(02-25-2020, 05:59 PM)Roomba Wrote: Aside from the fact that a policy of blanket silence and "It's none of your business, it's an internal admin thing that's already being resolved" would be extremely unsatisfying and also turn off a lot of players, it would also be completely unenforceable because the admins who left the team would not be bound by that policy and would have no qualms sharing about the issues that caused them to leave from their perspective. It's better to have the town hall not just so that the players can be informed, but so each of the admins can have their say, instead of interested players only getting the story in private conversations with disgruntled ex-admins (after all, such issues seem to be what caused this mess in the first place).
I'm not against the town hall, and certainly everyone should get their say.
More that, I think in the future it might be helpful to have a designated person or people whose role it is to handle communication between not just players and staff, but internal conflicts as well
A Human Resources and Public Relations department, I guess
02-25-2020, 07:21 PM (This post was last modified: 02-25-2020, 07:23 PM by popecrunch.)
IMPORTANT NOTE: sunday is the first. i am a big idiot who can't read a calendar
also: (the perception of) being shifty about what gets talked about is a huge part of what landed us in the current mess, so i'm trying to err on the side of 'answering literally any question asked to the best of my ability unless i have an extremely compelling reason to do otherwise'.
(02-25-2020, 06:03 AM)Azungar Wrote: A lot of people left when Goon decided to adapt to be more politically correct. I personally feel like this is just a continuation of that story, with the people who no longer wish to see that development is wanting to bow out. It's blatantly obvious that Goon doesn't mind catering to certain groups, which is fine but should perhaps be more directly stated. I personally don't think Goon has been a politically neutral ground for a while now, with certain people choosing to treat it as a playground for their political motives instead of a community created a video game. Maybe that's just the natural development of things.
On second thought, this is worth replying to specifically.
I think there's a massive disconnect between your perceptions of community and the perceptions of racial/ethnic/gender/sexual/etc minorities. As near as I can tell, and I could be very wrong here and invite clarification, your idea of 'neutral ground' is a space where your beliefs and assumptions aren't challenged without cause. Which sounds fine in a vacuum. The 'neutral ground' I have spent my entire administrative career in this community trying to achieve is a space where nobody's personhood is challenged. To someone in your position, 'don't ridicule certain things' is political correctness and one of those annoying things you have to agree to so you don't get grumped at by someone with no real sense of humor. To a member of one of those aforementioned minorities, 'don't ridicule certain things' is a shield that gives them a space where they can trust they won't be belittled because of who they ARE. Make fun of someone all dang day for stupid things they do, but the minute you start ridiculing someone because of who they are, that's the point at which I'm gonna have something to say about it. Just as nobody gets to pick their nation of origin or skin color, nobody gets to pick what sexual or gender identity they land on, or even whether or not theirs is concrete and not changing over time. Think of that pesky 'political correctness' as the natural conclusion of the no slurs rule we instilled long ago. No Slurs Part Two: The Secret Of The Ooze.
If that's a dealbreaker for someone, if they have no interest in engaging with a community where nobody's personhood is challenged, then I wish them every happiness in finding someplace else to call home. This space will not be that home, for as long as I have anything to say about it.
(02-25-2020, 06:03 AM)Azungar Wrote: A lot of people left when Goon decided to adapt to be more politically correct. I personally feel like this is just a continuation of that story, with the people who no longer wish to see that development is wanting to bow out. It's blatantly obvious that Goon doesn't mind catering to certain groups, which is fine but should perhaps be more directly stated. I personally don't think Goon has been a politically neutral ground for a while now, with certain people choosing to treat it as a playground for their political motives instead of a community created a video game. Maybe that's just the natural development of things.
On second thought, this is worth replying to specifically.
