BG Interpersonal Solutions

Would it be prudent to mention here we already have a draft tackling the problems we already outlined tackling a lot of the issues you handle here with the warning system? We are on top of this already, I just wanted to let everyone know.

edit: Quick note, not that this isn't being considered, I just wanted everyone to know we weren't sitting on our hands.

A: Please don't burn down my apartment. I rather like it. ;~;

B: Perma bans should be a last resort. Temp bans of 3-6 months should be ample time for heads to cool and behaviors to potentially stop. If the individual bothers coming back after all that time and still decides to be a little shit? Unfortunately, perma ban may be the one solution. Exceptions to this rule should certainly apply in the case of particular forms of harassment.

C: Player side, since it sounds like Staff is working on a solution by neatening up/clarifying and solidifying the guidelines, warning system, etc. 

Let's focus on a Player's responsibility and guidelines for interacting with Staff on an Interpersonal level.

First and foremost, as Kenshou said above, players in conflict should try working it out privately themselves. Be it Party A asking Party B to cut the crap and stop doing something offensive/considered as an attack on themselves, or Party B going, "Your attitude/behavior is bothering me and this is why without getting into incredibly personal and lengthy explanation, can you please stop?"

If Party A laughs in Party B's face and tells them to go fuck themselves with a loaf of bread, that's where you go to the next stage; stop interacting with them. Block them in your OOC channels; skype, aim, etc. Do not engage. 

Also, do not bring your OOC feelings into IC conflicts-- you can and should be slapped for that.

This, however, does not mean Party B gets to rally Party D, E, F, and G to come to their defense and send them after Party A. That's pathetic at best, and manipulative at worst.

Keep it simple. Keep it small.

Do not add more people to the issue. There is no reason to throw unrelated people into the conflict between you and one other person. Staff is your last resort on a conflict that will not end and are the only ones who should be pulled into said conflict in order to reach a resolution.

If Party A cannot reach a resolution with Party B or vice versa, the conflict escalates/continues even after taking the steps needed to block them from harassing you?

Bring in Staff, Party C, to help end the conflict and get a resolution.

This should be your last resort.

Do not add more people to the issue. There is no reason to throw unrelated people into the conflict between you and one other person.

A: Please don't burn down my apartment. I rather like it. ;~;

 

B: Perma bans should be a last resort. Temp bans of 3-6 months should be ample time for heads to cool and behaviors to potentially stop. If the individual bothers coming back after all that time and still decides to be a little shit? Unfortunately, perma ban may be the one solution. Exceptions to this rule should certainly apply in the case of particular forms of harassment.

 

C: Player side, since it sounds like Staff is working on a solution by neatening up/clarifying and solidifying the guidelines, warning system, etc. 

 

Let's focus on a Player's responsibility and guidelines for interacting with Staff on an Interpersonal level.

 

First and foremost, as Kenshou said above, players in conflict should try working it out privately themselves. Be it Party A asking Party B to cut the crap and stop doing something offensive/considered as an attack on themselves, or Party B going, "Your attitude/behavior is bothering me and this is why without getting into incredibly personal and lengthy explanation, can you please stop?"

 

If Party A laughs in Party B's face and tells them to go fuck themselves with a loaf of bread, that's where you go to the next stage; stop interacting with them. Block them in your OOC channels; skype, aim, etc. Do not engage. 

 

Also, do not bring your OOC feelings into IC conflicts-- you can and should be slapped for that.

 

This, however, does not mean Party B gets to rally Party D, E, F, and G to come to their defense and send them after Party A. That's pathetic at best, and manipulative at worst.

 

Keep it simple. Keep it small.

 

Do not add more people to the issue. There is no reason to throw unrelated people into the conflict between you and one other person. Staff is your last resort on a conflict that will not end and are the only ones who should be pulled into said conflict in order to reach a resolution.

 

If Party A cannot reach a resolution with Party B or vice versa, the conflict escalates/continues even after taking the steps needed to block them from harassing you?

 

Bring in Staff, Party C, to help end the conflict and get a resolution.

 

This should be your last resort.

A-ah, this is constructive! I like this topic, and this 'Quarantine' area. Is it okay if I post here? I hope I can contribute!

