mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Mar 8, 2024 18:35:05 GMT -5
Recently the Armageddon moderators, currently led by MarshallDFX, and presumably with the help of staff, decided to get rid of Non-Armageddon Discussion from the GDB and the Discord counterpart #off-topic channel. Although it's part of the overall Seasons plan, for some reason, I'll make a separate thread for it because 1) I can only see this decision having funny consequences, and 2) because it's not relevant to Seasons specifically.
Personally, I'm old enough to remember forums about a single topic and maybe a few tangentially-related topics -- we're on one right now, in fact. Broad forum communities like Something Awful, 4chan, or Reddit only exist because there isn't any theme connecting their members beyond the fact that they decided to post on that particular site. Armageddon's community does have a theme -- the game itself -- so the forum and Discord should always have been focused on the game. At least in theory. But at some point, Armageddon's staff decided seemingly at random, without any evidence to back it up, that the players are capable of socializing like actual human beings, and began to create spaces for them to connect on things outside of Arm, and/or organize meetings IRL to discuss Arm things.
I think the results of the community-building experiment speak for themselves. Multiple people have come to this forum over the years talking about how they were harassed, stalked, or threatened by other people in the Arm community. Even the regular day-to-day conversation in these spaces was a shitshow. The biggest threads in non-Arm discussion were: general griping and whining interspersed with trauma dumping (Idle complaints about today), humblebragging about having sex (I went on a date), and hundreds of pages of gibberish (Random thoughts). As a hypothetical new member of a forum, I can't think of anything more discouraging than seeing that this kind of drivel dominates discussion.
When the times were good, they were good. I have met my fair share of friends from Arm, and while most have come and gone, I still have one I co-own a business with and see almost every day, and a few others that are a bit more distant. But the window for building those kinds of connections closed as more and more decent people left the game, or rather, were driven out by the genuinely awful people that hung around the community and were seemingly protected by the staff, or the people who were basically anti-social losers that didn't know how to communicate but were simply considered too benign to do anything about.
As more players draw comparisons to this and 1984, or wring their hands about how no one will want to be a part of the community if they can't talk about anything, I have to laugh. These people largely made the community as inhospitable as it is, either directly through what they said and did, or indirectly through their sheer indifference towards the people crapping on the proverbial floor.
Personally hoping the community gets worn down into a little nub, because that is what it deserves. What will more likely happen is that people will just accept the new state of things and continue to be shitty to each other. You can't force mean people to be nice. Unfortunate that the mods insist on learning that the hard way.
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Post by pinkerdlu on Mar 8, 2024 20:37:17 GMT -5
I'm from the era of Armageddon where I made all of my friends on the Shadowboards.
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Mar 9, 2024 6:23:44 GMT -5
The shadowboards have a much cleaner, friendlier community than the game does:
- I've never heard any credible story of anyone here being stalked or sexually harassed by another shadowboard member. For that matter I haven't seen any credible stories of anyone outside the shadowboard being stalked or harassed by anyone on the inside. I would love to be corrected on this.
- jcarter gets rid of porn, slurs, libelous claims and other things that could violate ProBoards TOS - and by extension, justify a staff report to ProBoards to get the forums taken down. (Staff have had this idea, multiple times, of causing trouble here themselves to get ProBoards to remove us: remember the guy that posted dinosaur porn?) GDB moderation is subjective and never seems to apply to everyone equally (although Lizzie got muted for 24 hours yesterday for being an asshole, so maybe equal application is coming in)
- We haven't flooded a game's Discord so badly that it had to go on lockdown. Armageddon's players did this to Apocalypse.
- Aside from Ibusoe Cummypalms, who was swiftly dealt with, we haven't demonstrably caused trouble in Armageddon itself.
We're just a group of people talking about a dying game. Armageddon's community has weird people jockeying for power and clout, and people who just don't know how to talk to others. The business I mentioned in my OP is a game shop. We get roleplayers and TCG players all day every day, shopping or sitting down to play. They are, frankly, nerds, and so am I. And they are more sociable than even the most friendly Armageddon player.
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Post by poorimpulsecontrol on Mar 9, 2024 7:10:02 GMT -5
Cummypalms made me laugh.
