[Discussion/Announcement] NSG's "Wing" Megathreads

[Atlacatl Batallion]

Addressing it when it is brought up to them and ban people who do it accordingly would be a good start.

They say they want to start enforcing the rules consistently, and harassment is a rule they have, but their rule is way behind the times with Discord groups being little cliques on this website that harass other players to silence them, and when brought up all people say is "oh well, not my problem, it was off site so whatever".

Do you know why police departments have jurisdictions? Or why the FBI is not allowed to investigate in Canada, and CSIS vice versa? I know it's kind of a reach but you can see what I'm getting at here and how silly your suggestion is, right?

Okay, but you do know your local police department has no tools to combat cyberharassment, correct?

As in, if you call the cops, right now, over what someone did to you on Discord, the whole thing will likely go into a report bin to never be seen again because the cops don't have the tools to handle it, and they can't do anything anyways if it is out of their jurisdiction.

It's easy to say "call the cops", a different thing is to understand why cyberharassment works so effectively despite the laws in several states against it.

But to address your question, I understand the fact you're saying "it's out of their department", but the problem is I specifically focused on player-to-player harassment in a bid to silence them, which nothing is being done about, even when brought up that this is a problem.

It might be silly to you, but this lack of willingness to do anything about it is why a lot of people are flipping shit, added to everything else.

[USS Monitor]

Do you know why police departments have jurisdictions? Or why the FBI is not allowed to investigate in Canada, and CSIS vice versa? I know it's kind of a reach but you can see what I'm getting at here and how silly your suggestion is, right?

Okay, but you do know your local police department has no tools to combat cyberharassment, correct?

As in, if you call the cops, right now, over what someone did to you on Discord, the whole thing will likely go into a report bin to never be seen again because the cops don't have the tools to handle it, and they can't do anything anyways if it is out of their jurisdiction.

It's easy to say "call the cops", a different thing is to understand why cyberharassment works so effectively despite the laws in several states against it.

That wasn't the point at all.

[Nouveau Quebecois]

Okay, but you do know your local police department has no tools to combat cyberharassment, correct?

Every police department has exactly that.

As in, if you call the cops, right now, over what someone did to you on Discord, the whole thing will likely go into a report bin to never be seen again because the cops don't have the tools to handle it, and they can't do anything anyways if it is out of their jurisdiction.

It's easy to say "call the cops", a different thing is to understand why cyberharassment works so effectively despite the laws in several states against it.

I should've put emphasis on jurisdictions but the point I was trying to make is that NS Mods should not moderate Discord and vice versa. What is a rule on NS may not be a rule elsewhere. NS Mods should not be allowed to impose universal jurisdiction because that is just stupid.

It might be silly to you, but this lack of willingness to do anything about it is why a lot of people are flipping shit, added to everything else.

NS Mods not wanting to police the world is not a lack of willingness. They volunteered to police NationStates and they can't even do that. What makes you think they can police Discord too, among other sites?

[Nouveau Quebecois]

That wasn't the point at all.

I didn't convey myself clearly.

[Shazbotdom]

Do you know why police departments have jurisdictions? Or why the FBI is not allowed to investigate in Canada, and CSIS vice versa? I know it's kind of a reach but you can see what I'm getting at here and how silly your suggestion is, right?

Okay, but you do know your local police department has no tools to combat cyberharassment, correct?

As in, if you call the cops, right now, over what someone did to you on Discord, the whole thing will likely go into a report bin to never be seen again because the cops don't have the tools to handle it, and they can't do anything anyways if it is out of their jurisdiction.

It's easy to say "call the cops", a different thing is to understand why cyberharassment works so effectively despite the laws in several states against it.

The point is that NationSTates rules only apply to the NationStates website. If something happens offsite, then bring it up with the Moderators on that website/software. And if the Mods in that Discord Server don't do anything about it, then that on them.

[Greater vakolicci haven]

Ok, even I am confused what you want the Moderators to do about off-site harassment.

Addressing it when it is brought up to them and ban people who do it accordingly would be a good start.

They say they want to start enforcing the rules consistently, and harassment is a rule they have, but their rule is way behind the times with Discord groups being little cliques on this website that harass other players to silence them, and when brought up all people say is "oh well, not my problem, it was off site so whatever".

What would you like them to do?

