On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof

[Gashlycrumb]

@Istus

I suggest you work instead on just establishing trust.

Be reliable – show up when you say you will, get stuff done when you say you will, if it is at all possible, warn people and apologize* when you’re going to be late or cancel.

Be accessible – Seriously. Establish a bullshit chat channel, encourage everybody to use it, and use it yourself. Take some time, regularly, to blether and joke around and talk about pie with the players. Give people a chance to get to know you. It’s also a good way to model standards of courtesy.

Si non confectus, non reficiat – If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Don’t take real freedoms or comforts from real players to fix potential problems. In that direction tyranny lies.

*edited to add: Apologize. Sincerely, with grace, and every frickin’ time you inconvenience somebody, hurt feelings, or just make an awkward mistake. It’s going to happen. If apologizing hurts and having people notice your mistakes is an affront, practice until you can do it, before you take on this project.

[Wizz]

@Pavel said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:

@Rathenhope said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:

God, I hope no one takes a MU to court I don’t want my hobby splashed across the newspapers.

I look forward to explaining exactly what I do online to my mother.

I realize this is probably mostly facetious but I actually did have to explain this hobby to my mother recently, who is exactly the sort of person I was worried might find it strange. It took about fifteen minutes since she didn’t even have like a baseline for it, haha, but at the end she kinda just went “oh, ok. That’s not even close to the weirdest thing you could have told me you were doing online.”

The times, they are a’changin’!

[shit-piss-love]

I explain MU*s to people as “online collaborative writing” and they seem to get it.

[Wizz]

@shit-piss-love

I was obligated to go into more detail for reasons, but yeah I’ve boiled it down to that for curious friends before too.

[Pavel]

@shit-piss-love said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:

I explain MU*s to people as “online collaborative writing” and they seem to get it.

I now have to explain “I’m a moderator on a forum devoted to drama in the online collaborative writing community.”

[IoleRae]

@Pavel said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:

@shit-piss-love said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:

I explain MU*s to people as “online collaborative writing” and they seem to get it.

I now have to explain “I’m a moderator on a forum devoted to drama in the online collaborative writing community.”

Thank you for all that you do.

[Pavel]

@IoleRae said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:

@Pavel said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:

@shit-piss-love said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:

I explain MU*s to people as “online collaborative writing” and they seem to get it.

I now have to explain “I’m a moderator on a forum devoted to drama in the online collaborative writing community.”

Thank you for all that you do.

[Jumpscare]

@Pax said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:

Could you get away with giving the finger and seeing if you get dragged to court anyway? Sure, but at the point that you get that notarized letter from the IOC, your ass in the fire and we’re in a weird place, because it would be absolutely crazypants to go after an MU*, but just because it would be weird as hell doesn’t mean that it cannot actually be done under the auspice of current law. It sure can. And stranger things have happened.

For what it’s worth, it’s been six months and three reminders since I revoked my consent for Derp & co. to store my posts on MSB, and they’re still not removed.

So, if we really wanted…

[KarmaBum]

@Jumpscare Nah, let’s not go full Nymeria.

[Jennkryst]

@Jumpscare said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:

… it’s been six months

They’ve also only had like 8 posts over the last month.

… four of which were in the dead celebrity thread. So I’m super confused where all the people are hiding. You know… the folks who would totally be active there, if not for the mean girls shouting them into silence.

(I am not, and actual discussion should maybe happen in the proper thread where we go nyah nyah nyah.)

[Pavel]

[Apos]

@mietze said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:

A lot of the times (not always, but a lot) predators work in ways that circumvent formulaic approaches. In fact they /thrive/ in that environment because most of the time they operate on the gray area. Not breaking the letter of the law, but being extremely invasive and gross in the spirit of it.

I can’t remember if it was the very first banning but one dude at the very start asked Hellfrog to define ‘creepy’ for him in the context of ‘don’t be creepy’. Her instincts, then and now, are 1,000,000 times better than mine. She called it immediately.

[Roadspike]

@Apos Agreed. Any time that someone asks me to define a term that should be common knowledge, I assume that they are just looking for clearly delineated rules that they can push the envelope on and then claim that they’re not breaking the actual rules.

Everyone should know what “creepy” means, and if they can’t avoid it, then they can’t play on any game I run.

[Pavel]

@Roadspike said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:

Any time that someone asks me to define a term that should be common knowledge, I assume that they are just looking for clearly delineated rules that they can push the envelope on and then claim that they’re not breaking the actual rules.

Absolutely.

Though it’s less about ‘common knowledge’ and more about the old porn adage of knowing it when one sees it, so ‘creepy’ can differ from person to person.

This malleability is part of what makes reporting these things so uncertain, because your definition of creepy or acting like a jerk or being a dick, or any other such phrasing, is bound to be different - if only marginally - to mine.

Thus it’s super important, as staff, to make sure that you’ll take the reporter’s definition into account too.

[Jumpscare]

Nine times out of ten, when someone is told to stop being creepy and they ask, “What specifically am I doing that’s creepy?” they’re not asking in order to fix their behavior. They’re fishing for ammunition to gaslight people into agreeing that the victim is overreacting and that they did nothing wrong.

[farfalla]

@Jumpscare And/or to try and figure out who reported them.

[Herja]

@farfalla said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:

@Jumpscare And/or to try and figure out who reported them.

Biggest red flag. The minute someone starts trying to fish for info on who reported them, I know they need to go. One of the ‘tactics’ I use for dealing with reports is to go and speak to the person who was reported. I bring up that they have been reported directly to them because most of these people will tell on themselves, whether that is that they try to fish for information on who reported them (I especially love when they will name someone else that did not report them because then I’m like, ah, so you are doing this to multiple people) or get very angry and aggressive with me. Those are the easy bans. The harder ones for me to deal with are the ones that act apologetic and try to subtly gaslight (“Oh, I didn’t mean it like THAT. They must have misunderstood me.”). I find it infuriating because you can see the tactic they are using to harm others.

[hellfrog]

@Herja It’s such a baby mistake, to try to get info immediately on who reported. And yet, so so so many people do it.

[Pavel]

@hellfrog said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:

@Herja It’s such a baby mistake, to try to get info immediately on who reported. And yet, so so so many people do it.

I think it’s also a natural reaction. Not the fishing, but like reacting to confrontation with a sort of defensive curiosity? “Someone said you were doing X” “Yeah, who said that?”

Not helpful, but natural.

[Herja]

@Pavel There is a big difference from a reflexive defensive statement and how some people try to get the name of the reporter and then try to discredit the offense since I won’t ‘name names’ and give specific time stamped proof of the incidents in detail. If it were all just those sort of reflexive statements, it wouldn’t be such a big red flag.