Ban politics from the discord

[Drago156]

I mean, I think the solution is as simple as this:

If people wanna talk about the main topic of a channel, be courteous and just leave off your conversation or take it to DMs or something. If you're talking to some one about something, keep it civil, and if you can't just don't get involved. If someone isn't being civil in a discussion then take it to an admin.

Having open forums to discuss things is nice, that said people can return that favor by being nice themselves. If someone is being a shit then absolutely get an admin involved. I would expect any admin to be able to follow this kind of deal, but if it really comes to it and an admin is being shit, then tell wire or another admin about it.

[Roomba]

'Get the other admins involved' is a noble sentiment and all, but here are the most common admin responses to arguments in the discord:

1) Immediately get involved with the argument and start yelling about it, with no attempt to de-escalate it - hell, probably the one who started the argument in the first place.

2) Shitposting to escalate the situation because they don't particularly care.

3) "yeah we really don't want to even get involved in situations like that because we'll get yelled at ourselves, if you care about it have you considered becoming a mediator and resolving the situation yourself"

(For the record, I'm fully on board the sentiment of 'what constitutes "politics" is very touchy, and anything (within reason) should be allowed to be discussed in #general at least. I just don't have a lot of confidence in admins being able to handle situations like these, because their track record so far is abysmal.)

[vampirate]

Meant to quote Roomba:

It reminds me of the predicament cops are in. You yell at an admin, turn them in, or put them on blast as an admin... then you're on the outs with one or more, and you need to trust that they'll back you up when the time comes.

From the why we left thread, it seems like a lot who were willing to deescalate were worried about this. I've experienced similar in MUD communities I've adminned.

Things often had to escalate to the point where it finally had to be stopped.

It is part the hazard of any ingroup.

The answer I'd finally come up with on the muds, along with others, was to have a few admins assigned to resolve these issues by proxy. This meaning one or more admins made a complaint to one of a few admins and they'd shut it down or intervene while mentioning this was a requested action by one or more admins. Hurt feelings, but less targeted. This was a different environment though.

The mud's also usually have enforcers whose job it is to be hardasses. Generally people who didn't socialize much. These people, however, would sometimes power trip and have to be removed.

Still, assigning a few hall monitors that rotate isn't the worst idea. Someone watching the watchmen

[Roomba]

Flourish mentioned they were thinking about implementing something like this, a sort of 'space HR' of admins. The issue is that these admins would automatically be conferred with a higher status simply by virtue of the position being 'we trust you more than the other admins'. After the last debacle no one wants to have yet another admin cabal, and most admins rejected the idea quite vehemently when it was suggested.

(which brings up another issue: if the admins are so against the idea of one admin having authority over the others, then how can we trust the repeated refrain of 'just tell the admins to handle it and it'll be settled'? If an admin is involved, they'll just go 'step off, this isn't your fight' and there's nothing the other admin can do about it.)

[vampirate]

That is why you make it rotating. like switch every three months, no one ever retains that power, and people who didn't do well with it maybe don't get rotated back in.

[kyle2143]

Making personal attacks against the rules I think is solid OMJ. In fact, I'm fairly certain that it is already against the rules.

Regarding politics chat and the discord general channel. I've long been a proponent of removing them. We've had this discussion multiple times in admin channels and the result has always been the same, that we'll keep em around. Mostly for the reasons that Pope and Bubs expressed, that it's hard to completely define "politics" in a way that everyone is comfortable with and that they can be used to stifle conversation.

Those are compelling reasons, I think, but not the end-all-be-all of the discussion. When crafting any rule, you need to weigh the positive effects it will provide against the negative. Here is where I think we disagree; I think that it would be net positive for all members of the community to forbid it even though it would stifle some conversation. My main reason for thinking so is that in my experience all of the worst fights or problems that afflict this community arose from or were exacerbated by politics. I think that preventing that discourse will make the community a more friendly and accepting place, a community we came to out of love for a game, not to discuss politics or the real world. I think that some people feel like the have the right to talk about whatever they want wherever they want, and I don't think that's right, and I think most would agree with me if they considered it. Freedom of speech is important, but that doesn't mean you're free to speak about anything anywhere. And real life politics has been very damaging to this community when that's not what the community was created for.

