Waypoint+ |OT| "Fuck Capitalism, Go Home"

[Metalsnakezero]

What I learned from Austin is that it ok to play even the most problematic game, you just need to be upfront about it negatives. For people to be so on Austin case on Ghost for being inaccurate with time period or it depiction of samurai is mostly of Western view are missing the point of being critical with media.

And not to ignore what just happen but omg, I like being here but stuff like what has happen makes me really question the site's mission.

 

[Poodlestrike]

Rael's post is word for word what the alt-right dens on the internet accuse us of doing - being run by some shadowy SJW cabal and having some class inversion for cishet white men to feed their victimization complex. Not the first time they were banned for saying something similar, either - they've complained about how we don't moderate people for speaking out like that in the past. They were not defending Nora, they were saying they wish everybody who said something similar - regardless of context - was banned. They also have a history of complaining about the deplatforming of Joe Rogan. We're evaluating their entire history as part of the ban review process.

And again, the reason Nora got banned was because she was speaking over and for other minority members and being deeply inflammatory in doing so. We want people to have room to air their grievances with cis/het/white/etc spaces and people, but we can't let them do that if it means they're tearing into other minorities.

 

[StoveOven]

One of the problems on this forum (and with a lot of gaming discourse in general) is the overwhelming focus on whether a thing is objectively good or objectively bad. This has its obvious aspects like review threads, where any reviewer who dares to have an opinion outside a consensus that was agreed upon once the second trailer dropped gets dog-piled on. (And the fact that this shit is never actioned upon and that moderation even continues to allow these threads to exist when they are consistently the most toxic threads on this forum is a disgrace). But it also goes beyond the realm of whether or not a game is technically good and reaches a point where people can only put games in the boxes lablled objectively good or objectively bad based on morality too. The Last of Us Part II stars a queer woman and gets hate from internet fascists, that means it is morally good. And if you dare to point out the labor conditions under which it was made or question the political implications of the game's content, you are trying to move the game into the morally bad box. But that's not how criticism really works. Emanuel didn't write his article in order to declare that the Last of Us Part II is objectively, morally bad. He wrote the piece to discuss the game's political messaging in a larger context of how the Israel/Palestine conflict is often viewed and the larger problem of both-sides narratives. Talking about games simply for the purpose of passing qualitative judgements on individual games is largely pointless, yet it seems to be what most people on this forum think criticism is. Not only do people on this forum not understand this, but they also take their objective assumptions a step further through consumerist identification. If The Last of Us is objectively good and I enjoy the game, I'm also objectively good. I have good taste or I am a morally good person, because the authoritative powers on the internet said that this game is both technically and morally good. Any criticism of the game is then seen as a challenge not just to the objective value of the game but also the objective value of the people who like it and therefore must be ridiculed and attacked as uninformed, clickbait, politically motivated, etc. The reason you see people (including a fucking mod) saying "Waypoint is encouraging the harassment against the game's creators" (which even if they were would be completely irrelevant to the actual points Emanuel made and is simply an ad hominem) is because it allows them to dismiss the criticism by putting it in the objectively bad box.

I'm sorry if this is long-winded and rambling, but I had to get this shit off my chest.

 

[Megasoum]

One of the problems on this forum (and with a lot of gaming discourse in general) is the overwhelming focus on whether a thing is objectively good or objectively bad. This has its obvious aspects like review threads, where any reviewer who dares to have an opinion outside a consensus that was agreed upon once the second trailer dropped gets dog-piled on. (And the fact that this shit is never actioned upon and that moderation even continues to allow these threads to exist when they are consistently the most toxic threads on this forum is a disgrace).

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100% agree with that... While I'd love to see them go away completely, at the very least, there are really no reasons for Review threads to be up before the actual review embargo.

The fact that Review Threads are often already 20-25 pages deep before the first review is already out is completely ridiculous.

 

[freetacos]

One of the problems on this forum (and with a lot of gaming discourse in general) is the overwhelming focus on whether a thing is objectively good or objectively bad. This has its obvious aspects like review threads, where any reviewer who dares to have an opinion outside a consensus that was agreed upon once the second trailer dropped gets dog-piled on. (And the fact that this shit is never actioned upon and that moderation even continues to allow these threads to exist when they are consistently the most toxic threads on this forum is a disgrace). But it also goes beyond the realm of whether or not a game is technically good and reaches a point where people can only put games in the boxes lablled objectively good or objectively bad based on morality too. The Last of Us Part II stars a queer woman and gets hate from internet fascists, that means it is morally good. And if you dare to point out the labor conditions under which it was made or question the political implications of the game's content, you are trying to move the game into the morally bad box. But that's not how criticism really works. Emanuel didn't write his article in order to declare that the Last of Us Part II is objectively, morally bad. He wrote the piece to discuss the game's political messaging in a larger context of how the Israel/Palestine conflict is often viewed and the larger problem of both-sides narratives. Talking about games simply for the purpose of passing qualitative judgements on individual games is largely pointless, yet it seems to be what most people on this forum think criticism is. Not only do people on this forum not understand this, but they also take their objective assumptions a step further through consumerist identification. If The Last of Us is objectively good and I enjoy the game, I'm also objectively good. I have good taste or I am a morally good person, because the authoritative powers on the internet said that this game is both technically and morally good. Any criticism of the game is then seen as a challenge not just to the objective value of the game but also the objective value of the people who like it and therefore must be ridiculed and attacked as uninformed, clickbait, politically motivated, etc. The reason you see people (including a fucking mod) saying "Waypoint is encouraging the harassment against the game's creators" (which even if they were would be completely irrelevant to the actual points Emanuel made and is simply an ad hominem) is because it allows them to dismiss the criticism by putting it in the objectively bad box.

I'm sorry if this is long-winded and rambling, but I had to get this shit off my chest.

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Great post. And all of this ties into people basing their entire personal identity around pieces of media and physical objects. It creates tribalism and getting personally invested in the critique of a *video game*

 

[Deleted member 2761]

Rael's post is word for word what the alt-right dens on the internet accuse us of doing - being run by some shadowy SJW cabal and having some class inversion for cishet white men to feed their victimization complex. Not the first time they were banned for saying something similar, either - they've complained about how we don't moderate people for speaking out like that in the past. They were not defending Nora, they were saying they wish everybody who said something similar - regardless of context - was banned. They also have a history of complaining about the deplatforming of Joe Rogan. We're evaluating their entire history as part of the ban review process.

And again, the reason Nora got banned was because she was speaking over and for other minority members and being deeply inflammatory in doing so. We want people to have room to air their grievances with cis/het/white/etc spaces and people, but we can't let them do that if it means they're tearing into other minorities.

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I think there are many ways you could have approached this, but if even if it's not the intent, just outright banning someone for mildly criticizing how moderation practices feed into a hostile environment for certain minority posters only reinforces their view. Any vagueness with regards to examples, could very well have been due to the fact that posters understand that callouts are read as hostile, and if clarification was needed it could have been prompted.

Worse than all that, though, is that in trying to tie Rael to some tenuous alt-right association, it sounds like you're going through post history for some post-hoc excuse, and highlighting some comments about Joe Rogan of all people, just leads to an impression that you're not so much interested in providing a safe space for minorities but rather a safe space for the moderation who don't take kindly to this sort of criticism.

