I don't think that's necessarily a "video game culture" issue. Yeah, I can get rather ridiculously pissed off at a video game. I can also get equally pissed off doing arts and crafts. And if somebody should happen to engage me in that state, I'll very likely snap at them, even though it's not their fault and I'll apologise afterwards. It's just the fact that people can't instantly switch their emotions on and off. However, if video games are unique, it's that there's a multiplayer aspect to some games, and an instant outlet right there.
I gotta admit, I snickered at the image of going "needlepoint is bullshit! GG noob yarn fuck this shit!!!!" and throwing it across the room, where it floats down and lands in a gentle heap.
Nobody yells the n-word at a scarf they're knitting together or threatens to rape its children, is my reaction.
I don't think that's necessarily a "video game culture" issue. Yeah, I can get rather ridiculously pissed off at a video game. I can also get equally pissed off doing arts and crafts. And if somebody should happen to engage me in that state, I'll very likely snap at them, even though it's not their fault and I'll apologise afterwards. It's just the fact that people can't instantly switch their emotions on and off. However, if video games are unique, it's that there's a multiplayer aspect to some games, and an instant outlet right there.
I gotta admit, I snickered at the image of going "needlepoint is bullshit! GG noob yarn fuck this shit!!!!" and throwing it across the room, where it floats down and lands in a gentle heap.
Nobody yells the n-word at a scarf they're knitting together or threatens to rape its children, is my reaction.
This forum has the only model on the internet that I have seen actually genuinely work and that is to ban idiots when they appear and keep doing it.
The weird thing is that I don't see very many idiots here in the first place, fewer than even aggressive moderation would account for. Do we have an unusually low rate of attracting new people balanced out by a high retention rate, or something?
The idea that people who make quilts or whatever have the same sorts of problems with abusive language that video games do is a very interesting one but I suspect it is incorrect. I admit that I don't really quilt or do any other arts and crafts so perhaps I am wrong.
I don't think that's necessarily a "video game culture" issue. Yeah, I can get rather ridiculously pissed off at a video game. I can also get equally pissed off doing arts and crafts. And if somebody should happen to engage me in that state, I'll very likely snap at them, even though it's not their fault and I'll apologise afterwards. It's just the fact that people can't instantly switch their emotions on and off. However, if video games are unique, it's that there's a multiplayer aspect to some games, and an instant outlet right there.
I gotta admit, I snickered at the image of going "needlepoint is bullshit! GG noob yarn fuck this shit!!!!" and throwing it across the room, where it floats down and lands in a gentle heap.
Nobody yells the n-word at a scarf they're knitting together or threatens to rape its children, is my reaction.
Group a knitter with four random people who may or may not know how to knit well, lock them in a room with another group, and instruct them to try to get their team to knit more scarves than the other team within an hour, and you can bet there will be death threats by the end.
The way to handle this is to do what most actors do. Ignore the comments section.
They were calling her house.
Which is hard to ignore.
I get sales-calls. I don't even answer. Still fucking annoying.
That's ... not exactly the same thing.
"Just don't answer! Ignore it! It's effortless, and solves everything!"
With the quotations marks, I assume you're being sarcastic? Like, of course it isn't the same thing, and we agree on this?
Or are you making the argument that death threats over the phone and unsolicited sales calls are of the same level and can be compared equally?
I'm bad at text over the internet, so I thought I'd double check before I went any further.
Climb up the quote-tree, and you'll find a topic of whether or not ignoring unwanted phonecalls is a satisfactory solution.
I assumed you were making a comparison that an annoying (but ignorable) call from a telemarketer and a death threat over the phone were basically the same and should be treated as such (as an annoying reality, but ultimately no big deal).
Another reading of your comment could be that phone calls (even ones as minor as sales calls) are difficult to ignore, and thus advising someone to "just ignore" phone calls (in this case death threats) won't work.
Is the second reading of your comment one you would agree with? And if not, maybe you could clarify your position.
The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory is wrong. A normal, well-adjusted person doesn't turn into a fuckwad given anonymity and audience. They were always one in the first place. Maybe they didn't show it as much without the anonymity and audience, but anonymity is not the core problem here.
