Let's talk about The Cool Zone

[warcrimes]

you severely underestimate the sheer effort it takes to engage with this kind of... "argument".
anyone who isn't full of piss and vinegar enough to care about who got shouted out for plopping steamers in the kiddie pool isn't going to show up.

e: as em said, nothing actionable or even demonstrable in any sense has come up yet.
So no, I really don't see how you're going to muster up a response from the people hapily going about their business because your thread just vaguely alludes to something needs to change about these happy people going about their business because *shrug*

[vampirate]

But most the posters here are Mentors who were super reasonable about it...

[Flourish]

It's less that and more that even the idea that perhaps Trumpers and Cops aren't all monsters might get shouted down.    Again, I am what Americans would consider far left.  For context I would be just left of Bernie Sanders.     People have been shouted down for expressing any positive notion for cops, rules of law, and whatnot.    Anything outside the overriding opinion there can get some nasty comments.

I think this would probably go back to "read the room". Going into #cool-zone and expecting everyone to be fine with you saying that when you understand how awful Trump supporters and cops have been to, like, everyone, is not it. How are people supposed to respond? "Wow you're totally right, you've shown me how things really are, thank you for your wonderful contribution"? That's pretty silly. To put it another way; it's a channel for venting and heavy topics, and saying "hey it's not actually that bad" is really insensitive! Why do you feel the need to express that in the first place, anyways?

[warcrimes]

Again, im repeating myself but yes.
The mentors who brought stuff up here were reasonable. Unfortunately every thing that was brought up was one of two things:

a) something an admin immediately took care of, despite insistence that we somehow let these things slide
b) not a problem and not anything we can do anything about (i.e. pissing off more than one person, and having those persons dislike you thereafter)

The only relatively coherent issue was brought up by Sundance, being that we have a blind spot to some implications that are objectionable in other cultures (conflating IRA and other groups, example)- but those are once again not something we can do anything about unless someone actually reports it at the time so we can talk about it. If it had been, it would have been taken care of, and it's something we actively seek to improve.

So again, what part of this do we need to fix, other than nobody wanting to hear sealioning and devil's advocate wastes of time?

[vampirate]

1. Put a hard no on personal insults. Just in general, at all.
2. When someone expresses an opinion not letting others reduce that opinion to the most cartoonishly ridiculous version of their statement possible. If it's a place where people can dump and vent, that should be evenly applied.
3. Call out and hard no every call for violence against anyone.
4. Perhaps make cool zone its own player tag? This would stop your average person from stumbling in unprepared.
5. Encourage players to report all bad behavior, including if it's from admins (though that's rare), or toxic rhetoric. Make it super duper clear no one's catching a ban for reporting people who break those rules. You might think it's clear, but that is a valid concern some folks have.

[Mordent]

1.  Put a hard no on personal insults.  Just in general, at all.

That's a server rule.

2.  When someone expresses an opinion not letting others reduce that opinion to the most cartoonishly ridiculous version of their statement possible.  If it's a place where people can dump and vent, that should be evenly applied.

I'll let someone else field this one, but I feel like "read the room" is a good summary of this "point".

3.  Call out and hard no every call for violence against anyone.

We do. If you see one that we don't please make an admin aware.

4.  Perhaps make cool zone its own player tag?  This would stop your average person from stumbling in unprepared.

Alternatively: mute the channel if you don't seem to like it.

5.   Encourage players to report all bad behavior, including if it's from admins (though that's rare), or toxic rhetoric.   Make it super duper clear no one's catching a ban for reporting people who break those rules.   You might think it's clear, but that is a valid concern some folks have.

We do. Why would people think folks catch a ban for reporting those who break the rules? We don't have that logic anywhere.

So as all of your "demands" have been met/have a way of fixing with the exception of #2 (which seems to be a user issue rather than a community issue?) I don't see a problem here. Awesome.

[warcrimes]

thank you for explaining our own rules to us as if we don't already enforce them to the best of what is reasonable.

Here's a summary

1: we do this, and you have been banned from the cool zone for it.
2: that's a fantasy bubble world that you're not getting. ever. buy a diary.
3: we do this
4: we do this, but opt-out. that's how you were banned from it.
5: we do this, but nobody reports anything except for "players were mean to me because i was a jerk about indigenous genocide",
which i will point out, you didn't even get banned for that at the time, so it's not even like you can't express shit opinions- you just gotta live with the social consequences!

e: lol i was too slow but im so dissapointed in you that I need you to know.

e2: expanding on point 2, like mordent said, it's a user issue.
If you don't like your views being represented as cartoonishly evil and stupid, form a more informed opinion.
Literally every single case of this run-away charicaturizing has come from someone dropping a really really ingorant take, and getting increasingly defensive when anyone tries to discuss it. Not unlike present company. If a dozen people try to explain a different lived experience to you, maybe add that to your brain instead of taking it as an attack.