 

[Nerokis]

First off, the post that received a warning, we agree, it should have been a ban. That has been corrected. Just to clarify though, the post was not a death threat against journalists, but a joke in bad taste about the podcast ending: still, it was overly graphic and vitriolic, and was deserving of a ban.

As for Nora, she specifically lumped all liberals into one corner and all minorities into another, speaking for and over a number of marginalized posters who disagreed with her. It was also an inflammatory statement from a poster with a history of inflammatory statements. We work to give room to posters from marginalized backgrounds so they have space to express concerns and share their own experiences, but all posters are subject to the same rules. If you make inflammatory statements that violate our posting guidelines, you can still receive a ban for them, especially if you're aiming yourself at other people from marginalized groups. If you then send in contact us messages further heaping on inflammatory abuse, that ban gets extended, if not made permanent. The fact that one of those emails even had her using a fake name and email pretty clearly demonstrates that Nora is aware that her behaviour was unacceptable and decided to go through with it anyway.

For Terra, we're taking another look at the ban. Typical procedure is to extend ban durations for people whose accounts are still in the junior phase, thus the 2 week duration. Their accusation that those members from marginalized groups who took offence to things the Waypoint crew said are being "GG adjacent" was inflammatory enough to earn them a 1 week ban normally, and a 2 week ban due to their account status. But we are of course open to an appeal.

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a trans woman sees a bunch of people stanning an organization run by bigoted neocons, responds in an exasperated fashion that includes using the word "all" imprecisely, and channels a very basic critique of liberal ideology

do y'all seriously think banning Nora for that says anything good, accomplishes anything good? it seems to me we've lost a highly valued member of the community because of an entirely distorted and one-sided conception of "inflammatory"

 

[Poodlestrike]

I think there are many ways you could have approached this, but if even if it's not the intent, just outright banning someone for mildly criticizing how moderation practices feed into a hostile environment for certain minority posters only reinforces their view. Any vagueness with regards to examples, could very well have been due to the fact that posters understand that callouts are read as hostile, and if clarification was needed it could have been prompted.

Worse than all that, though, is that in trying to tie Rael to some tenuous alt-right association, it sounds like you're going through post history for some post-hoc excuse, and highlighting some comments about Joe Rogan of all people, just leads to an impression that you're not so much interested in providing a safe space for minorities but rather a safe space for the moderation who don't take kindly to this sort of criticism.

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I'm sorry it comes off that way. Sometimes when a post is ambiguous we'll go through their history to seek clarification. Here, we saw their prior ban, their prior posts complaining about the behavior not being bannable, and the Joe Rogan thing on top made it clear that despite pretensions to the contrary, we cannot take their post in good faith. That's what factored into the decision-making, so that's why I referenced it.

 

[GSR]

[spitting truth]

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Fantastic post and I think this mindset is at the root of a lot of issues with how this forum engages with media criticism.

The Discourse (tm) around TLOU2 here has been deeply disappointing, because it's clear that a lot of people have co-opted the vile harassment that the game's devs have received as a shield against any criticism against the game, even good-faith criticism from the left. And moderation on the topic has sort of ceded to this mindset, where it's pretty much open season on critics of the game, because "they might be feeding the fires of harassment" by speaking up. Which is absurd. As others have said, people who want to harass Druckmann and co. aren't going to say "ah well you see, Vice Gaming's discussion of the game's parallels to Israel-Palestine expose an uncomfortably unchallenged mode of thought from its developers", they're just going to throw slurs at them.

I do understand and respect that 1) there will be marginalized people who disagree with Waypoint's takes, 2) this forum wants to avoid encouraging dev harassment, and 3) this forum is also the target of significant alt-right harassment. I recognize it's a hard line to walk. But in practice the moderation here constantly comes down on the side of shutting down any complex criticism, even or especially from marginalized voices.

Hell, when Horizon 2 was announced there was a thread posing the extremely mild question of "isn't the imagery of a Forbidden West in America a bit charged" and it resulted in the OP getting just absolutely slammed and mocked for pages on end, and I don't think there was any particular action by the mods other than to eventually close the thread at the OP's request. What kind of discussion is that?

 

[JimD]

One of the problems on this forum (and with a lot of gaming discourse in general) is the overwhelming focus on whether a thing is objectively good or objectively bad. This has its obvious aspects like review threads, where any reviewer who dares to have an opinion outside a consensus that was agreed upon once the second trailer dropped gets dog-piled on. (And the fact that this shit is never actioned upon and that moderation even continues to allow these threads to exist when they are consistently the most toxic threads on this forum is a disgrace). But it also goes beyond the realm of whether or not a game is technically good and reaches a point where people can only put games in the boxes lablled objectively good or objectively bad based on morality too. The Last of Us Part II stars a queer woman and gets hate from internet fascists, that means it is morally good. And if you dare to point out the labor conditions under which it was made or question the political implications of the game's content, you are trying to move the game into the morally bad box. But that's not how criticism really works. Emanuel didn't write his article in order to declare that the Last of Us Part II is objectively, morally bad. He wrote the piece to discuss the game's political messaging in a larger context of how the Israel/Palestine conflict is often viewed and the larger problem of both-sides narratives. Talking about games simply for the purpose of passing qualitative judgements on individual games is largely pointless, yet it seems to be what most people on this forum think criticism is. Not only do people on this forum not understand this, but they also take their objective assumptions a step further through consumerist identification. If The Last of Us is objectively good and I enjoy the game, I'm also objectively good. I have good taste or I am a morally good person, because the authoritative powers on the internet said that this game is both technically and morally good. Any criticism of the game is then seen as a challenge not just to the objective value of the game but also the objective value of the people who like it and therefore must be ridiculed and attacked as uninformed, clickbait, politically motivated, etc. The reason you see people (including a fucking mod) saying "Waypoint is encouraging the harassment against the game's creators" (which even if they were would be completely irrelevant to the actual points Emanuel made and is simply an ad hominem) is because it allows them to dismiss the criticism by putting it in the objectively bad box.

I'm sorry if this is long-winded and rambling, but I had to get this shit off my chest.

Click to shrink...

No need to apologize that was very well said. This need for adopting the consensus about a game being objectively good and morally good stains almost every part of game discourse. You see the same kind of driveby quotes in so many threads: "I didn't expect much from this list, but it's GARBAGE." "Oh, this is written by the person who reviewed X 5 years ago, they don't know what they're talking about." "Don't pay attention to X, they liked Y (other game the consensus has decried bad)" or even the most ridiculous, "Wait, I thought we hated Y?"

There's no effort to engage in the content of the critique, just the fact that either the opinion differs or the person has a history of opinions that differ from the consensus condemns it.