I think it holds true if you modify it a little. I'd say its:
Arsehole + Platform + Anonymity = total fuckwad.
A normal person absolutely doesn't spontaneously become a fuckwad just because they're given an audience and anonymity. A certain type of person might though. Effectively its like the good old "fire triangle". You need heat, fuel and oxygen to create a fire. Remove any of those elements and the fire goes out.
What we have on these forums is a system whereby if someone reveals themselves to be an arsehole, the platform (their ability to post) is removed. I can't say I frequent any forums where you're forced to reveal your real name or other personal details, but I'd bet good money that death threats are less of an issue on a forum where moderators can see that "MastaKilla117" is Bob Jonson of 141 Harvard Crescent, Springfield.
Ideally we'd remove the "Arsehole" from the equation, click our heels and turn the offenders into friendly, productive posters. But if you know a way to do that, then you can probably apply your godlike superpowers to much more than fighting trolls on internet forums.
*edit* Oh sweet tapdancing jesus, there is actually a "MastaKilla117".
The positive reinforcement system on these boards (Agree & Awesome buttons) should not be overlooked. It's fantastic.
The worst behavior typically happens in places where there is no one in power who can "fix" things -- YouTube comments, random public game servers when there's no admin logged on, etc. The community-wide positive/negative reinforcement system is an excellent solution.
I like the one where all the negative-rated people end up being pushed into servers together away from everyone else.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
0
Options
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
The positive reinforcement system on these boards (Agree & Awesome buttons) should not be overlooked. It's fantastic.
The worst behavior typically happens in places where there is no one in power who can "fix" things -- YouTube comments, random public game servers when there's no admin logged on, etc. The community-wide positive/negative reinforcement system is an excellent solution.
I like the one where all the negative-rated people end up being pushed into servers together away from everyone else.
Oversight isn't going to catch everything though. People need to report things as they're seen (which is why, prior to the report button, forumers here were encouraged to PM a mod when she was going on). Having a staff big enough to watch YouTube comments as they are posted is an insane proposition. But again they have a means of reporting people who cross the line. I think.
Why is it that some developers don't get any threats and some devs get a bunch? Could it be the way some of them handle criticism in a way that invites backlash and abuse?
Bioware is not a company that takes criticism. They pretty much delete any forum posts that aren't heaping them praise. This already creates undercurrent of frustration. They hire a writer who complains about gameplay in games, and then they make a couple of shitty sequels. Now how does said writer respond to her critics? Does she acknowledge their complaints in any way? No, she says they are simply jealous because she has a game industry job and a vagina, and they want both but can't get either. Of course she got abused. This doesn't mean death threats are in any way warranted, but how can you not expect some level of blowback? And its not like these threats are in any way unique to games. Name an industry figurehead that is in public view, and he/she has probably received threats of some kind. Threats from angsty adolescents who are upset at the writing quality of a video game rank with threats from retirees that spend time coupon clipping for discounts for the least likely to ever do a goddamn thing. Has ANYONE ever attacked a game dev for their work?
I think Phil Fish is manic-depressive. If not, he is just a special snowflake hypocrite who can't take any fraction of the criticism he himself dishes out.
Why is it that some developers don't get any threats and some devs get a bunch? Could it be the way some of them handle criticism in a way that invites backlash and abuse?
Bioware is not a company that takes criticism. They pretty much delete any forum posts that aren't heaping them praise. This already creates undercurrent of frustration. They hire a writer who complains about gameplay in games, and then they make a couple of shitty sequels. Now how does said writer respond to her critics? Does she acknowledge their complaints in any way? No, she says they are simply jealous because she has a game industry job and a vagina, and they want both but can't get either. Of course she got abused. This doesn't mean death threats are in any way warranted, but how can you not expect some level of blowback? And its not like these threats are in any way unique to games. Name an industry figurehead that is in public view, and he/she has probably received threats of some kind. Threats from angsty adolescents who are upset at the writing quality of a video game rank with threats from retirees that spend time coupon clipping for discounts for the least likely to ever do a goddamn thing. Has ANYONE ever attacked a game dev for their work?
I think Phil Fish is manic-depressive. If not, he is just a special snowflake hypocrite who can't take any fraction of the criticism he himself dishes out.
