[DISCUSSION] Rule changes and retroactive enforcement

[Kasja]

Hello,

since the thread I was going to post this in was locked, I shall post it here instead since I am now the OP and I (and moderation) have control over the thread and where it goes. I want to be clear to moderation, however, that I'm not interested in a "original question answered, thread locked" because I believe in openness and transparency regarding rules and their enforcement that affect all community members, rather than a ticket-based system of asking questions and having them individually answered. Mods may disagree, but that's where I stand on it.

I have a few questions and comments regarding some topics discussed here(/in that other thread) today, and I would like others who have questions related to acceptable content to ask them here too.

Just a few questions to clear everything up, though: Obviously the worst of the content you described was from a decade ago or more, and Kraven himself says he doesn't remember most of it. So that's all very much before 2021, meaning it would still have been deleted whenever it was discovered regardless?

Correct.

1) Could you clarify why pre-2021 content is summarily declared a current rule violation and treated as such, instead of reaching out to the offending nation and putting the onus on them to fix their content to adhere to the new rules?

I think on a site like NS where a LOT of worldbuilding intellectual property can be retroactively deleted at any time by any arbitrary rule change, providing the user with a warning and allowing them to adjust the content is the more appropriate course of action moving forward.

2) Similarly, could you clarify if there are any ongoing discussions regarding adjusting longstanding members being DEAT'd for content that was made before a rule change, or at least giving members a chance to adjust to rule violations they did not make when posting, and perhaps didn't know/remember about under the new rules?

As a final final point, it is worth further clarifying that the nation that prompted this was deleted for serious and repeated violations of both obscene content (gore in extremely excessive detail across many posts and dispatches) and malicious content (glorifying Nazism, including repeat Nazi German military theming - Kreigsmarine, SS, Reichmarshall, Obergruppenführer, HauptSturmFührer, and use of Nazi imagery such as photos of Nazi German officials such as Himmler presented as officials in their nation, and images of Dachau concentration camp experimentation victims presented as experiments on members of their nation). The prohibition on content glorifying Nazism and Nazi atrocities applies as much to forumside roleplaying and dispatches as it does to nation names, custom fields and RMB posts.

To follow up, this means that dystopian states and outright evil antagonists for the good guys to fight are still okay, provided we don't give them any German-sounding names or elements borrowed from Nazi imagery? If I'm reading you correctly the goal is more to prevent people from wolf-whistling to one another and creating neo-Nazi NS groups under the veneer of being "ironic" than it is stifling someone's ability to create an evil nation. Evil dystopias are in. Evil dystopias with a Nazi look are out.

There is 100% no intention to stop people roleplaying as the bad guy. There are lots of imaginative ways of doing that, and obviously lots of RL inspiration for that as well. But yes, Nazi-theming it is generally not going to fit within the rules.

As for the question of banning vs content removal, thank you for the answer. Obviously the most upsetting thing for everyone involved is the impact it has on many communities which have now lost years of lore, so it is somewhat reassuring that everything he ever did wasn't deleted purely off of a few posts from the 2000s and isn't going to start happening to everyone. Hypothetically, if this were a scenario of a few gore posts resurfacing from a decade ago but very little other moderation worthy behaviour happening since then what would happen?

The standard Moderation answer would be "we can't rule on hypotheticals", which is accurate in this case. I'm not sure that providing guidance on this hypothetical would even really help anyone?

3) Specifically on the above topic, could I ask for clarification on what the line of demarcation is here regarding how horrible the atrocities have to be before any reference to them is considered a violation?

For example, say I'm a Germanic-themed nation who uses "Reichsmarschall" as the head of my military, because the translation for that is "Imperial Marshal", and I want to have a French Empire-style Marshal of France system to reward those at the very top of my military for their long and/or meritorious service to the Germanic empire. Is it just the fact that it's in German, being used for a Germanic nation, because one (of many) Germanic regimes used specific commonplace words to describe military ranks or positions of authority that breaches the content rules, or is it specifically when the above is used to talk about replicating that specific regime?

For another example, say I'm a Chinese-themed nation who uses "中央政治局主席" as the head of state, which (I think, I don't speak Chinese) translates to "Chairman of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee", because I want a communist government that underwent similar experiences as was felt during The Long March, but told during through the lense of a Qing Dynasty-led communist party that essentially turned into Kim family communist dynasty. Given that the person who used that title is personally responsible for anywhere from 14-80 million deaths (depending on which reports you believe), let alone the atrocities committed by the Qing Dynasty, would I be allowed to use such a title given that it's not specifically referencing Nazism?

