Bannings

[kalakh]

@Jennkryst said in Bannings:

@Solstice Yeah, there was a two week span I just stopped everything over there, and then one day everything exploded again. It’s hard to not call out the blatant hypocrisy, but it’s probably never going to stop.

Especially when Ghost is going to stir shit up and then play innocent like he’s not the one who keeps restarting things after they die down. On top of the MSB admins just… ignoring him breaking their rules right in front of them. Just keep piling up the evidence that it wasn’t actually about making a better forum. Because if it was, again… they could have gone and made their own new forum. I’ve been told a couple times now it’s not that hard.

Too-serious hat on:

For the folks celebrating, it was never about having their own space free of the people they’re demonizing, it was about driving those people out of the space they were already in.

This makes perfect sense in a context-less vacuum. We do it all the time with folks we consider toxic to the community/hobby, and I will argue that in a context-less vacuum that is generally a good thing. Unfortunately, in-context, the people doing the driving are largely the people who have been on the receiving end of the ostracism (or, heaven forbid, having people tell them to shut the fuck up and stop being an asshole now and then), and they were not on the receiving end of the community’s ostracism because we’re all just catty bitches, but because they caused genuine harm and, in many cases, seemed to absolutely thrive on it.

That’s not the majority of the folks left on MSB, though I’m not particularly thrilled with the behavior of the majority of folks left on MSB. But it’s the majority of folks that have stepped into the vacant spaces and are now making threads about how they’ve vanquished the evil bad people who dared to tell them to stop being awful. It’s the answer to my previous rhetorical question of “why are you lying about this?” Because it serves their needs and they’re taking victory laps.

In any case, I think this thread is largely beneficial. There’s a spot to be angry, express hurt, make stupid jokes about same, and bolster each other. If it’s clique behavior to say ‘you’re valid and you didn’t deserve this’ in the context of what happened, then oh well. Yeah, the people taking victory laps are reveling in people being angry/hurt where they can see it, but in the end, they shouldn’t be factored into the equation of what folks need. In time, things will heal; not as regards the current rift, but as regards genuine emotional injury, and this thread will rest.

[Pavel]

@dvoraen said in Bannings:

I want to know why I was not put in a sidebox (with a pink border) labelled “Clique Mascot”.

Tis more work than you’re worth.

[blu]

@Pavel said in Bannings:

This is how I best understand the clique membership, but I could be wrong:

[Roadspike]

@Pavel said in Bannings:

@Snackness NO PLUS ONES. THIS IS AN EXCLUSIVE CLIQUE.

Clearly not any plus ones, since Blu made it and I didn’t. We’re nitpicking a list that’s impossible to make anyhow, since membership in either category will depend on who the “victims” need to complain about at any given time.

But it’s fun, right?

@Pyrephox said in Bannings:

just as a person, I’d really love for us to…move on from obsessing about What They’re Saying Over There because I think it does perpetuate some bad blood and keep things emotional.

Completely agreed.

[Tez]

@blu Hello, BFF

[icanbeyourmuse]

I have been pondering MSB and the blow up a bit today since it was brought back to my brain with the recent dramas.

I don’t think it is bad they want to change the tone of MSB. I think the method they went about it was awful and the fact they basically ignored the many people who objected to Derp’s being made admin. The complaints I saw about him being promoted were well thought out and expressed in a reasonable way. By the majority. He is showing exactly why so many of us are not comfortable with his position by how he is handling everything as it is. Instant accusations of trouble stirring when there is no intention too, dismissing pretty much any attempts to express disagreements, getting mad because he has to explain the same thing repeatedly because people aren’t understanding, etc. The ban hammer slamming down on people for doing what exactly they have been doing during the life of MSB was baffling too.

Over all, I don’t care how people run their own thing as long as they are upfront and give a period for people to to assimilate to the changes. They wasn’t exactly offered by MSB. Like? If someone wants to ban a person for ‘not being the right fit’ for a game, go for it. Same for trying to make bits that don’t fit their ideas of games, whatever. IF someone wants to run their game a specific way and ban for X reason, reasonable or not, more power to them. However, I am not likely to join certain games/places when it comes to stuff that I can’t just accept and roll with (even if I don’t agree).

Those have just been the thoughts rolling in my little brain today after the current blow up.