[Roomba]

I'd say 80% of the time, politics chat remains fairly civil and can be carried out without much issue.

The issue is that some people are just incredibly aggressive about it all the time, and consider any attempts to curtail this as an attack on their rights, which also tends to lead into personal attacks on others. When this happens, none of the admins are sure about when to step in because 'this is all politics, I don't want to get involved in it' or 'well, these are topics that are right for someone to get heated about'. I don't think any of the admins have shown themselves to be capable of de-escalating such situations.

[OMJ]

do something about the laissez faire attitude shown towards people who call each other asshole on the discord all the time over political shit, this should not keep happening

[Carbadox]

Lets be honest. It's not discussing politics that's the problem, it's the completely overblown reactions, bitter attitude, insults and just straight up asshole behaviour that's not only allowed but being tolerated. I've seen a bunch of arguments on the discord and not once have I ever seen an admin try to de-escalate the situation, let alone consider shutting it down. And I'm pretty sure I've even seen admins egging others one.

It gets even more unbearable when anyone who tries to bring up the fact that political discussion on the discord only brings conflict gets shut down "politics are an integral part of life, you can't ignore them" or funnily enough what's already been said in this thread, that "you can't tell the difference what is and isn't politics".

Such enlightened individuals however seem to be either unaware or blissfully ignoring the fact that people don't actually think that political discussion is a problem but rather think that it's the behaviour in which said discussion happens in. I know for a fact that people can, do and have talked grown up matters like respectful and sane people.

If admins really do feel a reluctance to moderating toxic behaviour, then at the very least make a seperate politics channel so that those who really couldn't care less don't have to deal with #general becoming a civil war channel. Instead of doing nothing at least do the bare minimum

Afterthought edit : Just a thought that came to me, if there's admins that fully admit to no longer playing the game and there's admins who don't bother administrating the discord, then what are they admins of?

[OMJ]

Lets be honest. It's not discussing politics that's the problem, it's the completely overblown reactions, bitter attitude, insults and just straight up asshole behaviour that's not only allowed but being tolerated. I've seen a bunch of arguments on the discord and not once have I ever seen an admin try to de-escalate the situation, let alone consider shutting it down. And I'm pretty sure I've even seen admins egging others one.

It gets even more unbearable when anyone who tries to bring up the fact that political discussion on the discord only brings conflict gets shut down "politics are an integral part of life, you can't ignore them" or funnily enough what's already been said in this thread, that "you can't tell the difference what is and isn't politics".

Such enlightened individuals however seem to be either unaware or blissfully ignoring the fact that people don't actually think that political discussion is a problem but rather think that it's the behaviour in which said discussion happens in. I know for a fact that people can, do and have talked grown up matters like respectful and sane people.

retweet

edit before i go to bed: you all know the reason is not politics, but it's the hostile attitudes. you guys have to do better with this. it's ridiculous. today someone (an admin) shut down obama shitposting over players dogpiling on another for a dissenting opinion (not even a dissenting opinion, just pointed ignorance).

let's do a better job of making sure this shit doesn't fly, we're all capable of it

[Leeanei]

Stricter discord moderation to tone down some of the most, uh, passionate folk would be for the better. It turns people away from using General, including myself, for random discussion.

[Frank_Stein]

I think that your example, sundance, is something I think should be brought to admin attention. I don't think there is such a thing as a civil discussion that has one party othering or generalizing people over their identity like that.

Civility is for discussing budgets and taxes and economics, not the validity of someone's gender/sexual/ethnic/racial identity. I wouldn't personally start a big fight over it, but deff get the admin team involved asap if that kind of thing comes up

I agree with the overall sentiment, but not with your example.

I'll steadfast with my example, if only to make a point. 

That insinuation, while quite hurtful, still warrants civility. This is not turning the other cheek. This is you saying firmly, to the other individual, that you feel what that person said was incorrect and hurtful. That's not weakness, that's resolve. 

And yes, in these situations an admin could be invoked. This is not mutually exclusive. You could be civil to someone and call an admin to look into something in the same instance. 

Immediately launching into emotive tirade is exhausting for everyone and drags conversations into places that need not be dragged.