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Patuk
Shartist
Posts: 552
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Post by Patuk on Mar 9, 2024 13:28:14 GMT -5
I'm pretty sure they just don't know what to do.
They have goals far beyond their reach, the means to get there are anathema to them, they don't know how to get from A to B.
But something must be done, and this is something, therefor it must be done.
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my2sids
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 341 
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Post by my2sids on Mar 9, 2024 14:42:09 GMT -5
What's wrong with humblebragging about getting laid?
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Patuk
Shartist
Posts: 552
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Post by Patuk on Mar 9, 2024 15:00:11 GMT -5
What on earth are you on about?
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mehtastic
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Posts: 1,695
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Post by mehtastic on Mar 9, 2024 18:16:36 GMT -5
I'm pretty sure they just don't know what to do. They have goals far beyond their reach, the means to get there are anathema to them, they don't know how to get from A to B. But something must be done, and this is something, therefor it must be done. I'm inclined to agree. Much like how I don't think it is possible to fix Armageddon, it is also not possible to fix Armageddon's community, for the same reason: the people that would be involved in actually fixing it. Not just the leadership involved in directing things, but the people that would be expected to participate in the community after things have changed. Making a clean community for a MUD is an admirable goal. The problem is garbage in, garbage out. You cannot make a fancy house out of dog turds, and you cannot make a clean community with dozens of personalities that are, at best, draining, or at worst, sociopathic. I can only think of a tiny handful of people still at Arm that I would call a "positive presence", and most of them avoid talking to others on Discord or the GDB, and for good reason. So it's no surprise that the mods don't really know what to do. What's wrong with humblebragging about getting laid? All I will say to this is the last time I encountered someone humblebragging about getting laid, I was in high school. And that's not because the adults I surround myself with today aren't fucking. |
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Post by Azerbanjani on Mar 9, 2024 22:03:16 GMT -5
I miss cummy palms he was the only person to ever make me agree with armageddon staff
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hates2
staff puppet account
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Post by hates2 on Mar 9, 2024 22:17:57 GMT -5
I mean that's the shadowboards right? People asked him to bring the evidence after all his taunting and he was (rightly) judged to be a lunatic. Hard to argue throwing cum at people isn't sexual assault, but he tried with the tried and true counter of calling people snowflakes.
On the GDB, none of that gets anywhere because he's banned for just critiquing the staff originally.
Sometimes your community can moderate itself, who knew? It's a common classroom management technique, if one student is being disruptive and the others quiet him down, your class managed itself and you didn't have to intervene.
Lessons, lessons.
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my2sids
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 341
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Post by my2sids on Mar 10, 2024 0:31:52 GMT -5
What's wrong with humblebragging about getting laid? All I will say to this is the last time I encountered someone humblebragging about getting laid, I was in high school. And that's not because the adults I surround myself with today aren't fucking. I mean like - okay. Plenty of sex positive people out there.... |
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Mar 10, 2024 5:23:19 GMT -5
There's a difference between what I'm talking about and what you're talking about. Don't be obtuse.
Edit since I inevitably have to describe basic social norms to any Armageddon players reading: sex positivity: sex is fundamentally healthy and pleasurable for everyone involved 👍 average "I went on a date" post: bro I paid for dinner but nothing happened, what's up with that??? | bro idk find someone better, I got that puss | [insert more misogyny here]
I would not describe Armageddon as a sex positive community. I don't even see a path to Armageddon becoming one until it gets rid of all the people that victim-blame when sexual harassment or assault occurs or are simply misogynistic/objectifying. To say nothing of in-game behavior, such as in-game sexism and phobias that go against the docs but is generally allowed to stand because the staff are afraid of confrontation.
Anyway, this thread is about how Armageddon players are just not very bright.
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mehtastic
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Posts: 1,695
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Post by mehtastic on Mar 10, 2024 5:57:06 GMT -5
I mean that's the shadowboards right? People asked him to bring the evidence after all his taunting and he was (rightly) judged to be a lunatic. Hard to argue throwing cum at people isn't sexual assault, but he tried with the tried and true counter of calling people snowflakes. On the GDB, none of that gets anywhere because he's banned for just critiquing the staff originally. Sometimes your community can moderate itself, who knew? It's a common classroom management technique, if one student is being disruptive and the others quiet him down, your class managed itself and you didn't have to intervene. Lessons, lessons. Sweeping issues under the rug goes hand-in-hand with the Armageddon leadership's focus on maintaining the facade of peacefulness and friendliness within the community, while not actually digging deeper and actually making it so. Thinking back to all of the flashpoints the community has ever had, it was almost always a very brief and aggressive outburst that is quickly suppressed. The kind of thing that would have easily been prevented if people felt that they could discuss problems before they were uncontainable.
