09-06-2024, 08:09 AM
(This post was last modified: 09-06-2024, 08:14 AM by poop MANIAC(fecal frenzy!!!!!!!!. Edited 2 times in total.)
I have authored this document alone, at nobody else's request. Any and all inevitable retalitory personal attacks should be levelled against myself and myself alone, not any of the subjects I will be using as examples. While I do intend to be highly critical, I want to stress the point that I do not hate any of the subjects of my criticisms, I only want what is best for our community. I encourage any who feel hurt/stressed/frustrated at any point in this letter to take a break for mental healing. I do not condone or encourage any act of trolling, flaming, spamming or harassment. This document is an honest, sincere criticism of current events, penned out of concern for the overall health of the community. This is not intended to be an appeal for any reason, or as a report for an abuse. I understand the judgements made, as erroneous or outright malicious as they may be, are at this point immobile; additionally, that the parties against which I write this are protected from consequences (a fact which they wield mercilessly and I will dissect later in the document). I write this as an open letter of condemnation against what has become a clear pattern of behavior targeting the playerbase from the current administrative body. The unconscionable actions they have taken are steadily creating an unwelcoming, combative atmosphere that is corrosive to the community and seems only to be in service of their own egos.
The main focus of this letter will be the recent false warn and subsequent ban foisted onto A silly goose. As discussed, his was an innocuous, singular line of sarcastic consent to an actual offender. Initially labeled as a case of "slur baiting," when called out on their behavior the administration team slipped into their secret chatroom to not lift this obvious overreaction but instead chose to escalate into a "trolling" warning. Since they have already conceded that the initial pretext for the warn was erroneous, I will now proceed to disarm the charge of "trolling."
"Trolling" as defined under the TTT staff guidelines refers to when one "intentionally engages in provocative, irreverent, or offensive behavior in order to bait other players' reactions for a laugh," a.k.a. telling a joke. The actual context of goose's false warn was when another player [Sic] "asked for a 'slur pass'" after which [Sic] "sarcastically i responded 'sure buddy you can have 1,'" and then the actual offender proceeded to emit a homophobic slur. Now, what goose said here is the exact sarcastic joke (whether they will admit it or not) countless staff (typically trusted or moderators at the time and some of whom are currently or have been administrators) have made in the past. To argue that goose's statement here was "provocative, irreverent, or offensive" is an indictment of almost every seated staffer in Dinkleberg's history. This argument itself must be trolling, because I find its character to be grossly offensive and suggests that our community is too patently braindead to comprehend the concept of obvious, clearly choreographed and well-trodden irony.
The appeal's closing argument from the admin team towards the victim was "You do have an extensive history with the server and its rules, and the team feels that you generally know what behavior is acceptable and what is not hence the trolling warn." Firstly, this statement is ridiculous as this suggests that goose is a person of malicious intent whose goal was in this case and in the past to disrupt the game and the community at large. Goose's only continuing crime has been holding dissenting opinions on certain rule specifics. He has been on the wrong side of the rules before (accidentally!), but he has always gone through the correct channels when it happens to argue his case then gracefully accepted the rulings without repeat offenses. This is not a pattern of behavior as you are attempting to frame it; this is a person whose worldview and experiences occasionally conflict with the rules BUT who takes the necessary time and effort to change them for the staff's benefit when the inevitable friction occurs. To ascribe some "troll mindset" to his harmless, sarcastic words that echo a common server joke is laughably tonedeaf at best and willfully dishonest at worst.
Furthermore, the quote "you generally know what behavior is acceptable and what is not" is shockingly ironic. Your staff make this joke on a regular basis. In fact, one of them did so two nights ago in your presence with ZERO trolling warns placed on their person. The implication here is that while goose is held to a standard where he somehow understands the virtually infinite nuances that go into calculating whether you personally find a sarcastic one-liner offensive while the staffers who deliberately volunteer their free time to enforcing the rules would not is ridiculous. Alternatively, you may have implied that staff members either can't break the rules, can't be warned when they do, or simply don't have the capacity to "troll" as you understand it. Of course you almost certainly forgot about that TDawg, because while goose is on your clique's radar as an undesirable, the staff are your colleagues, your comrades and your friends, therefore when they make mistakes or offenses it's not a big deal and everyone should just move on (if they even register to you). Whether this says the people you find personally odious should be explicitly targeted or that the people you get along with just shouldn't be held to the same standard as the rest of the playerbase is unclear; what is clear is that this ban is not only spurious of the rules as written but a targeted act of censure against a non-staff user that would NEVER happen to an "offending" staffer.
