I thought the “IF is dead” post was a bit of a troll-posting and was surprised to see it. Reminds me why we left Usenet.
Discussions for or against CYOA/Parser are fine, but should be appropriately categorized and as Merk mention, be polite and useful.
The occasional rant is fine…have your wild hair day. But I would view someone with consistent wild hair days as a troll and clearly not interested in engaging in useful conversations.
There is absolutely no place for personal attacks. That deserves one very clear warning and then that user is banned.
“Equally” was poor word choice. I should have said “also”. But I won’t back down from that.
Maybe you’re missing the point that I don’t want want to be the one making these decisions. I’m not the right person for it. It sounds like you agree. But this can’t be one-sided, even if the other side comes from a privileged majority.
I feel uncomfortable when people accuse me of things that are untrue, but then I guess the same applies to everyone. My main issue with Porpentine’s comments, though, was the way she tries to see everything as a personal attack on women. When she sees negative comments about her games, maybe it’s because people didn’t like the game in question, not because they’re sexist.
1-voting games for the sake of it is wrong full stop, but here it sounds like she’s trying to make out that people who do it are making personal attacks on women. Do men never get their games 1-voted? Or does it not matter if the person being 1-voted is male?
And when I asked what she meant by that, she responded with
which is a heck of a long way from the textbook definition of misogyny.
My comment about people being too sensitive was just that. If someone says a bad word about your game, just accept they didn’t like the game and move on. Don’t paint them as a racist, sexist pig or soon you’ll reach the stage where people will avoid your games like the plague for fear of being branded if they comment negatively on them.
A couple of things might not directly relate (ex: the part about specific interactions with Choice of Games authors), but yeah, most of it could. This is a commercial endeavor, though, right? I can understand the need for all-encompassing rules in that case. Is that something we need here, though? I’m not saying we don’t. I’m asking.
Another suggestion submitted was more complete than my original brief version, but still short and simple.
That’s understandable. But you’ll be fine. You can handle Porpentine’s comments. You have thick skin, you have way more social power, and you don’t have to deal with people misgendering you every day of your life, which might put you a bit more on edge.
So don’t be too sensitive about oversensitivity. Be empathetic, and try to make this forum a safer space for everyone, including people who are really sensitive about this stuff. Those sensitive types are becoming more common every day, as you note, and if we don’t take care to be welcoming, they’ll just leave us alone, and we’ll all be the worse off for it.
The Mods have been doing a fantastic job with this forum. You have my thanks and respect. Please keep up the good work.
I agree with other voices that the Choice of Games Code of Conduct is an excellent model to work from, though it’s only a good idea if you plan to enforce it.
First, I think a code of conduct is a good thing, and I suspect a common-sense list of rules is a great start. I’m glad I clicked on this topic. It will help make the general discussion area a bit less of a wasteland.
This, I agree with in theory but not practice. If you are viewing people as categories, then yes, that is true.
Porpentine, the individual, has a lot of social power, especially in this localized part of the Internet. Porpentine knows a lot of people and has a wide social network who can back her up here or on other boards if someone takes a cheap shot. That doesn’t make cheap shots any less impremissible.
So I think this advice is inaccurate and I think it’s worth explaining why I think so…a personal experience comes to mind.
A gay man is speaking loudly on the bus that he doesn’t understand how heterosexuals can, well, enjoy heterosexual activities. Now, obviously, it’s way creepier if someone said the reverse, and they’d be off the bus right away. And deservedly.
Still, someone needed to have a word with him. (He got off the bus soon after, so I didn’t.) I wish I’d said something, but my own disadvantage is, I am really slow at talking.
I fought with myself why I was upset–and I think the thing is, you need to recognize when something makes people quickly uncomfortable even after thick skin kicked in. I know I don’t like people taking advantage of my thick skin, and while I’ll generally give people a few more passes based on their background, I can’t let it happen forever. And I feel that “you have thick skin” is often the sort of compliment that comes with baggage attached, with an implied order.
