone if fine with breaking rules in some cases, then something is wrong. Either the community or the rules.

P.S.: Havohej, as far as I can discern you admitted fault in not closing the thread for being a flamebait so far, not though that you have been at fault in your posted reaction to it. As far as I saw your posts it seemed to me that you were firmly on the 'Seriphyn deserved it." side, going as far as to imply that it's really be him who's the 'source' of all those shaming posts.