(if any of my words are goofy or messed up i just woke up so i apologize < > u < > )

Hi, Kireon! I quoted you specifically because while I'm fond of your suggestion I also like Kenshou's, and while it's obviously not impossible to fuse them together I was wondering what your thoughts were on one specific issue.

If it gets to such a point that you have to bring staff in, going by your method/ideal that staff are a last resort, how do you rank punishments then? A warning system seems out of place. I say that because with what you're saying this would be continued, unbridled harassment at multiple points even after you have done your best to both ignore and avoid the other person after having asked them to stop, specifically. While I'm not exactly keen on punishments because I wish everyone could just get along in the first place, I do realize, realistically, they are necessary to keep a positive flow of things.

A verbal/written warning from staff if that interaction reaches such a point just doesn't seem impactful. If they are willingly and continuously messing with someone that, once again using your example, you have to bring staff in I'm not shore how a natural progression of /warnings would go. 

Ah, thank you for your time!

(and I do wholeheartedly agree with your perma-bans being a last resort volley)

Unfortunately saying we are on top of it has a proven track record of taking months.

You're right.  Thankfully, Jian doesn't mean to convey that you can chill and this is all taken care of, quite the opposite.  He just wants to express that we literally have a finished draft of a vastly expanded CoC including punishment escalation for violating.

It's getting edits, and it will be out tonight, or tomorrow (Tuesday) at the latest.

Please, by all means, continue to discuss.  Staff members such as Jian, Robert, and myself probably won't comment until our draft is out, that's all.

 

If it gets to such a point that you have to bring staff in, going by your method/ideal that staff are a last resort, how do you rank punishments then? A warning system seems out of place. I say that because with what you're saying this would be continued, unbridled harassment at multiple points even after you have done your best to both ignore and avoid the other person after having asked them to stop, specifically. While I'm not exactly keen on punishments because I wish everyone could just get along in the first place, I do realize, realistically, they are necessary to keep a positive flow of things.

 

A verbal/written warning from staff if that interaction reaches such a point just doesn't seem impactful. If they are willingly and continuously messing with someone that, once again using your example, you have to bring staff in I'm not shore how a natural progression of /warnings would go. 

 

Example Scenario:

Person A has a conflict with Person B.

Person A has tried asking them to stop multiple times. Person B continues to do it anyways/chooses to continue because they don't care or because they get a kick out of A's reaction. Person A tries, again, to get them to stop and when B continues acting out, they block that person from being able to communicate with them. (You can disable PMs from certain people on this site, and you can also do the same in cbox, and the always present do not contact block and removal on your preferred instant messenger.)

Person B decides to continue harassment in the public cbox or finds another way of contacting Person A to keep their jollies going.

This is where Person A goes to Person C (Staff) and shows the information they should be saving/collecting with time/date and direct quotes. Full logs should be kept and unaltered so that Person C can not only see your attempts at negotiating/resolving the conflict yourself, but also the pattern of behavior continuing and/or escalating. This is also where Person A comes with a plan to Person C of what they would like done. Most of the time? Most of those wanting Person C's intervention and presence are just desperate for things to stop and go back to some semblance of normality. "Please get them to stop saying x thing or doing x thing or leave me alone."

If Person A wants something more severe done? That's where logs and compiled information is your friend, and you need to also be able to step away from your own feelings and examine the situation from an outsider's perspective; is what Person B's doing/saying enough that they do deserve something more severe than a warning? The chances of this being a 'yes' are surprisingly slim, I can think of a few examples of where I would have gone to my own 'stage two' warning mode in terms of severity of consequences while I was an actively writing member of this site.

Person C will take your information and approach Person B to have a little heart to heart talk in order to get their side of the story. There's always three sides, people, 'his', 'hers', and the 'truth'. Perspective is a thing, after all, and it's on Person C to get to the heart of the matter and make the call themselves; this is a crappy position to be in and puts Person C into a no win situation. Chances are, Person B will be told to stop the offending behavior/not to interact with Person A on an OOC level and that will be that.

Should Person B continue, Person C will take the appropriate steps from there since asking nicely didn't help, or B continued to be belligerent when asked not to, and thus the official warning gets slapped. If B still persists after that, the punishment train just continues down the tracks until B pretty well just ruins their own opportunities to remain on BG through stubbornness and refusal to follow a simple and reasonable request.

