The Community is You!!!

[chrisd]

Dear Arma Players,

I would like to urge you to change your ways. Let us have a community of positive behavior. Let us have a community where being civil is the default mode of operation. Let us make sure servers are a safe place for everybody. On the internet, though, safe places do not happen by accident. Some people think it is highly amusing to be abusers. Behaviour that would only very rarely occur in person is regularly seen on the internet because you don't have to look the person that you are abusing in the face. In the spirit of Emmanuel Levinas, the face of the other, obliges us, but on the internet there is often no face, so no not everybody feels this obligation.

However, also spaces on the internet can be a place where people are civil to one another. There is one thing that is required for this to happen, though. It is that people who have chosen not to let decency stop them are not tolerated. Let us therefore not tolerate abusive behavior. I am not talking about some random person saying some stupid stuff occasionally. Persons like that can be encouraged to change their ways by the occasional 'Let us all be nice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!' chat. However, if players insist on continuously being malicious and are not in any way prepared to change their ways a tron server becomes a toxic environment. In that case a kick poll needs to be issued and sensible people need to vote in favor of it. This is the only way to keep a server a positive place. Really, if a person insists on abusing all the time, not voting 'YES' for the kick poll is itself an abusive behavior. The kind of behavior I am talking about is directing curse words at another player, who him/herself not behaving abusively, at the rate of one every ten seconds. In other words, people being baroquely abusive.

Unfortunately, I have seen people react to kick polls by saying 'just silence the person'. As I just stated this kind of refusing to address the problem is itself part of the problem. If YOU do this, YOU are in fact an abuser as well. You burden every player in the server to notice the abuse and to go through the steps of silencing the player for themselves. Furthermore, you implicitly send the message that this kind of behaviour is fine an just a matter of everybody's subjective taste and that it is the person who is abused who needs to engage in action instead of all other people.

So, People of Tron! Do care about your community! Vote 'YES' for the occassional but very necessary kick poll!

Kind regards,
Chrisd

[kyle]

Wait, you want a positive community, but you want to ban players globally. ban's create more hate and an overall decline in the once positive community. separate your differences, don't just ban because you differ, find the middle ground. sure you cannot agree on everything, but surely you can tron putting away the differences.

[sinewav]

ban's create more hate and an overall decline in the once positive community.

That's an interesting statement. Can it be proven? I've seen a few bans here over the years that appeared to be effective.

[breeze]

Feature request for 0.4:

New default instant chat; "Let us all be nice!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

[nara]

Agreed, chrisd. Thanks for the necessary reminder. It felt like I was cyberbullied last night, and it was very, very unpleasant. I am sharing this to highlight how relevant chrisd's message is. I was having an already unpleasant conversation with Durf, who accused me among other things of bringing Pressure's behavior upon myself, when Pressure entered the server just to attack me, again. Another troll entered and spectated, and contributed insults occasionally. It was altogether very damaging. Cyberbullying is real and harmful. I decided to rejoin the grid and tell Pressure to leave me the **** alone and that I am absolutely going to document any further harassment and take measures in real life, like notify the people/employers/spaces he is associated with IRL of his behavior online. There is no reason someone like Pressure who attacks others on the Internet under the anonymity it provides should not have their cover blown if it is possible.

However, the burden of responsibility should not be on the person attacked. This kind of behavior should not be tolerated by anyone on the grid. Don't be an asshole and a coward who attacks people on the Internet. Be more mindful and don't allow someone else to inflict harm on another player on the grid.

This is not a call to condemn Durf. He is himself discriminated against and/or bullied on the grid regularly, and has spoken about it.

Let's maintain the grid so that it doesn't become a harmful, discriminating, and unsafe environment for anyone - by not tolerating assholes or behavior that may be harmful. Kick them off the grid. There are too many dbags and trolls in this community, but hopefully there are more people who aren't and won't let them ruin it for everyone/anyone else.