I can set up a discord account that looks very much like someone elses, in fact on another game there was a 'gvh' account that was pretending to be me. The only people who can decide what is actionable on discord are discord.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

I'd rather it not be a binary state, measured by whether I do or don't report them.

I manage to be reasonably civil to most people, most people are neither friend nor enemy, and if they never express strong opinions one way or the other they can stay a neutral indefinitely.

Okay if what you're trying to say is you don't have friends on this site then just say "no, this guy isn't related to me, I want him punished." What's wrong with being a binary state?

I don't feel good about seeing a neutral punished. Binary state is friend/enemy, and reporting someone for what they might think is "friendly banter" actually pushes them towards being an enemy.

Even more so if I've never exchanged a word with someone, when I see them flaming or trolling. Often I try to talk them into editing that out, but if they won't I report it. Because you see, I feel that's my duty.

[Atlacatl Batallion]

Okay, but you do know your local police department has no tools to combat cyberharassment, correct?

Every police department has exactly that.

As in, if you call the cops, right now, over what someone did to you on Discord, the whole thing will likely go into a report bin to never be seen again because the cops don't have the tools to handle it, and they can't do anything anyways if it is out of their jurisdiction.

It's easy to say "call the cops", a different thing is to understand why cyberharassment works so effectively despite the laws in several states against it.

I should've put emphasis on jurisdictions but the point I was trying to make is that NS Mods should not moderate Discord and vice versa. What is a rule on NS may not be a rule elsewhere. NS Mods should not be allowed to impose universal jurisdiction because that is just stupid.

But what is a rule in NS should be a rule in NS if it involves players who are in NS.

I am not suggesting to deploy mods to a website. What I am suggesting is if someone brings to moderation the fact that a player is harassing them, and there is good information about the player or players harassing said player off site, that this should be addressed accordingly.

That this is not being done, and a lot of us have had to go in the dark over this because we have a life and we're not willing to sacrifice it for some obscure forum full of bad moderation and even worst posters is one of the reasons WRA and others don't see the same posters around anymore.

[Nouveau Quebecois]

Okay if what you're trying to say is you don't have friends on this site then just say "no, this guy isn't related to me, I want him punished." What's wrong with being a binary state?

I don't feel good about seeing a neutral punished. Binary state is friend/enemy, and reporting someone for what they might think is "friendly banter" actually pushes them towards being an enemy.

Even more so if I've never exchanged a word with someone, when I see them flaming or trolling. Often I try to talk them into editing that out, but if they won't I report it. Because you see, I feel that's my duty.

You'd make a great Mod. You should apply during the next intake.

[Nouveau Quebecois]

But what is a rule in NS should be a rule in NS if it involves players who are in NS.

No it shouldn't.

[Greater vakolicci haven]

Please don't post about things several years ago with a puppet from 2020, it does make you look a bit silly.

Don't lecture people who have been here longer than you about events which they witnessed.

I've been on this site since just after the jolt forum closed. If the problem occurred before I joined, then most of the mods involved aren't even mods anymore.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

I don't feel good about seeing a neutral punished. Binary state is friend/enemy, and reporting someone for what they might think is "friendly banter" actually pushes them towards being an enemy.

Even more so if I've never exchanged a word with someone, when I see them flaming or trolling. Often I try to talk them into editing that out, but if they won't I report it. Because you see, I feel that's my duty.

You'd make a great Mod. You should apply during the next intake.

I know that's meant as an insult, but self-applications are discouraged. You could nominate me.

[Atlacatl Batallion]

Addressing it when it is brought up to them and ban people who do it accordingly would be a good start.

They say they want to start enforcing the rules consistently, and harassment is a rule they have, but their rule is way behind the times with Discord groups being little cliques on this website that harass other players to silence them, and when brought up all people say is "oh well, not my problem, it was off site so whatever".

What would you like them to do?

I can set up a discord account that looks very much like someone elses, in fact on another game there was a 'gvh' account that was pretending to be me. The only people who can decide what is actionable on discord are discord.

But what is a rule in NS should be a rule in NS if it involves players who are in NS.

No it shouldn't.

I mean, if that's the case then don't be surprised more people leave when they realize it's not worth to have their lives exposed to everyone else just because someone in an obscure website happens to disagree with them.

