Stop rewarding bad behavior

[Sir Scarfalot]

1 hour ago, Archibald said:

The tl;dr is I like Wiggum. He does what he can. But the fact that it's okay for Akuryo to go on huge rants and directly insult mods, and what's his face above can go all "haha gays amirite" and nothing happens is hella frustrating.

GOONS aren't "weaponizing" anything. We're cleaning up the mess y'all have let marinate for the past 8 years. Don't like it? Fix your nation before we find it.

What you are knowingly doing is rewarding trolling by taking public offense at it and thus giving the trolls the recognition, notoriety and negativity that they're going for in the first place. Your entire forum is a culture of hate, explicitly so, which you weakly defend by choosing to believe that anyone calling you out on your hatefulness is themselves therefore a nazi/pedo/etc. The argument that you're just "cleaning up the mess" is laughable since you're throwing shit around to see what sticks. That's not cleaning up the shit, that's spreading it. If you were acting in good faith, then you'd be handling OOC things as OOC, without complaining about how the moderators won't do your bidding or bragging about your 'victories' when they do.

Thankfully Wiggum actually does understand that, and I do not envy their having to sort through your constant bullshit.

[Archibald]

2 minutes ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

What you are knowingly doing is rewarding trolling by taking public offense at it and thus giving the trolls the recognition, notoriety and negativity that they're going for in the first place. Your entire forum is a culture of hate, explicitly so, which you weakly defend by choosing to believe that anyone calling you out on your hatefulness is themselves therefore a nazi/pedo/etc. The argument that you're just "cleaning up the mess" is laughable since you're throwing shit around to see what sticks. That's not cleaning up the shit, that's spreading it. If you were acting in good faith, then you'd be handling OOC things as OOC, without complaining about how the moderators won't do your bidding or bragging about your 'victories' when they do.

Thankfully Wiggum actually does understand that, and I do not envy their having to sort through your constant bullshit.

The ol' "just ignore them" nonsense didn't work when your mommy told you how to handle bullies in highschool, and it doesn't work in the real world, either.

Knock it off with your pretending to believe that crap.

[Sir Scarfalot]

2 minutes ago, Archibald said:

The ol' "just ignore them" nonsense didn't work when your mommy told you how to handle bullies in highschool, and it doesn't work in the real world, either.

Knock it off with your pretending to believe that crap.

There's a difference between ignoring and inventing, as you well know. All you have to do is stop using reports as propaganda and there wouldn't be a problem, but no, you just can't help but deliberately misrepresent my argument again and prove your hypocrisy again.

Every single post from a Goon member has strengthened my point, so thank you for that at least.

[Archibald]

Just now, Sir Scarfalot said:

There's a difference between ignoring and inventing, as you well know. All you have to do is stop using reports as propaganda and there wouldn't be a problem, but no, you just can't help but deliberately misrepresent my argument again and prove your hypocrisy again.

Every single post from a Goon member has strengthened my point, so thank you for that at least.

what are you even saying. When the hell did I imply that there wasn't a difference between the two lmao

[Sir Scarfalot]

48 minutes ago, Archibald said:

When the hell did I imply that there wasn't a difference between the two lmao

Same place that I said the appropriate response to slurs was to ignore them: when you strawmanned my argument for the 12th or so time.

Grammar note: It's a tad complicated to get straight, deliberately on goons' part, but my argument is:

that the moderators should not be used as Goons' personal army or ideally even that the moderators should allow the implication that they can/should be used as such, and to please stop enabling Goons' attempts at it

while the strawman is where Goons is misrepresenting my point and trying to advance a false narrative stating that my argument is in fact that there's nothing wrong with rulebreaking imagery/language, which is not and has never been my argument. And is therefore a strawman, a fallacy made in bad faith. Their use of which only strengthens my point that they're acting in bad faith.

Pretty sure I covered all of it.

