Best Posts in Thread: Toxicity

Hold it there with the toxic post pal, otherwise you will have 5 points coming your way.

 

I'm not really a player anymore, but I'm slightly concerned about the number of toxicity bans and the kinds of players it is being used against.

History:
Toxicity when I was staff was controversial because we just started using it as an acceptable moderation tool by all levels of staff. Of course it had to be an admin doing it and go through admin confirmation, but it was used rarely and under extreme cases. The only person who did these types of bans before this was fuzzlr and onis. When it was first implemented, I can't stress enough that it took a lot, and I mean A LOT, for a player to be banned for it. It would be talked about internally for probably a month before it was actually done.

Now, it is being used very liberally against players and I cant help but feel that it is wrong. Often times the toxicity threads have no supporting evidence posted or sent and just rely on the judgement of higher staff. In monkeys case, she was wrongfully banned for warning points that should have been set to expire and that wrongful ban was used as an opportunity to ban her for toxicity. That is far too opportunistic and predatory by moderation staff for people to be comfortable with. All lengths of toxicity bans were permanent, because of the extremeness of behavior and consistency of it.

Morally of the story is that toxicity was not meant to be used like this. To arbitrarily pick out players liberally and ban em. Especially one where a player is banned for a month without warning. It was meant to be used against the worst of the worst, the toxic of the toxic, such that it was doing the server extreme harm to have them around.

 

This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

 

@marshallmafers I dont really care about likes. I could just not reply but instead I choose to have the convo.

You act like youre some type of social god but literally everyone on the server hates you so, Im not too concerned with your memes.
I had an adult convo with you in game and you seemed to understand, until the next day you acteed like an idiot to achmed. The perm ban got you to my TS twice for a full convo. Id say mission accomplished.

P.S. Toxicity and criticism are COMPLETELY different. Like I said before,
"Klutch these kits are crazy unbalanced. Please we need to fix them"
"Klutch these suck are you an idiot? do you even pvp?"

If you dont see the difference. . . I cant help you.

 

How to lose and break community members and their trust 101

 

Ho ho watch yourself you are one step away from a toxicity ban

 

Just FYI: You don't have an inherent right to freedom of speech on the internet.

 

Well @KlutchDecals, I respect you a lot, but we disagree deeply.

Right now this is pretty much your server, so it is up to you to decide how to run it, not me.

I have to say though, most people with a developed brain do not appreciate communities where honesty is looked down upon. A community where young adults have to jump through hoops and say "Well, you know, maybe this can be done another way?" instead of "This is terrible," is a community that is only for a select few.

I'd get it if this server was geared toward little kids, but it isn't. All around there are teens and young adults who should be able to share their real thoughts without offending each-other and being banned for toxicity.

Now, I don't bring this up a lot, but I will to show my viewpoint. I am a developer who makes games geared towards children and young teens. My games been have visited over 1.4 million times.

When I am developing and working with my builders and testers, everything is most productive when we can be completely and brutally honest with each-other.

Me: "Hey, we should add this feature, it would go like this."
Builder: "That would be a rip-off of that other game. We'd get hate for that."

Builder: "Hey, what statue should I put in the middle here."
Me: "If you add a statue I will delete and won't add it to my game."

We don't jump through hoops with "Well maybe-s" or "because this or that-s," and it'd just slow us down if we did.

Human interaction reaches its pinnacle when we can be completely honest with each other, and it is diseased by political correctness and weaklings who can be offended by online text.

If someone genuinely thinks that, then I'd rather they said pretend that they don't think that way. If I developed kit PvP, that information would be extremely useful to me. Whatever I did caused strong distaste in the user of my program. When writing programs for users, the genuine, unadulterated thoughts of the end users are the most valuable things there are. Any sissy developers who request "politeness" and "just a suggestion" filters are missing out on massive potential, and they will be blind to many of the improvements they could have made in their future programs.

Now there are genuinely toxic people and trolls who should be banned, but Muunkee is not one of them, so those groups of people are irrelevant in this discussion. I view Muunkee as the opposite of these people; she often attempts to expose them and make them look stupid. Probably the thing I hated worst about her - she would be too serious about people who were just playfully trolling around.


Klutch,
I implore you to stop being biased and contemplate objectively whether or not this the path you want to take for your community.