Disproportionate response. "I don't like violence in video games." ironically is like a red flag to a bull around these parts. Of course she got abused? Come on man. Here's a writer doing what they love and suddenly they hit the intersection of an innocent interview explaining her personal beliefs that intersects with a perfect storm of nerds unsatisfied with a somewhat shallowly produced sequel (I still liked it personally) and they're crucified. So they got defensive, then they got death threat calls to their kids? I think if you can't defend the end result of that tunnel of rage you are on shaky ground trying to defend the beginning or middle of it. Angsty adolescents might look a lot scarier as anonymous phone calls and crazy things are done every day.
I can easily, and reasonably, condemn the blowback. I also can expect it, yes, but that's because I know that people are terrible and don't grasp how to behave in public. I know that, as a community, we've tolerated the behavior for a bunch of reasons. Posts like that, sparkle, are part of the problem because they present an unreasonable attitude as a legitimate response to imagined insults.
Bioware isn't required to "respond to criticism" and deleting negative comments on their forums, if they do so, isn't some sort of justification. If the writer made rude comments, it's not a justification or an explanation or a mitigating factor when considering the blowback she received.
Did she ever say that people were jealous she had a vagina and a game industry job, because I didn't see that anywhere, and I'm inclined to not believe she said that.
Why is it that some developers don't get any threats and some devs get a bunch? Could it be the way some of them handle criticism in a way that invites backlash and abuse?
Bioware is not a company that takes criticism. They pretty much delete any forum posts that aren't heaping them praise. This already creates undercurrent of frustration. They hire a writer who complains about gameplay in games, and then they make a couple of shitty sequels. Now how does said writer respond to her critics? Does she acknowledge their complaints in any way? No, she says they are simply jealous because she has a game industry job and a vagina, and they want both but can't get either. Of course she got abused. This doesn't mean death threats are in any way warranted, but how can you not expect some level of blowback? And its not like these threats are in any way unique to games. Name an industry figurehead that is in public view, and he/she has probably received threats of some kind. Threats from angsty adolescents who are upset at the writing quality of a video game rank with threats from retirees that spend time coupon clipping for discounts for the least likely to ever do a goddamn thing. Has ANYONE ever attacked a game dev for their work?
I think Phil Fish is manic-depressive. If not, he is just a special snowflake hypocrite who can't take any fraction of the criticism he himself dishes out.
I'm pretty sure everything you wrote there is an example of the crap we want out of our community.
Honestly I don't understand the blowback. These are video games you go out and purchase for fun, not some excruciating experience thrust upon you by malicious developers barging into your home life.
If I hate a game, I might write somewhere why I hate it, at worst suggest that the developer is lacking some required skill or talent, and that's about it. Attacking the developer? That's ridiculous.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
This forum has the only model on the internet that I have seen actually genuinely work and that is to ban idiots when they appear and keep doing it.
The weird thing is that I don't see very many idiots here in the first place, fewer than even aggressive moderation would account for. Do we have an unusually low rate of attracting new people balanced out by a high retention rate, or something?
This is a relatively self policing community as well. I've been on both ends of it: Saying something stupid and being admonished, and admonishing those saying something stupid. The mods here really don't have to get involved in every case of shit-headism, because we as a community tend to handle it up to the point where we cant. In general, the admonishment of your peers will always mean more than the admonishment of "the man".
At least for me, when I've opened my big mouth and stuck my foot three feet down my throat, the backlash of my peers caused far more behavior modification on my part than any infraction I've ever received.
The problem with that theory of course is that the internet is a giant echo chamber. Even if a total shit heel doesn't find acceptance here, he can go to 4Chan, or Something Awful, or some sub-Reddit, and find an echo chamber that will find his horrendous behavior amusing and encourage it.
Something Awful shuts down some behavior even more than the PA forums do. They're the ones with a :biotruths: smiley, for instance. Self-policing communities never seem to pop up where mods aren't pretty harsh, though - both PA and SA have mods that are willing to issue infractions and ban people for this sort of stuff, and I'd be interested to see a self-policing gaming community that didn't have the strong arm of the law hovering just behind the curtain.