4) To put a fine point on the above examples (one of which isn't a hypothetical FYI), why are communist-related names and historical references (globally responsible for more deaths as a direct result of Marxist-Leninist political leaders such as Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, the entire Kim Family, etc., and their policies/actions than any other, including Nazism and fascism as a whole) or Mongol/British/Japanese/Belgian/Chinese Empire-related names and historical references allowed given the atrocities that could be associated with their regime? If the basis for this rule is entirely based on not glorifying certain ideologies (some of which overlap between Nazism and others) or the atrocities that their regimes committed, then why are (in my opinion) the rules on which ones are deemed content violations so acute and the enforcement of them so obtuse?

Thank you for your time and considering my questions.

[Golgothastan]

Isn't it kind of weird that there's an extant Commendation praising him in fairly explicit terms for doing all the stuff he was deleted for (and which was, apparently, complete news to the mods)?

Edit: I guess it's a Condemnation. Still.

[Luna Amore]

Regarding this:

2) Similarly, could you clarify if there are any ongoing discussions regarding adjusting longstanding members being DEAT'd

For transparency sake, both the deletion and this topic are being discussed backstage.

[Kasja]

Regarding this:

2) Similarly, could you clarify if there are any ongoing discussions regarding adjusting longstanding members being DEAT'd

For transparency sake, both the deletion and this topic are being discussed backstage.

I appreciate the transparency on that specific deletion (and it will likely sooth a lot of nerves), but I do want to be clear that I am genuinely asking those questions, not just making a veiled attempt at talking about that specific deletion without actually talking about it. That's maybe not the clearest explanation, but I hope you get what I mean. I'm sincerely asking those questions independent of any previous events being upheld/reversed, however I am only asking them because of its occurrence and want some clarity on issues I don't understand.

Thank you again.

[Havensky]

Short version: As a solution, I propose nuking Kraven's threads prior to this one from Oct 2015. From this thread onward, the violations of current policy aren't present. The ones from before were written before the rules got stricter.

Longer version:

I've been Kraven's storytelling partner for almost two decades (!) since the days of Jolt. We, along with many of my peers in Gholgoth, are pretty ancient. I'm surprised by the charge that Kraven is glorifying Nazis since every post he's made it's clear that his characters are irredeemable evil monsters. You root for my characters in part because they're pitted against people who are clearly bad. Kraven's character Horst is a good example of this. Clearly bad. Clearly irredeemable. Clearly going to end up in a boss battle with one of my hero characters.

Kraven is not the first writer to draw parallels to the Third Reich as a clear indicator that 'Hey, these are bad guys' - It's so common there's even a page on tvtropes for it. Captain America, an all loving hero, is a Disney property whose origins are him fighting the nazis. You can't write that story without making some references.

That said, I also sympathize with the moderation team. After 2016, when you had actual nazis starting to march about, suddenly there was an uptick in people using the nazi stuff as 'this is cool!' instead of the 'these people are clearly bad and we're setting up this storyline so they can be punched in the face.' It's totally reasonable to clamp down hard on that.

That does put longtime nations like Kraven at a disadvantage because a lot of the early posts were made before the PG13 rating was being enforced consistently. Times have changed since then and the threads that Kraven and the rest of Team Gholgoth make have stayed pretty much on the same level as the Marvel Cinematic Universe (which includes HYDRA) including moving the canon away from more problematic references.

If you start at the "First Do No Harm" thread linked above, then you see none of those issues.

My proposal is to nuke everything before that. This takes material that's no longer suited for the site down while not outright banning Kraven for stuff he did retroactive to when the rules got stricter. This solves the issues in a way that works for everyone.

[Life empire]

I reckon retroactive enforcement is simply unfair, and if you're going to delete threads retroactivelly then at least don't delete nations for doing things that were fine when they were done, imagine if they banned something irl, lets say eating cereal as an example, and they started arresting people who ate cerial even though they have never done it after it was banned, wouldn't that be unfair?

[Darlingtown]

I think a main problem is that if a player is not punished or warned that what they post crosses the line for well over a decade, they might (reasonably, depending on who you ask) assume that such content is, in fact, safely within the rules. I do understand not everything gets caught, and I'm not meaning to imply that it should have been caught earlier or something, but it's fairly evident that different people have all manners of interpretations as to where the "safe" and "grey" areas are for most rules until corrected. Especially if over a decade of posting has not drawn any attention from mods or the community.

