Reconsidering Rule 3

[zhazz]

I think such a change would be a good one.

Though I am somewhat confused by the suggested change, when compared to the preceding paragraph seeking to justify it.

I'm offering the suggestion of editing this rule to allow civil discussion and conversation around issues without the thread getting immediately locked. If a thread spirals out of control and grows into a flame war, well then you lock it as one does, but currently there's no room for open discussion and, as a former staff lead, I genuinely don't think that's a good atmosphere.

Suggested changes are as follows:

If you have an issue with a specific player or staff member be it in character or out of character, do not post about it on the forums; instead use personal messages to solve it. If that fails, take the issue to the staff lead or admin.

Is the suggestion to

1. Be more lenient with forum posts about issues?
2. Remove ambiguity in the wording of the rule, to inform players that contacting staff is always a valid second option?

I believe both have merit.

From my own experience six years ago, posting any sort of criticism (which can be constructive!) resulted in locked threads. For the playerbase to build and present a consensus on what they perceive as flawed/unfair/unfun, there needs to be a public place to do so. If not the forums, then where?

Without such a place to voice concern, and civilly discuss them, what results is a lot of whispering in the corners.



Should the suggestion be accepted, to make room for the above, I do agree we can build a better atmosphere.

[Zanniej]

Good suggestion. Our aim is indeed to prevent attacking singular people, be they staff or not.
We do not want to prevent discussing issues at all. We just want to prevent attacking a single person.

I'll put this on my to-do list. Feel free to come up with an all encompassing wording. I'll post my own suggestion if I have further remarks. Also feel free to nudge me if I forget about it.

[Valefort]

Why not, this can't hurt.

[zhazz]

I'm just waking up so yet again not the best time to be writing things but I'll try to give it a shot again.


If you have an issue with an individual player or staff member, be it out of character or in character, do not post about it on the forums. Instead, use personal messages to solve the issue; if that can not be done you can contact either the moderators, staff leads, or admins if need be. Most issues can be solved by talking with one another!


That's my best shot at it, wanting the wording to emphasize the individual as opposed to the group as a whole. Someone else can probably word it better than my sleep deprived brain.

I would still like to include the option to for civil discussion on the forums. Here's my take on it.


If you have an issue with an individual player or staff member, be it out of character or in character, do not post about it on the forums. Instead, use personal messages to solve the issue; if that can not be done you can contact either the moderators, staff leads, or admins if need be. Most issues can be solved by talking with one another!

If you have an issue with the behavior of a player or staff member, be it out of character or in character, you can raise awareness to the behavior on the forum. Do not call out the person in question. The purpose of this is to have an open discussion about the behavior, and whether or not we as a community deem it suitable for the server.

[gedweyignasia]

If you have an issue with the behavior of a player or staff member, be it out of character or in character, you can raise awareness to the behavior on the forum. Do not call out the person in question. The purpose of this is to have an open discussion about the behavior, and whether or not we as a community deem it suitable for the server.[/color]

I think this would work very well for addressing official policies, but might be abused to call out a staff member (in all but name) instead of handling the matter over PMs. Discussing staff-wide policies is something that would work well as an open discussion, but addressing issues with an individual's behavior should be done privately with the person responsible for them (their superior or someone higher up the chain).

The reason for this is that staff-wide policy is something that players should have a voice in, but managing an individual's conduct is the responsibility of the people in charge of them. Staff members are volunteers who are trusted to conduct themselves in a responsible manner; they are not elected. In my experience, infractions tend to be handled effectively and compassionately by the leadership. Usually all that's required is a gentle reminder that the person stepped out of line and what's expected of them; I have yet to see anyone decline that kind of guidance. They're pretty careful with what kind of personalities they want on staff; being able to accept criticism and improve is an important criterion for staff.

In-character matters should always be handled by DMs; I would keep that separate from the rest of this.

[Shadowspinner70]

You made a good point there, Ged. At that point I'd probably have that part of the rule be enforced in the spirit of it, not necessarily the letter; essentially go full Hoarite on it. Small snippet of an idea, but I can explain more at a later time if it's needed!

[Planehopper]

I prefer Lazy's version. It makes sense, and seems like a more clarified and kind way of saying what we already enforce. Talking out an issue is best done in private or with lead roles.