+1
Options
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Something Awful shuts down some behavior even more than the PA forums do. They're the ones with a :biotruths: smiley, for instance. Self-policing communities never seem to pop up where mods aren't pretty harsh, though - both PA and SA have mods that are willing to issue infractions and ban people for this sort of stuff, and I'd be interested to see a self-policing gaming community that didn't have the strong arm of the law hovering just behind the curtain.
I don't disagree. You need the strong arm of the law to be the punch when it's required, but I still feel that self policing is best when it can be used.
SA must have changed a lot since I last hung around. When I was last there, making raciest, sexist comments was still very much en vogue. Joking about rape and such were certainly not out of bounds. This was years ago though, so it wouldn't shock me if a new crop of mods/admins had come in and cleaned the place up.
Something Awful shuts down some behavior even more than the PA forums do. They're the ones with a :biotruths: smiley, for instance. Self-policing communities never seem to pop up where mods aren't pretty harsh, though - both PA and SA have mods that are willing to issue infractions and ban people for this sort of stuff, and I'd be interested to see a self-policing gaming community that didn't have the strong arm of the law hovering just behind the curtain.
When people are reminded that there are boundaries, and when they generally conform to RL social norms of polite public behavior, community members feel a lot more comfortable holding to account those who step outside those boundaries. Moderation provides the atmosphere, and over time pseudonymous communication creates a reputation that becomes valuable on its own, much as happens in RL. One key component to this is that accretion of reputation. We're not anonymous here... we're pseudonymous at minimum and in many cases known in RL as well.
Yeah, like I know Spool is totally a bad person who loves playing Teemo :P
I think self moderation is the ideal and the reality for most places is just harsh moderation. Riot's steps to help the community with the tribunal and high profile player bans basically amount to stepping in and saying 'look at how little your account is worth if you're a dick' and it really honestly makes the community a bit less suck.
Did she ever say that people were jealous she had a vagina and a game industry job, because I didn't see that anywhere, and I'm inclined to not believe she said that.
She did tweet that, but she took her Twitter down during all the abuse. Since the account no longer exists, I can only point to referent articles.
More importantly, someone lashing out at haters in a not-great way themselves in no way excuses or justifies the ridiculous bullshit in the first place. Her entirely reasonable position was that it's a virtue to let gamers skip past cutscenes and conversations if they just want to get back to the gameplay, and so there should be a corresponding way to let gamers skip past combat if they just want to get back to the story (especially since combat in most games focused on writing has been shitty and tedious, e.g., Planescape, Vampire, Alpha Protocol, Dragon Age). There is zero connection between that and any general problem with DA2 or ME3 (which she didn't even write for), so the idea that she didn't measuredly reply to insane internet histrionics (charitably referred to as "complaints") is a non-starter.
And I don't think it's a consequence of dev feedback, either. Bioware gets tons of shit because they have more exposure, not because they handle it poorly. Do you think that the Black Ops 2 devs getting death threats over slight weapon rebalances is because of the way they interact with the community, or is the problem entirely on the part of idiots issuing death threats?
Moreover I suspect the frequent "it's just dorks on the internet, no point worrying about it" refrain can only come from someone who hasn't experienced anything similar. When people are inserting themselves into your life through the phone ringing off the hook or details about where your kids go to school, you can see if you laugh it off or if you instead worry that the bigger the crazy storm the greater the chance one actual psycho will be included.
+10
Options
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
While I agree it's a non-starter, and pretty much victim blaming, say something like "they are jealous because I have a vagina" is inflammatory at best and certainly doesn't help the situation. I don't blame her, I would lash out if I was getting threats as well...but that phrase specifically was a very silly thing to say. It was a straw man. I could be upset at her writing style and/or concept of skipping game play and not care at all that she has a vagina.
In any case, that's a serious tangent. Regardless of what she said, the abuse was uncalled for, and bringing someones children in to a discussion is beyond unacceptable. It's the mark of a sociopath.
Right, her response was bad, particularly by drawing on very negative stereotypes—let me emphasize that I agree entirely. My point is throwing sticks and stones into an inferno doesn't excuse the inferno, and I can understand the human foible of reacting to an amorphous, anonymous mass of hatred by lashing out at it much more sympathetically than issuing death threats to someone over talkin' 'bout vidyagames.