--

While it may not feel effective/good enough to the person reporting, it requires patience and understanding on the reporting individual's end to understand that, though they have done absolutely everything in their power to try and cut the harassment out, they have to go about the 'professional' manner of doing it now, and that means having to potentially put up with it while the staff work on it from their end and go through the appropriate steps in handling the conflict on their end.

The natural progression of warnings vs punishments for behavior/actions is something that I know they're working on figuring out; it's something that needed to be done a while ago and is a good thing we've brought to their attention since the old ways of doing things no longer remain effective. This was a change necessary, admittedly because I don't think the fusion of staff as a collective entity rather than separated by departments (i.e. Approvals, Interpersonals, etc) really understood just how complicated things were going to be when they decided to be the collective jack of all trades/all staff are to be able to handle all facets of staff work and not just specialists.

An unfortunate oversight, but one that luckily can be corrected hastily and will benefit the member base and staff team alike by putting everyone on the same level of understanding once the policies have been finished from their discussion and rough draft working and then presented to the community.

Fuck my brain for still thinking about this shit as I'm going about my day. Fuck it hard.

Okay, so here's your problem. It isn't actually what staff is or isn't doing, that's a part of but not the important part. The issue is what the players think staff is doing. The issue is the perception that problems go unaddressed and the domino effect of players not bringing problems to staff, etc etc ad infinitum. I've talked about making sure to communicate with the person who brings a problem to you, but that's not the problem here. It's not whoever approaches staff, it's (assuming we're talking about something that happens in public) everyone else who reads the topic and doesn't see any action taking place. If it all goes on behind closed doors, all the bystanders will assume it didn't go on at all.

You should create a public log of when disciplinary action is taken. It's what happens on most other sites I've been on and I've never understood why we don't do it here. If players can see that things are done when they think things should be done, if they can see staff handling other people's problems, they will trust staff with theirs. It may create more public drama, but it will create a hell of a lot less private resentment.

And now I'm going to bang my head against the wall until I stop being Kireon.

edit: and until I learn how to type, jesus christ.

You should create a public log of when disciplinary action is taken. It's what happens on most other sites I've been on and I've never understood why we don't do it here. If players can see that things are done when they think things should be done, if they can see staff handling other people's problems, they will trust staff with theirs. It may create more public drama, but it will create a hell of a lot less private resentment.

A potential logbook of, "Complaint/issue was filed Date/Time and is being handled by x" might suffice with a [Resolved], [In-Progress], [Unresolved] tag beside it, maybe? That way the individual who filed knows it was received, it's being handled, and can see what the status is. If they're relatively satisfied/when action is taken, it can be hit as Resolved. And the members also see that something has been noted. 

Specifics of the issue, I don't think, should be mentioned. If [Resolved] is put, it'll be up to the Staff to inform the individual who filed of the outcome and what steps will be taken next should things continue.

Or something like that, I think.

That and maintaining anonymity is still a thing; no one wants their dirty laundry aired and no one needs half the site jumping up their ass going, "Who fucked up? Who did what, etc".

..unless I'm bad at comprehension right now and that's what you meant.
 

And now I'm going to bang my head against the wall until I stop being Kireon.

I mean literally 'X was chatbanned for X days because X'.

The members need to know when and how staff takes action.

No need for it to. The explanation can be one word in some cases and shouldn't include specifics, just the general type of thing that was happening, and should rarely name names. If someone's attacking someone else in public, the victim and the reporter won't necessarily be the same regardless. And 'harassing people using private messages/private chats' is reason enough on its own.

Which shitstorm is preferable, that or what's going on now?

Kireon was cbox banned for 2 months due to harassment.

'Harassment' says nothing and is too vague on its own. 'Making harassing posts in site discussion' or 'harassing people through private messages' would be about the sort of detail I'm after.

I genuinely don't see why it would at all out the person doing the reporting. That makes straight-up no goddamn sense to me.

If it's in private, it's obvious who reported you. You know, they know, anyone else you care to tell knows. If you know he isn't being punished, which staff can tell you regardless of this, you can take that public regardless of whether your punishment is posted publicly. That has no bearing on it.

If it's in public, you have no idea who is reporting you and are making guesses.

In either case, you're stirring shit and should probably be further punished for doing so, because if staff is doing their jobs they'll have talked to you about it privately.

Maybe making it a post where things are edited into to avoid announcements that alert the member base to the existence of new drama would be a good play here.