Proving Assertions
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A question I’ve been musing on, personally, was raised over yonder, and I wanted to explore it a bit more without totally side-tracking the thread.
@STD said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:
Out of curiosity, what sort of proof would be accepted as valid? Everyone here has already said that no log will ever be accepted as evidence of anything. Would an equal number of people claiming that everything was filthy, filthy lies be enough?
So, a hypothetical: Someone arrives on the forum to make an assertion. Any kind of assertion you please. What kinds of things would you accept as ‘evidence’ or ‘proof’ of the assertions?
This is about the forum in particular, not the overall topic of Logs and Proof on games.
This isn’t anything official, just something I was curious about.
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
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@Pavel For me, I think it largely depends on the back and forth that I see taking place in a thread. Generally, plenty of people will ask questions that tend to test the person making the assertation if it holds up to the eyes of scrutiny. As someone who tends to watch that back and forth, I usually won’t make any kind of determination until I’ve read enough. And for me, having evidence such as ‘logs’ isn’t always a determining factor for me. Watching how someone carries themselves while being potentially drug out into the public forum and hammered with questions tends to(but admittedly not always)gives you an idea of how a person will act. Whether or not the mask ‘slips’ per se.
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@Pavel said in Proving Assertions:
So, a hypothetical: Someone arrives on the forum to make an assertion. Any kind of assertion you please. What kinds of things would you accept as ‘evidence’ or ‘proof’ of the assertions?
I’m going to assume we can discount tautologies and anything verifiable via real world experimentation as assertions (though, of course, there are plenty of people who would argue about both).
Unlike most here, I do think logs are legit evidence. Not perfect Ace Attorney determinating evidence, but better than just testimony. A person’s testimony only relates their interpretation of an event; the log is a concrete example of said event. Yes, yes, logs can be faked, but in that case you wouldn’t believe the person’s testimony anyway, right? They’re already untrustworthy, so log or no log, neither would be valid evidence. So I have to assume good-faith until I have reason to doubt and that means that I would prefer to have what was actually said and done rather than what a person thought was said and done.
I can make my own conclusions from there.
@Testament said in Proving Assertions:
@Pavel Watching how someone carries themselves while being potentially drug out into the public forum and hammered with questions tends to(but admittedly not always)gives you an idea of how a person will act. Whether or not the mask ‘slips’ per se.
I disagree here, too. Being hammered on a public forum where everyone already assumes you to be acting in bad faith does not give a good impression of how they would normally act. It’s just an exercise in pointless frustration. They’re more likely to just snap back snark with snark; after all, nothing they say will change anyone’s mind, so why not get a few jabs in? That at least would be cathartic, even if only temporarily.
The only winning move would be not to play. But even that would be taken as an admission of guilt.
What, you dare say you’re not a witch?! Only a witch would do that!
What, you dare not even respond to our accusations of you being a witch?! Only a witch would that!
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Preponderance of discussion and my own observations. As I said in the other thread, largely speaking, when a whole bunch of unrelated people come out to say, “Yeah, I’ve seen this happening,” it’s rarely been wrong. That doesn’t mean I turn my brain completely off - groups can gang up on someone for unfair reasons, and I’ve seen friend groups that I like all develop a weird distaste for someone who’s done nothing actually wrong.
But it’s really just…we don’t have any “courts” here. It’s all a matter of keeping eyes and ears open, and deciding from what we see and hear whether it’s worth it to pursue something, or not. I don’t think there’s anything I’d consider a single ‘gold standard’ piece of evidence other than me actually being there when something happens.
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@STD said in Proving Assertions:
The only winning move would be not to play. But even that would be taken as an admission of guilt.
What, you dare say you’re not a witch?! Only a witch would do that!
What, you dare not even respond to our accusations of you being a witch?! Only a witch would that!
To this I would agree, but there is a general consensus that if you come to a forum where the rules are posted on the wall, than there should be an expectation that you know what you’re in for. You do not have to show up.
So you’re right, the winning move is to simply not play, but even that comes with it’s own series of assumptions, for both good and bad.
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@Testament said in Proving Assertions:
So you’re right, the winning move is to simply not play, but even that comes with it’s own series of assumptions, for both good and bad.
That’s fair enough.
But I stand by my conclusion that hammering someone in a public forum where everyone assumes them to be Space Hitler is not a very good way of determining how they normally react.
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@Pavel said in Proving Assertions:
So, a hypothetical: Someone arrives on the forum to make an assertion. Any kind of assertion you please. What kinds of things would you accept as ‘evidence’ or ‘proof’ of the assertions?
The assertion itself is evidence, as someone over on that thread pointed out. It might not be the whole story or accurate in every detail, but it is at least evidence of the experience the accuser perceived.
Logs are situationally fine. It comes down to a vibe check for me. Like, in the case of sexual harassment, I’d side-eye someone who preemptively offered logs of something so intimate, humiliating, and prone to provoke retaliation; but I’ve seen plenty of people who frame it in such a way that it feels right to my own experience. Receipts of a less personal kind of injury would probably not provoke side-eye from me unless the vibe seems defensive, like the accuser has a guilty conscience and is trying to preempt rebuttal, which admittedly I can’t think of any example of someone ever having done.