Now would be the time to mention the fact that the guidelines allow for some degree of staff discretion. Naturally since this is addressed to the moderators and not the big league admin team this means the rules don't apply to you in this case, but for academic interest let's discuss it regardless. The note reads thus "Please ban fairly and appropriately based on severity." As discussed, this is entirely unfair as the singular 6 word statement made by the victim is an echo of a sarcastic joke common across Dinkleberg time and space through many different administrations and from many different people (staff included) and this is the only time in all my years here I have seen the "trolling" warn applied against its user. Ergo, unfair. As for severity, goose had nothing to do with the offending gentleman, he doesn't say slurs himself on the server and frankly if we are being honest this instance is about as severe as a mosquito bite. Your ruling holds no water and if it were being applied against yourself you would be undoubtedly dismissive. However, as mentioned this caveat is addressed to the moderators, so judging by your behavior the admins get a pass to do whatever they want.
To quote a relevant post of yours, "If you ever find yourself in a place where EVERYONE else is the problem, maybe it is time for some introspection." Clearly you take the popular opinion/decision as an indication of righteousness. In this case, the majority public opinion (posted on the appeal, at least) was that the ban was unwarranted and removal necessary. That your insulated think tank decided behind closed doors to keep the false ban and points regardless shows a clear lack of introspection. Or perhaps since it was you who personally disagreed with the majority (it was your ban after all), this is a special case and it is all of us who are wrong?
And yet this could all have been prevented had you only talked to goose about it first, had you taken the time out of your busy volunteer staff shift to engage your accused in an honest, understanding discussion. This is called moderation, according to the Collaborative International Dictionary of English. Unfortunately, as illustrated by the recent reveal of the admin handling of a certain entirely needless witch hunt, moderation is something your team has a long history of difficulty with. In fact, when the administration even deigns to lower themselves to speak with the unworthy and ignorant public, the one thing that does seem consistent is their refusal to consider the position of the accused. Your team rarely if ever talks with us, rather you make it your business to talk to us, sneering down your collective noses at the idea that perhaps we might have a perspective or piece of information which might conflict with your decisionmaking process. Let me remind you that your role serves the entire community, not just the friends you hang out in calls with on the discord, not just your colleagues in the staff, not just the shouting voices of the forum, but every single player that joins the server, whether it's to stay or just passing through or on their way to being thrown out. We're all in this together, you aren't the main characters and you don't just get to trample us down like a hog on a flowerbed; there would be no server without the players, and there won't be very many players if you continue to abuse and ignore us.
Conclusion
I might be repeating myself on some of these points from the recent thread, but I feel strongly enough about them to be confident in doing so. The question now is how do we actually move forward? Should the staff team be allowed to simply pay lip service for their misdeeds while the rest of us are lined up against the proverbial wall on a regular basis for every minor infraction? For the senior admins(teef and chib), you were present for a heinous betrayal that is entirely the fault of your own lack of due diligence and targeted highly respected, valued and generative community members. Appealing to the popularity of the decision within your circle is no excuse; acceptance is complicity. This kind of failure is not only an injustice against its victims, but erodes the trust the community has in the staff up to the highest level and affects community members with a bitter taste, leading to discord and outright abandonment in the worst cases. Every single day these bans stayed in effect is an offense against both the victims and the community as a whole, and this alone is such a critical and avoidable failure in your duties that the decent thing to do would be to resign your post. You have proven yourselves to be unworthy of the trust and power this position grants you, and you cannot be granted the opportunity to make such a colossal and malicious error again.
For TDawg, I would caution you not to follow in their footsteps and to perhaps humble yourself before you get too drunk on your newfound ascension. I don't think your actions here are enough to illustrate a clear pattern of personal behavior but you have been entrenched in the staff body for quite some time now and you do share some responsiblity for this collective series of failures as well as the overarching staff climate, to say the least of your involvement in the goose debacle. I sincerely hope you can prove my personal hunches about you wrong.
For the staff team in general, recall that your role is to provide moderation, not to rule over the community as dozens of little barons shaping the ignorant masses like lumps of clay. Kindness is key, communication is clarity and every person deserves respect. When a player is talking, sit down and listen.