I think there's a massive disconnect between your perceptions of community and the perceptions of racial/ethnic/gender/sexual/etc minorities. As near as I can tell, and I could be very wrong here and invite clarification, your idea of 'neutral ground' is a space where your beliefs and assumptions aren't challenged without cause. Which sounds fine in a vacuum. The 'neutral ground' I have spent my entire administrative career in this community trying to achieve is a space where nobody's personhood is challenged. To someone in your position, 'don't ridicule certain things' is political correctness and one of those annoying things you have to agree to so you don't get grumped at by someone with no real sense of humor. To a member of one of those aforementioned minorities, 'don't ridicule certain things' is a shield that gives them a space where they can trust they won't be belittled because of who they ARE. Make fun of someone all dang day for stupid things they do, but the minute you start ridiculing someone because of who they are, that's the point at which I'm gonna have something to say about it. Just as nobody gets to pick their nation of origin or skin color, nobody gets to pick what sexual or gender identity they land on, or even whether or not theirs is concrete and not changing over time. Think of that pesky 'political correctness' as the natural conclusion of the no slurs rule we instilled long ago. No Slurs Part Two: The Secret Of The Ooze.
If that's a dealbreaker for someone, if they have no interest in engaging with a community where nobody's personhood is challenged, then I wish them every happiness in finding someplace else to call home. This space will not be that home, for as long as I have anything to say about it.
There most definitely is no disconnect between how I perceive the community and racial/ethnic/gender/etc. minorities. I think it's pretty ridiculous to even suggest that those can even be seen apart as the latter group makes what is considered to be the 'the community'. And actually, my perception of the neutral ground is quite literally a space where beliefs and assumptions are kept to an absolute minimum as not to offend or affect anyone. Not only does it sound fine in a vacuum, but it would also work fine in the application if only this was someone genuinely wishing to genuinely not be challenged. Raising awareness that a certain group of people is being catered by the server is not challenging someone's personhood. Questioning if tokenism for any political/religious/ideological view is the way we wish to steer the server into is not also challenging someone's personhood. Pointing out that if certain individuals have been given the green light to personalize the in-game content with a part of themself then everyone else is free to do so as well. Especially if you are advocating for a stance where nobody's personhood is challenged, that means that you can't pick and choose.
Also, I must have missed the point where anyone was being ridiculed due to their gender/nationality/race/sexual orientation. Last time I checked, the server had a ruleset against bigotry, slurs, and general hate speech, not a ruleset against hate speech towards particular nationality/gender/race/sexual orientation. Just because certain people (you included) have decided to make it their agenda to push and promote a certain community within this server (The LGBTQ+ community) doesn't exactly mean that you can push past the set rules of the server and just pick and choose on what is allowed and what is not without a consensus. So what is exactly the issue with that, a server ruleset that has not been updated to reflect the ideals of the server or a very loud minority within the server that is pushing their views and beliefs onto everyone?
I don't think anyone of the older Goon guard or from the players has ever complained that removal of slurs was bad it was probably one of the better changes that have occurred to this blasted place. But I don't think this "pesky political correctness" is the natural conclusion of that. Or maybe I am wrong and it is, but it's not a question that neither you or I can decide for everyone who hops on our server. It is genuinely a thing that would require a server-wide vote on being accepted unless you prefer to do what was previously done, and just presume that everyone is fine with instilling political correctness within the server. I don't grasp at what point political correctness was assigned to be a necessary step of someone feeling welcome to play on the server or a part of them feeling equal to everyone else. If anything, allowing that to be widely used on the server just promotes further crowbarring for more rights through 'privileges'.
Also, if you wish to take the responsibility of creating this wonderful space where nobody's personhood is challenged, you'll wish to take the responsibility of sowing this minefield that lays between the people who genuinely have no interest in gender/sexual orientation/politics and the people who consider that to be something so vital about them, that they just can't push it in a community that is about spacemen and farting. I've yet to hear from anyone that they felt like they were not treated equally in our community. And yet this minefield prevents healthy and needed discussion on how the actual in-game content should be handled. This necessary and healthy discussion also prevents other discussions with these people as they are instantly ready to take up arms if there is as much as a minor disagreement with them. Even within my short year of being an admin, I could have gathered so many separate incidents where stuff was shoehorned into gender/identity politics even though the question at hand had nothing to do with it.