 

[gazoinks]

One of the problems on this forum (and with a lot of gaming discourse in general) is the overwhelming focus on whether a thing is objectively good or objectively bad. This has its obvious aspects like review threads, where any reviewer who dares to have an opinion outside a consensus that was agreed upon once the second trailer dropped gets dog-piled on. (And the fact that this shit is never actioned upon and that moderation even continues to allow these threads to exist when they are consistently the most toxic threads on this forum is a disgrace). But it also goes beyond the realm of whether or not a game is technically good and reaches a point where people can only put games in the boxes lablled objectively good or objectively bad based on morality too. The Last of Us Part II stars a queer woman and gets hate from internet fascists, that means it is morally good. And if you dare to point out the labor conditions under which it was made or question the political implications of the game's content, you are trying to move the game into the morally bad box. But that's not how criticism really works. Emanuel didn't write his article in order to declare that the Last of Us Part II is objectively, morally bad. He wrote the piece to discuss the game's political messaging in a larger context of how the Israel/Palestine conflict is often viewed and the larger problem of both-sides narratives. Talking about games simply for the purpose of passing qualitative judgements on individual games is largely pointless, yet it seems to be what most people on this forum think criticism is. Not only do people on this forum not understand this, but they also take their objective assumptions a step further through consumerist identification. If The Last of Us is objectively good and I enjoy the game, I'm also objectively good. I have good taste or I am a morally good person, because the authoritative powers on the internet said that this game is both technically and morally good. Any criticism of the game is then seen as a challenge not just to the objective value of the game but also the objective value of the people who like it and therefore must be ridiculed and attacked as uninformed, clickbait, politically motivated, etc. The reason you see people (including a fucking mod) saying "Waypoint is encouraging the harassment against the game's creators" (which even if they were would be completely irrelevant to the actual points Emanuel made and is simply an ad hominem) is because it allows them to dismiss the criticism by putting it in the objectively bad box.

I'm sorry if this is long-winded and rambling, but I had to get this shit off my chest.

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This is very well said.

 

[deepFlaw]

Nora wasn't banned for contesting a ban. Nora was already in our review process for a previous violation of our posting guidelines, and the further abusive and inflammatory emails she has sent in resulted in a permanent ban of her account. This was a continued violation of our ToS, and is something we clearly lay out in our General Guide. We are volunteers, we're here, we read your concerns, and are happy to work towards solutions, and yes we can be slow moving, but we are not required to take abuse from our member base.

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Could you explain why Terra got banned for making generalizations? Because they weren't. They were talking about real posts.

It continues to feel that people (often marginalized people!) get banned on this forum for complaining about how the lack of moderation has hurt them, while you still do not actually do anything about the things hurting them. This happens over and over and at some point you may want to actually fix that problem.

EDIT:

Having seen you commented further...

For Terra, we're taking another look at the ban. Typical procedure is to extend ban durations for people whose accounts are still in the junior phase, thus the 2 week duration. Their accusation that those members from marginalized groups who took offence to things the Waypoint crew said are being "GG adjacent" was inflammatory enough to earn them a 1 week ban normally, and a 2 week ban due to their account status. But we are of course open to an appeal.

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Why did you (the general staff, not you specifically) assume Terra was talking about this generic "members from marginalized groups" and not specific actual posts? Like it just sounds like your response to someone talking about people making gross assumptions was... to go "no you" without even looking into it?

 

[Nocturne]

personally think it's a little gross how you smokescreen everything around protecting 'other minorities' to basically every minority user who has a problem with the board status quo

 

[jviggy43]

Getting a kick out of the fact that we ban trans members, and then the people responsible for those bans come in and ban someone for transphobia (that merely called out it was highly suspect in the first place). Let alone that then you went digging through their posts after the fact to justify it and are now bringing up Rogan which isnt at all germane to the conversation. The forum's consistent behavior in regards to our trans members here is so fucking disheartening.

 

[Poodlestrike]

Could you explain why Terra got banned for making generalizations? Because they weren't. They were talking about real posts.

It continues to feel that people (often marginalized people!) get banned on this forum for complaining about how the lack of moderation has hurt them, while you still do not actually do anything about the things hurting them. This happens over and over and at some point you may want to actually fix that problem.

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I think I saw you reported those, we'll take a look over them, as well as Terra's original ban.

personally think it's a little gross how you smokescreen everything around protecting 'other minorities' to basically every minority user who has a problem with the board status quo

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This is the difficulty of trying to run an intersectional discussion. There's a lot of bad blood, and people leap to conclusions that hurt other minority users. It's not a smokescreen, it's literally the primary headache of moderation.

If it was as easy as "cishet white men" vs. everybody else, it'd be easy. I and a lot of other people literally joined the team to make this place a safer space. But it's not that easy. A lot of recent flashpoint threads on the site have been about people from marginalized groups either attacking other people from different marginalized groups or the same one they're in.

 

[jviggy43]

I think I saw you reported those, we'll take a look over them, as well as Terra's original ban.

This is the difficulty of trying to run an intersectional discussion. There's a lot of bad blood, and people leap to conclusions that hurt other minority users. It's not a smokescreen, it's literally the primary headache of moderation.

If it was as easy as "cishet white men" vs. everybody else, it'd be easy. I and a lot of other people literally joined the team to make this place a safer space. But it's not that easy. A lot of recent flashpoint threads on the site have been about people from marginalized groups either attacking other people from different marginalized groups or the same one they're in.

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You literally laughed at people saying they would vote for hitler to get Trump out of office, and when jewish members spoke up about how uncomfortable it made them you ignored them. How is it youre suggesting that youre trying to make this a safer space for members here again?

 

[Poodlestrike]

You literally laughed at people saying they would vote for hitler to get Trump out of office, and when jewish members spoke up about how uncomfortable it made them you ignored them. How is it youre suggesting that youre trying to make this a safer space for members here again?

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I talked to the users in question about that, actually. Also, as a Jewish member, you're telling me I'm not allowed to have an opinion on Jewish issues? You?

We're making the site a safer place by banning the shitheels. This is an ongoing process. It's not gonna get better overnight. But it's something we're pretty committed to. I'm gonna say something that could get me into a little trouble or at least cause a headache down the line, I don't give a fuck about how many cishet white people's feelings we have to hurt along the way - we ban people for complaining about that shit! But we're not going to get everybody overnight.

 

[jviggy43]

I talked to the users in question about that, actually. Also, as a Jewish member, you're telling me I'm not allowed to have an opinion on Jewish issues? You?

We're making the site a safer place by banning the shitheels. This is an ongoing process. It's not gonna get better overnight. But it's something we're pretty committed to. I'm gonna say something that could get me into a little trouble or at least cause a headache down the line, I don't give a fuck about how many cishet white people's feelings we have to hurt along the way - we ban people for complaining about that shit! But we're not going to get everybody overnight.

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Where did I say you weren't allowed to have an opinion on that? I also spoke with some of those people. Theyre still pretty not cool with it.

And saying youre targeting shitheels and cisnet white people while banning prominent trans members on this site is...well it sure is something.

 

[Nerokis]

I do understand and respect that 1) there will be marginalized people who disagree with Waypoint's takes, 2) this forum wants to avoid encouraging dev harassment, and 3) this forum is also the target of significant alt-right harassment. I recognize it's a hard line to walk. But in practice the moderation here constantly comes down on the side of shutting down any complex criticism, even or especially from marginalized voices.

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pretty much

I disagreed that this post warranted a ban, and this was the response I got:

Unfortunately, your recent report has been rejected: Post in thread 'The Not So Hidden Israeli Politics of 'The Last of Us Part II'' - ApatheticDolphin is an LGBTQ woman who took great offense to Maddy's gatekeeping comment concerning queer women's identities. A male poster was speaking over her and diminished her concerns, which is not something we allow.

apparently moderation collectively decided that Maddy's criticism of TLOU2's heteronormativity constituted "gatekeeping comments," so if you disagree, you're listening to the wrong marginalized voices

 

[Poodlestrike]

Where did I say you weren't allowed to have an opinion on that? I also spoke with some of those people. Theyre still pretty not cool with it.

