A behavioural view of toxicity & moderation on MS

[Nancy Drew 39]

This sort of thing is rarely a problem for sites like MU because they pretty much have a zero tolerance policy involving anything involving attacking another person’s character in any way and TPTB are extremely consistent about this. They don’t care if you’re a newbie or a mod, they don’t play favourites and therefore things rarely get heated.

I for example, tend to respond extremely poorly to anything that could remotely be considered any kind of personal attack, where it involves my ethics, integrity, sanity, intelligence, etc. I otoh, react quite well to any criticisms on my playstyle. And eventhough I try not to call any players “WOATS” anymore, if anyone were to ever call me that, I’d just probably laugh, because I wouldn’t take that sort of thing personally.

Often in games, at least one person will object to something another player has posted for whatever reason and if they limit their criticism to a particular post in question, things don’t usually get out of hand but all too often, they try to shame that player and that has the opposite deleterious effect, because unless you’re an extremely thick skinned individual, that can really get under your skin. This is especially true for anyone who’s survived an emotionally abusive environment in their childhood and they get retriggered by that.

[Nancy Drew 39]

Spoiler:

This sort of thing is rarely a problem for sites like MU because they pretty much have a zero tolerance policy involving anything involving attacking another person’s character in any way and TPTB are extremely consistent about this. They don’t care if you’re a newbie or a mod, they don’t play favourites and therefore things rarely get heated.

I for example, tend to respond extremely poorly to anything that could remotely be considered any kind of personal attack, where it involves my ethics, integrity, sanity, intelligence, etc. I otoh, react quite well to any criticisms on my playstyle. And eventhough I try not to call any players “WOATS” anymore, if anyone were to ever call me that, I’d just probably laugh, because I wouldn’t take that sort of thing personally.

Often in games, at least one person will object to something another player has posted for whatever reason and if they limit their criticism to a particular post in question, things don’t usually get out of hand but all too often, they try to shame that player and that has the opposite deleterious effect, because unless you’re an extremely thick skinned individual, that can really get under your skin. This is especially true for anyone who’s survived an emotionally abusive environment in their childhood and they get retriggered by that.

I just thought I should clarify that I was referring to MU the forum and not the discord server. I never really got to involved with it but there was this very emotionally scarred kid who used to spend a great deal of time on there and I don’t really know the fully story but apparently he said things that were interpreted as antagonistic to other members (I’m just assuming, based off of what I’d read about it)? and apparently in response he was bullied a lot. I don’t personally recall ever having interacted with this individual but he supposedly was also dealing with a lot of rl stress as well (again basing this off of assumptions of what I’ve read)? Anyway, for whatever reasons, this poor kid eventually took his own life.

So, a gentle reminder I guess to try to practice kindness and compassion and refrain from being excessively judgmental of others when you don’t have any idea what they’re going through outside of whatever respective games. This is extremely difficult in games, especially when situations get heated and it isn’t easy for anyone. I know that better than anyone. I personally have had an extremely difficult time of it since my best friend passed away from an autoimmune liver disease almost a year ago. I guess the important thing to remember is whether in a game or a discord server, you are dealing with real people who can definitely be deeply affected by what is said to them, in ways you might not even imagine.

[Nancy Drew 39]

Well it seems that’s the major issue that the mods’s decisions wrt bans do seem arbitrary if the example RC referenced is any indication. I was in a game where I was constantly getting insulted by the same two players despite not doing anything to warrant it and the game mod just told me that they wouldn’t do anything to stop it, including posting a general warning not to be a jerk. Because none of the insults were actually over the top as referenced in this thread, I knew reporting the offending posts would have accomplished nothing, so I think there ought to be some kind of requirement for game mods to at at least try to put a stop to such behaviour when a player is clearly feeling harassed by it. Most game mods would have done something in that situation I believe if only to have posted a general warning but I think if it’s an actual requirement for game mods not to be able to turn a blind eye to that sort of thing, it obviously would definitely help.

[Nancy Drew 39]

The problem with that approach is that while any one post may not be over the top, the body of behavior absolutely is.

The obvious problem is that can also be open to interpretation if I had tried to report it. It was extremely obvious to me but depending on the mod, there is no guarantee that they would view it that way. That’s why I believe that the kind of 0 tolerance policy that sites like MU have work best and as a result of that toxicity in games is extremely uncommon and very few if any players are ever concerned about blacklists. MU also has a really strict policy wrt repeat flaking which is a different matter entirely, however that hasn’t necessarily worked all that well.

[Nancy Drew 39]

it might be nice to see a little more transparency.

+1

Yep.

I’m extremely sorry you had to go through that. No one should ever have to be subjected to what you were in that game.

[Nancy Drew 39]

eh.

I was just mostly confused when the case got closed 4 days later.

That’s really nuts and I wish the mods would explain why that occured.