In general, to allow the staff to squeeze through these transgressions with no consequences is a gross miscarriage of justice and bodes rather darkly for the TTT community. When a normal player makes some transgression against the community as a whole, they are assumed guilty until proven innocent (you say they won't be anymore, but that doesn't change the past) and strictly punished, after which they can petition the admin team to undergo the terrible dishonor and burden of bothering to hear their side of the story at all. To actually win an appeal the team then actually has to lower themselves further to give the accused enough benefit of the doubt to actually believe them (believe a non-staffer? how preposterous!). Outside of these rare cases, players are expected to sit down and shut up and take their medicine like a good civilian. However, when the staff shirk their duties and disregard their post and either allow or outright perpetrate abuses of their power, are we meant to simply accept a vague corporate apology and move on? Are they instantly owed a million miles of good faith when they afford the community they serve with barely an inch? And should they walk away from their violations with a skip and a whistle while your average player is held to strict, immovable standards and summarily shot without trial? As important and enlightened as you think you are, there have to be consequences for your misdeeds. Either the rules are there for a reason and come with consequences for everyone, or they're just an excuse for the staff team to do whatever the hell they want and get off scott free. You can't have both.
The main focus of this letter will be the recent false warn and subsequent ban foisted onto A silly goose. As discussed, his was an innocuous, singular line of sarcastic consent to an actual offender. Initially labeled as a case of "slur baiting," when called out on their behavior the administration team slipped into their secret chatroom to not lift this obvious overreaction but instead chose to escalate into a "trolling" warning. Since they have already conceded that the initial pretext for the warn was erroneous, I will now proceed to disarm the charge of "trolling."
"Trolling" as defined under the TTT staff guidelines refers to when one "intentionally engages in provocative, irreverent, or offensive behavior in order to bait other players' reactions for a laugh," a.k.a. telling a joke. The actual context of goose's false warn was when another player [Sic] "asked for a 'slur pass'" after which [Sic] "sarcastically i responded 'sure buddy you can have 1,'" and then the actual offender proceeded to emit a homophobic slur. Now, what goose said here is the exact sarcastic joke (whether they will admit it or not) countless staff (typically trusted or moderators at the time and some of whom are currently or have been administrators) have made in the past. To argue that goose's statement here was "provocative, irreverent, or offensive" is an indictment of almost every seated staffer in Dinkleberg's history. This argument itself must be trolling, because I find its character to be grossly offensive and suggests that our community is too patently braindead to comprehend the concept of obvious, clearly choreographed and well-trodden irony.
The appeal's closing argument from the admin team towards the victim was "You do have an extensive history with the server and its rules, and the team feels that you generally know what behavior is acceptable and what is not hence the trolling warn." Firstly, this statement is ridiculous as this suggests that goose is a person of malicious intent whose goal was in this case and in the past to disrupt the game and the community at large. Goose's only continuing crime has been holding dissenting opinions on certain rule specifics. He has been on the wrong side of the rules before (accidentally!), but he has always gone through the correct channels when it happens to argue his case then gracefully accepted the rulings without repeat offenses. This is not a pattern of behavior as you are attempting to frame it; this is a person whose worldview and experiences occasionally conflict with the rules BUT who takes the necessary time and effort to change them for the staff's benefit when the inevitable friction occurs. To ascribe some "troll mindset" to his harmless, sarcastic words that echo a common server joke is laughably tonedeaf at best and willfully dishonest at worst.
Furthermore, the quote "you generally know what behavior is acceptable and what is not" is shockingly ironic. Your staff make this joke on a regular basis. In fact, one of them did so two nights ago in your presence with ZERO trolling warns placed on their person. The implication here is that while goose is held to a standard where he somehow understands the virtually infinite nuances that go into calculating whether you personally find a sarcastic one-liner offensive while the staffers who deliberately volunteer their free time to enforcing the rules would not is ridiculous. Alternatively, you may have implied that staff members either can't break the rules, can't be warned when they do, or simply don't have the capacity to "troll" as you understand it. Of course you almost certainly forgot about that TDawg, because while goose is on your clique's radar as an undesirable, the staff are your colleagues, your comrades and your friends, therefore when they make mistakes or offenses it's not a big deal and everyone should just move on (if they even register to you). Whether this says the people you find personally odious should be explicitly targeted or that the people you get along with just shouldn't be held to the same standard as the rest of the playerbase is unclear; what is clear is that this ban is not only spurious of the rules as written but a targeted act of censure against a non-staff user that would NEVER happen to an "offending" staffer.
Now would be the time to mention the fact that the guidelines allow for some degree of staff discretion. Naturally since this is addressed to the moderators and not the big league admin team this means the rules don't apply to you in this case, but for academic interest let's discuss it regardless. The note reads thus "Please ban fairly and appropriately based on severity." As discussed, this is entirely unfair as the singular 6 word statement made by the victim is an echo of a sarcastic joke common across Dinkleberg time and space through many different administrations and from many different people (staff included) and this is the only time in all my years here I have seen the "trolling" warn applied against its user. Ergo, unfair. As for severity, goose had nothing to do with the offending gentleman, he doesn't say slurs himself on the server and frankly if we are being honest this instance is about as severe as a mosquito bite. Your ruling holds no water and if it were being applied against yourself you would be undoubtedly dismissive. However, as mentioned this caveat is addressed to the moderators, so judging by your behavior the admins get a pass to do whatever they want.