I hope MSB gets their personal ‘utopia’ that they want to create. I won’t be part of it because there is a lot of things on how they are handling things and past things that have been done by current ‘staff’ that I can’t ignore like I do for a lot of things that I don’t necessarily agree with or like but can accept.

[GF]

@icanbeyourmuse I don’t believe a desire to change the tone of MSB was ever part of it. All this kicked off because people were not submitting to Derp and Ganymede’s authority. Trying to “change the tone of the board” after kicking half the users off feels to me like an attempt to reclaim the narrative with a retroactive justification. We’re not tin-pot tyrants; they’re just toxic members who needed to be excised for the good of the community!

[icanbeyourmuse]

@GF It’s likely them trying to control the story, yeah, but I want to attempt and think the best of their plans even if my mind is quite certain they are not doing it out of a desire to improve. So, I’d rather phrase things like the intention is good because my little heart wants it to be over wording it for the worst.

[Sam Hyde]

I’ve been a pretty long-time lurker on MSB, logging in occasionally just to see if a new game got advertised (increasingly rare), and I must say that it’s a good thing you had a split. Also the people who make new games tend to get run off for various reasons. Not sure how much of a fan I am of that.

[kalakh]

@GF said in Bannings:

@icanbeyourmuse I don’t believe a desire to change the tone of MSB was ever part of it. All this kicked off because people were not submitting to Derp and Ganymede’s authority. Trying to “change the tone of the board” after kicking half the users off feels to me like an attempt to reclaim the narrative with a retroactive justification. We’re not tin-pot tyrants; they’re just toxic members who needed to be excised for the good of the community!

Well, the tone of MSB certainly changed, just not in the way they insist they wanted.

A personal rankle is that I don’t give a shit about the Hog Pit. I’ve been in plenty of communities and plenty of hobby forums that didn’t have anything like that, with a much stricter code of conduct, and that was just fine.

The problem is, though, that MSB did have the Hog Pit, and it was incredibly active, for years. The majority of people I see posting about this split were active participants. It’s not like people were sneaking about behind the administrations backs being mean mean doodoo heads, it’s not like posters slipped it in without being noticed, it was part of the forum and thus tacitly endorsed by said forum and those running it. There’s nothing wrong with deciding to change that, but what’s absolutely mindboggling is how people (but not all the people, of course, just the ones that can’t respond) are being retroactively excoriated and condemned for having participated. It doesn’t matter if the conclusion has swung to “it was a mistake and it was bad”, it doesn’t matter if opinions have shifted to “people were shitheads”, what matters is that up until two months ago the Hog Pit and what went on inside it was accepted and endorsed.

Someone’s permabanned because they said "fuck you’ to Ganymede in the middle of a drama firestorm? It was perfectly fine to say “fuck you” to anyone in the Hog Pit at the time, for any reason, in any atmosphere. The hell that’s an acceptable reason to uphold a ban, let alone all the ones that happened because they questioned wtf was going on. It’s retroactively, and unevenly, enforcing rules that didn’t even exist, followed up by insisting such enforcement is justified because the people in question participated in a part of the community it was perfectly accepted to participate in.

If Arx decided tomorrow that we weren’t going to allow people to throw any more masquerade parties, it would be fucking ridiculous to announce this in the middle of one and then start banning people who kept posing about their sparkly dress. It would be even more ridiculous to then go “they deserved it because they used our mask code to wear a mask at the party that tells you to wear masks…except for these people over here, they’re really against wearing masks now, even though they keep putting them on right in front of us and typing ‘model/outfit’.”

[Kestrel]

The last two threads on MSB serve as an excellent reminder that misogyny and Authoritarianism often go hand in hand. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and neither should be trusted in a position of power.

That was sinister to watch, but I’m glad they’ve at least revealed themselves.

[GF]

@Kestrel said in Bannings:

The last two threads on MSB serve as an excellent reminder that misogyny and Authoritarianism often go hand in hand.

I did notice how concerned certain parties seem to be that whatever replaces the Hog Pit going forward must make sure that harassers be allowed to argue back, while people accusing harassers must bring receipts or else be in violation of the new code of conduct. Definitely got a sense of “bitches be crazy, we need to protect men from their hysterical accusations by arbitrating whether they actually experienced what they say they did.”

[Pavel]

@kalakh said in Bannings:

The problem is, though, that MSB did have the Hog Pit, and it was incredibly active, for years.