And saying youre targeting shitheels and cisnet white people while banning prominent trans members on this site is...well it sure is something.

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You did! You said it last time, and you just said it now. It was a member joking about zombie fucking hitler, I'm not allowed to have thoughts of my own about that?

If there's people who think I'm out of line, tell them to PM me. I'll have that conversation with them.

And obviously I was not talking about them. When I'm talking about shitheels I'm talking about the polite racists, the Heated Gamers, the low-key chuds. We smack 'em when they surface their heads but we don't have a list and they're not always going to be obvious on the first attempt.

 

[deepFlaw]

I think I saw you reported those, we'll take a look over them, as well as Terra's original ban.

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Please see my edit to the post you quoted. I appreciate you looking into this, but like...

To put what I said there a bit more seriously: why was someone talking about the gross behavior of other users considered a more important thing to immediately moderate compared to the posts in that thread that had been reported? Because it feels like waiting and prioritizing the latter would have cleared up whether they were actually making generalizations.

I know reporting -> moderation happening isn't a simple process, y'all need to discuss as a group, etc. but as I was talking about before, it just always feels like people talking about holes in moderation get instantly smited without ever dealing with their concerns. At least this time you've been in here to talk about it and that is an improvement, even if it's not really a solution.

 

[jviggy43]

You did! You said it last time, and you just said it now. It was a member joking about zombie fucking hitler, I'm not allowed to have thoughts of my own about that?

If there's people who think I'm out of line, tell them to PM me. I'll have that conversation with them.

And obviously I was not talking about them. When I'm talking about shitheels I'm talking about the polite racists, the Heated Gamers, the low-key chuds. We smack 'em when they surface their heads but we don't have a list and they're not always going to be obvious on the first attempt.

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I think its important to distinguish that because I think its shitty to have mods trying to make this a safe space who also think its funny about joking about voting for hitler, is not the same thing as saying youre not allowed to have an opinion. I'm not calling out you having an opinion. I'm calling out the opinion itself. This is a discussion forum. I'm obviously not telling you youre not allowed to have an opinion lol.

 

[Everill]

And again, the reason Nora got banned was because she was speaking over and for other minority members and being deeply inflammatory in doing so. We want people to have room to air their grievances with cis/het/white/etc spaces and people, but we can't let them do that if it means they're tearing into other minorities.

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I don't know how you can read the post that got Nora banned and come to the conclusion "this is out of line and needs a ban!"
She said nothing out of line or untrue, especially with the stuff that keeps coming out about TLP.
It's a really gross Perma ban. seriously I don't know how many threads about transphobia I read where there are some seriously gross stuff going on without bans to be seen and then this happens?

 

[Poodlestrike]

I think its important to distinguish that because I think its shitty to have mods trying to make this a safe space who also think its funny about joking about voting for hitler, is not the same thing as saying youre not allowed to have an opinion. I'm not calling out you having an opinion. I'm calling out the opinion itself. This is a discussion forum. I'm obviously not telling you youre not allowed to have an opinion lol.

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It's telling me I'm only allowed to have opinions you agree with! Do you seriously not see what you're doing right now?

Listen. Again, if any of our Jewish members feel I was too glib or shitty about the zombie hitler thing, they can PM me, and I will apologize to them. I get that as a member of the staff, my opinion carries weight, and I need to be careful about what I say.

I don't know how you can read the post that got Nora banned and come to the conclusion "this is out of line and needs a ban!"
She said nothing out of line or untrue, especially with the stuff that keeps coming out about TLP.
It's a really gross Perma ban. seriously

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The escalation to perma was actually for some emails she sent in after the fact, which were hostile and abusive. That she even tried to use a fake name and email on one of them demonstrates that she knew that what she was sending in was not okay. The initial ban was based on what she said and her prior bans.

 

[Steak]

It's telling me I'm only allowed to have opinions you agree with! Do you seriously not see what you're doing right now?

Listen. Again, if any of our Jewish members feel I was too glib or shitty about the zombie hitler thing, they can PM me, and I will apologize to them. I get that as a member of the staff, my opinion carries weight, and I need to be careful about what I say.

The escalation to perma was actually for some emails she sent in after the fact, which were hostile and abusive. That she even tried to use a fake name and email on one of them demonstrates that she knew that what she was sending in was not okay. The initial ban was based on what she said and her prior bans.

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how long was her initial ban for?

 

[Ketkat]

I talked to the users in question about that, actually. Also, as a Jewish member, you're telling me I'm not allowed to have an opinion on Jewish issues? You?

We're making the site a safer place by banning the shitheels. This is an ongoing process. It's not gonna get better overnight. But it's something we're pretty committed to. I'm gonna say something that could get me into a little trouble or at least cause a headache down the line, I don't give a fuck about how many cishet white people's feelings we have to hurt along the way - we ban people for complaining about that shit! But we're not going to get everybody overnight.

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I see where you guys are coming from with the Rael post as it looked bad to me even before the clarification on their history. I think where a lot of the disconnect is coming from is that what seems to determine the length of a ban or what is acceptable or isn't depends entirely on how it impacts the moderation staff. If someone writes a shitty attack on another user, they'll get a short time out. But if that exact same post is targeted at staff, it can be expected to be 2 weeks as we've all seen that happen. That doesn't mean that you all deserve to be harassed or put up with that by any means, but just that it is something that stands out because users don't want to put up with that any more than you do, but they're expected to put up with more.

I'm not Jewish, so I'm not going to speak on that post in particular, but there have been many times where people in a marginalized community feel that something is upsetting, or bigoted, or just should not be entertained but they're overruled by 1 or 2 voices on the staff that are a part of that community. These are staff members that are chosen by other staff and then placed on a pedestal to be the penultimate voices in these decisions. No one within a marginalized community is going to have the same sensitivities, the same experiences, or the same perspective, but these people are held up to that position and it's not fair to them to expect them to be able to accurately speak for an entire diverse group like that with a 100% rate. That is why these issues get brought up time and time again though, because some minorities' opinions are more valuable than other, and that's never going to feel good to anyone who reports something bigoted and won't even receive a notification why it wasn't actioned.

 

[jviggy43]

It's telling me I'm only allowed to have opinions you agree with! Do you seriously not see what you're doing right now?

Listen. Again, if any of our Jewish members feel I was too glib or shitty about the zombie hitler thing, they can PM me, and I will apologize to them. I get that as a member of the staff, my opinion carries weight, and I need to be careful about what I say.

The escalation to perma was actually for some emails she sent in after the fact, which were hostile and abusive. That she even tried to use a fake name and email on one of them demonstrates that she knew that what she was sending in was not okay. The initial ban was based on what she said and her prior bans.

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No its telling you it was a bad opinion (and thus that opinion influencing what discussions are appropriate in spite of others posting telling you it made them uncomfortable is pretty antithetical to making a safe space for all members but i digress). I'm not telling you youre not allowed to that opinion. I'm just letting you know it was a bad one. Theyre not the same thing poodle. Disagreements about our opinions is essentially the basis of a discussion forum.

I see where you guys are coming from with the Rael post as it looked bad to me even before the clarification on their history. I think where a lot of the disconnect is coming from is that what seems to determine the length of a ban or what is acceptable or isn't depends entirely on how it impacts the moderation staff. If someone writes a shitty attack on another user, they'll get a short time out. But if that exact same post is targeted at staff, it can be expected to be 2 weeks as we've all seen that happen. That doesn't mean that you all deserve to be harassed or put up with that by any means, but just that it is something that stands out because users don't want to put up with that any more than you do, but they're expected to put up with more.