Edited November 29, 2019 by Sir Scarfalot

[dragonshardz]

1 hour ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

Please stop embarrassing yourself.

[Teaspoon]

2 hours ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

There's a difference between ignoring and inventing, as you well know. All you have to do is stop using reports as propaganda and there wouldn't be a problem, but no, you just can't help but deliberately misrepresent my argument again and prove your hypocrisy again.

Every single post from a Goon member has strengthened my point, so thank you for that at least.

Who is using reports as propaganda? As far as I know these are just individuals deciding to report things that they see which are against the rules, presumably because they are used to a forums culture where rulebreaking is dealt with fairly swiftly. There is no coordinated effort, the mods are not being used as a weapon (which I'm still laughing my ass off about that anyone at all thinks this is the case, by the way), and anything that gets reported which Alex doesn't actually see as against the rules isn't being warned or banned for.

If a few jerks and trolls decide that rules being actually enforced means that they should just go break the rules more, then I imagine the moderators will just crack down on them that much harder until they can't keep doing it anymore. It's a self-solving issue.

What exactly is your actual problem? What are the negative consequences of what is happening that you're so concerned about?

Edited November 29, 2019 by Teaspoon

[Noctis Anarch Caelum]

11 hours ago, Archibald said:

The tl;dr is I like Wiggum. He does what he can. But the fact that it's okay for Akuryo to go on huge rants and directly insult mods, and what's his face above can go all "haha gays amirite" and nothing happens is hella frustrating.

GOONS aren't "weaponizing" anything. We're cleaning up the mess y'all have let marinate for the past 8 years. Don't like it? Fix your nation before we find it.

Think you guys already came pretty close to trolling Alex & the Mods into killing his own game with over moderation, although at least I think he realized it before it was to late. Although rules don't need to be strictly enforced and just verbal warns are appropriate in most circumstances.

47 People voted they thought making that "We in Kingdergarden or something?" thread on how badly over moderated things were becoming was a warnable offense and would get me suspended longer than ever before on the forum. With how over moderated the forum had gotten before I made that thread, can't even really blame anyone for thinking that. Even I wasn't sure if it was warnable or I could be suddenly suspended/banned for no good reason making it. However things have gotten pretty bad when most people voted they thought that was against the rules and likely to get me suspended.

[Alex]

8 hours ago, Noctis Anarch Caelum said:

Think you guys already came pretty close to trolling Alex & the Mods into killing his own game with over moderation

This isn't our first time dealing with brigading trolls, and I'm sure it won't be our last. The game never "died" before, I don't think it's going to die now.

Our moderation policy is to review and handle reports impartially and fairly according to the rules. We probably close out 75% of the reports we received after 2 moderators independently agree that no rules violation has occurred. Where we do issue warnings, we abide by the posted and agreed to forum rules which outline the warning point and suspension process.

You, or anyone else, may not love the moderation system, but I think it's ridiculous to say that moderation practices have been unfair or that the moderators have been "weaponized." I typically don't even look at or consider who makes a report when I examine it, I see what reason they listed for reported the post, review the post itself, consider the forum rules, and decide whether or not a violation has been occurred and process the report accordingly.

[Archibald]

Fr

45 minutes ago, Alex said:

This isn't our first time dealing with brigading trolls, and I'm sure it won't be our last. The game never "died" before, I don't think it's going to die now.

Our moderation policy is to review and handle reports impartially and fairly according to the rules. We probably close out 75% of the reports we received after 2 moderators independently agree that no rules violation has occurred. Where we do issue warnings, we abide by the posted and agreed to forum rules which outline the warning point and suspension process.

You, or anyone else, may not love the moderation system, but I think it's ridiculous to say that moderation practices have been unfair or that the moderators have been "weaponized." I typically don't even look at or consider who makes a report when I examine it, I see what reason they listed for reported the post, review the post itself, consider the forum rules, and decide whether or not a violation has been occurred and process the report accordingly.