I don't know about you, but a lot of us have a lot in our plates right now to either care about this one problem being one more problem added to the pile, or to have our lives exposed to the world simply because of a disagreement with some nobody online.

[The Archbishopric of York]

I have to say that I am very disappointed by this decision. I have been posting in the Right-Wing Discussion Thread on and off since the very first iteration, and I must say that at times in the past I would have agreed that the thread and its left-wing counterpart were too broad in scope and should not have been allowed. However, at this point both threads, but especially the RWDT, had given rise to a community unto itself, a community that- for all its flaws- was tight-knit, produced much genuinely interesting and thoughtful discussion and was a fairly significant component of the activity in NSG. That community has now been felled at a blow, essentially, and it is hardly surprising that the members of that community should feel hurt and angry about this. Now, there are also people in this thread who as far as I can tell had little to do with either the RWDT or the LWDT, and who are here to make unreasonable demands and rail against the moderation team principally for attention-seeking purposes; those people I have no time for, and really ought to butt out of a conversation they can only disrupt by continuing to engage in.

As for the people who actually are or rather were regulars in the closed threads, I think a certain amount of responsibility has to be accepted here. It's obvious that, whatever the official line is, the perception that the RWDT (and to a lesser extent the LWDT) had become a hotbed of "problem" posters and rulebreaking behaviour was a major factor in the decision to shut them both down. Coming back to NS after a hiatus it was obvious to me pretty quickly that the relationship between the moderation staff and the RWDT regulars had deteriorated to toxic levels, having never been terribly friendly in the first place. I don't think the blame for this lies entirely with moderation. I notice that for all the talk of the RWDT being one of the few places that one could find decent quality discussion on the forums, much of the conversation here over the last few pages has been over moderation's approach to "banter" and why that's wrong. Well, I have engaged in a reasonable amount of banter myself over the years, but I have to say that I don't see how banter is strictly necessary to having quality discussions or, for that matter, making and maintaining the friendships that are really the core of the RWDT community. What I have seen recently in the RWDT is a trend towards seeing moderation as "the enemy," an extremely unhelpful attitude to take, to the point that one long-time poster was more or less publicly shamed recently for making a report. Like it or not, NS is a privately owned site and the site owner and his staff have the right to make and enforce whatever rules they wish; one particular community cannot expect to simply exclude themselves from the rules that apply across the rest of the site and have that fly.

On the other hand, I do think that the standards of moderation have slipped somewhat around the forums of late. I've seen at least one instance of moderator action in response to a post that I believe would have merited a caution at best in the past. I have no shortage of respect for the moderation team, who have given up their free time to do a difficult, time-consuming and generally thankless job, so I don't want to go pointing fingers; but I notice that several newer additions to the moderation team are players with little to do with NSG, which might be why they find it difficult to make the kinds of judgement calls that moderating NSG demands. However, it is important that players are given a certain amount of benefit of the doubt. Excessively punitive moderation only encourages the kind of sentiments I've described above; whilst there will always be rabble-rousers, I don't think the majority of RWDT players were necessarily predestined to become such. All in all, I think that moderation has taken the wrong approach to the RWDT for some time, and this is the culmination of that; but by the same token, I think RWDT regulars could have approached their own relationship with moderation in a way that might have avoided this conclusion.

I left NS with the intention of staying away for good or at least for a fairly long while. As I said in the RWDT a while ago, I came back mostly because I was bored during lockdown and needed a way of filling my time. I thought that I'd see how things went and maybe continue to hang around after the real world returned to some kind of normality, depending on how I felt down the line. Unfortunately, with the RWDT gone, a fairly substantial part of what I enjoyed and missed about NS is gone with it, which makes it unlikely that I will stay here. That makes me quite sad.

[Nouveau Quebecois]

You'd make a great Mod. You should apply during the next intake.

I know that's meant as an insult, but self-applications are discouraged. You could nominate me.

Nah I'm being foreal. Your policy on 'neutrality' makes me confident you won't resort to biases if you had to make a ruling. I'd nominate you but there's this whole like essay you have to fill out and meh.

[Shazbotdom]

Every police department has exactly that.


I should've put emphasis on jurisdictions but the point I was trying to make is that NS Mods should not moderate Discord and vice versa. What is a rule on NS may not be a rule elsewhere. NS Mods should not be allowed to impose universal jurisdiction because that is just stupid.

