Unjust 48hr ban

[丂ħ̧i̧₣ɫ̵γ͘ ̶™]

I was recently banned for a post in Thalmor's thread.

Now the image in question or rather images, were of a gnome sighting in Argentina and of a gnome child in black SS officer wear.

The reason for this ban and dual point strike on Shifty's warn meter was due to "roleplaying as a Nazi."

Now mind you, I did not post anything "pro-Nazi" I merely posted a joke/valid reference to the original post and was all within the context of meme-ing.

>Johnny Costello and company call certain people undesirable/deplorable racists, nazis, and insensitive folks.

>Thalmor makes thread about sjws bringing these people to justice

>Shifty has already been called a nazi numerous times over just about anything, so he posts a "nazi gnome" (mind you with no runes or swastikas, so it was purposefully censored) and the statement "you won't take me alive" (common phrase for escaping criminals/also implying self-cyanide poisoning)

Overall, it was appropriate for the over-the-top nature of the thread and mocking Johnny's post.

Shifty does not roleplay as a nazi, he shitposted. Shifty roleplays as everything, currently he is a classically trained mage.

[Honey Monster]

OP & Everyone, 

One of the biggest things we have trouble dealing with as moderators is, is this wrong, is this a joke, or is this right? Clearly, within our rules it states that someone can talk about nazi stuff as long as they are not promoting  it. Unfortunately, we believed that you were representing yourself as a nazi in a way that didn't prove to be satire. We aren't not always inside the 'joke' when it comes to reading threads and we don't always know what exactly happens outside of the PW forums that gets brought into our house - in that case there is a little bit of a wall of knowledge so to speak. 

In this instance, I believe we made a correct decision based on our knowledge, therefore a just warn. - but if you were to bring that up to us post-warn we could have removed those warns for the satire that you have proved it to be. Points are still there, but we can discuss a removal of points if that tickles your fancy.

Racism, Sexism, and other topics have been pretty heated as of late. Most likely due to society changes across the world and as such we try to keep up with those changes and learn where exactly to draw the line. I just recently posted to moderators and alex about the line and where to draw it, its tough - but we do try and do our best with reports sent into us.

Before you jump on the moderation team, just be aware that we do attempt to look at situations in all angles and we try to reach out to the community when we have questions on a number of reports, to understand positions and why that was posted.

 

If you have further questions, feel free to post here or shoot me a DM.

[Sketchy]

3 hours ago, Honey Monster said:

OP & Everyone, 

One of the biggest things we have trouble dealing with as moderators is, is this wrong, is this a joke, or is this right? Clearly, within our rules it states that someone can talk about nazi stuff as long as they are not promoting  it. Unfortunately, we believed that you were representing yourself as a nazi in a way that didn't prove to be satire. We aren't not always inside the 'joke' when it comes to reading threads and we don't always know what exactly happens outside of the PW forums that gets brought into our house - in that case there is a little bit of a wall of knowledge so to speak. 

In this instance, I believe we made a correct decision based on our knowledge, therefore a just warn. - but if you were to bring that up to us post-warn we could have removed those warns for the satire that you have proved it to be. Points are still there, but we can discuss a removal of points if that tickles your fancy.

Racism, Sexism, and other topics have been pretty heated as of late. Most likely due to society changes across the world and as such we try to keep up with those changes and learn where exactly to draw the line. I just recently posted to moderators and alex about the line and where to draw it, its tough - but we do try and do our best with reports sent into us.

Before you jump on the moderation team, just be aware that we do attempt to look at situations in all angles and we try to reach out to the community when we have questions on a number of reports, to understand positions and why that was posted.

 

If you have further questions, feel free to post here or shoot me a DM.

And this is the exact problem with the moderation of this forum. 

Your personal subjective interpretation of a post should not be what dictates whether it does or does not break the rules. Whether or not you "get the joke" is completely irrelevant, what are you the humor police?

 

[Aksel]

1 hour ago, Sketchy said:

And this is the exact problem with the moderation of this forum. 

Your personal subjective interpretation of a post should not be what dictates whether it does or does not break the rules. Whether or not you "get the joke" is completely irrelevant, what are you the humor police?

 

I feel like what was meant was simply - understanding if something is satire within the context of the thread is difficult when the moderation team isn't 'in on' the joke itself. I feel like, maybe people that comment the way you do  have the tendency to blow things out of proportion just a little bit. When reading the post I didn't see anything indicating that moderation were policing humor, I only saw that at some times they might not understand a joke or understand the satire. 

Albeit, something moderation needs to work on is actually understanding what is going on in a thread and not basing their warns on the simple post alone, most times there are people posting worse above or below the reported content. I assume that it must be slightly difficult dealing with todays society - In my RL I bash heads with people on different beliefs just bc of offensive dialogue that yesterday wasn't. 

IDK Sketchy just DM me and I'll send you offensive things, tell me if they are funny or not.

[Honey Monster]

@Sketchy

Thanks for bringing that up - maybe the use of 'we believed' is in the wrong context here. The course of action was, review the report, review the post, determine it was against the rules and provide the justification. That justification, at the time, was that this was a violation. After this was determined, I issued the warn points this did cause a 48 hour no-posting ban on the forums for Shifty and right after I received a DM from shifty where we did discuss the points, discussed the satire, discussed the joke. Within that conversation I explained our process - at that time we agreed to keep the warn and we would discuss this publicly so that it would be transparent. 

Here we are. 

After discussing this issue with the moderation team we have decided to revoke the warn and the points given to Shifty. On behalf of the moderation team, I apologize for the confusion Shifty. In the future, we will reach out to what might confuse us or make us believe something is incorrect or wrong. We are humans and we make mistakes. 