I would remove IC, however. If the issue is IC it should be handled IC. If it can't be then it becomes OOC anyway.

It doesn't rule out discussions on policy or philosophy of server development or management. Those have always been allowed. Personal issues or personal behaviors, however, in general or pointed, are best handled away from the peanut gallery.

[Hoihe]

I'm just waking up so yet again not the best time to be writing things but I'll try to give it a shot again.


If you have an issue with an individual player or staff member, be it out of character or in character, do not post about it on the forums. Instead, use personal messages to solve the issue; if that can not be done you can contact either the moderators, staff leads, or admins if need be. Most issues can be solved by talking with one another!


That's my best shot at it, wanting the wording to emphasize the individual as opposed to the group as a whole. Someone else can probably word it better than my sleep deprived brain.

I would still like to include the option to for civil discussion on the forums. Here's my take on it.


If you have an issue with an individual player or staff member, be it out of character or in character, do not post about it on the forums. Instead, use personal messages to solve the issue; if that can not be done you can contact either the moderators, staff leads, or admins if need be. Most issues can be solved by talking with one another!

If you have an issue with the behavior of a player or staff member, be it out of character or in character, you can raise awareness to the behavior on the forum. Do not call out the person in question. The purpose of this is to have an open discussion about the behavior, and whether or not we as a community deem it suitable for the server.

My one cocnern with "issue with behaviour of a player, raise awareness about 'behaviour'" is that it's very easy to skirt the line and use conveniently timed forum discussions to put peer pressure upon a player to do something they don't want to do just to seem like a "good RPer."

Say, a player plans to gank and behead a certain character. They open a forum thread about how "people need to roll with consequences if they are real RPers" and essentially make the person being beheaded feel like "If I don't perma my character, I will be considered a bad RPer." which we should avoid as strongly as possible.

[zhazz]

If you have an issue with the behavior of a player or staff member, be it out of character or in character, you can raise awareness to the behavior on the forum. Do not call out the person in question. The purpose of this is to have an open discussion about the behavior, and whether or not we as a community deem it suitable for the server.[/color]

I think this would work very well for addressing official policies, but might be abused to call out a staff member (in all but name) instead of handling the matter over PMs. Discussing staff-wide policies is something that would work well as an open discussion, but addressing issues with an individual's behavior should be done privately with the person responsible for them (their superior or someone higher up the chain).

The reason for this is that staff-wide policy is something that players should have a voice in, but managing an individual's conduct is the responsibility of the people in charge of them. Staff members are volunteers who are trusted to conduct themselves in a responsible manner; they are not elected. In my experience, infractions tend to be handled effectively and compassionately by the leadership. Usually all that's required is a gentle reminder that the person stepped out of line and what's expected of them; I have yet to see anyone decline that kind of guidance. They're pretty careful with what kind of personalities they want on staff; being able to accept criticism and improve is an important criterion for staff.

In-character matters should always be handled by DMs; I would keep that separate from the rest of this.

I can agree to that logic.

Private matters handled privately, and wide-arching server matters handled in an open forum.

[JustAnotherGuy]

I think a change to that rule would be really good. In all honesty, it's why I left the server some years ago. I will not rehash it all here, obviously. But the circumstances were that I had an issue with a staff member. I PM'd the DM team. I thought I was all alone in this. ... and so did the other six people who all had a problem with the staff member. It wasn't until after we all left the server that we ended up realizing that we all had an issue with the same person. Had we been allowed to openly voice our concern, and get issues out in the open, then we may have never left the server at all.

Opening it up will allow a couple things:
1. It will keep transparency about the leadership of the server.
2. People will not feel as if it is them versus the entire staff if they have an issue. They can unite if it's a serious allegation.

All in all, I think it would be a good thing.

[Zanniej]

I'm thinking of something along the following lines:

If you have an issue with an individual player/staff, do not post about it on the forums; instead use personal messages to solve it. If you can't resolve it privately, discuss it with the staff lead, HDMs, moderators or admins where applicable. If you have an issue with a server-wide policy, you are ofcourse allowed to discuss it openly. But please address issues, not people.

You should be able to talk out issues amongst each other, and if that doesn't work, you can address the leads of their staff group. If that doesn't work, you can address the admin(s). There is always the option to get at least a second opinion, but in most cases also a third.