unforum

[jamesi]

If you agree with the actions taken or opinions expressed by your fellow moderators and channel ops, wouldn't speaking up about it be considered 'piling on'? (Yes, I know, this is probably what I'm doing right now, but there's always another side.

And yes, I agree -- this is going nowhere, but that's partly because this conversation has moved from 'play nice, please' to 'ops and mods suck and they're mean and they stick together, except for the ones too cowardly to speak out against their cohorts'. By opening that can of worms, the conversation shifted, and it's not necessarily about compromise or meeting at a common ground, but instead, offering rational and civil opposition to statements I, for one, feel are unfounded and wholly out-of-bounds.

[Gregoriev]

[redct]

I wouldn't go as far as to compare it to Soviet Russia, but you do make a good point.

[Gregoriev]

[imbri]

This thread makes me almost happy that I can't get into IRC anymore. Sure, I miss all my chat buddies, but I can't imagine why anyone looking to learn more about ARGs and the community would have any desire to go into #unfiction after reading this. I mean, isn't the channel s'posed to be about ARGs and general community chat? Nothing against sex, but you can find sex talk just about anywhere online and, frankly, I'd rather not talk about it with a bunch of people that I'm solving puzzles and playing games with. Apparently, I am not alone in that desire.

But I don't see why any of that matters. I can't imagine that things have changed all that much in the few months that I've been IRC-less. It's always been the case that if a topic of discussion begins to dominate the channel, a new channel is created so as to avoid annoying all the folks in the channel that aren't talking about it or don't want to be talking about it. That's how we've wound up with various game channels and, even, #ctu which is still around after all these years having morphed from 24 talk to general tv spoilers.

What's really frustrating, however, is seeing the reason and judgment of the channel ops, mods, and admins questioned. Over the years I've come to greatly respect these people. Heck, this community has thrived for 6 years now on the strength of their reason and judgment. People new to this community so frequently remark about how civil and welcoming this place is. That's not a fluke. It's the fact that the people here can see the beautiful shades of gray that make up this world and have used their sound reason and judgment on a case by case basis.

And, Euchre, I can speak from experience that I have broken ranks with other mods and admins. I am not the only one, either. We don't always agree on everything, but we do listen to each other. It's hard sometimes because we've become friends over the years - it's not always easy to tell your friends that you don't like what they're doing. Sometimes it makes for tension, but you know what, we're all still friends. It doesn't happen often though because, for an active internet forum, this place operates incredibly well. It's not just because of the mods and admins, the whole community is great, but they deserve a heck of a lot of credit.

So, to all you channel ops and mods and admins out there - thumbs up and job well done. It's a pretty thankless job, usually, and you all do it anyway. The community wouldn't be this great without you.

[redct]

[Euchre]

Jamesi, the quoting was to provide a specific context to what was being said in a very long post. It was not to point fingers, but to address without confusion. I'm sorry if you don't like that.

You misunderstood, or possibly misrepresented that first response I made. It was said that people are addressed, in public or private, about such behaviors. From all indications nothing of that sort was done before a post was made on the forum here - a completely different medium. The confusion is who was really the one offended, and who was being offensive.

As for the rest of your post, you seem to be taking this personally instead of keeping it elevated to the philosophy of the situation. You've made some very personally insulting statements. Unless you believe yourself to constitute the whole of unFiction, I don't know why you would take things and make things so personal. The only further point I'll thus touch on is how is this 'silent majority' of people more tenured in uF are more representative of the community than the newer more active members? Is that the mindset of an open community?

[jamesi]

[redct]

[thebruce]

[xnbomb]

[jamesi]

Euchre, I misunderstood nothing. The #unfiction chat room is an extension of the Unfiction forums, which all fall under the larger unfiction.com umbrella. Always has been, always will be. The message being delivered in this forum is no different than the message being delivered in the chat room itself, save for the fact that the statement here becomes more permanent and easier to reference. Your suggestion that people have not been addressed, both in public and in private, about their conduct in the #unfiction chatroom, you show that you are only considering recent history. Sure, the players may change, but the game doesn't have to.

Why am I taking this personally? Because I'm a community member. Don't you find this to be a personally upsetting discussion?

[imbri]

[jamesi]

Firing a quick reply to redct: perhaps the most strange (I wanted to say funniest, but surely no one is laughing at this point) aspect of this entire clusterfrak of a thread is that, while we argue about the philosophy of what a community is and how we are drifting towards a regime reminiscent of Soviet Russia, the chat room is mostly quiet, and when it hasn't been, topics have included a flashing red light (Project Abraham related) and our pending attack on Slashdot (huh? ). I find this both frustrating and amusing .

[RungeKutta]

As someone that has made many inappropriate comments in #uf, I apologize for taking the PG-13 level of the channel past that. I think the main two problems comes down to this:

1) Despite what people are saying, this issue has become very polarized, with one side being #uf admin/op and the other being #uf users.

2) Mature content has been said by many people - admins, ops, and regular users for quite a long time and nothing has ever been said until lately. I think most people "involved" in this matter know by now, when this issue first came up.

How about we all just agree that mistakes were made on both sides, and from now on, we'll conduct ourselves a bit different to accommodate everyone. Since the UF Java IRC applet points to #uf, the channel needs to stay more clean - no doubt about that.

The channel's admins and ops have the ultimate say in the channel, minus major problems and disruptions that threaten the usability of everyone on the IRC server. With that being said, how about a (private) warning to the offending user(s) that you (an admin or op) feel the user's language is inappropriate. If said user fails to heed the warning, they're kicked. If the user again ignores the warning, the user is banned for some time appropriate time period.

If we want to get all draconian I'm sure exact rules could be established, but in the vested interest of staying friends and not having fist-fights at ARGFest, people can just use their own judgment. Of course if you can't, that's when the warning/kick/ban comes into play.

I believe if we all follow this basic set of guidelines and forget about the swelling drama that's unfolding, we can remain a fun place to waste your life away for free (which sure beats paying a bartender).