But what is a rule in NS should be a rule in NS if it involves players who are in NS.

I am not suggesting to deploy mods to a website. What I am suggesting is if someone brings to moderation the fact that a player is harassing them, and there is good information about the player or players harassing said player off site, that this should be addressed accordingly.

That this is not being done, and a lot of us have had to go in the dark over this because we have a life and we're not willing to sacrifice it for some obscure forum full of bad moderation and even worst posters is one of the reasons WRA and others don't see the same posters around anymore.

And how would evidence be collected? Mods have said, repeatedly, that they will not accept Screenshots as evidence as it is easy to fake that sort of thing. Copy/Paste can also be edited heavily and won't be accepted as evidence.

I mean, we don't have Thought Police....Yet. So this idea is ridiculous.

[Nouveau Quebecois]

What would you like them to do?

I can set up a discord account that looks very much like someone elses, in fact on another game there was a 'gvh' account that was pretending to be me. The only people who can decide what is actionable on discord are discord.

No it shouldn't.

I mean, if that's the case then don't be surprised more people leave when they realize it's not worth to have their lives exposed to everyone else just because someone in an obscure website happens to disagree with them.

I don't know about you, but a lot of us have a lot in our plates right now to either care about this one problem being one more problem added to the pile, or to have our lives exposed to the world simply because of a disagreement with some nobody online.

You know doxxing is illegal everywhere, right. If you're being doxxed, go to the police, not the NS Mods. Jesus Christ, think about it.

[Greater vakolicci haven]

Every police department has exactly that.


I should've put emphasis on jurisdictions but the point I was trying to make is that NS Mods should not moderate Discord and vice versa. What is a rule on NS may not be a rule elsewhere. NS Mods should not be allowed to impose universal jurisdiction because that is just stupid.

But what is a rule in NS should be a rule in NS if it involves players who are in NS.

I am not suggesting to deploy mods to a website. What I am suggesting is if someone brings to moderation the fact that a player is harassing them, and there is good information about the player or players harassing said player off site, that this should be addressed accordingly.

That this is not being done, and a lot of us have had to go in the dark over this because we have a life and we're not willing to sacrifice it for some obscure forum full of bad moderation and even worst posters is one of the reasons WRA and others don't see the same posters around anymore.

So I'm talking to another nser over facebook at the moment.
If I call him a cunt, are you saying he should be able to report that to ns moderators?

[Nouveau Quebecois]

I have to say that I am very disappointed by this decision. I have been posting in the Right-Wing Discussion Thread on and off since the very first iteration, and I must say that at times in the past I would have agreed that the thread and its left-wing counterpart were too broad in scope and should not have been allowed. However, at this point both threads, but especially the RWDT, had given rise to a community unto itself, a community that- for all its flaws- was tight-knit, produced much genuinely interesting and thoughtful discussion and was a fairly significant component of the activity in NSG. That community has now been felled at a blow, essentially, and it is hardly surprising that the members of that community should feel hurt and angry about this. Now, there are also people in this thread who as far as I can tell had little to do with either the RWDT or the LWDT, and who are here to make unreasonable demands and rail against the moderation team principally for attention-seeking purposes; those people I have no time for, and really ought to butt out of a conversation they can only disrupt by continuing to engage in.

As for the people who actually are or rather were regulars in the closed threads, I think a certain amount of responsibility has to be accepted here. It's obvious that, whatever the official line is, the perception that the RWDT (and to a lesser extent the LWDT) had become a hotbed of "problem" posters and rulebreaking behaviour was a major factor in the decision to shut them both down. Coming back to NS after a hiatus it was obvious to me pretty quickly that the relationship between the moderation staff and the RWDT regulars had deteriorated to toxic levels, having never been terribly friendly in the first place. I don't think the blame for this lies entirely with moderation. I notice that for all the talk of the RWDT being one of the few places that one could find decent quality discussion on the forums, much of the conversation here over the last few pages has been over moderation's approach to "banter" and why that's wrong. Well, I have engaged in a reasonable amount of banter myself over the years, but I have to say that I don't see how banter is strictly necessary to having quality discussions or, for that matter, making and maintaining the friendships that are really the core of the RWDT community. What I have seen recently in the RWDT is a trend towards seeing moderation as "the enemy," an extremely unhelpful attitude to take, to the point that one long-time poster was more or less publicly shamed recently for making a report. Like it or not, NS is a privately owned site and the site owner and his staff have the right to make and enforce whatever rules they wish; one particular community cannot expect to simply exclude themselves from the rules that apply across the rest of the site and have that fly.