Frankly that's exactly how modding should be done. So, thank you for that.

[dragonshardz]

14 hours ago, Noctis Anarch Caelum said:

 [...]rules don't need to be strictly enforced[...]

Yes, they do. That's why they are rules, not guidelines.

[Sir Scarfalot]

8 hours ago, Alex said:

This isn't our first time dealing with brigading trolls, and I'm sure it won't be our last. The game never "died" before, I don't think it's going to die now.

Sure, you've had to deal with Kosmokenny and Milton for years, and moderation has acted appropriately for that scale. And sure, while this game hasn't died, I've seen multiple dozens of games nearly exactly like it die due to efforts similar to Goons' shit-stirring.

The problem is the same one that has existed before, just on a non-critical scale: anyone being allowed to make any report, for any reason, leads to the moral hazard wherein there's no risk nor cost to abusing the reporting system. Inventing lurid meanings to common letter groups (lollipop), digging up obscure trivia to make a tenuous link to nazism (flag report), flaming and baiting people just enough to ride under "moderator discretion" until they lose patience and deliberately break the rules to retaliate (San Fortunado), re-issuing reports on things that have long since been solved (nation shape, horsecock/gatorcock), searching incredibly far to deliberately seek out anything they can report (the sheer number of reports on long-since inactive and therefore extremely obscure nations) are all clearly abuses of the system, and despite that are outright encouraged. These reports and the (very obviously) feigned outrage against these reports only serves to grant both the 'brigading trolls' and the legit edgelords the negativity that they crave, while punishing honest ignorance/mistakes/misunderstandings socially to a far greater degree than decency can possibly permit.

This problem hasn't reached the toxic levels of recent weeks before for the simple reason that there weren't this many deliberately immature trolls all at once prior to Goons arrival. Worse, these guys are practiced, deliberate and experienced in spreading their negativity and hate and have been competing against moderation efforts for decades.

I'm far from the only one that's utterly disgusted with their shenanigans, and equally far from the only one that's called them out on it in one capacity or another.

Tl;dr: Treating troll reports as equal to good-faith reports is in and of itself acting unfairly, and is equivalent to letting moderation be weaponized by groups that choose to weaponize it as such.

Edited November 30, 2019 by Sir Scarfalot
grammar ree

[Alex]

18 minutes ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

Sure, you've had to deal with Kosmokenny and Milton for years, and moderation has acted appropriately for that scale. And sure, while this game hasn't died, I've seen multiple dozens of games nearly exactly like it die due to efforts similar to Goons' shit-stirring.

That's not true. In 2014-2015 we had a similar group to GOONS come in and cause a lot of trouble, back when P&W had maybe 1,000 players. Again we had it with the BLOC group, and a year or two ago we had a 4chan mini-vasion. P&W is not going to "die" and if you search the forum, people have been claiming this for literally 5 years anytime there's some change that they don't like. Well, P&W isn't dead, and in fact is doing very well comparatively to the past in terms of active players.

18 minutes ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

The problem is the same one that has existed before, just on a non-critical scale: anyone being allowed to make any report, for any reason, leads to the moral hazard wherein there's no risk nor cost to abusing the reporting system. Inventing lurid meanings to common letter groups (lollipop), digging up obscure trivia to make a tenuous link to nazism (flag report), flaming and baiting people just enough to ride under "moderator discretion" until they lose patience and deliberately break the rules to retaliate (San Fortunado), re-issuing reports on things that have long since been solved (nation shape, horsecock/gatorcock), searching incredibly far to deliberately seek out anything they can report (the sheer number of reports on long-since inactive and therefore extremely obscure nations) are all clearly abuses of the system, and despite that are outright encouraged. These reports and the (very obviously) feigned outrage against these reports only serves to grant both the 'brigading trolls' and the legit edgelords the negativity that they crave, while punishing honest ignorance/mistakes/misunderstandings socially to a far greater degree than decency can possibly permit.