To quote a relevant post of yours, "If you ever find yourself in a place where EVERYONE else is the problem, maybe it is time for some introspection." Clearly you take the popular opinion/decision as an indication of righteousness. In this case, the majority public opinion (posted on the appeal, at least) was that the ban was unwarranted and removal necessary. That your insulated think tank decided behind closed doors to keep the false ban and points regardless shows a clear lack of introspection. Or perhaps since it was you who personally disagreed with the majority (it was your ban after all), this is a special case and it is all of us who are wrong?
And yet this could all have been prevented had you only talked to goose about it first, had you taken the time out of your busy volunteer staff shift to engage your accused in an honest, understanding discussion. This is called moderation, according to the Collaborative International Dictionary of English. Unfortunately, as illustrated by the recent reveal of the admin handling of a certain entirely needless witch hunt, moderation is something your team has a long history of difficulty with. In fact, when the administration even deigns to lower themselves to speak with the unworthy and ignorant public, the one thing that does seem consistent is their refusal to consider the position of the accused. Your team rarely if ever talks with us, rather you make it your business to talk to us, sneering down your collective noses at the idea that perhaps we might have a perspective or piece of information which might conflict with your decisionmaking process. Let me remind you that your role serves the entire community, not just the friends you hang out in calls with on the discord, not just your colleagues in the staff, not just the shouting voices of the forum, but every single player that joins the server, whether it's to stay or just passing through or on their way to being thrown out. We're all in this together, you aren't the main characters and you don't just get to trample us down like a hog on a flowerbed; there would be no server without the players, and there won't be very many players if you continue to abuse and ignore us.
Conclusion
I might be repeating myself on some of these points from the recent thread, but I feel strongly enough about them to be confident in doing so. The question now is how do we actually move forward? Should the staff team be allowed to simply pay lip service for their misdeeds while the rest of us are lined up against the proverbial wall on a regular basis for every minor infraction? For the senior admins(teef and chib), you were present for a heinous betrayal that is entirely the fault of your own lack of due diligence and targeted highly respected, valued and generative community members. Appealing to the popularity of the decision within your circle is no excuse; acceptance is complicity. This kind of failure is not only an injustice against its victims, but erodes the trust the community has in the staff up to the highest level and affects community members with a bitter taste, leading to discord and outright abandonment in the worst cases. Every single day these bans stayed in effect is an offense against both the victims and the community as a whole, and this alone is such a critical and avoidable failure in your duties that the decent thing to do would be to resign your post. You have proven yourselves to be unworthy of the trust and power this position grants you, and you cannot be granted the opportunity to make such a colossal and malicious error again.
For TDawg, I would caution you not to follow in their footsteps and to perhaps humble yourself before you get too drunk on your newfound ascension. I don't think your actions here are enough to illustrate a clear pattern of personal behavior but you have been entrenched in the staff body for quite some time now and you do share some responsiblity for this collective series of failures as well as the overarching staff climate, to say the least of your involvement in the goose debacle. I sincerely hope you can prove my personal hunches about you wrong.
For the staff team in general, recall that your role is to provide moderation, not to rule over the community as dozens of little barons shaping the ignorant masses like lumps of clay. Kindness is key, communication is clarity and every person deserves respect. When a player is talking, sit down and listen.
In general, to allow the staff to squeeze through these transgressions with no consequences is a gross miscarriage of justice and bodes rather darkly for the TTT community. When a normal player makes some transgression against the community as a whole, they are assumed guilty until proven innocent (you say they won't be anymore, but that doesn't change the past) and strictly punished, after which they can petition the admin team to undergo the terrible dishonor and burden of bothering to hear their side of the story at all. To actually win an appeal the team then actually has to lower themselves further to give the accused enough benefit of the doubt to actually believe them (believe a non-staffer? how preposterous!). Outside of these rare cases, players are expected to sit down and shut up and take their medicine like a good civilian. However, when the staff shirk their duties and disregard their post and either allow or outright perpetrate abuses of their power, are we meant to simply accept a vague corporate apology and move on? Are they instantly owed a million miles of good faith when they afford the community they serve with barely an inch? And should they walk away from their violations with a skip and a whistle while your average player is held to strict, immovable standards and summarily shot without trial? As important and enlightened as you think you are, there have to be consequences for your misdeeds. Either the rules are there for a reason and come with consequences for everyone, or they're just an excuse for the staff team to do whatever the hell they want and get off scott free. You can't have both.
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