+5
Options
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited August 2013
For me personally, as a father, it's bringing her children in to it that really gets me going. You have to be a sociopath or have a very weak grasp on right and wrong to think it's okay to EVER bring someones family in to a situation, especially children.
I was in meetings earlier, but as I was sort of spacing off and thinking, I got to wondering: How much responsibility do we need to start foisting on to social media sites to police this sort of behavior? Is it not at least somewhat incumbent on the Facetwittergrambooks of the world to not allow this sort of clearly unacceptable speech on their site? If I walked up to someone in person and screamed "I'M GOING TO KILL YOUR CHILDREN", I'd be arrested for making bodily threats. I know the laws are very different when it comes to online speech, but at what point do we as a community demand that these sites begin to police this behavior?
This becomes even more prevalent when you see the repeated news stories about kids bullied on these sites killing themselves. What level of responsibility do the sites themselves have to remove this sort of speech and remove the offenders from the associated communities? And what level of responsibility do we as the users of these sites have to demand they do so?
I don't have the answer, I'm just posing the question.
e: This obviously doesn't cover or solve people calling her house, but there are already real world avenues for that sort of harassment. That is clearly illegal and someone could get the police involved in that case.
CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
I know everyone hates this idea, but I wonder how much law could be brought to bear on this problem, or if there's even any practicable way to do that.
As a telecom employee, I sometimes have to notify screaming customers that it's a federal offense for them to threaten me (which has the desired result of those people calming the fuck down).
Obviously something like that is a lot harder to pin down when it comes to the internet.
We had that story about that LOL player arrested for making inflamatory comments on facebook, and pretty much universally the gaming community was mad that he got arrested instead of being mad that he hadn't discovered before the age of 16 that talking shit in public has consequences.
Since disturbing the peace is just a misdemeanor, arrest was obviously over-harsh in that case. But what if people started being fined $700 for telling other people that you are going to rape them on the internet or Xbox live? Would it result in behavior modification assuming it could/would be carried out by local government?
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
+2
Options
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
I think part of the problem is that we are still dealing with the stigma of online speech not being "real" speech. I can show you posts on this very site where people claim that things people say on the internet aren't "real" and can't affect you. Until that stigma is put to rest (which is slowly happening through cases like the Facebook suicides and this), you aren't going to get a serious law response to threatening remarks on social media or forums.
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
My only thing with making it a legal matter that people can be punished for is that it has to be a subtle touch. If you were to bring this crap to the attention of a lawmaker they may produce a draconian punishment system.
Issuing fines for threats is a start, suggestion wise. I dunno if $700 is right though, that's pretty danged high. People get fined for less for traffic violations - something is actually physically harmful.
+1
Options
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited August 2013
I don't even think you need new laws. It's already illegal to threaten someone or someone's family with physical harm. Why can't those laws simply be enforced in the online arena? Again, it goes back to that stigma: Oh, it's just online, it doesn't mean as much, you shouldn't take it so hard, lighten up, etc.
How is threatening to kill or rape someone or their children online any different than calling them on the phone an doing the same? In the latter case, it's already illegal and you'll already get arrested.
My only thing with making it a legal matter that people can be punished for is that it has to be a subtle touch. If you were to bring this crap to the attention of a lawmaker they may produce a draconian punishment system.
Issuing fines for threats is a start, suggestion wise. I dunno if $700 is right though, that's pretty danged high. People get fined for less for traffic violations - something is actually physically harmful.
I wasn't sure what the fines were for disturbing the peace, so I looked it up and the internet said $700.
Why it costs more than traffic fines I dunno.
And disturbing the peace, if you read the link I posted, speech alone was counted as a citeable disturbance:
Sec. 42.01. DISORDERLY CONDUCT. (a) A person commits an offense if he intentionally or knowingly:(1) uses abusive, indecent, profane, or vulgar language in a public place, and the language by its very utterance tends to incite an immediate breach of the peace;
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
I really appreciate this discussion, because even though no one has come up with a miraculous solution (wouldn't that be nice), it has still produced a lot of good analysis of the situation and some different perspectives. I also really appreciate this forum, for just the same reasons as prior posters. This forum is an oasis of sanity in a desert of madness.