I don't think there's any gain from making a report, if people make frivolous reports it just wastes their time. While it also wastes the moderators' time, it's our job and what we signed up for. We can quickly review and close unnecessary reports.

18 minutes ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

This problem hasn't reached the toxic levels of recent weeks before for the simple reason that there weren't this many deliberately immature trolls all at once prior to Goons arrival. Worse, these guys are practiced, deliberate and experienced in spreading their negativity and hate and have been competing against moderation efforts for decades.

I'm far from the only one that's utterly disgusted with their shenanigans, and equally far from the only one that's called them out on it in one capacity or another.

The only reason GOONS are stirring up this much trouble is because of players like yourself who are actively lashing out against them. In a lot of ways, GOONS has been right, there was a lot of content that had gone unreported which was rule-breaking. I, for one, am glad that we have cleaned up a lot of the questionable content on the site. If you're upset about the frivolous reports, you shouldn't be, because they just get closed out and don't cause any harm except for some wasted time on the moderator's part.

18 minutes ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

Tl;dr: Treating troll reports as equal to good-faith reports is in and of itself acting unfairly, and is equivalent to letting moderation be weaponized by groups that choose to weaponize it as such.

It would be outrageously unfair to selectively ignore a player's reports simply because of the group that they belong to. I have no desire to discourage reporting, as it only improves the community - rule-breaking activity gets corrected or removed, and where people report activity that is not rule-breaking, nothing happens. You may not love that we treat all reports fairly and seriously, but it is really the only way to moderate fairly.

[Noctis Anarch Caelum]

23 minutes ago, Alex said:

That's not true. In 2014-2015 we had a similar group to GOONS come in and cause a lot of trouble, back when P&W had maybe 1,000 players. Again we had it with the BLOC group, and a year or two ago we had a 4chan mini-vasion. P&W is not going to "die" and if you search the forum, people have been claiming this for literally 5 years anytime there's some change that they don't like. Well, P&W isn't dead, and in fact is doing very well comparatively to the past in terms of active players.

I don't think there's any gain from making a report, if people make frivolous reports it just wastes their time. While it also wastes the moderators' time, it's our job and what we signed up for. We can quickly review and close unnecessary reports.

The only reason GOONS are stirring up this much trouble is because of players like yourself who are actively lashing out against them. In a lot of ways, GOONS has been right, there was a lot of content that had gone unreported which was rule-breaking. I, for one, am glad that we have cleaned up a lot of the questionable content on the site. If you're upset about the frivolous reports, you shouldn't be, because they just get closed out and don't cause any harm except for some wasted time on the moderator's part.

It would be outrageously unfair to selectively ignore a player's reports simply because of the group that they belong to. I have no desire to discourage reporting, as it only improves the community - rule-breaking activity gets corrected or removed, and where people report activity that is not rule-breaking, nothing happens. You may not love that we treat all reports fairly and seriously, but it is really the only way to moderate fairly.

It could very well be a deliberate attempt by GOONS to kill off most of the active forum population. I don't think suspensions should be handed out much at all, although after the first one all warn points do. So think mods should avoid giving out points unless they really need to against that offender.

[dragonshardz]

6 minutes ago, Noctis Anarch Caelum said:

It could very well be a deliberate attempt by GOONS to kill off most of the active forum population. I don't think suspensions should be handed out much at all, although after the first one all warn points do. So think mods should avoid giving out points unless they really need to against that offender.

Unless you have actionable proof that we're attempting to ~~kill off the forum population~~, please cease casting baseless aspersions on the GOONS community, thanks and dogbless.