Some people are closer to learned helplessness than others because of who they are. I want to respect that and, well, not be a jerk. But we all deserve not to be pushed into learned helplessness. And David had some points that got lost in the shuffle.
I think it’s better phrased as “take a deep breath, and see if you’re still upset after a couple minutes. If it’s happened before, know who you can turn to.” I want the freedom to be able to say enough is enough if I need to. Even if I never have to use that freedom. And if I’m wrong, I’ll learn from that. I tend to learn more from mistakes than keeping quiet, and I think we all do.
One thing I’ve noticed is that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of people speaking up here, even though this is a topic that concerns the whole forum. Maybe a mod should set up some kind of alert to tell people we’re discussing making a code of conduct here?
“One thing I’ve noticed is that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of people speaking up here, even though this is a topic that concerns the whole forum. Maybe a mod should set up some kind of alert to tell people we’re discussing making a code of conduct here?”
Actually most of this discussion seems to be more about what happebned on the other thread and why people are insensitive rather than establishment of a code. And I think some people don’t want to get involved because they are afraid to. I looked back at my post, which I thought was harmless enough, but then realized it could be misconstrued, and I could be “attacked” for being insensitive. After all, I think the moderators are doing a good job, and some of these posts suggest that they may not be as sensitive or aware of the issues as they could be, and so I must be insensitive, too.
I’d like to endorse everything dfabulich has said on this thread. One thing that I think would be helpful (as he said) would be for moderating to take place behind the scenes–having open flame wars about moderation issues doesn’t seem helpful. Unfortunately for that to happen would probably require more energy on the part of the moderators. It’d also require people to respect the moderators–in the other thread a moderator tried to intervene and she was basically flamed and then ignored.
I’m concerned that the view being expressed here–by Merk in particular–is that the problem with that thread was that some people got accused of misogyny, and that the apparent proposed remedy is to make people stop calling out what they see as sexism or any other kind of ism. Whereas a lot of people, especially women both cis and trans, explained why the posts at the beginning of the thread made them and others feel unwelcome, and I don’t see anything in Merk’s proposals that would address that effectively. The injunctions to be civil and respectful, err on the side of caution, etc., aren’t going to help stop someone who doesn’t think he’s being disrespectful or incautious, even though he is in fact making people in certain groups feel unwelcome–especially if the forum is going to officially discourage people from pointing out that what someone’s doing is making those people feel unwelcome.
In particular, I think the point about “subtle isms” is important–just because someone doesn’t intend to be perpetuating some ism, and doesn’t think they’re perpetuating some ism, doesn’t mean that they aren’t doing something that in fact is hurtful. Just because you don’t think you’re standing on someone’s foot doesn’t mean you’re not standing on someone’s foot. And the person who is in the best position to judge whether someone’s foot is being stood on is the person whose foot it belongs to. So when someone says, “Hey, get off my foot”–even if they’re not saying it very politely–the thing to do is to apologize nicely and get off their foot, not to start an argument about whether you’re standing on their foot, or ask them to explain very patiently why that’s their foot. Demanding that sort of explanation is an imposition.
A lot of people in that thread were explaining very eloquently why the initial posts made them feel unwelcome. (This post from Emily Short is just one example.) The people setting up the Code of Conduct should be listening to them, not saying “Well I didn’t see anything unwelcoming” or “The word you used to describe the way this made you feel unwelcome is one I disagree with, and I’m going to focus on that rather than on the way it made you feel unwelcome.” That frankly seems insulting. Again, who’s the authority here?
