What is creepy?

[Splatpope]

I am somewhat reluctant to discuss such a topic because I feel like this is the exact reason why not everyone can and will be an admin : they are by nature chosen so that they are able to decide whether or not things break the rules, and by extension, if things are too creepy.

We have accepted this from the goonstation staff for all those years and everytime there was a disagreement either on the complaint or appeal section, it always ended up with the plaintiff being a weirdo who has no control of what he says and no idea why what he says might be disgusting to more sane people, and the staff being unanimous about the fact such things are not acceptable.
I'm obviously exaggerating a little bit, but you understand what I am trying to say.

But of course I understand the purpose for this thread and I suppose that admins getting feedback from the playerbase on how this should be handled cannot be a bad thing.

Anyways, as to what concerns my opinion about creepy stuff, hell it's indeed very important to consider context in every case; I will also concur with Spy_Guy that a "when in doubt, dont" mentality would solve many a problem in our community, the optimal state of mind probably being : "well I have this idea that might be fun, but I think it might be wrong to do, let's adminhelp and see what the staff has to say about it". The admin's guidelines might even stay in the dude's head and it's probable he wont do any future mistakes on the same subject.

Yet, the good majority of people who don't follow such mindsets end up being the same ones who do not even read the rules and who tend to ignore basic human interaction conventions, so it's a bit hard to rely on that.
Over the time, these people become experienced, lived through a handful of bans and should know better. So in the end, I am not so sure that this will help much because these offenders will still continue to ignore basic behavioral inhibitions and continue being weird creeps, whatever the acceptable level of creepiness may be; while people with the slightest bit of common sense will realize when they should question themselves about doing stuff. (syntax might be weird, forgive my belgian-ness)

Who knows, it might work.

Also I'm sorry for bashing whatever-fartman's-name-is, I understand why talking about him and not about what defines creepiness doesn't add anything useful to the thread.

[popecrunch]

I disagree with putting this on the rules page for the reason mentioned above. The issue is not with people doing heavy rp stuff on goon (if they pull it off more power to them, etc) but people going too far.
If there is a need to add a clause to the "Creep" section of the rules I think it would be better done as something along the lines of:

Creepiness is also unacceptable. This includes rape jokes, roleplaying sex, sexual harassment/assault, rape or extreme torture. If it involves your genitals, it doesn't belong here. There is absolutely no reason to use the word 'rape' on our servers, in any context, at all, forever. This is neither negotiable nor up for debate.

If the extreme torture clause requires clarification I believe all that should be necessary is a "when in doubt, don't" statement, or even using popecrunch's example as a display of where the line is drawn.

This I like, with slight shifting around and an addition:

This includes rape jokes, roleplaying sex, sexual harassment/assault, or rape. If it involves your genitals, or extreme torture, it doesn't belong here. If you're not sure if something you're plotting crosses the line, it's probably best not to do it until you've discussed it on the forums or IRC. Adminhelp is probably not the appropriate venue for this discussion.

Good?

Just out of curiosity, is possible that this discussion might go in a way that will bring back poo?

Absolutely not.

[popecrunch]

I am somewhat reluctant to discuss such a topic because I feel like this is the exact reason why not everyone can and will be an admin : they are by nature chosen so that they are able to decide whether or not things break the rules, and by extension, if things are too creepy.

Yeah that's why I said in the OP that I wasn't promising that anything would necessarily change as a result of the discussion, this is not a democracy. The entire admin staff, however, is definitely interested in input on the subject, as we're not really into the whole megalomaniacal BIG DEAL DECISION PERSON ON THE INTERNET sort of thing. There's a general consensus among the vast majority of the admins I've talked to on the topic that it would be better if we had a short list of important rules that tried to avoid lists of specifics - this is easier for the playerbase to read and understand, and easier for the admins to work with. The prerequisite for this is making very sure that the short-list rules are written well enough so that they are clear, without getting bogged down. It shouldn't really take more than half a minute or so to read and understand the rules - if we really truly NEED a lengthy tome telling the players what they can or can not do, something's broken somewhere.