I'm not Jewish, so I'm not going to speak on that post in particular, but there have been many times where people in a marginalized community feel that something is upsetting, or bigoted, or just should not be entertained but they're overruled by 1 or 2 voices on the staff that are a part of that community. These are staff members that are chosen by other staff and then placed on a pedestal to be the penultimate voices in these decisions. No one within a marginalized community is going to have the same sensitivities, the same experiences, or the same perspective, but these people are held up to that position and it's not fair to them to expect them to be able to accurately speak for an entire diverse group like that with a 100% rate. That is why these issues get brought up time and time again though, because some minorities' opinions are more valuable than other, and that's never going to feel good to anyone who reports something bigoted and won't even receive a notification why it wasn't actioned.

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This was put better than I could have said it.

 

[Mezentine]

I see where you guys are coming from with the Rael post as it looked bad to me even before the clarification on their history. I think where a lot of the disconnect is coming from is that what seems to determine the length of a ban or what is acceptable or isn't depends entirely on how it impacts the moderation staff. If someone writes a shitty attack on another user, they'll get a short time out. But if that exact same post is targeted at staff, it can be expected to be 2 weeks as we've all seen that happen. That doesn't mean that you all deserve to be harassed or put up with that by any means, but just that it is something that stands out because users don't want to put up with that any more than you do, but they're expected to put up with more.

I'm not Jewish, so I'm not going to speak on that post in particular, but there have been many times where people in a marginalized community feel that something is upsetting, or bigoted, or just should not be entertained but they're overruled by 1 or 2 voices on the staff that are a part of that community. These are staff members that are chosen by other staff and then placed on a pedestal to be the penultimate voices in these decisions. No one within a marginalized community is going to have the same sensitivities, the same experiences, or the same perspective, but these people are held up to that position and it's not fair to them to expect them to be able to accurately speak for an entire diverse group like that with a 100% rate. That is why these issues get brought up time and time again though, because some minorities' opinions are more valuable than other, and that's never going to feel good to anyone who reports something bigoted and won't even receive a notification why it wasn't actioned.

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This is basically where I'm at

 

[GSR]

pretty much

I disagreed that this post warranted a ban, and this was the response I got:

Unfortunately, your recent report has been rejected: Post in thread 'The Not So Hidden Israeli Politics of 'The Last of Us Part II'' - ApatheticDolphin is an LGBTQ woman who took great offense to Maddy's gatekeeping comment concerning queer women's identities. A male poster was speaking over her and diminished her concerns, which is not something we allow.

apparently moderation collectively decided that Maddy's criticism of TLOU2's heteronormativity constituted "gatekeeping comments," so if you disagree, you're listening to the wrong marginalized voices

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Well, this is why this stuff is complicated. I do agree with Maddy's critiques of perceived heteronormativity in TLOU2 and feel she was clear in the podcast that she did not intend to invalidate people for whom Ellie and Dina resonated, but I am not a queer woman and I respect the opinions of queer women who disagree with her. I think broadly speaking a moderation goal of "don't let men talk over queer women about queer women" is valid.

This ultimately becomes a microcosm of the difficulties of discussing marginalized issues. Some queer women (like Maddy) will feel the game was heteronormative, and others will disagree - in some cases vehemently so. How do you determine what level of discussion is appropriate for such a charged topic? How does the discussion of a piece of media versus real people apply? If Ellie and Dina were real people, obviously we'd tell people calling them "heteronormative" to fuck off unless we were in a space of queer people who could have that conversation amongst one another with all the experience and history and good faith that would require. But how does that change in the context of them being fictional characters in a game primarily written by two straight people? How does people downplaying the importance of lesbian representation play into this?

I don't want to make a value call on this specific example (because again, I'm not a queer woman) but it is an example of where the moderation seems to have decided to close down that discussion altogether.

 

[Deleted member 2752]

Well, guess it makes sense to perceive moderation here as disparate if their identities and entirely unrelated discussions from their post history are part of the rulings. That's just incomprehensible for average users.

 

[Tygre]

One of the problems on this forum (and with a lot of gaming discourse in general) is the overwhelming focus on whether a thing is objectively good or objectively bad. This has its obvious aspects like review threads, where any reviewer who dares to have an opinion outside a consensus that was agreed upon once the second trailer dropped gets dog-piled on. (And the fact that this shit is never actioned upon and that moderation even continues to allow these threads to exist when they are consistently the most toxic threads on this forum is a disgrace). But it also goes beyond the realm of whether or not a game is technically good and reaches a point where people can only put games in the boxes lablled objectively good or objectively bad based on morality too. The Last of Us Part II stars a queer woman and gets hate from internet fascists, that means it is morally good. And if you dare to point out the labor conditions under which it was made or question the political implications of the game's content, you are trying to move the game into the morally bad box. But that's not how criticism really works. Emanuel didn't write his article in order to declare that the Last of Us Part II is objectively, morally bad. He wrote the piece to discuss the game's political messaging in a larger context of how the Israel/Palestine conflict is often viewed and the larger problem of both-sides narratives. Talking about games simply for the purpose of passing qualitative judgements on individual games is largely pointless, yet it seems to be what most people on this forum think criticism is. Not only do people on this forum not understand this, but they also take their objective assumptions a step further through consumerist identification. If The Last of Us is objectively good and I enjoy the game, I'm also objectively good. I have good taste or I am a morally good person, because the authoritative powers on the internet said that this game is both technically and morally good. Any criticism of the game is then seen as a challenge not just to the objective value of the game but also the objective value of the people who like it and therefore must be ridiculed and attacked as uninformed, clickbait, politically motivated, etc. The reason you see people (including a fucking mod) saying "Waypoint is encouraging the harassment against the game's creators" (which even if they were would be completely irrelevant to the actual points Emanuel made and is simply an ad hominem) is because it allows them to dismiss the criticism by putting it in the objectively bad box.

I'm sorry if this is long-winded and rambling, but I had to get this shit off my chest.

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Put slightly more succinctly by Gerstmann:

 

[Deleted member 2761]

Well, guess it makes sense to perceive moderation here as disparate if their identities and entirely unrelated discussions of their post history are part of the rulings. That's just incomprehensible for average users.

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I mean that's the thing though: 1. in banning Rael they didn't even give them an opportunity to speak for themselves and 2. Rael's post history is open for all of us to see and but the framing that's been set for the ban has already been established by moderation. I'm not entirely keen on the prospect of folks having to declare their marginalized status from the outset for them to have a take on anything, especially since, as we can see, it's done nothing to protect Terra or Nora.

 

[deepFlaw]

Hell, when Horizon 2 was announced there was a thread posing the extremely mild question of "isn't the imagery of a Forbidden West in America a bit charged" and it resulted in the OP getting just absolutely slammed and mocked for pages on end, and I don't think there was any particular action by the mods other than to eventually close the thread at the OP's request. What kind of discussion is that?

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While we have staff in here: still waiting for any kind of statement on why that thread isn't a graveyard. It's just outright embarrassing that nothing was done.

 

[Poodlestrike]

how long was her initial ban for?

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I think she was due for a review, so most likely 2w-1M, but that's the kind of thing that gets nailed down later in the process. Wasn't a perm, though. People tend to think that Duration Pending just means we're waiting to perm, but usually that's not the case.