It's not a dealbreaker for me that there is a suggestion of political correctness being used on the server. What is a dealbreaker for me is people like you who think that they can just force it on everyone without actually consulting the people who it affects. I don't think either of us knows if you are a majority or a minority in this case and as such, I genuinely think that is a thing that would require a server vote on how political/ideological agenda should be handled within the game. It's a very fresh phenomenon on the server as in the past, things have been kept very much in line with the flavor of the 1980's spaceman game.
I'd be genuinely interested in hearing what the actual community thinks about this.
02-26-2020, 08:50 AM (This post was last modified: 02-26-2020, 08:54 AM by Camryn. Edited 1 time in total.)
EDIT: this was written prior to pope and Azungar's latest responses.
not that my message changes in anyway, but I figured I should make that clear
(02-25-2020, 05:46 PM)OMJ Wrote:
(02-25-2020, 04:23 PM)Frank_Stein Wrote:
(02-25-2020, 12:31 PM)OMJ Wrote: my honest opinion on all this is that the players/mentors don’t need to see or hear any of this. We aren’t owed anything. It’s just exerting extra energy.
, but we should definitely be careful about peeling back too many layers of separation between players, coders, and admin staff. A certain amount of professional detachment should be held
said what I was trying to say in a better way. Infighting is not the players business. They should be kept in the dark, if anything. Too many cooks spoils the broth
No.
That sort of blackbox information policy is exactly what got us into this mess in the first place.
It is disingenuous and harmful to both players and staff.
As representatives of the larger playerbase, admins should be able to be held accountable by the people they represent. Hiding inter-admin conflict to maintain a veneer of respectability prevents this from happening.
More importantly, it deprives staff members of a valuable pressure relief valve. Ultimately, admins are still people. Conflicts are going to happen. Stress and tension are going to build. In a closed system like the one proposed in the current revision of the admin guidelines (see spoiler at bottom of post), there is nowhere for this pressure to go. Eventually the container will fail, and we'll have another blowout on our hands.
If we want to actually respect the mental and social wellbeing of our admin team, we can't force them to bottle up their emotions and try to "settle" things internally. Especially since that tactic has already been tried and clearly hasn't worked.
While I'm here, I'd also like to address Azungar's comments about Goon no longer being "politically neutral ground."
There is no such thing as "politically neutral ground." To even view "politically neutral ground" as desirable is to support a false equivalency between the values of the right and the left. To give equal credibility to both the ideology that seeks to eliminate the rights and freedoms of entire groups of people for just being different and the one that seeks to protect those rights is tremendously misguided at best and morally abhorrent at worst.
Even if you decided to create "politically neutral ground" by forbidding any political discussion, you would be inherently taking a political stance in favor of the status quo.
The same status quo that values profit over the lives of employees and sees prisoners as tools to be exploited rather than people to be reformed
The same status quo that genuinely oppresses a large portion, perhaps even a majority, of our player base.
The members of our community deserve to feel safe and welcome in our digital family, regardless of their rank.
That includes our admins, coders, and other staff.
That is why I cannot in good conscience support in any way, shape, or form this proposed guideline:
Under no circumstances are members of staff to communicate internal issues or secrets to the players or general public. This includes, but is not limited to: Interpersonal arguments between members of staff, opinions of specific players or groups of players held by members of staff or staff in general, planned or future game functions, or information about administration structure that has been decided will be kept quiet. The sole exception is that you can talk about secrets and other game features IF AND ONLY IF you are either the sole person who created that content, or have explicit permission from the person or people who did. You probably want to screenshot that permission in case it’s challenged!
02-26-2020, 08:54 AM (This post was last modified: 02-26-2020, 08:57 AM by popecrunch.)