How do we determine what counts as acceptable and unacceptable speech, though? Especially on a service as confusingly disconnected as Twitter, where comments are forced to be short and are only loosely strung together into a conversation, I don't know how anyone has any idea what is being said on there, let alone whether someone is being sarcastic or is making true death threats. Perhaps we need to simply not be tolerant of sarcasm that errs so far on the side of a threat, but what if the context is actually a video game?
Imagine if the tweet to which I am responding is from a friend about playing CoD later, and I respond with "I'll shoot you in the face tonight, bitch!" Is that actually hate speech or bad? I would say no, assuming that I am talking to my friend. If I were posting in response to someone who works on CoD, on the other hand, talking about game balance, it would be unacceptable. But, how do we make that call properly on a large scale? Will a report button and removing someone's account, after review by a moderator, work on Twitter or YouTube? Is it already there and not working, or just not really being enforced?
Battle.net/SC2: Kwisatz.868 | Steam/XBL/PSN/Gamecenter: schmads | BattleTag/D3: Schmads#1144 | Hero Academy & * With Friends: FallenKwisatz | 3DS: 4356-0128-9671
Issuing fines for threats is a start, suggestion wise. I dunno if $700 is right though, that's pretty danged high. People get fined for less for traffic violations - something is actually physically harmful.
Each time you make a serious threat over the Steam system, Valve randomly removes one game from your library.
World peace within a decade.
0
Options
CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
To be honest, I'm not that upset if my "I'll kill you later bitch!" to my friend has to be forced to email or phone texts or some other private means, if that's what it takes to stop assholes from being allowed to say "I'll kill you later bitch" to random strangers who have nothing to do with them and who never asked for the interaction.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
I don't wanna live in a world where reciting a Louis CK joke or a Misfits lyric could get me arrested or fined by some culture-less swine who doesn't understand. There have to be provisions for hyperbole and sarcasm and art, otherwise 1984 comes true.
I like the idea of applying current harassment/stalking/hate-speech/whatever laws to the internet. I'm not a lawyer so maybe they'd need some rejiggering, but I think it's a decent idea to start with.
The difference is, its a lot harder to report in real life. It takes effort and so people reserve it for actual serious cases.
On the internet, they would flood the reports for everything imaginable. Impersonate people to make false reports, and generally make it an impossible system that'd further just require huge manpower to accomplish almost nothing.
That's pretty much the hard part there. How do you make something that works online, that isn't easily abused and generally a huge waste of money?
Imagine if the tweet to which I am responding is from a friend about playing CoD later, and I respond with "I'll shoot you in the face tonight, bitch!" Is that actually hate speech or bad? I would say no, assuming that I am talking to my friend. If I were posting in response to someone who works on CoD, on the other hand, talking about game balance, it would be unacceptable. But, how do we make that call properly on a large scale? Will a report button and removing someone's account, after review by a moderator, work on Twitter or YouTube? Is it already there and not working, or just not really being enforced?
You probably need to rely on the recipient to determine intent, e.g., the report button. I don't have any concrete thoughts on it but I like Microsoft's idea of a reputation system where you can shunt people into different communication circles based on their behavior-over-time. Maybe a version for Twitter would start a new user at 0 rep, or negative rep if attached to a disposable email address, and accumulate rep for time active and activity and follows by other high-rep users. Tweets reported and reviewed as harassment would incur huge reputation penalties, and users would be able to modulate the tweets that show up in their feed by blocking people below a certain rep and/or with a certain number of reported instances. Reports would be sorted in moderator's queues by the rep of the reporter, to diminish the ability of trolls to make dummy accounts and repeatedly flag everything they object to.
I think systems that work in parallel with moderators like that are necessary for high-traffic operations like Twitter, because simply relying on a limited number of moderators reviewing flagged cases lends equal power to disposable trolls as it does legitimate complaints, which leads to the system being bogged down. To someone being abused, an inefficient system is indistinguishable from an ineffective one.
People have mentioned LoL's Tribunal system as a sort of peer review. How does that work?
0
Options
CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
I don't wanna live in a world where reciting a Louis CK joke or a Misfits lyric could get me arrested or fined by some culture-less swine who doesn't understand. There have to be provisions for hyperbole and sarcasm and art, otherwise 1984 comes true.