[Drago156]

I can recall a very specific instance one of the few times I looked in thw cool zone way earlier in the year that there was indeed quite a loud expression of "ACAB" through the cool zone at the time and where a few people, myself included, attempted to say that the statement of "ACAB" is highly assumptive and not fair to cops who are good, and by which we were very clearly dogpiled against and yelled at when we were attempting to make a fair case. Right now my phone is at 5% and I won't be home for some time but I very much can when I get home fetch discord links to the specific incident.

As for the poll being biased or not having a wide enough audience then I would suggest that having an official poll posted in the news section of the goon discord would solve the issue of audience, and you could have a few different questions asked in the poll, having answers like "definite yes, kind of yes, neutral, kind of no, definite no" or that range in a similar way as to allow all options to be selected, that would help to eliminate the bias.

[Carbadox]

" I mean hell, even carbodox's screenshot that he intended to be an example of the system not working, was - actually a screenshot of the system working, because an admin Dealt With It in moments."

No. My comment was pointing out the stuff I hate seeing, cool zone or not. The screenshot was only provided because the truthfulness of statement was questioned.

The problem with the person from the screenshot goes way beyond that one occasion but that's off topic. For the record, there was no attempt at implying they were an admin, since as Em bought up, you can easily check who said what.

"Encourage players to report all bad behavior, "

Personally I'll say I haven't felt that this was actually enforced in any proper way. Previously, I had seen an admin act incredibly abhresively to lots of individuals in the past in situations that really didn't warrant that behaviour. Seeing that only made me think "well if he's been doing that for so long then I can only assume that this is okay with the other admins"
However, seeing the statements in this thread, I'll keep in mind to make use of what's been said here. Consider any issues I bought up here as resolved

[warcrimes]

Perfect example:

Cool zone - for expressing dismay and pain
ACAB - an expression of dismay and pain, directed at a class of people sworn to cause the dismay and pain in question
Cool zone - not a place to debate peoples dismay and pain
Not All Cops - debating other people's expression of dismay and pain.

Once again, nobody needed a textbook definition of the literal meaning of "all" and why that might be factually, technically incorrect.
It's an expression of pain, and trying to police that expression is the same as policing their pain.

You can solve this problem for yourself by learning the historical and cultural significance of the magical phrase ALL COPS ARE BASTARDS, rather than kneejerking in horror at the literal interpretation of it you have chosen.
https://www.gq.com/story/history-of-acab
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/aca...43386.html
https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/what-do...mean-1312/

Or you could continue to try to debate definitions and semantics with people who are speaking of structural concepts, and continue getting burned for not wanting to understand the significance and nuance allowed in human expression.

[popecrunch]

No. My comment was pointing out the stuff I hate seeing, cool zone or not. The screenshot was only provided because the truthfulness of statement was questioned.

If you do not like seeing what goes down in cool zone, do not look in cool zone. End of.

[Carbadox]

If you do not like seeing what goes down in cool zone, do not look in cool zone. End of.

I don't frequent cool-zone at all, I keep it muted and only glance occasionally whenever curiosity gets the better of me

Like I said, consider anything I bought up as resolved, I have no issue with what's been presented so far

[shotgunbill]

i'm glad that your issues are resolved carbadox

to reiterate for the general viewing public in this thread:

If you do not like seeing what goes down in cool zone, do not look in cool zone. End of.

I think the place contains roughly every type of conversation I don't want to have as part of a community about a spaceman game, but that's okay because I followed the following steps:

1) Mute the channel
2) Carry on with my life

Anyone else is welcome to do the same.

[Sundance]

It's become abundantly clear now from reading the discussion that the #coolzone is not a political chat, but a quarantine: both from Bubs points that making extra rules will just have it leak into different chats or splintering and from Mordents points about muting the chat and moving on. 

If that is the case you are making then I agree with letting it be.

[vampirate]

One thing I wasn't aware of, that was pointed out to me, is now cool zone has a warning for new people entering it. Like a disclaimer or something. That's super rad, and I may not have even made the thread had I known that. I get that it's a channel that needs to exist, and I am fully supportive of that. I also think it's rad that goon has a thriving lgbt community that has a spot where they can just emotional dump about the ongoing suck of some of the things attached to that lifestyle (again, dating a man in Texas. I know for sure it can sometimes be nice to just be like "man this shit sucks" and have people hear you).

I do wonder if perhaps the town halls continuing might have helped avert people's doubts? But I also think those probably put some constraints on the time of those involved.

The Cool Zone is still pretty new, yeah? And it might still be a work in progress and fine tuning occurring.

It's not for me, I'm too much of a bleeding heart.

I had meant to post a thread at some point asking if the town halls were going to happen again

And yeah it fully makes sense as Sundance said as a quarantine to keep it spilling over to the rest of the channels.