I invite you to point to literally anything I have done to promote a LGBTQ+ agenda, whatever that means. I'm not a coder, I have no ability to add anything to the game. The only changes I have made to the community are to forbid slurs and other forms of exclusion. The closest I have come to 'promoting an LGBTQ+ agenda' is responding positively and with inclusion when people share their life experiences, which I do for anyone. Perhaps by 'catered to', you really mean 'disallowing their demonization' in which case sure, that's legit, but complaining about that is probably not making you look as cool as you think it will. Again, since you seem to be confused on this topic: i am not a coder, and have no ability to add anything to the game, and haven't specifically approved of or disapproved of any potential addition to the game in a long, long while - and when I do, it's out of gameplay or mechanics concerns. Like I can't even remember the last time I said yes or no to a proposed addition, I think it was something to do with chemistry. Believe it or not, coders generally don't ask me about a given thing before they add it. Why would they? I'm not in charge of that, and I don't wanna be.
It's also worth noting that you seem to think 'no transphobia' is a new rule. It's not. It was always included in the 'no slurs' bit, under 'other bigoted language'. When I've mentioned transphobic comments, it wasn't in the spirit of 'this is a new rule', but in the spirit of 'you might not have realized this, but transphobia is absolutely bigoted speech'. I would know, I'm literally the person who WROTE the original rule, way back when, when we all voted on it at the wizard, admin, and even player level.
Yes, literally everyone voted on it. I would know, I was there. The wizard vote came first, then the admin vote, then the player vote. I made a great point of not imposing that rule until and unless it represented the will of the community as a whole, and not merely a simple majority. I don't recall the numbers right offhand, but I remember it was well in excess of 80% - so your handwringing about that mean old popecrunch imposing his values on an oppressed playerbase is your own invention. If you don't believe me, check with literally anybody who was around back then, they'll back me up.
I literally do not care if people have an interest or not in politics. I literally do not care if people have an interest in the sexual or gender identities of others. I am not asking anybody to. All that I have ever asked, and all that I ever will ask, is that you (a general 'you', not you specifically) do not, under any circumstances, say or do anything that attacks someone on the basis of who they are. That goes both ways - I have grumped at people for calling heterosexuals 'breeders' as an insult, i have grumped at people for assuming people who align with conservative politics are Nazis without anything to back that claim up, and I will continue to do so.
I have not once seen anyone 'pushing an LGBTQ+ agenda' beyond asking for simple acceptance. I'm not even sure what that would look like - gay recruiting? If I did see that, I would stomp on it (though after a moment of amazement at seeing such an insane display, sure). Most of this post seems like unhinged whataboutism that is complaining about something that doesn't exist, based on arguments of imposed values that are false, and ending with a shriek that boils down to 'what rights will they ask for next'. That's.... not a good look, and I would strongly advise you to take a long hard look in the mirror and do some heavy thinking before returning to this conversation.
Civility is not a zero sum game. One group of people being treated more civilly does not mean a different group of people gets treated less civilly, unless you are seriously claiming a right to dehumanize others or use bigoted language.
And again, I take especial offense to the idea that the rules or their implementation is being 'imposed' on the community from above. I was ESPECIALLY careful to avoid that, to the point where I made sure to allow the playerbase to vote on the new rules before they became active. That was possibly before your time, so I don't necessarily hold it against you that you were unaware of that fact, but before you accuse me or anyone of tyranny, you should really check your assumptions lest you look like a fool.
(02-26-2020, 08:50 AM)Camryn Wrote: That is why I cannot in good conscience support in any way, shape, or form this proposed guideline:
I wanted to take a moment to specifically, strongly ask you to show up at the town hall, because I would very very much like to discuss this with you and see if we can word it better to arrive at something that threads the needle. If it helps, the intent of the guideline wasn't to hide Actual Concerns About The Community from the community, more to keep interpersonal arguments that simply aren't relevant or rumination on whether or not a given player was a Problem off y'all's radar - the first case to avoid stirring the drama pot, the second case to preserve privacy. This isn't something that just you and me should work out, and I think the townhall meeting is an excellent way for everybody with an interest in that guideline being written Correctly to have input.
02-26-2020, 08:58 AM (This post was last modified: 02-26-2020, 02:41 PM by Flourish. Edited 4 times in total.)
