As I see it, the problem wasn't just trash talking. It was that it had gone too far into genuine harassment. BS sought help from the administration not for an individual "he-said she-said" argument, but for ongoing targeted nasty abuse that was independant of any incidental events on a specific day. In the end it became too much for her to cope with and she left with a (IMO) largely ill-advised explosion.... FB, public flaming etc.
Yes, that looks reasonable. She asked me to do something with someone's harassment, but i was too busy and had no time to realize that "he-said she-said". At the same time i have no idea how to handle that different way. Also, i don't want to take care of that as i'm not a native-spoken english and it's quite difficult for me to understand some moments. But the main reason is i don't understand mentality of our community, i even don't know most players here, so, i'd prefer to work on technical questions. I posted that:
http://forum.war2.ru/index.php/topic,372.msg4465.htmlI don't know that there's an easy set of rules we could have somehow grafted onto our existing community, but I do think that we, as a community, should have been able to do something about it before it got to that point.
If someone is beating another person with a bat, that is bad. You don't have to say "I agree with the victim and everything they say and we are BFFs now", you just have to be a decent human being and say, "stop hitting them with a bat, that is not ok". Sugesting that is ok because you don't like that person or because they are yelling a bunch of stuff while they are being hit is not an excuse. People being hit with a bat will generally lose their shit and yell all sorts of stuff.
This is common sense. You don't need rules to work it out. This place is well cliquey enough that if a few people had had the balls to just stand up and apply a bit of social pressure against it, the whole thing could have been managed.
I absolutely agree with your thoughts here, community should handle such situations itself. But i have no idea what to do if they don't.
Rules are absolutely useless if people don't want to follow them or don't understand them.
The only thing we can reach by such "rules" is malipulating by admins (to provoke someone and then report to admins "ban him, he called me...") or w/e. Much work for admins and absolutely useless and quite harmful for community.
I hoped most people dislike such toxic atmosphere and they will try to follow such rules. They didn't...
I have no ideas how to change that toxic atmosphere. I can compare our big international community with small russian subcommunity. Russians are not so toxic. I'd be happy if international community become much pleasant place for current players and of course for newbies.
I'd be happy to discuss that with other players who want the same...
I understand that, but they are leaving anyway. Quieter people don't post on the forum, and generally don't trash talk, and don't like being subjected to it.
Our problem is we still play 25-years old game, abandoned by it's developers may years ago. So, people are leaving. I think that's our reality.
We can try to attract new players, but old ones will leave from time to time.
The standard has to be set not for the existing players, it has to be for the players we don't have yet. Young people. New people. There are millions of people every day clicking around on stupid browser games because they are bored. The opinions of those people are much more important that the opinions of the few crusty old assholes we still have left.
Yes, we try to attract new people, make different things: beautiful sites, programming, fixes, then newbies join the server... and falls into our toxicity: got banned from games, harassed, attacked by words, and then they eighter leave or become part of such toxicity.
If you want to play war2, your have to play with the best players. And these best players make up such toxic atmosphere. Vicious circle.
If us crusty old assholes have any brains at all we should see that.
Yes, but we don't...
Well I think there's a no swearing in the channel policy and a bot to police it, but basically it's a small enough group that people aren't nasty to each other.
Of course, i'm sure we can at least find mutually beneficial decision. But now i can't see any other decision as to stay everything as is...
I don't think BS is "against us". She just feels that she was treated very badly and no longer wants to play here. I don't think someone is the enemy just because they want to play wc2 somewhere else. It's not like she didn't try hard for a long time here.
Well, she asked us about to resolve the problem, we did nothing, then began to punish her (unfair of course, as she feel), and now we banned her... Of course, she should hate all our admins and all our rules, so she will not do anything together with us. I think so.
That is absolutely not about to play somewhere else, though that will split the community.
Personally I don't mind a little bit of trash talk occasionally, but for some people it is their normal for of communication when gaming .... constant rage and flame... IMO that's just being a dick
I agree with such communication when gaming and i don't protest against that. But here's an important line: that should not be moved to personalities.