I see where you guys are coming from with the Rael post as it looked bad to me even before the clarification on their history. I think where a lot of the disconnect is coming from is that what seems to determine the length of a ban or what is acceptable or isn't depends entirely on how it impacts the moderation staff. If someone writes a shitty attack on another user, they'll get a short time out. But if that exact same post is targeted at staff, it can be expected to be 2 weeks as we've all seen that happen. That doesn't mean that you all deserve to be harassed or put up with that by any means, but just that it is something that stands out because users don't want to put up with that any more than you do, but they're expected to put up with more.

I'm not Jewish, so I'm not going to speak on that post in particular, but there have been many times where people in a marginalized community feel that something is upsetting, or bigoted, or just should not be entertained but they're overruled by 1 or 2 voices on the staff that are a part of that community. These are staff members that are chosen by other staff and then placed on a pedestal to be the penultimate voices in these decisions. No one within a marginalized community is going to have the same sensitivities, the same experiences, or the same perspective, but these people are held up to that position and it's not fair to them to expect them to be able to accurately speak for an entire diverse group like that with a 100% rate. That is why these issues get brought up time and time again though, because some minorities' opinions are more valuable than other, and that's never going to feel good to anyone who reports something bigoted and won't even receive a notification why it wasn't actioned.

Click to shrink...

So, that's sorta why we're always looking to expand the team and get more people on board, so we don't have to have only 1, 2, or 3 people's perspectives on the topic. That said, I would absolutely stand by the staff we have now. They're all good people, and I'm proud to work with 'em. Even if we make mistakes sometimes, I know that it's not out of malice or lack of care. It gets kinda rough on them, as things stand. They get pinged on issues related to them, so first they get exposed to the bigots, and then there's a lot of looking at posts talking about how they don't care about the bigots :/

No its telling you it was a bad opinion (and thus that opinion influencing what discussions are appropriate in spite of others posting telling you it made them uncomfortable is pretty antithetical to making a safe space for all members but i digress). I'm not telling you youre not allowed to that opinion. I'm just letting you know it was a bad one. Theyre not the same thing poodle. Disagreements about our opinions is essentially the basis of a discussion forum.

This was put better than I could have said it.

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Jviggy... I'm just going to have to be straighforward at this point and tell you you're goysplaining and ask you to stop. Again, if our Jewish members think my opinion sucks, they can tell me that. I welcome it. I actually, genuinely do, because I just want to be a better person. It's the primary contributor to my anxiety, and getting told when you fucked up can be valuable for that. But for now, please.

 

[Nocturne]

This is the difficulty of trying to run an intersectional discussion. There's a lot of bad blood, and people leap to conclusions that hurt other minority users. It's not a smokescreen, it's literally the primary headache of moderation.

If it was as easy as "cishet white men" vs. everybody else, it'd be easy. I and a lot of other people literally joined the team to make this place a safer space. But it's not that easy. A lot of recent flashpoint threads on the site have been about people from marginalized groups either attacking other people from different marginalized groups or the same one they're in.

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obviously the job isn't easy and i wouldn't presume to imply otherwise. i also don't think it's worth belabouring over because anyone with some sense could understand how corralling a huge board made up of dozens of communities might be hard. at a certain point though understanding that the job is hard does not mean we can't be frustrated that the job isn't being done. and maybe that's unfair but everything about how the site is moderated and the process by which these 'flashpoints' are dealt with are so opaque (and yes I understand some of the reasons for that opacity) i don't think anyone should be surprised at the low level of trust that exists between a lot of the marginalized people on this site and the staff.

like ok a lot of the issues that spring up in the site are because of one marginalized community member against another, but when the staff takes such a position to immediately punish who they think is the 'instigator', there's no apparent effort to bother with how things got to that point to begin with. there is what feels like an established canon of experience and people outside that definition are just completely shut out with no real recourse. ketkat's post puts it much better than mine could. there is a prevailing feeling if you take your issue directly to the staff you will at best not be heard and at worst either be directly punished or have that complaint filed in a permanent record to be referred to when you're banned for another reason later.

a lot of these users wind up eventually being banned for 'inflammatory posting histories' but i do have to imagine that it's hard not to get increasingly heated the more it feels like you're just yelling into the wind and your only means to be heard is to just get louder.

i have no doubt that the staff have good intentions. i reserve my right to judge those intentions against how many marginalized community members actually feel safe posting here and what the staff allow to continue happening on the board.

 

[Ketkat]

So, that's sorta why we're always looking to expand the team and get more people on board, so we don't have to have only 1, 2, or 3 people's perspectives on the topic. That said, I would absolutely stand by the staff we have now. They're all good people, and I'm proud to work with 'em. Even if we make mistakes sometimes, I know that it's not out of malice or lack of care. It gets kinda rough on them, as things stand. They get pinged on issues related to them, so first they get exposed to the bigots, and then there's a lot of looking at posts talking about how they don't care about the bigots :/

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I am dating an ex-moderator so I know a little bit about those processes and the ways that people are pinged on the issue and the impact that can have on them. To be clear, I'm not accusing anyone of malice here either, it's natural to have a harsher stance on the issues that affect you personally, that's just being human. But that doesn't really change that the issues I brought up there are a major source of the friction that exists between staff and users.

The facts of the matter are that even if you have 5 of a minority on staff at one time, the odds of there being more than 1 or 2 who are around for an actual discussion and to look into context are not very high. And even in the event that there are 2 or 3 moderators who say it doesn't bother them, does that negate the perspectives of every other minority user who spoke up about the issue?

 

[Poodlestrike]

obviously the job isn't easy and i wouldn't presume to imply otherwise. i also don't think it's worth belabouring over because anyone with some sense could understand how corralling a huge board made up of dozens of communities might be hard. at a certain point though understanding that the job is hard does not mean we can't be frustrated that the job isn't being done. and maybe that's unfair but everything about how the site is moderated and the process by which these 'flashpoints' are dealt with are so opaque (and yes I understand some of the reasons for that opacity) i don't think anyone should be surprised at the low level of trust that exists between a lot of the marginalized people on this site and the staff.

like ok a lot of the issues that spring up in the site are because of one marginalized community member against another, but when the staff takes such a position to immediately punish who they think is the 'instigator', there's no apparent effort to bother with how things got to that point to begin with. there is what feels like an established canon of experience and people outside that definition are just completely shut out with no real recourse. ketkat's post puts it much better than mine could. there is a prevailing feeling if you take your issue directly to the staff you will at best not be heard and at worst either be directly punished or have that complaint filed in a permanent record to be referred to when you're banned for another reason later.

a lot of these users wind up eventually being banned for 'inflammatory posting histories' but i do have to imagine that it's hard not to get increasingly heated the more it feels like you're just yelling into the wind and your only means to be heard is to just get louder.

i have no doubt that the staff have good intentions. i reserve my right to judge those intentions against how many marginalized community members actually feel safe posting here and what the staff allow to continue happening on the board.

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So, I'm about to burn out, but let me address two parts of this first.

If you PM a staff member, unless you're sending a PM that's bannable in and of itself, that's never going to be a problem for you or anybody else. Captains like myself always reply, too (though I'm terrible about doing it promptly, apologies in advance). That's a good way to start a conversation with staff, because you know you'll be heard and your particular concerns addressed. And, again, nothing you say there is going on anybody's record unless it's the kind of PM that'd get you banned sending it to any other member.