Corroborating testimony is also compelling to me. People don’t generally just make accusations up, and the likelihood goes down in groups.
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@GF said in Proving Assertions:
Logs are situationally fine. It comes down to a vibe check for me. Like, in the case of sexual harassment, I’d side-eye someone who preemptively offered logs of something so intimate, humiliating, and prone to provoke retaliation; but I’ve seen plenty of people who frame it in such a way that it feels right to my own experience.
Wait, sorry, hold up. You’d be SUSPICIOUS of someone offering up logs of sexual harassment they experienced??
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@Roz said in Proving Assertions:
Wait, sorry, hold up. You’d be SUSPICIOUS of someone offering up logs of sexual harassment they experienced??
Suspicious might be too powerful a word on my part. I’m trying to say it would feel weird to me if someone preemptively lead with logs. It’s my general experience people are reluctant to expose themselves to that kind of scrutiny, unless that reluctance is on display in the post providing it.
Like, for a non-MUSH example, there’s this “leftist” Youtuber who’s way more popular than he should be, who’s being accused of years of sexual harassment by a former fan. This fan has released a Google doc full of receipts of him harassing her and her repeated requests that he stop. That doc doesn’t seem suspicious to me because her tone feels right, like she’s only taking that step because of years of his fans dismissing her as having made stuff up. It one hundred percent passes the vibe check.
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Testimony is evidence. Telling the story in the first place counts, absolutely.
let it be a challenge to you
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@sao Yup. And proof is the accumulation of evidence beyond which competing theories make any sense.
“He said, she said” is notoriously one of the hardest situations to prove anything in ever. In a MUSH or otherwise. There’s a reason that phrase is a cliche.
But all you can do is gather information and do the best you can.
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@GF said in Proving Assertions:
@Roz said in Proving Assertions:
Wait, sorry, hold up. You’d be SUSPICIOUS of someone offering up logs of sexual harassment they experienced??
Suspicious might be too powerful a word on my part. I’m trying to say it would feel weird to me if someone preemptively lead with logs. It’s my general experience people are reluctant to expose themselves to that kind of scrutiny, unless that reluctance is on display in the post providing it.
Gonna be real, this general sentiment would make me less likely to report something.
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@Polk “he said, she said” is primarily the only evidence there is even in situations where there’s a lot more at stake than anything that happens in gaming. Credibility determinations are required to make judgments, that’s all there is to it. In a situation where there is genuinely only one person in each side of an argument that’s hard. But that’s relatively rare, because most people operate according to patterns of behavior.
let it be a challenge to you
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@sao Yup. “Fortunately,” people tend to spread around their misbehavior and are found out.
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A couple of the skills that are required in good staffing that I rarely see most people mention are the ability to do a vibe check and be okay with getting it wrong sometimes. Because you will occasionally get it wrong but most of the best staffers I have ever met have an ability to do a fairly accurate gut check. Hell, with one new staffer I brought on to Arx, one the big reasons I reached out to them was that I trust their ability to vibe check.
Some people are going to hate hearing that because we have been schooled to believe ‘innocent until proven guilty’ and that every accusation needs to be thoroughly investigated and all evidence used to ‘convict’ needs to be publicly available. But this isn’t a court of law and getting removed from a MUSH isn’t the end of the world. If all I have is a ‘he said, she said’ situation, then most of that decision is based on what I have seen from them IC and OOC and if there has been a pattern of behavior. I do ask for logs for context but I don’t insist on them. Almost every ban for predatory behavior on Arx was someone already flagged for watching by staff.
What it comes down to is if you trust staff judgment. If you have seen them getting it wrong more than getting it right or outright ignoring toxic behavior or not able to admit if they have gotten it wrong without having a meltdown over it, leaving the game is often the best option, but sunk cost fallacy can step in and make that really hard (hi, it me as well).
lol lmao
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Vibe check is for real and can be done real quick. Most of your info about a new person in the very first meeting. Like take for example the flying monkey from that other thread who came in hot with vague info and a grey rock stance. Normally people who are contrite lead with, like, contrition.
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@Roz You’re right, and that’s something I need to work on. Thanks for calling me out on it.
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@GF Hey, respect for the response.
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@Roz Thank you, but I hope I’d still be willing to interrogate myself whether or not I got praised for it. Everyone has prejudices, and it feels like everyone should be willing to be uncomfortable in the process of trying to overcome them.
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@Pavel I don’t know if I can answer this. The scope of the assertion matters.
If someone wants to say, “you know, they have a McDonald’s in Nepal” – fuck it, pal, I’m inclined to believe you. No problem.
If they want to say, “you know, I actually threw a Molotov cocktail into the one McDonald’s in Nepal” – I don’t know man, something about that don’t really line up.
How much and what kind of proof I’d look for really depends on the size and complexity of the claim. Small claims, small evidence. Big claims, big evidence.
I wish you would.
