Memes are more often than not ludicrous in my experience… Then again, I’m middle aged and jaded. 
.
It’s a bit cancerous, but it’s in #off-topic. The human race comment seems to be in response to roaring-john, so it’s not abhorrently rude. Some of the stuff is not an issue, as I already addressed it before (like the OP not needing to prove anything, since he was not initially in the wrong).
But that’s the initial ban, not kevin’s behaviour here in the forums.
Anyhow, this is not my community, and I’m not going to police or tell you lot what to do. I hope my views will resonate with clear-headed individuals and they will stay away from here until the culture matures.
We invited him to show that he can usefully contribute on these forums, he declined to do so.
I’m not sure how the culture is supposed to mature. The development Discord server is a focused server for developing C:DDA, managed by people who want to spend their free time on developing C:DDA and not on managing the Discord server. Necessarily, there’s not a lot of hand-holding with regards to potentially disruptive behavior that doesn’t contribute to developing C:DDA. We’re fairly welcoming of potential new developers, but if you’re joining the development server to make friends and socialize, there’s a mismatch between your goals and the server’s purpose.
Kevin put the onus on the kid to demonstrate that he could contribute to the development of C:DDA. Because, again, that’s the point of the development Discord server. Kevin doesn’t need to prove himself to you.
3 Likes
the human race comment seems to be in response to roaring-john, so it’s not abhorrently rude
The history is backwards, that comment was entirely unprompted.
It goes
[Fris0uman] Use your night vision
[EMBEAM] Delete human race
[EMBEAM] bad
[wist] Why post that at all?
[EMBEAM] why not
[roaringjohn] Delete allanimalliving and viral races
I’m not sure how posting spam links and posting nothing that wasn’t ostensibly spam before that doesn’t make you initially in the wrong.
What work?
One, what I’m responsible for as a moderator is keeping the chat facility usable for it’s intended purpose, if I can foist work off on users that’s fantastic. Making users do work instead of making moderators do it is ideal.
Two, if you mean explaining things about the link, I literally could not do it myself since the link was gone as I had mistaken it for commercial spam.
And why should we tolerate posts that are, “a bit cancerous”? We want people actually talking to each other instead of spamming memes, if you want to do that, there are a nearly unlimited number of places that welcome it.
Jesus, I have been seeing this post pop up repeatedly for the past month or two. Everything that can be said has been said, so I probably don’t need to comment. But I’m going to anyways.
I don’t think this was handled as well as it should’ve been, both the original ban and the ensuing forum post. And I’m obviously not the only one who thinks that. The mod(s) should take that as a sign that there could be something to learn from here, not keep pushing that they’re absolutely right. Well, those are just my thoughts. It doesn’t really matter, probably.
What exactly do you think should have been handled differently, and why?
The original ban was understandable I suppose. If one isn’t aware of the “hot memes” of 2019, they’re likely to react to the gnome thing the same way people reacted to being rick rolled in 2008. That is treating it like spam / being confused, etc. And if a pseudo-rick roll was posted to a discord focused on development of a game, I’d imagine a warning or temp ban could be issued.
What I absolutely think should’ve been handled differently is the back and forth on the forums. The guy obviously meant well and was clearly confused as to why people thought he was a bot for posting the gnome thing. But instead of giving the guy some leeway and being open minded, he was treated as a villain / some troll who shouldn’t be let in. The guy took the effort to appeal his ban and while he wasn’t great at articulating his points, he still tried in an awkward manner. At least until everyone ganged him.
What could’ve been handled differently? I think being clear on what the ban reason was for, not driving the person into a corner, and being more open is a must.