[Nancy Drew 39]

its funnier when you know that I was pushing scum and he was pushing town.

He was actually scum in that? Wow, I have no words.

[Nancy Drew 39]

lol @ expecting the mods to do anything that they don't want to

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=73529

RC could just switch the URL to this one, they’re pretty active in that thread.

[Nancy Drew 39]

I think game mods need to be as accountable as players. If a mod doesn't properly report a player then disiplinary action should be considered to the mod.

That’s kind of extreme, it makes way more sense to suggest that the mod not ignore player complaints. Speaking as a game mod and I’m sure that many game mods will concur with this, we aren’t rigorously following what’s going on in our games. We don’t read every single post. It’s up to the players to either complain to the game mod and either one can report a post if necessary.

To actually penalize a game mod for failing to read every single post in their game seems kind of silly and counterproductive. All that would accomplish is an absence of people to mod games. Otoh, it is easy for a mod to pay attention to a player complaint, that is the difference.

[Nancy Drew 39]

And what would you consider the main reason of the ‘tighter leash’?

Spoiler:

Just noting the ironic connection between Fire’s avatar and this question.

[Nancy Drew 39]

Spoiler:

If making these report/ban decisions was easy I’d probably still be modding. It actually kinda sucks to have that obligation hanging over your head. As a site mod, a non-zero amount of your time spent on site is dedicated to seeing the user base at its absolute worst behavior. And you have to be the one who kindly steps in to essentially say “please stop being awful to each other”. Personally, I found it to be exhausting, even depressing.

I don’t say this to garner sympathy, I think everyone on the mod team knows that’s what they signed up for. It’s more so my way of explaining why the wheels turn slowly more often than not. Promptness is the biggest challenge the mod team faces, and they know it. I expect they’ll be at least a little more prompt without the dead weight I’ve provided for the last 3 months.

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Fairness is a pretty hard thing to make a public statement on. This thread hasn’t gone unnoticed by the mod team, but what response is there to to give? No one on the mod team sets out to make ban decisions that are unfair, or that play favorites in some way. Every report sparks a discussion where the mod team weighs the user’s history and the context of the situation along with the severity of what was posted. No one on the mod team will claim they get everything right, but by the time a decision is made the team feels justified that their decision is fair.

It’s sometimes hard to give that justification to the general public without infringing on some amount of privacy. The whole world doesn’t need to know that you received a warning from the mod team, but when you do receive a warning it will come with justification. The warning will try to explain what rule was broken, why the rule exists, links to the offending posts, and a what the consequences of breaking the rule again will be. If you have questions, the mod team will try to answer them. At the end of the day the mod team wants to give warnings and teach, not to give bans and punish.

Bans are in almost all cases an escalation of previous warnings. The mod team tries to give justification to the public for taking away a user’s posting rights by way of the ban announcement thread. Along with this, the mod team tries to give further justification to the user by rehashing all of the previous warnings that had been given, and by pointing to the text that says the consequence for continued rule breaking is a ban.

The picture I’m trying to paint here is one that I hope gives enough clarity for public perception to trust that site mods are making fair decisions. If a series of posts makes you cringe because of its toxicity or personal attacking nature, but already has reports closed without a ban, there’s a good chance the site mods also cringed but gave a warning because of a lack of history for that user. If a series of posts are linked in a ban announcement that don’t look all that bad to you, there’s a good chance that the site mods gave a ban after evaluating the warnings documented throughout the other 17 pages of discussion history for that user.

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The conversation about changing rules to move closer to a zero tolerance for toxicity policy is a good one. The mod team has plenty of threads backstage dedicated to drafting new sets of rules and assigning quantifiable actions and escalations to be taken each time a rule is broken.

The first question always becomes, where exactly is that zero tolerance the line? There is no getting away from mafia being a game based on rhetoric and manipulation and that those things lead to toxicity being a winning strategy. If the mod team had a more robust rule set that they thought wouldn’t create 50 pages of debate in the SGB thread, it would already be in place.

The second question always becomes, how close to the line is too close? The mod team is well aware of the weak spot that exists in current rules enforcement for users who consistently get right up to the line of receiving a warning but not quite across. If the mod team had a more robust rule set that they thought wouldn’t spell out exactly how to be as toxic as possible without being punished, it would already be in place.

I think the mod team is pretty generally aware that site rules aren’t strongly codified and the problems that presents. The challenge they have is creating something that is actually better. Feel free to draft your own ideas and throw them into the conversation. I think the mod team will appreciate any ideas the community has for making the rules governing toxicity more clear, while keeping them enforceable.

Which is the “SBG” thread?

I guess it personally confounds me that Aura and Nor got the same punishment despite Aura actively and deliberately harassing another user. Both were guilty of transphobia but only one was specifically guilty of harassment as well.