I agree with Taunya that two wrongs don't make a right. However, I also believe that Staff cannot ignore antisocial behavior as it is against the forum rules. I did not "call Klapman a troll", I said that if a post appears to troll, it's unwelcome. Responding to inappropriate comments functionally has to happen as part of moderation. If my attempt to moderate the comment was too snarky for some tastes, I apologize.
That said, I think it's important to be clear - I'm a person. I'm no less vulnerable to personal attacks, comments about my character, or anything than anyone else is. I also have regular lapses in judgment, and it is sometimes a herculean effort to maintain my neutrality to do what is best for TI. I acknowledged that as the owner of a game, I am a highly visible target for flack, and as such I should be held more accountable when things go wrong. That said, I'm long comfortable with who I am and all my many failings. Everyone has a choice about how to spend their time, and whether they want to in my world.
In my view, people who are not active and flinging out insults have low consequences and even lower stake in the environment they're creating for the rest of us that remain here. We moderate TI's environment for the sake of everyone's sanity, both our player's and staff's. This is a private game on a private server though, and I am bluntly, as policy, drawing the line at inactive players coming around to fling casual insults and sow discord.
Inactive Players Posting on Forums
For me, as the person who pretty dedicatedly combs the forums for awesome stuff to grab and put into the talking points/ideas to implement list, it can at times be inordinately difficult to wade through things that are anchored around some nebulous event that happened on TI in the realm of a decade ago to find stuff relevant to the current situation and atmosphere. I know that I've personally asked a question or two and ended up baffled when the answers received were a) totally unrelated, not even peripherally, to what was actually happening, and b) used by a minority of former players as an avenue to vent resentment from years past.
That's not to say by any means, as Kin noted, that "past players" have nothing valuable to bring to the table. Of course they do, and as our unofficial forum-comber I see it all the time. There just seems to be this bewilderingly angry minority that uses any possible foothold as an outlet to inject bile into a community that they also take pride in longer being a part of. I'm not sure I understand how this works in the minds of those who do it. But for me, honestly you guys, it can be really exhausting, not to mention it occasionally feeling like being pelted with fistfuls of poop over things I have no context to understand. It's just... kinda time to move on.
In short (sort of?), the context of the past is vital when framed around the present, but the present has to play some part in it to be useful. Almost every "past player" does precisely that, and their perspectives - because they're wider - are important. I'll admit that I have a hard time buying the innocent faces from those who pop in to inform us everything we're doing is stupid or worse than it used to be; they know what they're doing, and it isn't an act of community service. People who want to work toward positive change don't do it that way.
Somebody actually hit the nail on the head earlier, albeit inadvertently: Consistently checking a rarely-updated forum for a small text-based game that you used to play and currently disdain is pretty odd, especially if the sole purpose of doing so is to levy complaints based on things that stopped being relevant years ago. It's a stress to Staff, it's a stress to the consistent flux of current players who have expressed their discomfort posting even innocuous things here because they don't want a clusterfuck to erupt around them, and it's just all around not good. It's not even all that good for the people doing it.
That's not to say by any means, as Kin noted, that "past players" have nothing valuable to bring to the table. Of course they do, and as our unofficial forum-comber I see it all the time. There just seems to be this bewilderingly angry minority that uses any possible foothold as an outlet to inject bile into a community that they also take pride in longer being a part of. I'm not sure I understand how this works in the minds of those who do it. But for me, honestly you guys, it can be really exhausting, not to mention it occasionally feeling like being pelted with fistfuls of poop over things I have no context to understand. It's just... kinda time to move on.
In short (sort of?), the context of the past is vital when framed around the present, but the present has to play some part in it to be useful. Almost every "past player" does precisely that, and their perspectives - because they're wider - are important. I'll admit that I have a hard time buying the innocent faces from those who pop in to inform us everything we're doing is stupid or worse than it used to be; they know what they're doing, and it isn't an act of community service. People who want to work toward positive change don't do it that way.
Somebody actually hit the nail on the head earlier, albeit inadvertently: Consistently checking a rarely-updated forum for a small text-based game that you used to play and currently disdain is pretty odd, especially if the sole purpose of doing so is to levy complaints based on things that stopped being relevant years ago. It's a stress to Staff, it's a stress to the consistent flux of current players who have expressed their discomfort posting even innocuous things here because they don't want a clusterfuck to erupt around them, and it's just all around not good. It's not even all that good for the people doing it.
"This is a private game on a private server though, and I am bluntly, as policy, drawing the line at inactive players coming around to fling casual insults and sow discord."
Can we not assume all inactive players are doing this though? Just because one is inactive doesn't mean they don't intend to come back someday (though I wish all the new systems didn't make it so difficult) or that they don't care about the MUD.
Can we not assume all inactive players are doing this though? Just because one is inactive doesn't mean they don't intend to come back someday (though I wish all the new systems didn't make it so difficult) or that they don't care about the MUD.
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