Proving Assertions

STD

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.

GF

@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.

Roz

@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??

GF

@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.

sao

Testimony is evidence. Telling the story in the first place counts, absolutely.

Polk

@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.

Roz

@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.

sao

@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.

Polk

@sao Yup. “Fortunately,” people tend to spread around their misbehavior and are found out.

Herja

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).

shit-piss-love

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.

GF

@Roz You’re right, and that’s something I need to work on. Thanks for calling me out on it.

Roz

@GF Hey, respect for the response.

GF

@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.

Pax

@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.

Roz

@Pax said in Proving Assertions:

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.

I’d believe it coming from @helvetica.

helvetica

@Roz LOL. I can’t throw! I have Betty Spaghetti arms.

Testament

@Pax said in Proving Assertions:

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.

I hate the fact that I felt obligated to look up if there was, in fact, a McDonalds in Nepal.

tsar

@Testament said in Proving Assertions:

@Pax said in Proving Assertions:

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.

I hate the fact that I felt obligated to look up if there was, in fact, a McDonalds in Nepal.

Well???

Testament

@tsar Oddly, there is not. And I say ‘oddly’ if only because I expected them to be like Starbucks, literally everywhere.