[Vogue]

Agreed, chrisd. Thanks for the necessary reminder. It felt like I was cyberbullied last night, and it was very, very unpleasant. I am sharing this to highlight how relevant chrisd's message is. I was having an already unpleasant conversation with Durf, who accused me among other things of bringing Pressure's behavior upon myself, when Pressure entered the server just to attack me, again. Another troll entered and spectated, and contributed insults occasionally. It was altogether very damaging. Cyberbullying is real and harmful. I decided to rejoin the grid and tell Pressure to leave me the **** alone and that I am absolutely going to document any further harassment and take measures in real life, like notify the people/employers/spaces he is associated with IRL of his behavior online. There is no reason someone like Pressure who attacks others on the Internet under the anonymity it provides should not have their cover blown if it is possible.

However, the burden of responsibility should not be on the person attacked. This kind of behavior should not be tolerated by anyone on the grid. Don't be an asshole and a coward who attacks people on the Internet. Be more mindful and don't allow someone else to inflict harm on another player on the grid.

This is not a call to condemn Durf. He is himself discriminated against and/or bullied on the grid regularly, and has spoken about it.

Let's maintain the grid so that it doesn't become a harmful, discriminating, and unsafe environment for anyone - by not tolerating assholes or behavior that may be harmful. Kick them off the grid. There are too many dbags and trolls in this community, but hopefully there are more people who aren't and won't let them ruin it for everyone/anyone else.

Tbh, Durf calls it upon himself by the things he says. I guess you missed the situation where he was utterly transphobic and where he claimed I wasn't a girl because "I don't act like it". Pure sexism, so it's hard for me to feel sorry for him.

I believe everything you said about Pressure, people turn a blind eye to what he says because he's a MAN. I conducted a social experiment a few days this week and acted EXACTLY like Pressure always does. The result? Call for a global ban! Yet.. he's been saying horrible things for years and nobody cares. The people in this game are pathetic and hypocrites.

[Monkey]

ban's create more hate and an overall decline in the once positive community.

That's an interesting statement...

If by interesting you mean incorrect then yes. Sorry kyle but the "once positive community" of which you speak no longer exists due to the behaviour of some very nasty people. These people don't respond to nicey nicey crap like "putting away differences". What they need is punishment and removal from as much of the game as is possible.

[kyle]

ban's create more hate and an overall decline in the once positive community.

That's an interesting statement...

If by interesting you mean incorrect then yes. Sorry kyle but the "once positive community" of which you speak no longer exists due to the behaviour of some very nasty people. These people don't respond to nicey nicey crap like "putting away differences". What they need is punishment and removal from as much of the game as is possible.

Don't you think that maybe the reaction from people is what drives them to do more "wrong" almost as if they see punishment as reward and they want more of it. ignorance or peace is not necessary what they want either, but if that's all they can get, then they will either go away or be more respectful. Work with them to make them better, I've been successful doing this in the past, so well if I mentioned the name, people would not believe that they had a troublesome past on the grid.

Still this won't mend the tares and divides that have been a part of several years of punishment and giving them what they want. But it's a start, we all can silence a person if we don't like what they say?

But overall you cannot fight fire with fire, someone's gotta pour the water over to put it out.


(I won't link to statistics, however I'm sure you can find some that both support and reject my claims )

[nara]

I see what you're saying kyle, what you're arguing is what several people have argued about how to deal with trolling/abusive behavior/sexism/etc. on the Internet. While targeting those behavior might incite people to do more of it, we also haven't increased any moderation on the grid. So there is no way to know increasing moderation for inappropriate behavior on the grid doesn't work.

The problem with ignoring them/making peace with them/being the bigger person with them is that, as I see it, it doesn't change anything. Silencing someone because they are being sexist, racist, etc. does not change the sexist, racist, etc. culture that tolerates that kind of behavior. Sure there are more trolls now who make jokes about accidentally being sexist, but before these jokes and before I made my original post what I was reading all the time on the grid anyway were taken for granted, straight up sexist conversations between tronners (hence why I made the post). So it's not like things are actually worse on the grid in general.

In terms of being the bigger person in order to change someone else, you have been successful once working with a player to "make them better," but I don't see that as a viable option in terms of dealing with trolls and more malicious abusers on the grid in general. Someone being targeted should not be asked to be responsible for changing the person attacking them and putting up with the abuse, and also, it is not anyone's obligation to spend hours solving the mystery of why someone became a particularly harmful troll, or trying to convince someone to be less of an asshole. At a certain point convincing is not deserved and a stop should just be put to it. And anyway, I have explained my problem in a civil manner in my posts in the original thread, before it was derailed by a claim as ridiculous as "I didn't mean to insult nara" when I am talking about throwing sexist abuse at a player, whoever it is, for 20-30 minutes. It has been interesting to hear people's opinions/stances on this issue in general.