Hey, to a lot of players, this conversation between Azungar and Pope is gonna look kinda weird. You probably don't have enough context for some of the things they're saying. I'll type up a longer post later, but for now, please understand that there's been a lot of things going on in adminchat, for a long time. This includes arguments about politics and what is okay ingame and what is not, speculation and accusations about people's political affiliations, and a lot of bad feelings. Please bear this in mind. Thank you.
Alright, here's what I wanted to say:
I want to give everyone's points enough attention and actually address them, but I really can't keep up! So, I've chosen some specific ones I wanna clear up, elaborate on, or simply emphasize.
I agreed with most of Azungar's first post. Here are some of his points that I especially want to emphasize or add onto.
(02-25-2020, 06:03 AM)Azungar Wrote: Just that there was and still isn't a system that allows these conflicts to be resolved in a healthy manner, rather the more stubborn party can keep on pulling shit behind the scenes for as long as they wish to. And yes, sometimes there is no way to resolve these conflicts as sometimes ideologies just clash too hard on principle level. And when that happens, you end up witnessing what is occurring right now with some of the admins leaving.
Azungar is absolutely right. From my experience, we've never really had a truly functional system. There have been lots and lots of issues over the years, and a lot of them were never really resolved. Things add up, and sometimes they spill over, and then you end up with these extremely unfortunate events, seemingly out of nowhere (at least from the perspective of your average player).
(02-25-2020, 06:03 AM)Azungar Wrote: And congratulations, you have discovered the core issue. Not only have these quarrels been censored to private wizard channels which means that you REALLY needed to be in the loop even as an admin to figure this shit out, but the whole stance of Goon admins on a lot of the issues has been just a bunch of patting people on the head and wishing that things would just get better. I don't blame anyone, because I understand the desire behind everyone getting along but it's such a ridiculous pipedream when shit keeps boiling to conflict and leaks into other channels as well. It leaks into conversations about actual features, surfacing as genuine spite where genuinely decent ideas are shot down because of on-going feuds between people. I'm genuinely biased, so I won't point any fingers around, even if I personally think that it is just a very vocal minority.
I agree with everything Azungar said here. While it sounds sort of dismissive to characterize past efforts simply as "patting people on the head", oftentimes it did feel like people weren't really acknowledging the issues we had and just simply trying to ignore them while telling us that things were fine.
(02-25-2020, 06:03 AM)Azungar Wrote: A lot of people left when Goon decided to adapt to be more politically correct. I personally feel like this is just a continuation of that story, with the people who no longer wish to see that development is wanting to bow out. It's blatantly obvious that Goon doesn't mind catering to certain groups, which is fine but should perhaps be more directly stated. I personally don't think Goon has been a politically neutral ground for a while now, with certain people choosing to treat it as a playground for their political motives instead of a community created a video game. Maybe that's just the natural development of things.
I'm not sure which specific event or set of events Azungar is referring to when he says "when Goon decided to adapt to be more politically correct", but I agree that we should be more direct about what we want here and what we don't. Being clear about our expectations, boundaries, and our visions for the game and community going forward is very important, and I think ties a lot into the previous discussion I had with FishDance about direction. One thing I want to point out, though, is that I'm pretty sure we're operating with different definitions or ideas of what a "politically neutral ground" is. But again, being more clear would help settle this issue and potential miscommunications.
(02-25-2020, 04:23 PM)Frank_Stein Wrote: The breakdown, based on what I've heard thus far, seems to be that people got too personal with each other, expressed ideas that clashed with some deeply held beliefs and identities, felt frustrated from a perceived sense of resentment, favoritism, and/or lack of accountability, and no one addressed it until it boiled over.
Good summary!
(02-25-2020, 05:59 PM)Roomba Wrote: Aside from the fact that a policy of blanket silence and "It's none of your business, it's an internal admin thing that's already being resolved" would be extremely unsatisfying and also turn off a lot of players, it would also be completely unenforceable because the admins who left the team would not be bound by that policy and would have no qualms sharing about the issues that caused them to leave from their perspective. It's better to have the town hall not just so that the players can be informed, but so each of the admins can have their say, instead of interested players only getting the story in private conversations with disgruntled ex-admins (after all, such issues seem to be what caused this mess in the first place).