Just to highlight this point again: in my humble opinion, the Hog Pit was the point of MSB. Sure, it had other sections and active posters who never set foot in the Hog Pit. But when one thinks of WORA, or MSB, they think of the unrestricted bit as the main draw. That’s what differentiated it from other places, in my view.

[Testament]

@Pavel said in Bannings:

@kalakh said in Bannings:

The problem is, though, that MSB did have the Hog Pit, and it was incredibly active, for years.

Just to highlight this point again: in my humble opinion, the Hog Pit was the point of MSB. Sure, it had other sections and active posters who never set foot in the Hog Pit. But when one thinks of WORA, or MSB, they think of the unrestricted bit as the main draw. That’s what differentiated it from other places, in my view.

This. This was always the point of SWOFA/WORA/MSB/Whatever. It always the Hog Pit or whatever it used to be called on older sites. It was always supposed to be that unfiltered opinion, biased or not, on calling out someone’s shitty behavior, shitty or not. To the extreme of showing the results of doxxing that wasn’t even arguably stalking, it was stalking.

If anything has been demonstrated by the last couple of days on MSB, it’s that MSB seems to be more regressing into worse habits than ‘getting better’. Now it’s just seems more like a draconian step towards more control while still being toxic.

[Kestrel]

@GF said in Bannings:

@Kestrel said in Bannings:

The last two threads on MSB serve as an excellent reminder that misogyny and Authoritarianism often go hand in hand.

I did notice how concerned certain parties seem to be that whatever replaces the Hog Pit going forward must make sure that harassers be allowed to argue back, while people accusing harassers must bring receipts or else be in violation of the new code of conduct. Definitely got a sense of “bitches be crazy, we need to protect men from their hysterical accusations by arbitrating whether they actually experienced what they say they did.”

Yes. And in fact, to the person on the tail end of that thread who wove their own tale of woe about how they themselves were once wrongfully accused, who wanted to see the database erased, and for MSB to safeguard against the persecution of innocent men in future, I want to say this:

I don’t know what you were accused of, but I bet it was true.

[Snackness]

@Testament They’re consolidating power. But it’s okay because it’s an internet forum and they don’t actually have any power.

[Sam Hyde]

@Snackness said in Bannings:

@Testament They’re consolidating power. But it’s okay because it’s an internet forum and they don’t actually have any power.

Not only is it for an Internet forum and therefore they don’t have any power, it’s for an objectively dying sub-segment of a hobby we know as “roleplaying.” Roleplay is actually gaining a lot of popularity, but it’s not on these command line Telnet games; that’s going bye bye.

You and I are part of the lunatic fringe just by dint of being on either of these forums in the first place.

[Pavel]

@Sam-Hyde said in Bannings:

Not only is it for an Internet forum and therefore they don’t have any power, it’s for an objectively dying sub-segment of a hobby we know as “roleplaying.” Roleplay is actually gaining a lot of popularity, but it’s not on these command line Telnet games; that’s going bye bye.

I was with you right up until this. It’s not objectively dying. It’s not as popular as it once was, but it’s fine. New people still find us, we’re still having fun, it’s fine.

[Sam Hyde]

@Pavel said in Bannings:

@Sam-Hyde said in Bannings:

Not only is it for an Internet forum and therefore they don’t have any power, it’s for an objectively dying sub-segment of a hobby we know as “roleplaying.” Roleplay is actually gaining a lot of popularity, but it’s not on these command line Telnet games; that’s going bye bye.

I was with you right up until this. It’s not objectively dying. It’s not as popular as it once was, but it’s fine. New people still find us, we’re still having fun, it’s fine.

That’s fine. It’s not like I have some kind of animus for MU*'s; it’s just that almost all of the RPing I see online now is done by voice chat, by web forums, and by other things like Discord with Tupperbox. I trawl these boards for new MUSHes and stuff and let me tell you, I see fewer and fewer of those.

[Third Eye]

@kalakh said in Bannings:

Someone’s permabanned because they said "fuck you’ to Ganymede in the middle of a drama firestorm? It was perfectly fine to say “fuck you” to anyone in the Hog Pit at the time, for any reason, in any atmosphere.

The pearl-clutching about ‘bad language’, especially from folks with certain post histories, is really something to see, not gonna lie, but it reaches such heights of tone-deaf hilarity I can’t even be mad about it.