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RE: Community & Mutual Respect


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As a quick preface to my quibbles, I think a better community is something we should all strive towards - or at very least, have our minds open to. While I may disagree with the diagnosis of the issue within the post to which this one references, it goes without argument to say that our objectives do not differ. To foment the development of a more welcoming and understanding community will undoubtedly be hard work for all of us, considering where we stand today - but I doubt anyone would argue that the effort isn't worth the eventual payoff.

 

Like Nervous, I myself discovered my love for writing (and roleplaying, by extension) at a young age - a passion that saw me jumping communities, genres, management styles, et cetera for the past 15 years at least. I have seen what works and, more importantly, what causes a community to break apart. As usual, I wholeheartedly support the "what" of the message as we all should, but the "how" of the bullet points in the announcement is what causes mild concern along with a few other management choices. I really only have a few major concerns to bring up:
 

 

  • Harassment reports. My earnest belief is that this is a realm in which we have to tread very carefully. Not only do I worry about the inevitable over-extension of a small group of people handling such reports for a server with so many players daily, I believe this is a misdiagnosis of the core issue. Fabricated evidence is also a potential concern - firsthand, I know how easy it is to bring down a severe punishment on someone without affording them the chance to defend themselves on the basis of an altered screenshot. We should definitely not tolerate harassment in the community, but I fear a hardline approach coupled with the volume of reports will mean that investigative nuance is lost - and when people are wrongly punished, toxicity naturally follows.

    I would urge management to consider seriously the balance between report confidentiality and the rights of someone accused to defend themselves against allegations - including reviewing the evidence against them. If the revelation of that evidence results in more harassment after the accused distributes it or retaliates against whoever has filed the report, you have all the more evidence against them after that, don't you?

    The alternative is that those players who are willing to lie, cheat, and fabricate information hold the deceptive power to see someone removed from the server without so much as a chance to address the allegations. Again, I would strongly caution management to err on the side of transparency with regards to the accused and accuser, rather than secrecy.
     
  • Thread locking. I'm not saying it should never happen, but if I'm being frank, it happens far too often on the forums here. I'm not talking about threads that have devolved into flaming contests - I mean discussions in which the locking administrator takes the opportunity to have the last word before shutting down all debate on a particular topic. I do not believe this is healthy for the community - specifically when it comes to discussions that veer in the direction of becoming suggestions. Regardless of whether a particular idea has been rejected in the past, why lock down the discussion? We'll never find effective countermeasures to the issues barring the implementation of an idea if debate concerning the mere concept is shut down entirely - and it does tend to foster resentment when those working on the discussion are shut down on a whim.

    This extends to topics that staff expects will devolve but have not yet; I would encourage staff to give the community the opportunity to subvert their expectations.

 


My hope is to foster a constructive conversation about how we can bridge the divide and extract toxic elements without throwing the baby out with the bath water, as it were - because for every community that's broken apart due to fractures, just as many have done so because of overzealous attempts to combat it. When we say we have a zero tolerance policy against toxicity, we need immaculate specificity regarding how we define toxicity - else the door is open for wildly varying standards between individual staff members (which fosters the very same toxicity we're trying to fight.)

 

We should all have the same goal - and my hope is that we can extend each other the benefit of the doubt going forward in working towards it.

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Some people just enjoy screaming hate, making snide comebacks, and scoring sick burns.  They enjoy being dicks.  My guess is they find it exciting and fun, then when someone does it to them they get mad, and then they get fired up to do it back.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  A lot of other people aren't interesting in figuring anything out, they just want to have snide back and forth, again because they get off on it.  No amount of community problem resolution dialogue is going to change this, because there are enough people on the server who are interesting in arguing with each other like this.  Discord is worse, because the forum at least gives people the chance to slow down and think about what they're saying before they post.

 

Admins and staff have to see and deal with the worst the community has to offer, all the time.  People need to cut them a break.  Do Not Make Nervous or Other Staff Members Tired.  It only makes it harder for them to run the rp server we all like playing in.

 

GTAW has grown so much in population and features in only a few years, and it's amazing.  Thanks Staff.

 

 

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Toxicity is one of the end products that stems from a combination of issues and circumstances that came before it. People don't just wake up and chose violence.

 

By focusing on things such as "said toxicity", you are treating the symptom, not the disease. 

 

Sounds  a bit too generalized, but I really don't want to get into more detail because:

 

1) CBA

2) "Crackdown" on toxicity

3) OP mentioned thread locking

 

TLDR though? The server has issues from an administrative policy POV, and given how interlocked everything is, such issues create other issues of their own. Things happen, people continue to put up with them, until someone blows up on the forums every now and then.

 

 

 

Edited by SCANDALOUZ
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1 hour ago, ChickenOffSky said:

I just wish General Discussions would be used as a place for positive discussions rather than the place everyone goes to complain and shoot others down.

Theoretically, sure. Objectively, GTA World is a product and we are its customers - ones that have all put time and/or money into it with the aim of helping it to becoming a more populous and accessible medium for roleplay. As such, it's only natural to speak out about issues that individuals feel may jeopardise that goal. The issue lays in non-constructive critique, flaming, and (in my opinion) splitting hairs over details those individuals don't have the credentials to posit solutions for, the former of which I imagine is the toxicity Nervous' post refers to.

 

LSRP got around this (somewhat) with the creation of the Verified Discussion group where trusted community members could weigh in on issues and others could only read the discourse and benefit from the eventual outcomes. It was great in theory but for it to work there needs to be equal input from high-level administrators, management, and developers to prevent discussions from spiraling out of control or into the realm of feature creep.

 

Certainly more manageable than the current solution of everybody shit-flinging in open threads and seeing what sticks after 20 pages when it's inevitably locked.

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