The guy was likely trying to fit in with the “cool programmer discord” and decided to, as a lot of awkward people do today, post a meme in what would seem like an acceptable place to do so: off topic. (I’m going to be real, I absolutely could have done the same). He then got banned and believed he had been mistaken for an ai/spam bot as that was the ban reason. Therefore, he appealed trying to prove he was legitimate. He was then told how wrong he was to do what he did by multiple different people with one treating him in a condescending manner, thus causing him to return a condescending comment. No leeway was given even when he answered questions given to him. He was penalized for being too concise. Majority of the people posting were relatively unforgiving. The ban reason was confusing and seemed to change (I’m not positive on what he said afterwards on the discord, but he followed what he was asked of on the forums until he was repeatedly told off)
In short, just be very specific on why a ban is given. If he was banned because he was assumed to be a bot, give him a warning and unban him. If you want him to say that he’s willing to participate, ask him if he is. Be more lenient on appeals as if someone wants to appeal, then they obviously want back in. And be more open. A lot of people, especially the newer generations, act differently. Be ready to talk with people who articulate differently / have a different understanding. The guy was obviously agitated after everyone kept saying the meme was spam. It really wasn’t, at least universally. At worst, it was a bad meme.
In all honesty, a lot of this could have been avoided if there was an appeal page on the forums where 1to1 talks could be had. If newcomers want to appeal, having half of the website come in and interrogate them literally helps no one unless the mods don’t have time to talk themselves.
The reason why I believe that advice should be taken is that more open communities are able to grow faster and larger. Faster and larger means more updates for my apocalypse experience simulator. If we treat new comers as hard as we did with this guy, then the only community we would really have is the fellas we currently have.
2 Likes
This is somewhat my area as years of customer service, so take this post as some sort of observation.
When you are giving a statement, you are attempting to convince said community understand your position and your action.
So ideal statement of proving that person X was wrong and action Y was done, community should convinced that you are in the right and make offender weep tears of guilt and beg for your forgiveness.
I have not seen second part happen yet, but I do aim for the best result.
This would be my response to community:
"Hi, Reinhark here.
EMBEAM have:
- Posted unrelated memes as well as suspicious link in the CDDA Development Discord chat - that is, exclusively for development of CDDA.
- Did not contribute to the development process.
For those reasons, EMBEAM have been banned from the DDA Development Discord chat.
Here are the chat log of all his activities.
[post long here]"
This is not a perfect response as I have much to learn, but I think this will agitate people less.
Now, at this point you may argue that this already is too much work just for community management. As you said, you are not a babysitter, and your response may still do the job. And you are absolutely right.
Much like how I could argue that code with newline, proper indents and comments are too much work and therefore I do not use any. my code will still function, so it is arguably OK.
It might looks like I am comparing apples and oranges, but why DO we use comments and rigid formatting for coding? To make sure existing/future devs and even yourself in 6 months understand what was done. Make code easier to read.
In essence, to not hinder future development processes. My argument is that much like sub-standard code causing future development issues, sub-standard response will cause future communication issue that NEEDS MORE WORK.
Something that could have been quashed in the first few hours have developed like untreated wound that lasted months as well as required additional response from yourself.
If you had a choice between:
- Go with concise response that can convince people and provide reasoning behind action.
- Go with obscure response that will draw out discussion and eventually will require you to provide reasoning behind action because otherwise issue will not die.
Ask yourself:
a. Which requires more work?
b. Which would result in “Best response”?
You have a community here, so such incident happened, kind of did happen recently and will undoubtedly happen in the future. You will have at least few years to reflect on this.
I do hope you remember this post next time such issue occurs.
2 Likes
There is a fallacy here - we are not running a customer service or public relations, thus I don’t think we need to appease anyone at all. While it would be great if someone understands and agrees, but it is still okay if they don’t.
4 Likes
You’re grasping at straws here, they posted spam, then when confronted about it they defended it instead of accepting that it’s a problem. That is a major red flag. If someone is unwilling to accept feedback, they can’t be moderated, so they’re going to get banned.
What was unclear? Posting bot-like spam followed by defending said spamming.
That’s absolutely not the case, a larger lightly moderated community, especially on the development server, is going to hinder progress instead of accelerating it.
1 Like
Yeah if you want updates to proceed quicker, allowing our dev conversation to be interrupted first by bullshit like rickrolling memes, and then by the time spent cautiously moderating someone who wants to defend that statement, will not achieve that goal. We’ve got 170 PRs waiting to review and merge, dev will proceed faster if we’re not also wasting a ton of time either trying to talk past spammers or treating them as if they’re valued friends.