[Spy_Guy]

I disagree with putting this on the rules page for the reason mentioned above. The issue is not with people doing heavy rp stuff on goon (if they pull it off more power to them, etc) but people going too far.
If there is a need to add a clause to the "Creep" section of the rules I think it would be better done as something along the lines of:

Creepiness is also unacceptable. This includes rape jokes, roleplaying sex, sexual harassment/assault, rape or extreme torture. If it involves your genitals, it doesn't belong here. There is absolutely no reason to use the word 'rape' on our servers, in any context, at all, forever. This is neither negotiable nor up for debate.

If the extreme torture clause requires clarification I believe all that should be necessary is a "when in doubt, don't" statement, or even using popecrunch's example as a display of where the line is drawn.

This I like, with slight shifting around and an addition:

This includes rape jokes, roleplaying sex, sexual harassment/assault, or rape. If it involves your genitals, or extreme torture, it doesn't belong here. If you're not sure if something you're plotting crosses the line, it's probably best not to do it until you've discussed it on the forums or IRC. Adminhelp is probably not the appropriate venue for this discussion.

Good?

That seems good, but on the other hand it kind of makes it seem like the genitals bit is negotiable which is a very clear line. Extreme torture feels more at home in the "This includes..." sentence because of this. While none of the things in that sentence are acceptable, this is covered by the genitals clause.

If that didn't make sense it's because I'm way tired

[DyssalC]

ALICE, IS THERE SOMEONE WE SHOULD CALL TO MAKE SURE YOU'RE TAKING YOUR MEDICATION:

Alice shoots Bob with a tranq dart. When Bob wakes up, he's lashed to a chair in a dark room somewhere with a couple dead bodies around, and Alice is laughing. She tells him that he can't escape, that he's going to die here, and starts hollering on the radio that unless Jones The Cat is taken safely to the owlry and arrives unharmed, she's going to mail pieces of Bob to various parts of the station, starting with beakers of blood, going through the limbs, then ending with his brain. Nobody responds to the demands, so she extracts some blood, *laughs afterward and does a custom emote about licking the needle afterward,then mails that to Chemistry, hacks off his limbs, does a custom emote about slapping him with his own severed arm and hollering STOP HITTING YOURSELF and mails those to the Bridge, and finally mails his brain to the kitchen after doing a custom emote about licking it clean.

So it's not okay to slap people with their own limbs and ask "Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself?"?

[Readster]

So it's not okay to slap people with their own limbs and ask "Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself?"?

Read the rest of the thread.

[DyssalC]

So it's not okay to slap people with their own limbs and ask "Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself?"?

Read the rest of the thread.

Ah, gotcha.

[popecrunch]

That seems good, but on the other hand it kind of makes it seem like the genitals bit is negotiable which is a very clear line. Extreme torture feels more at home in the "This includes..." sentence because of this. While none of the things in that sentence are acceptable, this is covered by the genitals clause.

If that didn't make sense it's because I'm way tired

Yeah no I stuck it there because I worried that if it was before the genitals bit, they might parse it as 'hm so extreme torture that DOESN'T involve the genitals is A-OK then!' How about:

This includes rape jokes, roleplaying sex, sexual harassment/assault, or rape. If it involves your genitals, or extreme torture, it doesn't belong here. Stuff relating to your bathing suit area is absolutely not allowed under any circumstances, but if you're not sure if something else you're plotting crosses the line, it's probably best not to do it until you've discussed it on the forums or IRC. Adminhelp is probably not the appropriate venue for this discussion.

[UrsulaMejor]

In my "so you wanna be a teacher?" Classes where we discussed how to set guidelines in a classroom while working our internships, we were told that there are really only two rules you need to have:

1) Be respectful to others
2) Be respectful to yourself

If you properly explain what these rules entail and consistently enforce them, children usually have no problem understanding how they're expected to behave.

I think the same kind of thing applies here: when setting guidelines for behavior, less is more.

We shouldn't get too muddied down in discussing the specifics of what EXACTLY constitutes creepy. Instead, we should focus on propagating a community of mutual respect, using consistent and clear guidelines and enforcement policies.

In the case in the OP, while the words themselves might not have been strictly "creepy" under specific rulings, the clear context and intent of their meaning WAS to stretch the boundaries of allowed behavior deliberately, and was not demonstrative of respect for other players.

Ps: when I say respect, I don't mean that we necessarily have to be NICE all the time or turn into a "hugbox", whatever that means. There's a difference between LIKING a person and participating in a community of mutual respect that HAPPENS TO INCLUDE that person.