Edited November 30, 2019 by dragonshardz

[Marxalot]

49 minutes ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

This problem hasn't reached the toxic levels of recent weeks before for the simple reason that there weren't this many deliberately immature trolls all at once prior to Goons arrival. Worse, these guys are practiced, deliberate and experienced in spreading their negativity and hate and have been competing against moderation efforts for decades.

imo you should have quoted this to go with that comic

[dragonshardz]

51 minutes ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

This problem hasn't reached the toxic levels of recent weeks before for the simple reason that there weren't this many deliberately immature trolls all at once prior to Goons arrival. Worse, these guys are practiced, deliberate and experienced in spreading their negativity and hate and have been competing against moderation efforts for decades.

I'm far from the only one that's utterly disgusted with their shenanigans, and equally far from the only one that's called them out on it in one capacity or another.

  

2 minutes ago, Marxalot said:

imo you should have quoted this to go with that comic

I got you boo.

Edited November 30, 2019 by dragonshardz

[Teaspoon]

51 minutes ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

Sure, you've had to deal with Kosmokenny and Milton for years, and moderation has acted appropriately for that scale. And sure, while this game hasn't died, I've seen multiple dozens of games nearly exactly like it die due to efforts similar to Goons' shit-stirring.

The problem is the same one that has existed before, just on a non-critical scale: anyone being allowed to make any report, for any reason, leads to the moral hazard wherein there's no risk nor cost to abusing the reporting system. Inventing lurid meanings to common letter groups (lollipop), digging up obscure trivia to make a tenuous link to nazism (flag report), flaming and baiting people just enough to ride under "moderator discretion" until they lose patience and deliberately break the rules to retaliate (San Fortunado), re-issuing reports on things that have long since been solved (nation shape, horsecock/gatorcock), searching incredibly far to deliberately seek out anything they can report (the sheer number of reports on long-since inactive and therefore extremely obscure nations) are all clearly abuses of the system, and despite that are outright encouraged. These reports and the (very obviously) feigned outrage against these reports only serves to grant both the 'brigading trolls' and the legit edgelords the negativity that they crave, while punishing honest ignorance/mistakes/misunderstandings socially to a far greater degree than decency can possibly permit.

This problem hasn't reached the toxic levels of recent weeks before for the simple reason that there weren't this many deliberately immature trolls all at once prior to Goons arrival. Worse, these guys are practiced, deliberate and experienced in spreading their negativity and hate and have been competing against moderation efforts for decades.

I'm far from the only one that's utterly disgusted with their shenanigans, and equally far from the only one that's called them out on it in one capacity or another.

Tl;dr: Treating troll reports as equal to good-faith reports is in and of itself acting unfairly, and is equivalent to letting moderation be weaponized by groups that choose to weaponize it as such.

Making up a whole bunch of shit about our alliance and then repeatedly insisting it's true without the slightest shred of evidence doesn't actually make any of it true, nor is it going to convince anyone who didn't already hate us to begin with. Really, this whole post is just sad.

The only people competing against moderation efforts are you and yours, Scarfalot.

[Comrade Marx]

1 hour ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

Sure, you've had to deal with Kosmokenny and Milton for years, and moderation has acted appropriately for that scale. And sure, while this game hasn't died, I've seen multiple dozens of games nearly exactly like it die due to efforts similar to Goons' shit-stirring.

The problem is the same one that has existed before, just on a non-critical scale: anyone being allowed to make any report, for any reason, leads to the moral hazard wherein there's no risk nor cost to abusing the reporting system. Inventing lurid meanings to common letter groups (lollipop), digging up obscure trivia to make a tenuous link to nazism (flag report), flaming and baiting people just enough to ride under "moderator discretion" until they lose patience and deliberately break the rules to retaliate (San Fortunado), re-issuing reports on things that have long since been solved (nation shape, horsecock/gatorcock), searching incredibly far to deliberately seek out anything they can report (the sheer number of reports on long-since inactive and therefore extremely obscure nations) are all clearly abuses of the system, and despite that are outright encouraged. These reports and the (very obviously) feigned outrage against these reports only serves to grant both the 'brigading trolls' and the legit edgelords the negativity that they crave, while punishing honest ignorance/mistakes/misunderstandings socially to a far greater degree than decency can possibly permit.