No, don't worry, it's ok, I already know nothing will change your mind.

 

The average age of smods has gone down. thats an explanation.

 

hey hi i heard the word toxicity?

 

Tsk tsk tsk...

People on this server are so easily offended... Everything is "toxic."

Muunkee is not a toxic person at all... Like not in the least...

I think we are confusing toxicity with speaking your mind. Is that offensive? Speaking your mind? Seems like it.

I don't care about this server or this community, but it is concerning that human beings even have the capacity to think like this.

This community has too many adults that really need to mature and recognize the value of real conversation; real conversation that does not mask genuine thoughts to save one's feelings.

Negativity is toxic.

Disagreement is toxic.

Honest critical opinions are toxic.

This post it toxic.

Anyways, everyone have a wonderfully toxic day.

 

a warning within the past year would have been nice

 

I'm going to try give my response in a non-bias manner, not from the perspective of any one side.

It seems people on this thread are having a tough time seeing from the perspective of the other side. What I'm going to do is summarize each side’s points, and then state my opinion of it. Note that this is only from what I can see people saying on this thread, not including any of the stupid posts.


Player’s perspective:

- are not allowed to share opinions (limited in what can be said)

- get banned for anything that isn't "approved" by staff

- being a little "negative" shouldn't be enough for a perm ban


Staff perspective:

- those that are constantly negative don't deserve a part in our community

- it is the staff who dedicate hours and hours of their lives to making the experience of the players better, and should therefore not have to have the community questioning them on everything they disagree with

- Giving criticism and being toxic can be mutually exclusive


Overall analysis:

To start off, it seems that even the word "toxic" has now become a joke, which from both sides should be a little concerning. From what I could gather, each side sees the word "toxic" as having the same definition, but with slight differences. From both sides perspective, it is someone who (for example) swears in chat, bashes the server, and makes others around them just feel bad at an extreme level. The only difference is that the staff views your attitude over a long period of time, whereas the community sees it as one post can make or break a situation. Toxicity itself is always looked down upon, but having one bad day isn't enough to get a ban for it.

Players should understand that voicing an opinion isn't looked down upon, but encouraged. The way you voice that opinion however, is very important. It's called the art of diplomacy. A quote that perfectly sums up what this means is “Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions.” Members who want to help improve the server by giving constructive criticism, should also be the ones mature enough to go about it in a decent way. Saying "your idea is bad, here is a better one" means the same thing as "My idea is so much better than this dumbass idea" but is said in a way that doesn't hurt anyone, and will actually make people want to listen to you.


Take a second to notice how none of the posts in this thread are "toxic" by either sides standards. This is part of the reason why the conversation is still going on. When constructive criticism is given in a positive way, staff are more than willing to listen. I guarantee that if this thread were to have the same points made in a more toxic and negative way, it would have most likely been looked over and brushed off (thanks @epick8 and everyone else who contributed positively for that).


tl;dr: It seems like there's a simple misunderstanding between how each side views the word "toxic". One side sees it as "one or two posts be negative enough to deserve a ban" vs "this isn't very negative but it's done on a consistent bases by this player". At the end of the day, it's the staffs job to decide what's best for the server. Does that mean you always have to agree with it? No you don't, but that's why we have discussions like this. Staff value your input as long as it's said in a way that isn't completely negative.

 

I don't know how you've decided to ignore an entire system used since the forums began is purposeless, but its irrelevant. Its predatory. The first two warning points were from 2015 and there was a jump to ban for toxicity at 1 warning point. Its jumping at an opportunity to ban someone when the rule of toxicity deemed a perm ban from in game and most of the times forums as well because it was that bad. This is not that bad. Also, on top of not providing contextual evidence for such ban is wrong. All appeals I looked at provided no evidence. They just said sorry which is exactly what staff is looking for now in these bans. Theres supposed to be a process and its getting thrown out to be liberal with toxicity bans. I don't know if the ends justifies the means here, especially when certain players hit by it are dedicated members of the community.

 

Its not about "Handling a situation"
I handle it VERY well. However, I dont need negativity surrounding me.
IM the one putting the time in, Therefore, IM the one who stays. See how that works?
If you want to make the rules or try to tell me how to do my job, I dare you to attempt to stand in my shoes. Until then, Carry on.