I think we need some kind of card system for this, because this seems like how it plays out most of the time.

When person A says a microaggresion that gets person B upset enough to insult person A on a personal level, it's really easy to point to person B's conduct as negative, but person A's conduct also needs to be addressed.

I propose a means of flagging posts as a kind of signal to the person making them that they should stop and think carefully about the ideas they're expressing and how they're harmful to other players. Like reacting with a yellow square or red square, depending on perceived severity.

That way no one has to expend the mental energy writing up a response and
someone arguing in good faith can see in real time the effect their words are having on players

[breach]

the only winning move is not to play

SS13 (as a general rule, regardless of servers) has always had this issue and it does not go away by forbidding discussion of a subject, it always ends up spilling over elsewhere. Unless those in the community actively choose not to engage in those kinds of discussions to avoid the downward spiral into insult flinging, it's going to happen. I'm not trying to do the holier than thou thing, but the discord has been this way for a while now and it's why I chose not to be a part of it. Community members have to actively not want to be shits to one another in order to avoid that kind of strife, and I'm not sure there's a SS13 community that's capable of that.

My 2 cents deposited, I guess I'm just trying to say be kind to one another, even in a general discussion channel we're still all here because we like playing farty spacemen together, don't ruin that.

[Maegor]

I scrolled back to see this conversation and there are clearly some missing parts so I won't pretend I have the entire context. However, the greater issue to me is quite clear:

 

Lack of enforcement of the rules

 

Right from the rules page:

 

Be respectful of others. You will not be banned from the channel for expressing opinions, so long as you are able to express those opinions in a respectful fashion. Don't use slurs, racial or otherwise, even ironically. Don't attack people for their opinions.

 

Personal attacks are already against the rules, under other words. And there were plenty in that discussion, but no admin took action. Of course we cannot expect them to be glued to the discord, yet it is egregious when an admin actually goes in and effectively says, "this is fine" when pinged. It enables this kind of behaviour as well as being against the admin guidelines.

 

Honestly, all the problems stem from admin inaction towards people either admittedly arguing in bad faith, using slurs or generally just trying to bait people. I was going to add more points but this sums up all issues I noticed with political discussion (if you can call hot takes and personal attacks a discussion), but that is all.

Politics, whatever way you define it, are sensitive issue that can often lead into unhealthy dialogue, and if the parties involved cannot or do not to see want when the best option is simply stopping, then higher action is needed. Now, I do not think all discussion should be stopped when it gets heated, but political discussion is a fairly unrelated subject to goon and if people can't discuss it civilly here then they should discuss it elsewhere. 

 

Now, with the admin guidelines and discord rules in mind, there is not a clear "What do I do if someone is being shit". Do I ping the admin I like the most? Or the first one that's online? Creating a separate discord moderator role for admins who actually are willing to enforce discord rules may be a solution.

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However, I don't discuss politics in goon due to a mix of my dislike of doing it on discord and it generally being internal US shit, so I can't really say whether this is a common issue but this should be addressed before so it doesn't bottle up.

[OMJ]

we shouldn't let players feel safe and like their behavior is okay when they're insulting people over politics. right now, it seems like people who are doing it genuinely feel like they're in the right when they insult people because they know the admins share the same political standpoints. they're right too.

Something I've noticed is how people who come in our discord with not necessarily conservative opinions, just centered, are violently mistreated and nobody steps up to say anything about this. God forbid they say anything back. It's guaranteed no admin will back them up while everyone's dog piling on them. It's frankly bullshit.

The most bullshit part, of course, is tenured community members who assume they can just say whatever insulting bullshit under the guise that they're in the "right" politically. It's garbage and we (by we, I mean you, the admins) need to do better, as you're all capable of doing. I can only call out so much bullshit myself, but the discord seems borderline inhospitable at times.

I say ban politics because nobody in our community can talk about politics without it spiraling into personal insults, and nobody has the balls to tell them to stop insulting people. We have to make our community inhospitable to people who mount personal thinly veiled attacks every time they can under the guise of them being right.

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Doublepost- it's a big fucking hivemind mentality and I think that's why nobody calls out people over insulting others- they don't want to come off as disagreeing. How did we come to this?