Good take.
(02-26-2020, 07:06 AM)popecrunch Wrote: To someone in your position, 'don't ridicule certain things' is political correctness and one of those annoying things you have to agree to so you don't get grumped at by someone with no real sense of humor. To a member of one of those aforementioned minorities, 'don't ridicule certain things' is a shield that gives them a space where they can trust they won't be belittled because of who they ARE. Make fun of someone all dang day for stupid things they do, but the minute you start ridiculing someone because of who they are, that's the point at which I'm gonna have something to say about it. Just as nobody gets to pick their nation of origin or skin color, nobody gets to pick what sexual or gender identity they land on, or even whether or not theirs is concrete and not changing over time. Think of that pesky 'political correctness' as the natural conclusion of the no slurs rule we instilled long ago. No Slurs Part Two: The Secret Of The Ooze.
To make it clear to the players, Pope is addressing these ideas because it's good to address them, not because these ideas are a good representation of what Azungar actually thinks. I don't believe that Azungar's idea of/issue with political correctness is "don't ridicule certain things", and from my experience, he's never ridiculed someone because of who they are. I just want to make this clear because I think this can come across as really confusing, especially to a player who's not really familiar with Azungar or what's been going on recently.
(02-26-2020, 07:06 AM)popecrunch Wrote: If that's a dealbreaker for someone, if they have no interest in engaging with a community where nobody's personhood is challenged, then I wish them every happiness in finding someplace else to call home. This space will not be that home, for as long as I have anything to say about it.
Similar to what I said above, "don't ridicule certain things" or "don't challenge other people's personhoods" isn't Azungar's issue with our community or what's been happening recently, and it's absolutely not why he left. Why he left is super complicated and nuanced and a lot more related to what's been going on between admins, and if you want more information on that, you should talk to him directly.
Azungar's second post is a lot more contentious to me, but I'm going to do my best to not argue with what I disagree with, and again just clarify/elaborate/emphasize certain points. Again, we're going to address all of these things during the upcoming town hall.
(02-26-2020, 08:30 AM)Azungar Wrote: But I don't think this "pesky political correctness" is the natural conclusion of that. Or maybe I am wrong and it is, but it's not a question that neither you or I can decide for everyone who hops on our server. It is genuinely a thing that would require a server-wide vote on being accepted unless you prefer to do what was previously done, and just presume that everyone is fine with instilling political correctness within the server.
I'm not sure what specifically Azungar is referring to with "what was previously done", but I agree that we should be more in touch with our community and entire server. Even, as, like, a general thing, beyond all this discussion about politics. Did you know what approximately only 40% of players who filled out our community survey (n = 268) are on our Discord? We're missing out on a lot of voices on a day-to-day basis.
(02-26-2020, 08:30 AM)Azungar Wrote: Also, if you wish to take the responsibility of creating this wonderful space where nobody's personhood is challenged, you'll wish to take the responsibility of sowing this minefield that lays between the people who genuinely have no interest in gender/sexual orientation/politics and the people who consider that to be something so vital about them, that they just can't push it in a community that is about spacemen and farting.
You're right that different people have different ideas and perspectives, and you're right that this is something we need to figure out.
(02-26-2020, 08:50 AM)Camryn Wrote: If we want to actually respect the mental and social wellbeing of our admin team, we can't force them to bottle up their emotions and try to "settle" things internally. Especially since that tactic has already been tried and clearly hasn't worked.
That is why I cannot in good conscience support in any way, shape, or form this proposed guideline:
Quote:Under no circumstances are members of staff to communicate internal issues or secrets to the players or general public. This includes, but is not limited to: Interpersonal arguments between members of staff, opinions of specific players or groups of players held by members of staff or staff in general, planned or future game functions, or information about administration structure that has been decided will be kept quiet. The sole exception is that you can talk about secrets and other game features IF AND ONLY IF you are either the sole person who created that content, or have explicit permission from the person or people who did. You probably want to screenshot that permission in case it’s challenged!
