Ban politics from the discord

[69andahalf]

I've found from years of being an extremely online guy that rules like this rarely work out and become more of a bludgeon people use to shut down discussions they don't like.

I've been in discussions and communities where labeling things "politics"  is used as a bludgeon to silence people, especially non-normative folk whose entire lives have been forced into being political.

There is a certain degree of irony in claiming that rules banning political discussion are used to shut down discussions by "bludgeoning/silencing people" with them. You don't need rules to do this, specific members of the admin team have been doing this for a long, long time already by simply bullying anyone they don't agree with, be it political or otherwise. I'd say people could go check the admin complaint regarding this but, of course, the thread detailing these complaints has since been hidden away, so make of that what you will.

The fact of the matter is, no amount of mediation from the admin team will ever solve any problems, since they themselve are involved, as many of the community members have rightly pointed out. They're not above the same level of vitriol that they attempt to put themselves above. Most admins won't talk about it—and frankly I don't blame them—but they have all seen the extremely childish and bullying behaviour of specific members of the admin team in the admin channels. I'll not name names here, but I also raised these concerns to Popecrunch in a letter in March which I have never received a reply to.

There's a common trend in these threads where the admin team feigns ignorance of an issue and pretends it came out of the blue. Quite frankly, as you can see in what I have said above, not only has the issue of toxic political discussion been known for a long time, but also the impacts of personal attacks. They can claim it was a "failing" on their part that they'll rectify with new rules, but the fact of the matter is, this issue has been ignored for years.

Ask yourself this, why after all that has happened with admins leaving, are they just discovering that personal attacks should be banned? Everyone who left expressed the anger and frustration over personal attacks, but it was played off with, "Oh, we're an safe and welcoming community who doesn't support personal attacks. We'll just add a conflict resolution system and that will solve all our problems!" Sorry to say, but after years of the same people flinging the same shit without consequence, don't be surprised when people get sick of it. I don't blame the non-admins in this thread for not having a shred of faith that the admins would actually enforce any new rules they create that don't serve their own personal opinions.

I'd also like to touch on the idea that politics cannot be effectively banned in a community. Quite frankly, this is inherently bullshit (which, ironically, is used here to shut down the discussion of banning politics). I, too, have been part of many communities in my time and none have ever had as much issue with politics as Goonstation does.

The fact of the matter is that everyone who's not fresh off the turnip wagon fucking knows what a political discussion is. Hiding behind the idea that, "Oh, it's a slippery slope that might shut down important discussions!" is just a blatant lie and emblematic of the same willful ignorance that pervades the upper ranks of the admin team and their friends. They don't want to enforce it, because that would mean they'd also be held to those same standards. This is why these rules could never properly or fairly be enforced, because the people enforcing them are the same people who are causing the issue in the first place.

Don't let them lie and pretend this came out of nowhere, they've known about it for a long time.

[Sitoutumaton]

I second the motion and I hope the admins can also enforce the rules more vigorously. Rules #2, #4 and #6 seem to get flouted at will every time general and spaceman get heated.

[DyssalC]

I'm curious, I see a lot of people making mention of seeing admins address this sort of behavior and say it's okay, or avoid having to get involved (and, y'know, actually administrate something), or even partake in this sort of toxic discourse. Is anybody willing to cop to this sort of behavior and explain why? Like there's a lot of community member perspective here and how they see this, but how do the admins, in particular the ones that behave in these sort of ways, feel about this matter and the opinion of everybody here who expresses a lack of confidence in the admin team's ability to deal with this issue?

Additionally, how do the non-offending admins feel about this, both the (at the very least, perceived) behavior of their fellow admins in these instances and the community's lack of confidence in the admin team?

Also, to the admins who have so far shot down most proposed solutions, is there anything extra you could consider doing besides just enforcing the current rules better? I see a lot of talk about other solutions as leading to other problems, like any potential rule based around politics being used to silence speech in general, and admins being forced to deliberate how to go about enforcing the rule, but how does that differ from the enforcement of any other rule? And the solutions like creating a politics channel, it's said that it wouldn't solve the problem, only move it, wouldn't containing the discussions that are most likely to lead to toxic discourse in their own individual chat make it easier to moderate? I understand there is no "perfect" solution that instantly fixes this issue, but surely something must be better than nothing.