Nor does it seem constructive to ask people who are trying to say that they feel unwelcome exactly why they feel unwelcome, in a way that is going to be extremely careful and respectful of the people who have just made them feel unwelcome. Quoting Lynnea Glasser:
I love this forum and am very grateful for it, and there’s a lot here that would be very hard for me to replace, but it needs to be a more welcoming place. It’s not going to be a more welcoming place if our solution to this kind of flame war is to tell women (mostly) not to call out what they see as sexism, or to be extra extra careful to do so tactfully, or whatever. That just adds to the burden on people who are already being made to feel unwelcome, and why would they want to deal with that? As Dan said,
On preview: Andrew, I see your comment, and it will sometimes happen that the kind of view I just endorsed is going to lead to unfairness to people like me and you. But even with a moderation policy that bends over backwards not to spare our feelings, the unfairness is likely to wind up much more the other way. (I just went to the Choice of Games forum and the first thread I clicked on had a ridiculous blatant transphobic comment–the comment didn’t get any support but it still is the sort of thing that seems like it could help ruin your day if it was directed at you.) If we just let things bounce off our thick skin, here at least, the world and the forum will be a better place.
I would welcome a code of conduct. I think that moderation is a hard job and having a code of conduct makes it easier to do it better.
I know for a fact that when a community suggests that it is more interested in, and spends more energy on, defending itself against accusations of misogyny than it does on welcoming outsiders, that this drives women away. I don’t think it takes very much of this to make a community feel unsafe. I think that a code of conduct that is mealy-mouthed about this is not going to make it feel any safer.
matt w, I don’t think any of the mods think the initial posts in the IF is Dead thread were anything but unwelcoming. How to deal with them is a complex issue though.
The later accusations are a different matter. I agree with maga that we shouldn’t spend more energy defending against those claims that we do actually trying to make this place a safe welcoming misogyny-free place. But I’m also unhappy that the accusations were made in the way that they were made.
explicit codes of conduct are hella important because the natural inclination of things is to veer toward oppression, because we live in an oppressive society. its not so much a matter of guilt or innocence as understanding everyone is socialized to normalize oppression, including me, and staying aware of the erosion
I’ve realised that what I didn’t like about your comments in the other thread Porpentine was they they felt like drive-by comments to me. While I don’t think there should be some kind of minimum word count or mandated way to express that you are feeling oppressed, I also don’t think that short comments that lack enough context are constructive. Many people were confused by them. Does that make sense?
Everyone, should the code of conduct have anything about constructive ways to communicate?
It seems like there’s a culture clash between members of the community and the mods here. Maybe we should add some new mods? Personally I nominate maga, since he’s always been a stand-up gent, and I feel like he could help smooth over disagreements with the management.
if the comments of women feel drive by, it could have something to do with understanding how readily they’re going to be dismissed, or because they know speaking at length is sometimes taken as being “too invested” and “emotional” in the topic. some of us have the energy to speak at length on it, others are here to register our opinions and move on. i was hardly the only woman in that thread to do so.
saying automatic downvotes are bad (a clear infraction of the IFComp rules) shouldn’t be controversial. I dissented against the idea of automatic downvotes in the same amount of sentences, if not more, than others approved of the idea. there are plenty of men who made genuinely low effort, no context comments, who were not singled out.
At this point, there are supporters of a shorter Code of Conduct and supporters of a Choice-of-Games style Code. Nobody has indicated opposition to having a Code of Conduct, nor concerns with how restrictive a longer Code might be. In the interest of moving ahead, it seems a slightly adapted Choice-of-Games version is the winner. If somebody is willing to adapt that text to intfiction.org – basically by slightly revising whatever applies only to Choice-of-Games – that would be great. Otherwise, I will try getting it done this weekend.
In support of this, a review committee might be needed. I’ve had one volunteer. Others are welcome. One way to handle this is to have a group and private board (same concept as the IFComp authors board), but I think it takes moderator access to actually see pending “reports” on a post. So this part could take some thought. The answer might be to just make more moderators.
One thing that has become clear is that I no longer fit in here myself. My comments have already been taken in unintentional ways. And since it’s been made clear that defending against accusations only contributes to the problem, I don’t even feel comfortable now trying to explain myself.
To this end, I’d like to begin the process of transitioning the forum to somebody else willing to take it on. I can create a full DB backup (MySQL), but you will need a server running the latest version of phpBB. I will transfer the domain name in the process. This doesn’t have to happen immediately, but I guess it’ll need to happen at some point.