Like we discussed in Discord, the phrasing and everything of these guidelines really needs to be worked on! In no way do we mean "okay keep everything internal, don't ever share anything". We'll definitely need to do a better job of distinguishing which internal issues are fine to communicate and which aren't.
I believe that there is a breakdown in communication here.
Azun, I don't understand your feelings or where you're coming from on this, but we are friends and I have faith in that friendship. I feel like you aren't expressing yourself properly; your post is very stream of consciousness and isn't nearly as thought out or considered as other discussions you and I have had.
I hope I'm misunderstanding you. You've said things in your post that don't match the perception of you I have in my head.
(02-26-2020, 08:54 AM)popecrunch Wrote: If it helps, the intent of the guideline wasn't to hide Actual Concerns About The Community from the community, more to keep interpersonal arguments that simply aren't relevant or rumination on whether or not a given player was a Problem off y'all's radar.
"Simply aren't relevant" is doing a whole lot of lifting in that sentence.
Who determines what is and isn't relevant?
Anything that needs to be private due to containing sensitive information should be handled in a separate channel exclusively dedicated to that sort of discussion.
That's how mentor chat works. We socialize in public and we use the mentor channel specifically to handle mentorhelps. We get grumped at if we use it for anything else.
Why couldn't a similar system work for the admins?
Admins pretty overwhelmingly want a breakroom they can socialize in that players can't see, and there's not a compelling reason to deny that. I'm willing to talk about exactly what business chat gets shared and what doesn't and bend really, really far on that, but I'm not going to be in favor of switching adminchat to player-visible, period.
(02-26-2020, 08:50 AM)Camryn Wrote: To even view "politically neutral ground" as desirable is to support a false equivalency between the values of the right and the left. To give equal credibility to both the ideology that seeks to eliminate the rights and freedoms of entire groups of people for just being different and the one that seeks to protect those rights is tremendously misguided at best and morally abhorrent at worst.
Even if you decided to create "politically neutral ground" by forbidding any political discussion, you would be inherently taking a political stance in favor of the status quo.
The same status quo that values profit over the lives of employees and sees prisoners as tools to be exploited rather than people to be reformed
The same status quo that genuinely oppresses a large portion, perhaps even a majority, of our player base.
The members of our community deserve to feel safe and welcome in our digital family, regardless of their rank.
That includes our admins, coders, and other staff.
I don't really see how agreeing to keep our politics to ourselves favors the oppression of certain groups, or the exploitation of prisoners. In fact, I think the point of it is to keep completely irrelevant opinions out of a 2D farting spaceman game. I agree with you that people deserve to feel safe and welcome, but I don't see how that will all change if Goon were made a politically neutral ground, unless you believe that its impossible to be civil or respecting of others without getting political. While I agree discussing politics is important, I think the town-hall will probably be a better time for it. This thread is meant for questions we have about the meeting, and what we can expect from it, as well as some less pressing questions about recent events, so we actually have a clue whats going on. Not to make things even worse by arguing about it, which will just escalate, until thats all the thread becomes. So I recommend arguing either goes to DMs or stops, and that Azungar is invited to the town-hall, because I honestly feel that the opinion of an ex-admin who left due to recent events would be extremely valuable, not only because it'll increase transparency, but also because it'll help prevent things like this happening in the future. I'll shut up now.
(02-26-2020, 08:50 AM)Camryn Wrote: To even view "politically neutral ground" as desirable is to support a false equivalency between the values of the right and the left. To give equal credibility to both the ideology that seeks to eliminate the rights and freedoms of entire groups of people for just being different and the one that seeks to protect those rights is tremendously misguided at best and morally abhorrent at worst.
Even if you decided to create "politically neutral ground" by forbidding any political discussion, you would be inherently taking a political stance in favor of the status quo.
The same status quo that values profit over the lives of employees and sees prisoners as tools to be exploited rather than people to be reformed
The same status quo that genuinely oppresses a large portion, perhaps even a majority, of our player base.