[bubs]

Hey 69andahalf, you don't really know what you're talking about. You were inactive for what, 18 months before you came back to make a big show of the fact that you're leaving. Now two months later you're here on the forums to what, call us liars and start trouble? Or is this your big crusade for justice.

We aren't lying about anything, the personal attacks you talk about were anything but one sided, and I think you need a hobby.

[DyssalC]

Hey 69andahalf, you don't really know what you're talking about. You were inactive for what, 18 months before you came back to make a big show of the fact that you're leaving. Now two months later you're here on the forums to what, call us liars and start trouble? Or is this your big crusade for justice.

We aren't lying about anything, the personal attacks you talk about were anything but one sided, and I think you need a hobby.

Someone says something an admin doesn't like, and rather than just shutting down or refuting what they said without turning hostile, they choose to purposefully infuse vitriol into your response. I can't imagine why people feel the way they do, Bubs. But oh, that's fine, it's just your "schtick", ya?

[bubs]

I thought that was pretty light on the vitriol actually. What's your schtick?

Honestly I was pretty irritated by it because of the fact that, despite not being around or talking to anyone since leaving, his tune has drastically changed since his posting on the shitty thread. Have a read:

They're usually not doing anything inherently wrong, simply arguing their side of an opinion. Goonstation has a diverse admin team, so there's a lot of unique and sometimes differing opinions brought on by those backgrounds (which I believe is super important and has made the server better over time). Sometimes heads butt, but there's usually not any malice behind it. There are systems in place/being built to better handle disputes as the team grows. Any decision players see is usually built on a number of discussions/votes that go on in the background. When I talk about people stirring the pot, that's like 1% of the time. The other 99% they're decent folk who are just having fun and doing their own thing. It's just that right now tensions are high due to the leak and have come to a head. There's always an open door back in, it's rarely ever burning all your bridges and running into the hills.

Pretty different tone and content, and considering the fact that he hasn't been around for a second since posting it I'm pretty irritated (and confused honestly) that he would continue to lurk the forums and come back to cause fights.

[UrsulaMejor]

I guess I'll take the opportunity to circle back around on something I said on page one in this thread:

We should be focusing on the parts of these conversations that actually cause harm, and not "politics"

The main thing I was trying to get at, here, is that we have issues, but those issues aren't totally political in nature. The problem stems directly from the personal attacks and hostility that have been displayed in all sorts of different conversations; game balance, sharing round stories, code, whatever.

And yes, there is a problem. Nobody is feigning ignorance of there being a problem. Pretty much every admin response here has been "Yes, there is a problem, BUT, politics isn't it." And we're committed to fixing that problem:

We have new admin guidelines, voted in unanimously, which in several instances explicitly addresses these issues.

We have mediators, who are working hard to try to deescalate arguments as they happen, and have committed to helping people resolve conflicts in a way that we hope to alleviate some of this pain.

We have stepped up enforcement of Discord Rules, especially rule 2.

We are doing our best. I haven't been interested in addressing this thread so far, after those first few posts, mostly because I sorta decided that arguing about it ad nauseam wasn't going to help anyone. We needed to do something. We're doing something.

I'm sorry that things seem to be moving slow, but these things don't change overnight. I'm sorry that we haven't said much, but it's hard to know what to say.

[DyssalC]

I thought that was pretty light on the vitriol actually. What's your schtick?

Honestly I was pretty irritated by it because of the fact that, despite not being around or talking to anyone since leaving, his tune has drastically changed since his posting on the shitty thread. Have a read:

They're usually not doing anything inherently wrong, simply arguing their side of an opinion. Goonstation has a diverse admin team, so there's a lot of unique and sometimes differing opinions brought on by those backgrounds (which I believe is super important and has made the server better over time). Sometimes heads butt, but there's usually not any malice behind it. There are systems in place/being built to better handle disputes as the team grows. Any decision players see is usually built on a number of discussions/votes that go on in the background. When I talk about people stirring the pot, that's like 1% of the time. The other 99% they're decent folk who are just having fun and doing their own thing. It's just that right now tensions are high due to the leak and have come to a head. There's always an open door back in, it's rarely ever burning all your bridges and running into the hills.

Pretty different tone and content, and considering the fact that he hasn't been around for a second since posting it I'm pretty irritated (and confused honestly) that he would continue to lurk the forums and come back to cause fights.