On the other hand, I do think that the standards of moderation have slipped somewhat around the forums of late. I've seen at least one instance of moderator action in response to a post that I believe would have merited a caution at best in the past. I have no shortage of respect for the moderation team, who have given up their free time to do a difficult, time-consuming and generally thankless job, so I don't want to go pointing fingers; but I notice that several newer additions to the moderation team are players with little to do with NSG, which might be why they find it difficult to make the kinds of judgement calls that moderating NSG demands. However, it is important that players are given a certain amount of benefit of the doubt. Excessively punitive moderation only encourages the kind of sentiments I've described above; whilst there will always be rabble-rousers, I don't think the majority of RWDT players were necessarily predestined to become such. All in all, I think that moderation has taken the wrong approach to the RWDT for some time, and this is the culmination of that; but by the same token, I think RWDT regulars could have approached their own relationship with moderation in a way that might have avoided this conclusion.

I left NS with the intention of staying away for good or at least for a fairly long while. As I said in the RWDT a while ago, I came back mostly because I was bored during lockdown and needed a way of filling my time. I thought that I'd see how things went and maybe continue to hang around after the real world returned to some kind of normality, depending on how I felt down the line. Unfortunately, with the RWDT gone, a fairly substantial part of what I enjoyed and missed about NS is gone with it, which makes it unlikely that I will stay here. That makes me quite sad.

Yo you gotta write another paragraph because the mods closed the AuthRight and AuthLeft discussion threads too.

[Shazbotdom]

But what is a rule in NS should be a rule in NS if it involves players who are in NS.

I am not suggesting to deploy mods to a website. What I am suggesting is if someone brings to moderation the fact that a player is harassing them, and there is good information about the player or players harassing said player off site, that this should be addressed accordingly.

That this is not being done, and a lot of us have had to go in the dark over this because we have a life and we're not willing to sacrifice it for some obscure forum full of bad moderation and even worst posters is one of the reasons WRA and others don't see the same posters around anymore.

So I'm talking to another nser over facebook at the moment.
If I call him a cunt, are you saying he should be able to report that to ns moderators?

[Gorundu]

So let me get this right. Here are the two common complaints against closing the threads:

"But these threads are the only places left in NSG with coherent discussion left! You're killing NSG!"

And when the mods point out the moderation issues with these threads, the responses is:
"Stop trying to moderate us for saying stupid things! They were just banter!"

So are these threads places with coherent discussion, or simply banter and trolling?

[Nouveau Quebecois]

So I'm talking to another nser over facebook at the moment.
If I call him a cunt, are you saying he should be able to report that to ns moderators?

This idea is such a bruh moment

[Nouveau Quebecois]

So let me get this right. Here are the two common complaints against closing the threads:

"But these threads are the only places left in NSG with coherent discussion left! You're killing NSG!"

And when the mods point out the moderation issues with these threads, the responses is:
"Stop trying to moderate us for saying stupid things! They were just banter!"

So are these threads places with coherent discussion, or simply banter and trolling?

Both.

...

Did you expect something else?

[Greater vakolicci haven]

So let me get this right. Here are the two common complaints against closing the threads:

"But these threads are the only places left in NSG with coherent discussion left! You're killing NSG!"

And when the mods point out the moderation issues with these threads, the responses is:
"Stop trying to moderate us for saying stupid things! They were just banter!"

So are these threads places with coherent discussion, or simply banter and trolling?

Have a read through and see what you find. A healthy mix of both.

[Gorundu]

So let me get this right. Here are the two common complaints against closing the threads:

"But these threads are the only places left in NSG with coherent discussion left! You're killing NSG!"

And when the mods point out the moderation issues with these threads, the responses is:
"Stop trying to moderate us for saying stupid things! They were just banter!"

So are these threads places with coherent discussion, or simply banter and trolling?

Both.

...

Did you expect something else?

If it's the former, then the latter should not be there and people have no right to complain about moderators being frustrated and closing the thread for that. If it's the latter, then it shouldn't exist.