This problem hasn't reached the toxic levels of recent weeks before for the simple reason that there weren't this many deliberately immature trolls all at once prior to Goons arrival. Worse, these guys are practiced, deliberate and experienced in spreading their negativity and hate and have been competing against moderation efforts for decades.

I'm far from the only one that's utterly disgusted with their shenanigans, and equally far from the only one that's called them out on it in one capacity or another.

Tl;dr: Treating troll reports as equal to good-faith reports is in and of itself acting unfairly, and is equivalent to letting moderation be weaponized by groups that choose to weaponize it as such.

Pro-tip: Get over it. We aren't going anywhere.

[durmij]

Funny how "the active forum users" don't contribute to game politics at all. Seems like "the active forum posters" don't actually interact much besides shit-posting, cringe posting, conspiracy posting, dog whistling and downplaying pedophilia and Nazism related content.

Edited November 30, 2019 by durmij

[Noctis Anarch Caelum]

I think the current system of having warn points accumulate with longer suspensions each time also encourages the kind of reporting GOONS do over minor offenses, since they stack up even if at first a warn point is near harmless. As someone has more, suddenly its a week or more suspension for a trivial offense; where the warn point didn't matter as much when people had less accumulated.

Not sure if mods are even putting any thought into how long they're suspending people for some stuff when just going by the point system & handing them out more liberally for even the most minor offenses despite the penalty that comes with a warn point increasing sharply.

[dragonshardz]

47 minutes ago, Noctis Anarch Caelum said:

I think the current system of having warn points accumulate with longer suspensions each time also encourages the kind of reporting GOONS do over minor offenses, since they stack up even if at first a warn point is near harmless. As someone has more, suddenly its a week or more suspension for a trivial offense; where the warn point didn't matter as much when people had less accumulated.

Not sure if mods are even putting any thought into how long they're suspending people for some stuff when just going by the point system & handing them out more liberally for even the most minor offenses despite the penalty that comes with a warn point increasing sharply.

Or, you could not do things that break the rules, and thus not get warning points applied to your forums account.

[Sardonic]

Maybe you could try, I don't know, not violating the rules?  Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

E;F;B

Edited November 30, 2019 by Sardonic

[Salt Meat]

11 hours ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

flaming and baiting people just enough to ride under "moderator discretion" until they lose patience and deliberately break the rules to retaliate (San Fortunado)

See, this is where it become painfully obvious that you're not worried whatsoever that GOONS is somehow "destroying the community" or whatever nonsense you've made up, and are just mad that your edgelord friends are actually facing some backlash for once.

Yes, poor San Fortuando, bastion of the community.

Clearly just a misunderstood individual, driven to breaking some "minor rules" by those awful SJWs.

How could anyone ever assume bad intentions from such a person? Him and the rest of his Anti-GOONS club are clearly concerned for the well-being of the game.

 

edit: just noticed Moe and Curly from the "Concerned GOONS are going to ruin the game squad" are also in the first image, what a surprise.

Edited November 30, 2019 by Salt Meat

[Alex]

10 hours ago, Noctis Anarch Caelum said:

I think the current system of having warn points accumulate with longer suspensions each time also encourages the kind of reporting GOONS do over minor offenses, since they stack up even if at first a warn point is near harmless. As someone has more, suddenly its a week or more suspension for a trivial offense; where the warn point didn't matter as much when people had less accumulated.

Not sure if mods are even putting any thought into how long they're suspending people for some stuff when just going by the point system & handing them out more liberally for even the most minor offenses despite the penalty that comes with a warn point increasing sharply.

The warn point system is clearly outlined in the rules, suspensions applied are automatic and pre-configured based on the number of warning points you've racked up.

I agree with the others who've posted saying "if you don't want warning points, don't break the rules." Like 99% of forum users have 0 warning points, so obviously it's perfectly possible for the majority of players to follow the rules without any issues.