The one thing that hit the community hard was the reveal of Shalooonsh being what he was and the slow drip, drip, drip of discussion that ensued in the month or so between the initial reveal, and the staff's final announcement of what they decided to do about it. And I think part of the reason is because the community was so unaccustomed to discussing such things. So much so that there were several players that tried to """moderate""" by suggesting that the discussion of Shalooonsh's awful behavior should end, just like they learned from staff.
With the community being as established as it is, with most of its members having been around for decades, I don't see how they could ever introduce the concept of self-moderation. - The bittervets are against the new rules, but offer no meaningful alternative - They continue to act as if they are not beholden to those rules, because they never felt that they were - Whenever the community tells each other what they can or can't do, it's always players aligning with what they feel are staff's best interests
Yeah, the building blocks just aren't there. Oh well. GDBers are always welcome to make an account here.
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Patuk
Shartist
Posts: 552
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Post by Patuk on Mar 10, 2024 6:43:44 GMT -5
I mean that's the shadowboards right? People asked him to bring the evidence after all his taunting and he was (rightly) judged to be a lunatic. Hard to argue throwing cum at people isn't sexual assault, but he tried with the tried and true counter of calling people snowflakes. On the GDB, none of that gets anywhere because he's banned for just critiquing the staff originally. Sometimes your community can moderate itself, who knew? It's a common classroom management technique, if one student is being disruptive and the others quiet him down, your class managed itself and you didn't have to intervene. Lessons, lessons. This is my objection with whatever the GDB is doing, too. Accusing staff of whatever Ibusoe said is a very serious accusation. They are blessedly fortunate to have kept the logs, something they rarely care to do, and post them. But even then, the GDB can't resolve issues like those. The guy could insist it was doctored. Fake news, ha ha. And so on. Without this place, he'd never have been publically outed as a lunatic. The kind of deranged retard who insists we should be 'thankful' for people like him and that we're all snowflakes for not being thrilled about people flinging cum off inna Byn sparring halls. For another example, consider the Kestria/Katima thing from a couple months back. Accusing someone of encouraging a suicide is an extremely serious matter. The kind of stuff it really isn't the purview of a dumb game's caretakers, so much as the relevant law enforcement agencies. Again, talking about it for a couple pages' worth of thread did clear things up: nobody told any guy to jump or pull the trigger, it boiled down to some murky and tragic commonplace situation that absolutely does not warrant chasing someone down to call them a murderer. The GDB moderators, of course, see this and want to make their forum has less of it. I do not know why they think less open discussion is a good thing, and I doubt it will have the intended effect. |
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Mar 10, 2024 7:48:27 GMT -5
We have no idea what the GDB would have done with Ibusoe because he brought his complaint about other players here first, thinking we would all be on his side. If he had posted on the GDB that half-giants were bullying him or whatever, it would have just gotten removed as publicly airing a player complaint well before anyone could step in to say, "well actually, Ibusoe's character was throwing cum all over the place". He brought it here first because he thought we would be gullible enough to take his side. I don't think that says anything about the GDB or about the shadowboard, more about Ibusoe himself being one of Armageddon's many narcissists.
The Kestria/Katima thing is the same as above. A self-important asshole from the community thought we would take their side automatically, because they perceived the shadowboard as anti-Armageddon and willing to take up any cause that helps embarrass the game. Neither example shows a lack of willingness to be open on the GDB.
What does show a lack of willingness to be open on the GDB?
- Halaster subverting the player moderators to delete critical posts during the Shalooonsh crisis. (Yes, he apologized for it. No, he should not still be on staff.)
- The current mods removing tantrums about the new rules sort of counts? They could and should have had a discussion about why the community sucks and got the players more involved in fixing it. Instead the players get more top-down paternalism because the players are perceived as unable to fix their own community. And it's true that they are completely incapable of it. And if they don't like it, they can just leave.
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