The members of our community deserve to feel safe and welcome in our digital family, regardless of their rank.
That includes our admins, coders, and other staff.
I don't really see how agreeing to keep our politics to ourselves favors the oppression of certain groups, or the exploitation of prisoners. In fact, I think the point of it is to keep completely irrelevant opinions out of a 2D farting spaceman game. I agree with you that people deserve to feel safe and welcome, but I don't see how that will all change if Goon were made a politically neutral ground, unless you believe that its impossible to be civil or respecting of others without getting political. While I agree discussing politics is important, I think the town-hall will probably be a better time for it. This thread is meant for questions we have about the meeting, and what we can expect from it, as well as some less pressing questions about recent events, so we actually have a clue whats going on. Not to make things even worse by arguing about it, which will just escalate, until thats all the thread becomes. So I recommend arguing either goes to DMs or stops, and that Azungar is invited to the town-hall, because I honestly feel that the opinion of an ex-admin who left due to recent events would be extremely valuable, not only because it'll increase transparency, but also because it'll help prevent things like this happening in the future. I'll shut up now.
Your point is valid and is also the reason why I have decided not to further answer Camryn/Pope.
(02-26-2020, 09:29 AM)Camryn Wrote: That's how mentor chat works. We socialize in public and we use the mentor channel specifically to handle mentorhelps. We get grumped at if we use it for anything else.
A lot of socialization occurs in mentorchat as well - I've personally even experienced times of socialization where midway through we realized a particular person wasn't a mentor yet and couldn't participate. I've also not once, in all the times I have socialized in mentor channel, been grumped at or seen anybody get grumped at for doing non-mentorhelp-handling activities.
I agree, and this is something that we'll need to work on. Like you mentioned in Discord, it's often just like a free for all, which doesn't really work out. We're hoping to address some of these issues with coder guidelines and additional policies. It's definitely a work-in-progress type thing though, so I don't exactly have anything tangible to offer you at this point.
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I don't think most gameplay changes require the permission of the wizards, as they generally deal with more internal and community stuff (from my understanding and limited experience). However, you're right that if you have clout with people, you can make things happen. I'm not sure what we can really do about that, besides maybe being more transparent about the circumstances of new features and such?
i'm curious where the direction with coder guidelines is going to go. from my limited experience, it seemed to be okay as it was. better explanations of changes in commits would be appreciated, but i think part of it is that the current method for updating the changelog is tedious and prone to being forgotten about. (there's also, obviously, no way for players to see the changes that are only in commit logs.)
part of it is that i think, in general, being able to experiment and create new things 'out of nowhere' is cool and good. but having a better way to collect feedback about changes and things is needed. i was considering something like an in-game comments box and/or a button in the top right for sending feedback messages, akin to adminhelp but... not help? the forums are quiet and a lot of people aren't on discord.
Quote:You're right that there are large disconnects. For instance, I don't actually read anyone else's code; only their commit messages. Sometimes, I won't be aware of a new thing until I see it in the changelog or ingame. As I mentioned earlier, hopefully our new coder guidelines can provide us a bit more structure and accountability.
a good guideline for this would be (manual) enforcement of writing decent commit messages. you can't really automatically enforce this because there's honest cases where you're just gonna dump in "fix typo" or "sdhfasgdkg" but things that actually impact stuff should be written out.
Code:
break economy by adjusting mineral prices
- all minerals have an innate 'value'
- quality increases or decreases this value when sold
- alloy values change based on the stats of the material used
this would be a good commit message, for example. done right, you could even potentially automate some changelog stuff out of it.
(to that end: the changelog could be auto-generated based off of commit messages and hosted on the wiki instead of being manually updated in the repo.)
Quote:A lot of socialization occurs in mentorchat as well - I've personally even experienced times of socialization where midway through we realized a particular person wasn't a mentor yet and couldn't participate.
mentor chat always seems like a chill place focused on sharing knowledge and being excellent to each other. the fact its a group specifically around helping people out helps, imo. discussions are always mutually beneficial.
Goonhub