And these grey areas do exist. At least, they do in practice. The "PG-13" is not 1:1 with what an actually PG-13 rating entails (at least from what I've seen), as I have yet to see anyone warned or punished for using the word "fuck" more than once (or just once if used in a sexual context). That's the real PG-13 standard. This has been watered down to "excessive use" being prohibited. Likewise, there are many rules that require the opinion of a moderator to determine, such as whether something that is borderline flaming/trolling falls one way or the other. Grey area is, at the end of the day, inevitable. But if this is so, then action (or in this case inaction) is what guides players through such grey areas.

I'll be clear, this is not an attempt for me to try and exonerate Kraven of having violated the rules. I do not know all the details of the situation and am open to the possibility that the content in question was, indeed, a breech of the rules. But DEAT as a punishment in the context of what I've just explained seems ultimately unfair. Though unintended and unknowingly done, the decade without warning or punishment can very easily be taken as unspoken approval, which the whole site functions on unless mods want every post to be vetted by moderation.

Unless someone made themselves clear they knew they were violating the rules, or broke an extremely clear no-go rule like posting what is unquestionably porn, there shouldn't be such a severe and dramatic escalation of action. Especially if it was done over an extended period of time without warning, seeing as how this can become accidentally (rather than maliciously) self feeding. In such cases the intent was not to break rules, and despite the sheer volume of violations it becomes entirely unfair to jump straight to massive punishments without warning.

Imagine you put up a hundred posters that you believed were in line with the laws, even after having read up on relevant laws in your jurisdiction. A dozen or so of these posters get seen by tens of thousands of people, and over the course of a decade you never receive notice that you have broken any laws. Why should you suspect you have, after all? All signs point to this being okay. So you put up more...and more...and more. But then one day the police show up to your house. They state the reason is that because you've been breaking the law for so many years and, despite said law only carrying a fine as a penalty, that you are under arrest and will stand trial and possible face a prison sentence. When asked, the police admit the only reason they didn't just slap you with a fine earlier is that they somehow didn't see it until years later.

Is this fair?

Without prior warning, volume of "moderator opinion needed" rules broken over a long period of time should not magnify one's punishment. The circumstance created by the unintended inaction should at the very least cast reasonable doubt on malintent. Warning or light punishment should be fine, but DEAT or similar for someone who might be willing to follow the rules once clarified seems unjust. Why even have warnings in the first place, then?

[Havensky]

That's the thing, Kraven and I were both told a post of ours was over the PG13 line years ago (I forget when exactly). This was back when they first started enforcing it. We steered our posts from then on to make sure we stayed in those bounds and never had a problem since. Now, there's probably threads that were made before then that were R rated - but I don't know if either of us when back and retroactively changed them all

I mean, if somebody gave me a button that said "Hey, do you want to nuke everything before 2016?" I'd probably take the option just to be sure

[Diarcesia]

3) Specifically on the above topic, could I ask for clarification on what the line of demarcation is here regarding how horrible the atrocities have to be before any reference to them is considered a violation?

For example, say I'm a Germanic-themed nation who uses "Reichsmarschall" as the head of my military, because the translation for that is "Imperial Marshal", and I want to have a French Empire-style Marshal of France system to reward those at the very top of my military for their long and/or meritorious service to the Germanic empire. Is it just the fact that it's in German, being used for a Germanic nation, because one (of many) Germanic regimes used specific commonplace words to describe military ranks or positions of authority that breaches the content rules, or is it specifically when the above is used to talk about replicating that specific regime?

For another example, say I'm a Chinese-themed nation who uses "中央政治局主席" as the head of state, which (I think, I don't speak Chinese) translates to "Chairman of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee", because I want a communist government that underwent similar experiences as was felt during The Long March, but told during through the lense of a Qing Dynasty-led communist party that essentially turned into Kim family communist dynasty. Given that the person who used that title is personally responsible for anywhere from 14-80 million deaths (depending on which reports you believe), let alone the atrocities committed by the Qing Dynasty, would I be allowed to use such a title given that it's not specifically referencing Nazism?

4) To put a fine point on the above examples (one of which isn't a hypothetical FYI), why are communist-related names and historical references (globally responsible for more deaths as a direct result of Marxist-Leninist political leaders such as Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, the entire Kim Family, etc., and their policies/actions than any other, including Nazism and fascism as a whole) or Mongol/British/Japanese/Belgian/Chinese Empire-related names and historical references allowed given the atrocities that could be associated with their regime? If the basis for this rule is entirely based on not glorifying certain ideologies (some of which overlap between Nazism and others) or the atrocities that their regimes committed, then why are (in my opinion) the rules on which ones are deemed content violations so acute and the enforcement of them so obtuse?

Thank you for your time and considering my questions.