That's fine, but why not say that directly instead of what you did say? Why instead just try to call him irrelevant and pretty much say they have no life with your "get a hobby" comment? That sort of thing is what this thread is about, you have genuine points but instead you just resorted to getting needlessly shitty with him. As much as that may have flown in the past, especially with you bubs, after all the shit that has happened recently can you not see that the context has changed? Nobody wants to see that behavior anymore when everyone is so uncertain about the attitude and behavior of the admin team.

[69andahalf]

Hey 69andahalf, you don't really know what you're talking about. You were inactive for what, 18 months before you came back to make a big show of the fact that you're leaving. Now two months later you're here on the forums to what, call us liars and start trouble? Or is this your big crusade for justice.

We aren't lying about anything, the personal attacks you talk about were anything but one sided, and I think you need a hobby.

Actually bubs, I took a break from Goonstation because whenever I would check back on the admin channels, I'd see the same toxicity that had made me feel the need to distance myself in the first place. Just because you didn't see me actively participating in chats, doesn't mean I wasn't reading what was being said, along with a lot of other admins. You're simply demonstrating the issue at heart with the team currently, always trying to shift the blame onto someone or something else, rather than addressing the issue itself.

Azungar made a post--that yes, I will admit had some issues--detailing why we left as an explanation to both the admin team and the players, but it was deleted without anything being addressed, or the actual contents archived in such a way that they could still be viewed (swept under the carpet, if you'd like).

I wrote to Popecrunch explaining why I left after he accused Azungar of "planning" this all to defame another admin, which was promptly ignored.

Now I make a post explaining yet again the issue of why we left, in context with topic of this thread, and rather than actually taking anything of value from it, you decide to insinuate I have nothing better to do with my time than lurk here and start shit. The fact is, I don't want to have to write this, but when I see how the issue that made us leave is being blatantly ignored and downplayed, I want the community to know that too.

However, if you'd like to show how one-sided the personal attack was, I'd invite you to post the full logs here of the discussion in the cirr leak channel that sparked all this. Please show the community how capable the admin team is at handling conflict resolution within their own ranks before expecting the players to trust that it could be of any use to them.

[bubs]

We have been addressing the issue though, you aren't here and you don't see that, it's just that the issue isn't "Politics". I don't want to sidetrack this conversation any more than I already have, look at urs' post for a good summary of things.

[Maid]

...
Azungar made a post--that yes, I will admit had some issues--detailing why we left as an explanation to both the admin team and the players, but it was deleted without anything being addressed, or the actual contents archived in such a way that they could still be viewed (swept under the carpet, if you'd like).

I wrote to Popecrunch explaining why I left after he accused Azungar of "planning" this all to defame another admin, which was promptly ignored.

Now I make a post explaining yet again the issue of why we left, in context with topic of this thread, and rather than actually taking anything of value from it, you decide to insinuate I have nothing better to do with my time than lurk here and start shit. The fact is, I don't want to have to write this, but when I see how the issue that made us leave is being blatantly ignored and downplayed, I want the community to know that too.

However, if you'd like to show how one-sided the personal attack was, I'd invite you to post the full logs here of the discussion in the cirr leak channel that sparked all this. Please show the community how capable the admin team is at handling conflict resolution within their own ranks before expecting the players to trust that it could be of any use to them.

I feel obliged as someone who was involved in this shit situation to which you're alluding to point out that this part has some pretty flimsy arguments in it. The facts of how Azungar was moving around during all this stuff are not really up for reinterpretation: he was doing some shady shit that is pretty easy to connect to ill intent. Also saying "post the logs" and then just picking probably the highest-stress conversation we had, which involved a lot of people who have since left the team or like you who weren't really involved who popped in with hot takes feels a lot like an attempt to discredit people who are putting in a lot of genuine work to make things better. At least that's what was going on when I left. If that's what you're tryin to do i mean go for it i guess but that's some weird obsessive ex shit to be doing.