Two is, part of why I brought up the minority vs. minority flashpoints is because dealing with those has easily consumed most of the staff attention for the last 6+ months. If somebody is being bigoted, we ban them, and at this point that's... not a hard call. But part of making things safe for minority members is making sure that there's room to disagree amongst themselves without getting shouted out off the discussion by other minority members. That's the hard one. If it's safety from bigots, I can commit really easily to saying - we ban those guys when they rear their heads, and we're always looking for more of them. But when you have people accusing other minority members of being the bigots and trying to get them banned, that's... I mean, you know it's harder, I'm just running out of adjectives as my brain runs out of fuel.

Anyway, the primary takeaway was - people should always feel free to send me and the other captains PMs if you think staff's doing something wrong. It won't get you in trouble, and you will get an answer.

 

[Windrunner]

i don't think anyone should be surprised at the low level of trust that exists between a lot of the marginalized people on this site and the staff.

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Most of the staff on this website are women and/or minorities and there is nothing we care more about than the communities we come from. We've known oppression all our lives and it's honestly very demoralising how often some on this website seek to erase us or accuse us of not caring. If any of us felt that the needs of our communities were not being addressed, we would not suffer that indignity, we would leave.

 

[Ketkat]

Most of the staff on this website are women and/or minorities and there is nothing we care more about than the communities we come from. We've known oppression all our lives and it's honestly very demoralising how often some on this website seek to erase us or accuse us of not caring. If any of us felt that the needs of our communities were not being addressed, we would not suffer that indignity, we would leave.

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I don't think that's what that user was implying at all. There were multiple parts of that post that directly stated that they understand the mods have good intentions, and that you're all trying your best because you care. At the same time, that divide exists and there's a lot of friction surrounding it on both the user and the staff side. The marginalized users of the forum have a lot of the same experiences that people on staff have and that's why we care just as much.

 

[Nocturne]

Most of the staff on this website are women and/or minorities and there is nothing we care more about than the communities we come from. We've known oppression all our lives and it's honestly very demoralising how often some on this website seek to erase us or accuse us of not caring. If any of us felt that the needs of our communities were not being addressed, we would not suffer that indignity, we would leave.

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i don't really appreciate the guilt trip. me saying that there isn't a lot of trust between the staff and many marginalized users on the board isn't saying those are two mutually exclusive groups, and it's not saying that no one on the staff cares or made it part of their mission when they applied. it simply is what it is. i don't think we would be having this discussion in the first place if the tension weren't there, i imagine some moderators wouldn't have felt the need to step in to begin with either. and i think there would be more marginalized members active on the boards if a common sentiment wasn't one of pessimism about what the board would actually do in their interest.

ultimately the user base and the staff have different perspectives on what's actually being done. the staff have inside track, the user base sees (or doesn't see) outcomes. perhaps in staff communications, you feel that the right things are happening and being said. personally, i have no clue. i don't particularly care about seeing how sausage is made to begin with. in the end we all still post on the same site and deal with the same environment. it is often not a very welcome one.

 

[Nerokis]

Well, this is why this stuff is complicated. I do agree with Maddy's critiques of perceived heteronormativity in TLOU2 and feel she was clear in the podcast that she did not intend to invalidate people for whom Ellie and Dina resonated, but I am not a queer woman and I respect the opinions of queer women who disagree with her. I think broadly speaking a moderation goal of "don't let men talk over queer women about queer women" is valid.

This ultimately becomes a microcosm of the difficulties of discussing marginalized issues. Some queer women (like Maddy) will feel the game was heteronormative, and others will disagree - in some cases vehemently so. How do you determine what level of discussion is appropriate for such a charged topic? How does the discussion of a piece of media versus real people apply? If Ellie and Dina were real people, obviously we'd tell people calling them "heteronormative" to fuck off unless we were in a space of queer people who could have that conversation amongst one another with all the experience and history and good faith that would require. But how does that change in the context of them being fictional characters in a game primarily written by two straight people? How does people downplaying the importance of lesbian representation play into this?

I don't want to make a value call on this specific example (because again, I'm not a queer woman) but it is an example of where the moderation seems to have decided to close down that discussion altogether.

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Yeah, that's the thing: in cases where one marginalized perspective is put against another marginalized perspective, the mods' personal sensitivities and biases seem to rule the day, even when it would simply be best to let discussion play out. When it comes to the sexualization of female characters, we just understand at this point that "but some women dress that way??" is an utterly idiotic point, because we know these are fictional characters created in a certain context; meanwhile, Maddy's perspective on TLOU2's heteronormativity was steamrolled and mischaracterized, because for whatever reason we apparently decided to limit space for critical discourse around straightwashing, the importance of queer creators being in positions of prominence, etc. to just the most convenient examples. There's a good, important discussion to be had there, but one side has to walk a wire to have it and the other doesn't.

(What makes it even more frustrating is how that "limit the space for critical discourse" thing has run rampant with TLOU2 threads in general. Shitty, defensive fans doing everything in their power to make a critical discussion utterly exhausting for anyone who wants to sincerely participate should be moderated at least as hard as port begging and console warring.)

Same with Nora's post, by the way. We see far worse every single day than somebody using less than totally precise language in their expression of anger that people want to signal boost a bunch of hardcore bigots. But the Overton window at the time was that embracing The Lincoln Project was perfectly acceptable, so the burden of the "inflammatory" label fell on her.

 

[bomma man]

One of the problems on this forum (and with a lot of gaming discourse in general) is the overwhelming focus on whether a thing is objectively good or objectively bad. This has its obvious aspects like review threads, where any reviewer who dares to have an opinion outside a consensus that was agreed upon once the second trailer dropped gets dog-piled on. (And the fact that this shit is never actioned upon and that moderation even continues to allow these threads to exist when they are consistently the most toxic threads on this forum is a disgrace). But it also goes beyond the realm of whether or not a game is technically good and reaches a point where people can only put games in the boxes lablled objectively good or objectively bad based on morality too. The Last of Us Part II stars a queer woman and gets hate from internet fascists, that means it is morally good. And if you dare to point out the labor conditions under which it was made or question the political implications of the game's content, you are trying to move the game into the morally bad box. But that's not how criticism really works. Emanuel didn't write his article in order to declare that the Last of Us Part II is objectively, morally bad. He wrote the piece to discuss the game's political messaging in a larger context of how the Israel/Palestine conflict is often viewed and the larger problem of both-sides narratives. Talking about games simply for the purpose of passing qualitative judgements on individual games is largely pointless, yet it seems to be what most people on this forum think criticism is. Not only do people on this forum not understand this, but they also take their objective assumptions a step further through consumerist identification. If The Last of Us is objectively good and I enjoy the game, I'm also objectively good. I have good taste or I am a morally good person, because the authoritative powers on the internet said that this game is both technically and morally good. Any criticism of the game is then seen as a challenge not just to the objective value of the game but also the objective value of the people who like it and therefore must be ridiculed and attacked as uninformed, clickbait, politically motivated, etc. The reason you see people (including a fucking mod) saying "Waypoint is encouraging the harassment against the game's creators" (which even if they were would be completely irrelevant to the actual points Emanuel made and is simply an ad hominem) is because it allows them to dismiss the criticism by putting it in the objectively bad box.