If I may speculate on the nature of this rule, to me, it looks like an exercise of moderator discretion of excluding unwanted segments of the userbase that caused enough trouble in the website. In this case, they are the unironic Nazis who use Nazi-themed nations to explore their fantasies. It's similar to the proscription against DEN/Black Riders successors, chill/chat threads, and the discussion of pedophilia.

[Nyte]

Question... Are we all now to be expected to go through years and years of posts, factbook entries, and dispatches every time a new rule is created or an existing rule is modified and delete or edit said content before it is retroactively used against us?

Bacause that is the precedent that moderation has just set with this... Should I be scrambling to check my over a decade+ of posts (most of which I don't even remember because they're basically ancient history) and either delete them all, or take who knows how long rereading and editing them one-by-one because a bored mod, or one who may, or may not have OOC issues with me has decided to look for an excuse to have me deleted?

[The JVP]

Question... Are we all now to be expected to go through years and years of posts, factbook entries, and dispatches every time a new rule is created or an existing rule is modified and delete or edit said content before it is retroactively used against us?

Bacause that is the precedent that moderation has just set with this... Should I be scrambling to check my over a decade+ of posts (most of which I don't even remember because they're basically ancient history) and either delete them all, or take who knows how long rereading and editing them one-by-one because a bored mod, or one who may, or may not have OOC issues with me has decided to look for an excuse to have me deleted?

Got to agree here. Lots to look back on, now that the fear of banning hangs over our heads.

[Imperial-Octavia]

There should be no reason that people are being banned retroactively for rules that didn’t yet exist when they made the offending content. I can’t possibly see the justification for banning Kraven ex post facto when the mod team could have at least asked him to remove offending content from his factbooks.

[The JVP]

There should be no reason that people are being banned retroactively for rules that didn’t yet exist when they made the offending content. I can’t possibly see the justification for banning Kraven ex post facto when the mod team could have at least asked him to remove offending content from his factbooks.

This. This all day. Why was he never contacted to remove the offensive posts?

They said 5 mods pulled the trigger on the banning... none of them thought to say "Maybe we just message him to remove that stuff."

MKes it seem like no one looked at what was really being said, just a quick glance.

[The Rio Grande River Basin]

There should be no reason that people are being banned retroactively for rules that didn’t yet exist when they made the offending content. I can’t possibly see the justification for banning Kraven ex post facto when the mod team could have at least asked him to remove offending content from his factbooks.

Again, I can prove some very disturbing, ie. Torture, torturing children, mauling a child with scissors, dragging someone’s intestines, etc., absolutely PG-13 violating, posts from 18 years ago, which breached no rules when posted, but do now. And they’re from our very own Reploid Productions.

I can also dig up piles and piles of old threads which didn’t break rules then, but do now.

I can dig up posts of Sedge calling people idiots.

So should they all suffer consequences?

[Castille de Italia]

So should they all suffer consequences?

If Kraven is the new standard for dealing with rule-violating content from decades ago, then yes. If nation deletion is going to be the baseline, then they all should get the chopping block.

[The JVP]

There should be no reason that people are being banned retroactively for rules that didn’t yet exist when they made the offending content. I can’t possibly see the justification for banning Kraven ex post facto when the mod team could have at least asked him to remove offending content from his factbooks.

Again, I can prove some very disturbing, ie. Torture, torturing children, mauling a child with scissors, dragging someone’s intestines, etc., absolutely PG-13 violating, posts from 18 years ago, which breached no rules when posted, but do now. And they’re from our very own Reploid Productions.

I can also dig up piles and piles of old threads which didn’t break rules then, but do now.

I can dig up posts of Sedge calling people idiots.

So should they all suffer consequences?

I mean, by the logic at head right now... yeah ban them all.

but what should really happen? Just ask them to delete the stuff or just delete the thread and say tell them why.

[Nyte]

There should be no reason that people are being banned retroactively for rules that didn’t yet exist when they made the offending content. I can’t possibly see the justification for banning Kraven ex post facto when the mod team could have at least asked him to remove offending content from his factbooks.

Again, I can prove some very disturbing, ie. Torture, torturing children, mauling a child with scissors, dragging someone’s intestines, etc., absolutely PG-13 violating, posts from 18 years ago, which breached no rules when posted, but do now. And they’re from our very own Reploid Productions.

I can also dig up piles and piles of old threads which didn’t break rules then, but do now.

I can dig up posts of Sedge calling people idiots.

So should they all suffer consequences?

By moderations own standards, yes. They too should be deleted just as Kraven was. It's only fair isn't it that the rules be equally and evenly enforced across all of the RP community after all. If we're going to be opening this Pandora's Box, it better be opened equally and without bias, or the box needs to be closed and the actions taken need to be reversed ASAP.