[Spy_Guy]

That seems good, but on the other hand it kind of makes it seem like the genitals bit is negotiable which is a very clear line. Extreme torture feels more at home in the "This includes..." sentence because of this. While none of the things in that sentence are acceptable, this is covered by the genitals clause.

If that didn't make sense it's because I'm way tired

Yeah no I stuck it there because I worried that if it was before the genitals bit, they might parse it as 'hm so extreme torture that DOESN'T involve the genitals is A-OK then!' How about:

This includes rape jokes, roleplaying sex, sexual harassment/assault, or rape. If it involves your genitals, or extreme torture, it doesn't belong here. Stuff relating to your bathing suit area is absolutely not allowed under any circumstances, but if you're not sure if something else you're plotting crosses the line, it's probably best not to do it until you've discussed it on the forums or IRC. Adminhelp is probably not the appropriate venue for this discussion.

Are you sure it'd be parsed like that, given that it's lumped together with things like roleplaying sex, sexual harassment/assault and rape? As it stands, having double clarifications for genitals being unacceptable seems slightly redundant to me and makes the entire thing a lot less concise.

[Natsumehack]

The Line I draw is when something stops being absurd like a bad B horror movie. Cutting a person limb off, and hitting them with it yelling "stop hitting yourself" Is just absurd and funny. The Moment they start acting real in-depth about what they are doing, putting detail into things that don't need it, and stop trying to be absurd is the point I begin to get the feeling they trying to creep me out.


For example with what pope said about poo. Using poo a few times, to do stuff that is silly such as Filling a room full of it. That is Sitcom level of silly. Doing it every round, to the point it's not funny, and becomes more of a Modus operandi. Then it becomes creepy.

That's my input on this subject.

[Noah Buttes]

I think we may be trying to be a bit too thorough. Really, the job of the admins is to decide this kind of stuff on a case by case basis. If someone thinks that what they did wasn't creepy enough to warrant a ban, tough shit.

[popecrunch]

As much as I'd like the rules to be as simple as 'be respectful of others', that's simply not going to cut it. We have to specifically keep anything that could be mistaken for sexual material out, and given the playerbase this game tends to attract, 'respectful' is even more of a moving target than 'creepy' - and very often, respectful behavior leads to an unfun boring mess of a round. I want to get it as basic as possible, though, as long as the core ideas are covered.

That said, 'we are the admins, you aren't, deal w/ it' doesn't exactly lend itself well to a good admin-player community.

[Sundance]

The Line I draw is when something stops being absurd like a bad B horror movie. Cutting a person limb off, and hitting them with it yelling "stop hitting yourself" Is just absurd and funny. The Moment they start acting real in-depth about what they are doing, putting detail into things that don't need it, and stop trying to be absurd is the point I begin to get the feeling they trying to creep me out.

Agreed.
The issue here isn't extreme torture. Torture, even extreme, can be funny in the right setting if it is done in a playful light slapstick kinda way. Fake mustache supervillain-esque escapades. There's literally nothing in-game that a traitor shouldn't be able to do for a pro-longed period of time, even if it is injecting someone with various poisons and medicines for 30 minutes to pro-long the agony, or sending someone through a mechanic portal that sends you through a gravity loops that tears you to pieces, all the while stopping at least once per cycle so the villian can step over and fart on you, or sleep-penning someone then chain-sawing off all their limbs before feeding their barely living torso to a man-eater.. That's all dandy (isn't it?). At least it should be for gimmicks. It is lame walking down a corridor and keeling over because of initro. Boring. (To a means of an end of course)
The pro-longed torture can be interesting for the victim, because in the end, they are alive. Tis' the nature of the game. Many escapades i've seen ends up with the victim making it out alive or cloned and the insane traitor cuffed or lynched because he ran a gimmick, and gimmicks are hard.
It is the context of the matter. Not what they do, but what they say and how they do it. The how they do it part really is down to how one emotes it. I dunno.. Am I wrong here?

[popecrunch]

Am I wrong here?

Nope, you're exactly right. We're not talking about the sort of everyday murderous behavior, we're talking about really, really, REALLY out there stuff. It's hard to really verbalize, but it's the sort of heavily emoted stuff that makes you wonder if the person has both hands on the keyboard.