[compguygene]

I have been watching this topic since its inception and I think I have something to contribute. To start, I would like to weigh in with a position like kyle's and support it.
First some history, for those who may not be aware of it.
Some of you may remember that a few years ago, Immortal Dynasty (ID), the clan, died. For just under 3 years before ID died, I was a member, and a leader. I also hosted some of the ID servers. Arilou was the person that had kept ID going and pretty much the founder/Ultimate Leader, except when he was inactive and left it to those of us who were active. For many years, before I was a member of ID and during my time in ID, Arilou was known to be someone who was very proactive in kicking/banning players that trolled/offended him. This led to a cycle of trolling/kicking/banning that eventually ended with Arilou leaving the game in frustration.
Could there have been a better way?
I think so.
I have been a server owner and moderater in many game servers over the years. I can't say that I have done a perfect job of things. Most notably, if you search youtube you can find an arguement I had with taz in teamspeak. But, I have always operated on a simple philosophy. FIrst, I try to reason with an unruly player, even if I have to spectate to do so and not ruin gameplay for others. Second, I warn them that if they don't stop doing things that are making it bad for others, I will kick them. Then, if they persist, I kick them for a short period of time. Rarely do they stick around to be kicked, they get it. Even more rare, coming back after being kicked, though it has happened.
Sometimes I think we need to set a higher bar of behavior for ourselves and others might follow. In Wild West CTF, when others would be just screwing around and not actually playing the game, and some would be complaining about it, I would come in the server, and just start doing flag runs as fast as possible. Pretty soon, others would see that it's more fun to play the team game and start actually playing.
Psychologists have spent many man-years studying the effectiveness of positive and negative reinforcement. While negative reinforcement does have its place, when possible positive reinforcement is much more effective.
Let's use both tools, negative and positive, but focus on the positve ones!

[Monkey]

Arilou was known to be someone who was very proactive in kicking/banning players that trolled/offended him. This led to a cycle of trolling/kicking/banning that eventually ended with Arilou leaving the game in frustration.

Arilou didn't have backing/help from the rest of the community at that time. Also, he was a bit too hot-headed from what I've gathered.

Work with them to make them better

I hereby challenge you to work with Liz or Durf to "make them better". Go for it champ, show us how it's done...

You see, the problem is that there are some people you just can't change for the better.

One other very important point I'd like to make is that you can make many people change their behaviour, but it's usually because they *have* to, not because they *want* to. There is a huge difference between the two. People who change their behaviour because they *have* to are still the same person they were before, just with their bad behaviours repressed. Personally speaking, I don't want to be playing the game with people like this, period. I'd like to just play with people who are actually nice, decent people, just being themselves.

[afishy]

Hi all.

Could it be that if we setup some new player video walkthroughs or accessible guides that new players have to view, read, and understand (enforced somehow) we could cut down on the hostility and trolls?

[Vogue]

Hi all.

Could it be that if we setup some new player video walkthroughs or accessible guides that new players have to view, read, and understand (enforced somehow) we could cut down on the hostility and trolls?

Do you even go here?

*pls someone recognise this beautiful reference from mean girls

[afishy]

Hi all.

Could it be that if we setup some new player video walkthroughs or accessible guides that new players have to view, read, and understand (enforced somehow) we could cut down on the hostility and trolls?

Do you even go here?

I mean can we agree on and create a list of things the community will not tolerate and then agree to expose all players to them and enforce them uniformly? If the type of behaviour/troll that the OP is worried about is spreading maybe this is a way to deal with it without future headaches?

Just my 0.02.

[kyle]

Work with them to make them better

I hereby challenge you to work with Liz or Durf to "make them better". Go for it champ, show us how it's done.../quote]I would, but the rest of the community would have to release their grudges, or else they won't change, because everyone is still against them.

@afishy there is some basic game play tutorials in 0.4