As for customer service, this is absolutely not a client-company relationship. We’re hobbyists trying to enjoy our hobby of making and playing a game. None of us are in the hobby of trying to make people feel coddled and valued if they’re not adding something of value.
3 Likes
It’s a development server, it’s for developers to discuss the work they’re doing. It’s not for people to wander in and start posting hot memes they think are funny.
And if someone in charge tells you “hey, cut that out, that doesn’t belong here” the proper response is “oh, sorry, I won’t do that anymore.” That is, assuming your mom raised you right, and you paid attention…
4 Likes
I think the problem here is that mindset. You may see it as spam but I and many others don’t. That’s probably because, like one guy said,
If you’re willing to ban someone for posting a rick roll or memes in general, then so be it. You can be strict, but like I said, you ought to include that in the rules. Development oriented discord or not, make sure you’re clear on what isn’t allowed, even if it’s in the “Not related to development” discussion channels.
Besides that, you keep saying that he was trying to defend himself spamming while declining feedback. I seriously don’t think that, and that’s another point I was trying to make. The guy was originally banned for being believed to be a bot; thus, he appealed for that. When questioned on what he posted, he replied as to what it was. When told by random people passing by who didn’t understand what the meme meant that it was spam, he replied in a way that suggested he was trying to make others understand what it was. Not that “He couldn’t accept feedback while trying to defend spam.” He replied to you, the admin, appropriately, but when randoms who didn’t know what it was came in to give their take, he likely didn’t feel it was necessary to take them on to full discussion.
He himself literally said
That is genuinely what happened. He wanted to clarify that it was a meme, not harmful advertisement or spam.
There also wasn’t much back and forth between you and him. No directions given besides “What was the thing you posted.” Just both parties mistaking what the other one meant. This could have been absolutely avoided with either a 1 on 1 talk, or you being clear and saying that you can’t post things like that.
Yea, I suppose you can run the development server as how you would like if you believe it to be the right way. I don’t exactly have the experience with managing so I can’t really argue on that. But I still think that being lenient in unbanning should be a must as the original ban reason seemed to have been a mistake from what you said.
I fully agree, that is if the person in charge actually says to not post stuff like that. Not when every Joe decides to be somewhat aggressive in giving their own opinions. Hence why transparency is important.
1 Like
Except they, and you, are wrong, it is absolutely spam. Just because you feel like tolerating it doesn’t make it not spam, and it doesn’t imply that other people should tolerate it.
This isn’t remotely a generational thing, this is a maturity thing. “young people” were spamming ancient pseudo-memes on IRC back at the dawn of the internet when I was young, and the arguments for and against it were exactly the same as they are now, which is that coming into a discussion-oriented space, especially one people are using for coordination on a project, is not a productive or welcome thing to do. Some places are ok with that, others are not, understanding and respecting that is simply a sign of maturity, not anything to do with a particular culture.
1 Like
Are you trying to straw man me?
I’m not arguing about whether it’s ok or not to ban someone for posting that. If you think the gnome thing is spam and ban for it, that’s completely fine. Strict doesn’t mean bad. The point is, is that transparency is needed as well as the ability to be clear. Again, the guy genuinely thought he was mistaken as a bot/ai. If it was made clear from the beginning and some leniency was given to him, I’m positive the outcome would’ve been different. It’s as easy as saying “That type of content falls under spam on our discord. If you plan to rejoin the developmental discord you must understand that that place is strictly for development talk, nothing else. If you understand, then let it be known.”
There are also plenty of other ways to ensure that such miscommunications don’t happen again.
Either by making appeals a 1 on 1 thing, being specific on what you want from him, or by tweaking the rules to be slightly more specific.
I’d imagine that was added after this ordeal as that sure is specific.
TBH I have no idea. This happened such a long time ago, and it’s a thing that only seldom is a problem.