Thanks y'all. 

[Sketchy]

1 minute ago, Mad Max said:

I feel like what was meant was simply - understanding if something is satire within the context of the thread is difficult when the moderation team isn't 'in on' the joke itself. I feel like, maybe people that comment the way you do  have the tendency to blow things out of proportion just a little bit. When reading the post I didn't see anything indicating that moderation were policing humor, I only saw that at some times they might not understand a joke or understand the satire. 

Albeit, something moderation needs to work on is actually understanding what is going on in a thread and not basing their warns on the simple post alone, most times there are people posting worse above or below the reported content. I assume that it must be slightly difficult dealing with todays society - In my RL I bash heads with people on different beliefs just bc of offensive dialogue that yesterday wasn't. 

IDK Sketchy just DM me and I'll send you offensive things, tell me if they are funny or not.

All the context needed to understand the post was within the thread itself. The moderators either didn't choose to read it and do their due diligence, or like I said, "they didn't get it".

Humor is subjective, so is what people take offense to, what matters is whether or not a post violates the rules or not.

What it means to promote: With regards to referencing historical discussions and satirical usage, promoting Nazism, Terrorism, Racism, etc means using those images, agenda, propaganda in place in RL society to further promote that type of hate and agenda within this community.

What part of the post promotes hate or an agenda? 

If the moderators felt that being a "nazi" was such a bad thing, they would crackdown on people like the person who instigated that thread, who randomly call people nazis without evidence. But of course they won't lmfao. The only standards the moderation team have are double standards.

[Aksel]

9 minutes ago, Sketchy said:

All the context needed to understand the post was within the thread itself. The moderators either didn't choose to read it and do their due diligence, or like I said, "they didn't get it".

Humor is subjective, so is what people take offense to, what matters is whether or not a post violates the rules or not.

What it means to promote: With regards to referencing historical discussions and satirical usage, promoting Nazism, Terrorism, Racism, etc means using those images, agenda, propaganda in place in RL society to further promote that type of hate and agenda within this community.

What part of the post promotes hate or an agenda? 

If the moderators felt that being a "nazi" was such a bad thing, they would crackdown on people like the person who instigated that thread, who randomly call people nazis without evidence. But of course they won't lmfao. The only standards the moderation team have are double standards.

You seem pretty heated over a simulation game moderation team and an unfortunate accident on warning a member who posted something Nazi related.

My apologies.

Maybe its because its like 3am and you are looking for an argument, or you just care insanely deep for Shiftsters either way, keep on keepin on - the world doesn't deserve you.

[丂ħ̧i̧₣ɫ̵γ͘ ̶™]

17 minutes ago, Mad Max said:

You seem pretty heated over a simulation game moderation team and an unfortunate accident on warning a member who posted something Nazi related.

My apologies.

Maybe its because its like 3am and you are looking for an argument, or you just care insanely deep for Shiftsters either way, keep on keepin on - the world doesn't deserve you.

Everyone secretly loves Shifty, they just don't know it yet.

Sketchy would care about Shiftsters. Sketchy is from the same Genus as Shifty.

Both branched off in the early Oligocene as the continents slowly began to drift part. At one point the range of the common ancestor was from Antarctica, South America, and Australia. As these 3 continents spread out further, they began to differentiate into species. One unknown specimen was found exclusively in Antarctica, but was thought to have gone extinct by 35 m.y.a as the continent began to freeze. 

Despite popular belief, CreepyLurkers are not related at all and are an example of convergent evolution.

[Aksel]

19 minutes ago, ϟħ̧i̧₣ɫ̵γ͘ ̶™ said:

Everyone secretly loves Shifty, they just don't know it yet.

Sketchy would care about Shiftsters. Sketchy is from the same Genus as Shifty.

Both branched off in the early Oligocene as the continents slowly began to drift part. At one point the range of the common ancestor was from Antarctica, South America, and Australia. As these 3 continents spread out further, they began to differentiate into species. One unknown specimen was found exclusively in Antarctica, but was thought to have gone extinct by 35 m.y.a as the continent began to freeze. 

Despite popular belief, CreepyLurkers are not related at all and are an example of convergent evolution.

I've never had a problem with him, I just don't mind giving him a hard time - I want his avatar to yell at me like Bruce Wayne in Dark Knight - deep and manly.. (shivers)

 

Also, idk if you had that saved somewhere or just typed it up - but damn. If you whipped that out in a simple reply, props.

[Buorhann]

How did I miss this?

@Sketchy already covered a lot of what needed to be said.  If you're going to punish people, you need to look at the source of the issue first, then go from there to see the appropriate punishment if the situation is relying on subjective opinion.

A 48hr ban on Shifty though for that image?  Yet nothing happened to others?  This is clearly not bias, right?

Or do we need to mass report posts?  I can sure as hell arrange that on people who are constantly baiting others to go into OOC attacks in the In-Alliance Forums.

 

If anything, just edit out the posts with something cute (Turning offensive to funny/cute), then shoot a warning if you're unsure of how to really handle a issue.  At least it'll be somewhat amusing and lighthearted of a situation.  If the offender reposts the image in retaliation or does something else in spite of it, at least then you have justification for whatever you deem appropriate because you'd have a very clear idea what the intent was beforehand.

[Zaksaeling]

Are the bulk of the reports of "forum abuse" being handled via discord? And are the people being reported on involved prior to warns being issued? 

I ask this because it seems like the issues with moderation are a lack of transparency and a shoot first, ask later policy of warnings. Getting with shifty beforehand and asking for context could've avoided this whole situation.