Proposed New Blackballing Policy for Feedback

[Kinaed]

Dear Players,

Here's a proposal for the new blackballing policy that I've sent to staff for review and feedback. Please feel free to leave any comments or feedback below.

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Blackballing is a term that comes from an ancient Roman times when people
would hold a secret vote via a white or black stone whether to admit someone
into their group.

On TI, blackballing is the practice of ostracizing someone through social
interaction with others with the effect of convincing others to exclude them.
While this behavior is acceptable ICly, it is absolutely unacceptable OOCly.

Examples of behavior that are against blackballing policy:
- Disclosing another player's alts to third parties
- Discussing another player's RP OOCly with disapproval
- Discussing the policy history of other players
- Discussing others with implied hate, insults, or bile
*** Be VERY careful if "venting" to check yourself that you're not just
misery looking for company - if you do this, YOU are the problem***
- Conspiring with others OOCly to make someone's time ICly more difficult
- Copying snippets of a private conversation to show to a 3rd party
out of context
- Sharing private logs of other players without their permission
- OOCly warning any player about another player (report issues warranting
warnings to staff and accept their decision)
- OOCly misrepresenting someone else to gather allies against them
- OOCly declaring someone else's motivations or intentions

WARNING: Blackballing is deemed to be through any OOC social medium, on or
off TI.
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[SilverMoon]

So over all, I think it's good that you've outlined specifically what's against policy. However, to say on or off TI, isn't really enforceable. I mean what someone does on TI, or on the TI discord server of course, but when it goes off TI related things, and other people's private conversations, and trying to regulate that is a bit of a difficult thing to enforce. I mean if three people are having a chat on their on team talk server for example, and I guess if one person reported it to you guys, but the other two say no, how can it be proven? It was off the TI server, and it was a private A and B conversation. That also extends to trying to control what a person does away from game, and while I agree blackballing shouldn't be done, trying to control what a person does or say off game, off TI servers, essentially off TI property is a bit too much. That being said, that's just my opinion.

[LonelyNeptune]

I don't approve of this proposal, because it misunderstands what blackballing is on a fundamental level. Blackballing is the act of excluding or ostracising someone from your super secret group. Blackballing is not saying mean things about people, or sharing in-game information.

Only one of the examples given is actual blackballing. The rest simply aren't.

With your good example included, real examples of blackballing would be:

- Conspiring with others OOCly to make someone's time ICly more difficult
- Walking out or dropping link with a character because your clique doesn't like them
- Pushing your OOC friends into positions of power at the expense of others
- Voting for your OOC friends in IC elections at the expense of others
- Refusal to acknowledge a specific player and their RP
- Inviting everyone except a specific player to an event

I see good points by Silvermoon as well - controlling what people say to each other outside of TI is difficult to enforce and worryingly overbearing.

[Rothgar]

Like the others have said : there's a gem hidden underneath the sand, here, and it's good that you intend to punish people for attempting to make vicious sorts of cliques and whatever else, should they be pointed out to you or other imms.

I will mirror what the others said, however, which is that some of these are simply too overbearing, and that - realistically - punishing people on TI for stuff that they've said/done outside of TI is dangerously... Well. Dangerous.
I'd also hasten to point out that everyone makes mistakes, and even imms have been known to accidentally let slip via OOC meetings or forum posts or even tells, alts, current RP, complaining about certain players, etc. Additionally, you all also hold your own personal Discord accounts that have been linked to the TI official Discord channel. Unless you're planning on shutting down the official TI Discord, I'd say that the cat is pretty much out of the bag on stuff like complaining and sharing logs.

I think our current Blackballing helpfile is good enough. Personally, I'd have just left it at the first paragraph, it's incredibly self-explanatory. If people have problems interpreting it, they've probably got more widespread problems on TI and elsewhere.

[Niamh]

@Rothgar, are you drinking tea with a foot?

[Evrald]

Indeed he is.

[Zeita]

I'm comfortable with this, both in terms of the policy content/direction as well as the somantic concerns about the name; if you need to change it to 'Blackballing and Anti-Dickish Behaviour Policy', by all means go for it. It is reasonable to pack them together.

The points raised about off-game activities being difficult to monitor and even harder to enforce are fair. However, the policy sets out the expectations- those expectations will then play a part in guiding the behaviour.

[Kinaed]

Thank you everyone who took the time to post, I appreciate the feedback. I will expand the dot points based on some of LonelyNeptune's suggestions and resolve a few more comments from private conversations I've had with players who chose not to post, probably sometime today.

Regarding the definition of blackballing, this use is correct and in alignment with the definition in several dictionaries.

With regards to enforcing issues discovered "off TI" - whether this policy is overbearing is an opinion that some people share and others don't. Regardless, setting the correct expectations about when Staff will take action is necessary and appropriate.