[The JVP]

Again, I can prove some very disturbing, ie. Torture, torturing children, mauling a child with scissors, dragging someone’s intestines, etc., absolutely PG-13 violating, posts from 18 years ago, which breached no rules when posted, but do now. And they’re from our very own Reploid Productions.

I can also dig up piles and piles of old threads which didn’t break rules then, but do now.

I can dig up posts of Sedge calling people idiots.

So should they all suffer consequences?

By moderations own standards, yes. They too should be deleted just as Kraven was. It's only fair isn't it that the rules be equally and evenly enforced across all of the RP community after all. If we're going to be opening this Pandora's Box, it better be opened equally and without bias, or the box needs to be closed and the actions taken need to be reversed ASAP.

This, this all day.

but it does make me think... They were quick on the banning, with no message to delete the posts.

So how often do they delete accounts without messaging the player?

I mean, this is a big issue now, cause Kraven is a big part of the community, so the outrage is real.

Makes you think

[The JVP]

I have a quick question. Does this rule also cover Communist nations that "glorify" Communism? mainly the Soviets. Tons of killings, prisons, and just overall horrible stuff.

[Nyte]

By moderations own standards, yes. They too should be deleted just as Kraven was. It's only fair isn't it that the rules be equally and evenly enforced across all of the RP community after all. If we're going to be opening this Pandora's Box, it better be opened equally and without bias, or the box needs to be closed and the actions taken need to be reversed ASAP.

This, this all day.

but it does make me think... They were quick on the banning, with no message to delete the posts.

So how often do they delete accounts without messaging the player?

I mean, this is a big issue now, cause Kraven is a big part of the community, so the outrage is real.

Makes you think

One can only imagine. This issue isn't new. It's why large parts of the RP community have a great dislike (to put it nicely) for the site moderation. It flames up every couple of years or so when something big like this happens, or it happens to someone with a lot of popularity among the community (which should have, perhaps been a hint to the moderation staff that maybe Kraven isn't a glorifier of Nazi's after all, and context is a thing) then eventually simmers back down and goes away for a bit.

[United Calanworie]

I have a quick question. Does this rule also cover Communist nations that "glorify" Communism? mainly the Soviets. Tons of killings, prisons, and just overall horrible stuff.

Let me direct you to our site policy on malicious content:

A common question is why we don't ban nations that mimic the Soviet Union, or the USA, or some other real-life nation/entity with a violent history. Certainly, you can total up the body count of various real-world countries and arrive at awful totals: the Soviet Union under Stalin, for example. The question we ask is whether a mini-Soviet Union nation appears to celebrate violence against RL people. And the answer is probably no: assuming no specific references to the contrary, most people wouldn't make that association, because the Soviet Union is widely known for much more than butchery.

[The Rio Grande River Basin]

Again, I can prove some very disturbing, ie. Torture, torturing children, mauling a child with scissors, dragging someone’s intestines, etc., absolutely PG-13 violating, posts from 18 years ago, which breached no rules when posted, but do now. And they’re from our very own Reploid Productions.

I can also dig up piles and piles of old threads which didn’t break rules then, but do now.

I can dig up posts of Sedge calling people idiots.

So should they all suffer consequences?

I mean, by the logic at head right now... yeah ban them all.

but what should really happen? Just ask them to delete the stuff or just delete the thread and say tell them why.

Oh, but they didn't give Kraven that chance, so why should they have it?

[United Calanworie]

By moderations own standards, yes. They too should be deleted just as Kraven was. It's only fair isn't it that the rules be equally and evenly enforced across all of the RP community after all. If we're going to be opening this Pandora's Box, it better be opened equally and without bias, or the box needs to be closed and the actions taken need to be reversed ASAP.

This, this all day.

but it does make me think... They were quick on the banning, with no message to delete the posts.

So how often do they delete accounts without messaging the player?

Only when they don't have an email associated with the account. If they have one, we send a do-not-reply email with directions on how to contact us with a Getting Help Request.

[Sedgistan]

I can dig up posts of Sedge calling people idiots.

I really don't think you can. Someone was citing ancient Fris posts along those lines earlier, but definitely not any by me.

[Nyte]

This, this all day.

but it does make me think... They were quick on the banning, with no message to delete the posts.

So how often do they delete accounts without messaging the player?

Only when they don't have an email associated with the account. If they have one, we send a do-not-reply email with directions on how to contact us with a Getting Help Request.

Do we not have in-game telegrams still? Because I can literally see the option on my screen. Is there a reason the Telegram system can't be used to contact such people then to give them a chance?