[Adhara In Space]

idk if my opinion is even wanted here or anything, but i'm still gonna talk because like, not saying anything is dumb.
i think that like, i think banning politics from the goonstation is a pretty bad idea. for better or for worse, the goonstation discord isn't just a place where you only talk about space station 13, and for the most part, people talk about personal stuff there. now if you have people and they talk about personal stuff, politics are gonna come up at some point because they effect all of our lives, right? and i think that as long as people can be respectful and level headed around that, it isn't an issue. but that's also where the problem is, right? people can be really hostile and rude around politics, which sucks. but its not always a malice thing, i don't think, its just that politics can be really personal, and when someone talks about politics that directly affect you, it can feel like they're trying to be rude to you personally a lot? idk, its just that like, i think people just need reminders to be more respectful to eachother.

most of what i see going wrong with political discussions is people perceiving something as hostile (it sometimes is and it sometimes isnt) then going and replying hostile-ly themselves, which sets the tone for the rest of the discussion (or argument, usually, at this point). but reminding people to keep things cool and respectful usually helps de-escalate stuff, so i'd encourage you to do your part! a lot of the times its not just an issue with politics itself, right? its just that politics is kinda a catalyst to get people angry and arguing and being mean to eachother.

also sometimes people seem to default to "youre bad because i think your ideas are bad" instead of "i dont agree with your ideas" or even "i think your ideas are bad" (even tho the latter is still kinda meh). which sucks because that just leads straight into the first thing, where people make it a personal issue and then the discussion just gets personal and hostile and rude.

another thing is that a lot of people approach discussions (or arguments) from a winning / losing perspective, where they have to come out on top and prove that theyre right or their idea is right or even just that the other person is wrong or their idea is bad or something. which i think sucks and also kinda feeds into the discussion, because people dont want to lose, like, ever, right? and that's not a bad thing, but i think people should really stop approaching discussions or arguments like competitions and just accept that you can't always win, (like by "proving" someone wrong or by changing their mind or whatever, just like, if its not going anywhere and its because you dont want to lose or want to win or something, just disengage from the situation, it'll be a billion times more productive than staying)

so i think going forwards, if people dont want discussions to get as hostile as they more people should try to keep things in mind about

tl;dr:
politics aren't necessarily bad and don't need to be removed, it's the win/lose attitudes that people approach discussions/arguments with, how easily people start making things grody and personal in those discussions/arguments, and how since politics are usually really personal, discussions about how good/bad/necessary stuff those politics are is often treated as a personal judgement/attack.

(please let me know if i missed something, or if something i said is shitty you think, even ping me on discord, my username is @adhara#4566 and my nickname is adahararababa)

---

!!ALSO!!
re: above people talking about the admin complaints thread
the thread was closed / removed because discussion got really horrible and people refused to disengage or stop insulting / attacking other people and there were some breaches of privacy with people leaking dms and using them to make really uncomfortable points, and the people didnt consent to having their dms put on a public forum, and it was honestly just a big mess and it all sucked a lot and everyone was stressed and upset and people were just behaving like children and it sucked, idk, i wish all the breach of privacy stuff was removed and the thread was left closed but standing, but nothing can rly be done now.

and im gonna try to remind people here to please be nice to eachother, or at least, if you can't be nice / don't want think that you should be nice, try to be respectful to other people, they're really not your enemy here and things are just gonna get all crusty and gross. if you're thinking of writing something like "oh go eat some honey you big dumb bubs bee" just delete it and put a period instead (if youre at the end of your sentence) and if it helps you can press the period key really really hard and that period will have all yr negative brain energy in it.

[vampirate]

To be honest, I think a huge part of the problem with political discussion is how quickly people resort to reductio ad absurdum the moment an opposing view point comes into play.

Lemme give a for instance that will only involve me and hasn't occurred HERE (mainly cause I saw those screen-grabs in the why we left thread and knew my freshly unbanned ass better stfu). I could say "I'm not about illegal immigration. I am pro deportation of non-dreamers".

The reply instead of something reasoned will be "so you support the concentration camps?! You must also be pro-Nazi. Your opinion is invalid Nazi scum" when in fact I sheltered illegal immigrants cause of how the current administration handled them.

The binary viewing of people and their ideas is what makes discussions unhealthy.

[OMJ]

Yo shut the fuck up about your thinly veiled attacks on the admins that’s not what I made this thread for@69

since this thread was made ppl seem overall more civil. It isn’t politics, it’s vitroil that stems from political discussion. No admin is acting in bad faith. Shut the fuck up about that. Thx

[ZeWaka]

tl;dr:
politics aren't necessarily bad and don't need to be removed, it's the win/lose attitudes that people approach discussions/arguments with, how easily people start making things grody and personal in those discussions/arguments, and how since politics are usually really personal, discussions about how good/bad/necessary stuff those politics are is often treated as a personal judgement/attack.

+1