Bannings

[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.

[Meg]

@KarmaBum if you do, i’m gonna rewrite the narrative that you ignored me because i asked for some ACCOUNTABILITY on your banned image.

[Pavel]

@Third-Eye You can always feel free to call me a motherfucker if you want. There’s a caveat to our basic respect rule that excludes me, specifically.

[GF]

@Third-Eye said in Bannings:

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.

I personally interpret prohibitions against bad language as instead being a demand for obeisance. Like, remember the milkshake panic three or four years ago where people would throw milkshakes at shitty politicians, and the political class in general acted like throwing a milkshake was as bad as the sum total of every bad act the milkshake was meant to protest because it’s not civil and respectful?

[Pyrephox]

@Sam-Hyde said in Bannings:

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.

This is something that has concerned me, as well. If I have any ‘hopes’ for this board, it involves the Helping Hands subforum, and that there will be room for people to talk about interesting ideas without having those ideas instantly shot down by people who have very specific ideas of how MU*s ‘should’ work and are all too gleeful to talk about how trying anything else is doomed, DOOMED and will never survive.

It’s something that I’ve heard game designers and potential game designers talk about for years and when people are already considering putting hours and hours of work into something, having a bunch of people all too ready to pour buckets of cold water on any idea that isn’t exactly like five hundred games that have gone before is very discouraging.

[TNP]

@Pavel Motherfucker is so crude and low brow. Insults should be more interesting such as calling someone a pillock or cockalorum.

[GF]

@Pyrephox I know that after a break-up, there’s a period where a person defines themself by their opposition to the ended relationship, and that’s natural and fine. I’m really hoping we start to develop a more positive identity soon, though, by which I mean defining ourselves in terms of what we’re for rather than whom we’re against.

[Pavel]

@GF We’re for taco Tuesdays, no-pants Fridays, and the violent and utter overthrow of the capitalistic, white-supremacist patriarchy. And tea.