When arguments turn unhealthy

[conrad]

This is still a fresh wound of the wallening, and I am not 100% sure of the details, so if my question is impertinent please educate me.

There are situations (and I'm not going to post screenshots or look for receipts 'cos I think everyone is tired at this point) of staff members being extremely toxic towards community members on public areas. We've seen this during the wallening.

By public areas I mean the Discord and the forums, and by staff members I mean someone with a funny colored name (admin, coder, spriter), someone with an active involvement in the project or server that also bears resonsibility and accountability in some way.

At the same time on the other end I've seen shit that turns my stomach and makes me want to just go on another extended break, work stress notwithstanding, such as "I don't care, I'm not a coder, go fix it green name", from non-staff members.

Those conversations are largely unmoderated. Admins clap shitters who act in bad faith on the server, and the odd admin that fucks up is removed from the team. I find it weird that there is no active involvement from jannies when the conversation involves the project, or staff members.

I want to know: how do you plan on handling such situations in the future? Will you exercise active involvement? Should forum and discord janny pings be the only means of getting a flamewar to end? Perhaps this is not an actual problem? Gimme your thoughts, please.

Thank you for your attention

[Lacran]

TLDR:
I see the lack of respect and decency as a symptom of an unhealthy dynamic that needed an opportunity to be addressed, I don't think this was a moderation issue, this was a fundamental issue of how certain people in authority viewed the playerbase as an entity that exists to cater to them.


I'm going to be very honest here, but before I do, it's important to acknowledge that there are people on both sides, hard working people who have been left emotionally and physically exhausted from this drama. As much as I don't like that the wallening was pushed through, the fact that the coder team was able to burn the midnight oil to push this through despite the mountain of abuse they were receiving was genuinely impressive.


This conflict was a really big one, it had been a long time coming, discord and forum moderators were stepping in at times, but the more reasonable means to moderate weren't going to work on this scale, it was a choice of either contain the drama, or just outright ban its discussion.


People should treat others with respect, but honestly neither side has had a great deal of respect for the other for a while now. People got too used to just seeing the playerbase as some toxic obstacle they'd use their authority to overrule. And players felt any comments than ran counter to a pre-existing opinion, no matter how respectful, insightful and valid, would be outright ignored. And tbh it had been, for years now. Which drags the quality of contention down until you get this emotional lashing out.


I don't like that this happened, or the way it happened. But I think looking back it needed to happen like this, coloured names needed to say dumb, toxic takes, because it's genuinely a representation of how they felt and gave others the opportunity to challenge them. Players needed to lash out a bit, because frankly, alot of the anger here was valid, and it needed to be said pretty dramatically, as alot of the coder team had developed a culture of minimising the negative impacts of their work and weren't going to listen otherwise.

[TheBibleMelts]

actually enforce rule 1 on the discord/forums.

[TheRex9001]

I think active jannies are needed for enforcement on the forums/discord, its not the ONLY way for a flamewar to end but removing people who are trying to fan and create one is a key part of attempting to repair an argument, sometimes it can also just be the time to close the thread if its devolved into shitflinging from every side. Rule 1 applies to admins as much if not more than it does to players and I do agree with you that just because a staff member is involved shouldnt make the discussion immune and it shouldnt feel like thats ever the case.

[ekaterina]

Headmins are not the first line of defence for these cases. There are forum moderators and discord jannies for a reason. If they for whatever reason fail to deal with it, then headmins should step in.

[RaveRadbury]

This is difficult to fix because the coding community is built around different moderation standards than the rest of the community and the maint team are firm about maintaining this sovereignty. That restricts a lot of immediate and direct solutions.

I think that the best course of action for this terms headmin team is to work towards getting more players to become active community members. Players who are on the forums, github, and discord. Maybe they've got a PR merged. I think that would do a lot to heal and strengthen the community. One plan that I plan to carry out towards that end is a PR Jam weekend where I try to help a bunch of people get their first PR submitted. Small, reasonable things, mostly just making sure they set things up correctly and then a basic PR. We have a handful of features in the game that are intentionally made to be newbie-expandable. I think that everyone should get to experience the process of receiving feedback and working with a maint and then getting the PR merged and seeing their content in the game. It's a great feeling and was a big draw for me, personally.

I find it weird that there is no active involvement from jannies when the conversation involves the project, or staff members.

Generally the expectation is that heads manage their teams and administrate them, which is why headmin work is Internal Affairs work. The protocol for that is requesting a cave and sharing your concerns with the headmins. I do not know what the protocol for the coding team is but I would imagine it is similar.

As for the project, I'd say that a lot of staff felt uncomfortable because people are entitled to have an opinion and the whole thing was a powderkeg.

[xzero314]

It was only natural disagreements, and tempers would flare over the change. It was however, upsetting to see some of the insults people were hurling at each other over this. To be honest, I would be Wary of taking side in any particular coding debate as a headmin. But if I happen to see unproductive arguing while I’m scrolling through the community discord I’ll step in and say something. We don’t get anywhere by Insulting each other over changes to a game we all love