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Community & Mutual respect


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Hello,

 

I've been witnessing the past months more and more toxicity and attacks from every sides of the community against each others. I'll be very honest with you, as someone who is active in every sides and discords of the community, it really affects me to read hate messages everyday.

 

The final hit ocurred when we decided to display the freedom flag for few hours to acknowledge the pride month, the flow of hate that came on the Discord really made me think twice about the community I created and love so much.

Was I witnessing a failure of mine? A younger generation of players prone to be more conservative and toxic? Culture shocks?

 

I decided to put that event past me as I quickly realized I would have no ability to change people's mindset about a subject that so many cultures still ban. While I fully accept that some players aren't supporting it or live in countries where it's illegal, I still do not understand the need to spread hate instead of remaining silent.

 

Now, the other issue I started witnessing a while back was the rise of a constant fight & hate between legal and illegal roleplayers. The usual "PD vs illegals" went worse, then SD hate was spread, and it spread over all the legal roleplayers. The same issue was witnessed on the other side : legal discords spreading hate and insults against some illegal roleplayers.

 

On every sides that I read, the other party is always trash tier roleplayers and no effort is made further than that. A mistake from an illegal player will lead to "gang roleplayers are all trash", a mistake on an LEO side will lead to "PD trash tier faction". Every players on every sides can make mistakes, every players has their own roleplay level and skills. Generalizing to the entire faction is part of the issue.

 

We ended up having some niche roleplayers targeted for what they like doing, and while many of us do not necessarely understand all niche of roleplays, nothing forces us to participate in that roleplay so we don't need to spread hate or insult them. Just let these players be as soon as their RP isn't shown publicly to you.

In that specific issue and debate, we've decided to fully ban rape roleplay to ensure that no players would have to go through sexual roleplay even if brought by force / and any context surrounding it. While you were able to deny rape roleplay, the simple fact that you could be brought to a roleplay that would lead to it could sometime be a difficult experience for many of you.

 

Now, you all have to understand that every sides are doing their best to improve their roleplay standards and remove bad apples.

The LSPD and LSSD have drastically improved months after months following feedbacks, on pursuits, on roleplay quality, on interactions with factions. While there is still room for improvements and some officers who could not be matching the standards (they will often get removed if reported), you have to remember they are 300+ members.

The same thing applies to illegals, there are dozens of gangs with some gangs being new and lacking some quality but they quickly get identified and removed/killed, some gangs with great roleplay standards but bad apples can sneak in it too and same as other factions the removal process may sometime take a while as we don't immediately remove a member for 1 mistake.

Every sides are constantly doing their best, and if they're not LFM or IFM will be behind them to bring down the punishments, warnings or removals.

I personally witness great people on each sides not properly understanding each others because they don't communicate about issues, and thus are just shouting at each others the same things again and again.

 

I could take the example of IFC, which is a discord that had many sins few months ago and drastically improved. Obviously it has kept a specific mentality that doesn't fit with all players, and that's perfectly ok, but I still see players or administrators directly refering to the first illegal players breaking a rule as "it's IFC again" and attacks towards IFC just because they were once a place where some rulebreaking happened. Their improvements? "BUT IFC." This is a prime example of poor communication and lack of understanding.

One could improve, it'll most of the time always seen as very bad and be attacked by haters.

IFC isn't the only issue, as I also witness the same issue on the other side. Legal factions, PD, SD can be refered as shit and their daily improvements are also completely ignored. What matters is spreading the hate, again and again for no reason but to complain.

As of today, I feel that the legal / illegal communication is completely cut, within members and administrators. And it is part of my fault too : I sometimes involved myself in legal too much, then in illegals, I also actively participated wrongly in some poor communication especially with PD.

 

I believe we all have our faults to the current state of the community, but I don't want to see this divide anymore. I would like everyone to respect each others, we're all here playing an extremely niche game which is our common passion. Many of us have spent more time playing text roleplay in our life than any other kind of games, many of us escape real life complexity, difficult lives, family losses through this game that can bring so much enjoyment. 

 

You have to understand that every kind of players are needed to make a server : from legals to illegals, from young players to grandparents, from US players to Middle East players. Some people like to portray a gang member, some like to portray an exotic dancer, some want to spend $50 per month supporting the server, some live with $50 per month. It is perfectly fine, and everyone supports each others to make the game what it is today.

 

I personally started roleplaying when I was 13, I wasn't good and I would be instantly banned here, the roleplay was very bad but at least I remember everyone helping each others out and being nice because it was new and we weren't many. I still see that on GTAW, we try to keep the forum as peaceful as possible, our discord is also okay, but we are still failing in many other parts of the community to be a peaceful and respectful place. 

 

Enough has been written by me about this issue, my speech is fully unstructured and most likely badly written but I tried to write as it came out of my mind. I would like everyone to do as much efforts as they can to stop spreading attacks, hates or insults against other players, or to actively stop others from doing so.

 

  • On the administration side, I am going to restructure IFM & LFM fully to improve communication with both side, reduce the divide in the community and ensure that the new FM team will actively work in reducing conflicts / toxicty by improving communications.
  • I am also opening a new section to report players called "Harassment report"  which will be mainly handled by myself in order to protect all players against targeted harassment, and ensure that GTAW remains a safe place to play. All reports are fully hidden except to yourself and administrators.
  • With the dating website being opened, we're also going to be way stricter on Facebrowser's pictures to ensure that it remains a "social platform" instead of a "dating platform". We invite all players who wishes to roleplay dating with their character / showing characters with a low amount of clothes to immediately redirect on the new dating application, which allows us to keep that specific roleplay in its own perimeter.
  • We will keep having a 0 tolerance for toxicity on forum, and we will not hesitate to permanently mute toxic players from the forum if needs be. I also invite every third party Discords to actively moderate toxic content to participate in making GTAW a better place to play.

 

Thank you, and remember that we are a very small community sharing a common passion. It is also your duty to ensure that everyone feels happy & safe while playing around you.

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