I'm sorry if this is long-winded and rambling, but I had to get this shit off my chest.

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Excellent post

 

[Deleted member 3093]

Most of the staff on this website are women and/or minorities and there is nothing we care more about than the communities we come from. We've known oppression all our lives and it's honestly very demoralising how often some on this website seek to erase us or accuse us of not caring. If any of us felt that the needs of our communities were not being addressed, we would not suffer that indignity, we would leave.

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I reckon this was not your intention, but the way you phrased the last sentence reads like you're dismissing the concerns from the communities.

 

[deepFlaw]

One of the problems on this forum (and with a lot of gaming discourse in general) is the overwhelming focus on whether a thing is objectively good or objectively bad. This has its obvious aspects like review threads, where any reviewer who dares to have an opinion outside a consensus that was agreed upon once the second trailer dropped gets dog-piled on. (And the fact that this shit is never actioned upon and that moderation even continues to allow these threads to exist when they are consistently the most toxic threads on this forum is a disgrace). But it also goes beyond the realm of whether or not a game is technically good and reaches a point where people can only put games in the boxes lablled objectively good or objectively bad based on morality too. The Last of Us Part II stars a queer woman and gets hate from internet fascists, that means it is morally good. And if you dare to point out the labor conditions under which it was made or question the political implications of the game's content, you are trying to move the game into the morally bad box. But that's not how criticism really works. Emanuel didn't write his article in order to declare that the Last of Us Part II is objectively, morally bad. He wrote the piece to discuss the game's political messaging in a larger context of how the Israel/Palestine conflict is often viewed and the larger problem of both-sides narratives. Talking about games simply for the purpose of passing qualitative judgements on individual games is largely pointless, yet it seems to be what most people on this forum think criticism is. Not only do people on this forum not understand this, but they also take their objective assumptions a step further through consumerist identification. If The Last of Us is objectively good and I enjoy the game, I'm also objectively good. I have good taste or I am a morally good person, because the authoritative powers on the internet said that this game is both technically and morally good. Any criticism of the game is then seen as a challenge not just to the objective value of the game but also the objective value of the people who like it and therefore must be ridiculed and attacked as uninformed, clickbait, politically motivated, etc. The reason you see people (including a fucking mod) saying "Waypoint is encouraging the harassment against the game's creators" (which even if they were would be completely irrelevant to the actual points Emanuel made and is simply an ad hominem) is because it allows them to dismiss the criticism by putting it in the objectively bad box.

I'm sorry if this is long-winded and rambling, but I had to get this shit off my chest.

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Realized I didn't say as much earlier but - entirely agree with this.

There are culture issues on gaming side that need to be dealt with on a very basic level. The fact that review threads always go a certain way (and just encourage people to obsess over review scores to begin with) really should be a sign that something needs to change about them. That will probably piss a lot of people off, but it'd be worth it. It would be a good first step to actually dealing with how even the slightest bit of criticism gets a lot of people's hackles up just because someone dared to not 100% love This Month's GOTY. Or even just loved it but with a slightly different take on it.

(And also... I do sincerely appreciate staff coming in here and trying to explain themselves to the extent that they did, and I don't want to pick a fight. But it does stand out to me that Windrunner was in here with 0 mention of how she also directly participated in that thread by claiming the article was irresponsibly encouraging harassment, and then went on to unintentionally validate misinformation/mischaracterizations people were spreading in the thread as well. I certainly do not think any of it was done in bad faith, but it was - ironically? - incredibly irresponsible of a staff member to do regardless and I hope that's considered in how staff handle future situations. I know staff should be allowed to post normally too, and I specifically think that they should be able to share their perspective on something that affects them personally, for the exact reasons she said in her post in here. But at the same time, literally any criticism being posted like that should be seen as an outright powder keg and any odd-sounding complaints about a critic in these threads should be questioned to some degree. It's not a situation to blindly participate in when your status does inherently affect the flow of conversation, for better or for worse. And I've definitely seen times staff members joined in on similar threads without having any personal stakes to justify their participation, which is a much bigger problem.)

 

[Mafro]

Realized I didn't say as much earlier but - entirely agree with this.

There are culture issues on gaming side that need to be dealt with on a very basic level. The fact that review threads always go a certain way (and just encourage people to obsess over review scores to begin with) really should be a sign that something needs to change about them. That will probably piss a lot of people off, but it'd be worth it. It would be a good first step to actually dealing with how even the slightest bit of criticism gets a lot of people's hackles up just because someone dared to not 100% love This Month's GOTY. Or even just loved it but with a slightly different take on it.

(And also... I do sincerely appreciate staff coming in here and trying to explain themselves to the extent that they did, and I don't want to pick a fight. But it does stand out to me that Windrunner was in here with 0 mention of how she also directly participated in that thread by claiming the article was irresponsibly encouraging harassment, and then went on to unintentionally validate misinformation/mischaracterizations people were spreading in the thread as well. I certainly do not think any of it was done in bad faith, but it was - ironically? - incredibly irresponsible of a staff member to do regardless and I hope that's considered in how staff handle future situations. I know staff should be allowed to post normally too, and I specifically think that they should be able to share their perspective on something that affects them personally, for the exact reasons she said in her post in here. But at the same time, literally any criticism being posted like that should be seen as an outright powder keg and any odd-sounding complaints about a critic in these threads should be questioned to some degree. It's not a situation to blindly participate in when your status does inherently affect the flow of conversation, for better or for worse. And I've definitely seen times staff members joined in on similar threads without having any personal stakes to justify their participation, which is a much bigger problem.)

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Yeah that was pretty slimy. Are you meant to receive a message or notification back from a post you've reported when it's been seen? Because I received nothing from reporting that post the other day Poodlestrike The Woods

 

[deepFlaw]

It's never a guarantee and pretty rarely happens, so I don't expect to see them when a report's resolved. Which more or less makes sense - it's my understanding that they're not automated so someone has to spend time doing the response instead of other moderation work. Which can probably be an extra hassle if a lot of people reported a post.

Frankly, the notification isn't really as helpful as it could be anyway. Like it's definitely good to know that they weren't being ignored/lost and that it wasn't decided that the posts were fine, so I'd rather get one than not. But if I reported, say, 5+ posts in a particularly bad thread and I get a notification, it doesn't link back to the reported post at all and just mentions the thread, so I may have no idea what posts got dealt with. Of course, if I'm making a lot of reports in a particularly bad thread, I guess that's also the time I definitely want any acknowledgement that the problem is being dealt with (though that can also be in the form of a staff post and/or locking the thread).

 

[Deleted member 5621]

Yeah that was pretty slimy. Are you meant to receive a message or notification back from a post you've reported when it's been seen? Because I received nothing from reporting that post the other day Poodlestrike The Woods

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Sometimes you get a notification on the report being solved, but not usually, nor when it gets read.

 

[Avengers23]

Ah, Ushah.

 

[Out 1]

having listened to 4 hours of the spoiler cast, most of the points they bring up are fair and valid. any person who actually engages with the text of this game should ask these questions.

when Maddy said that this game is like "baby's first film" I almost died lol

 

[Perkin_Warbeck]

Austin wanted sooo badly for there to be some kind of out with how down Rob sounded on it, but every time he asked, Rob dropped a "but Austin..." and it just got even worse.

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Haha, this is the perfect description of how that conversation went. They also got around to how Watch Dogs 2 predicted the events of 2016.