I like the idea of applying current harassment/stalking/hate-speech/whatever laws to the internet. I'm not a lawyer so maybe they'd need some rejiggering, but I think it's a decent idea to start with.
People always go so self-righteous on this point, calling on the ghost of George Orwell to ward off evil, but I mean you already realize that when you go out in public your speech is greatly curtailed, right?
Like I love Louis CK as much as the next lady, but if I went quoting his rape jokes at work I'd probably be put under discipline and that's not a bad thing.
Similarly, if you went to a bar and started yelling "Compulsively you'll die... I hate people!" a bouncer would have your butt out the door in short order, no matter how cultured you are.
Cambiata on
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
People have mentioned LoL's Tribunal system as a sort of peer review. How does that work?
At the end of a matchmade game of LoL you are given the ability to report (or honor) your fellow players, as well as write a description of why the report was sent. If a player receives a sufficient number of reports over their games (ie: a significantly higher number than the average player) they are sent to The Tribunal, which is a basically a player-jury. Any level 30 LoL player can judge a case on the tribunal, though they don't get to choose their case, it is selected randomly from the list of available cases. The tribunal system selects a set of cases it considers representative of the player in question, and the judges can vote to either Punish or Pardon. If enough people vote to Punish, the system can mete our temp bans, and eventually the cases are escalated to Riot for permanent bans.
It's a fairly simple system in concept, but in practice there are a lot of little details behind it that make it work and prevent abuse. For example, if a tribunal judge consistently votes against the majority (ie: their vote is for the 'wrong' outcome), their votes in the tribunal eventually start to count for less and less. This is to weed people out of the system who choose randomly or use standards too far away from the community's standards.
Overall, the system works all right, but LoL as an environment is still incredibly toxic to play in. So it's probably not an answer on its own.
As far as legislation - well, harassment is already illegal in most places. Actually enforcing those laws in web communities runs into the same problems as enforcing internet piracy laws. It tends to bring disproportionate punishments down on a few people (ie: Justin Carter), while letting the problem largely continue unabated. We just aren't able to enforce speech laws across the internet very effectively. Even if you put a watch one online community, the people you are trying to target will just move to another.
Social pressure also doesn't seem to be very effective outside of the community the pressure is coming from. PA people can effectively apply social pressure to PA people, but out words have much less sway with Reddit and 4Chan (and conversely, theirs have less sway with us.) The further you get from someone's community, the less effective your social pressure is going to be - this is part of why harassment is worse in games where you never expect to see the person you're harassing again. It's not very effective to apply social pressure to random teammates in a LoL match or FPS lobby.
So what's the answer? I honestly have no idea. I've never heard a suggestion for solving this problem that sounded to me like it would be effective. I absolutely think we should put pressure on companies to clean up their individual communities; there's no reason Live or YouTube should be the cesspools that they are. But that doesn't really solve the problems of mass internet harassment as we saw with Hepler, Sarkessian, et al. Those people aren't coordinating on Xbox Live, they're coordinating on 4Chan and Reddit, and if you shut down 4Chan and Reddit there will be a hundred other communities springing up to replace them.
Posts
Nobody yells the n-word at a scarf they're knitting together or threatens to rape its children, is my reaction.
well... maybe Wolfman does?!
:shock:
The weird thing is that I don't see very many idiots here in the first place, fewer than even aggressive moderation would account for. Do we have an unusually low rate of attracting new people balanced out by a high retention rate, or something?
Stitches get Stitches
Second.
I think it holds true if you modify it a little. I'd say its:
Arsehole + Platform + Anonymity = total fuckwad.
A normal person absolutely doesn't spontaneously become a fuckwad just because they're given an audience and anonymity. A certain type of person might though. Effectively its like the good old "fire triangle". You need heat, fuel and oxygen to create a fire. Remove any of those elements and the fire goes out.
What we have on these forums is a system whereby if someone reveals themselves to be an arsehole, the platform (their ability to post) is removed. I can't say I frequent any forums where you're forced to reveal your real name or other personal details, but I'd bet good money that death threats are less of an issue on a forum where moderators can see that "MastaKilla117" is Bob Jonson of 141 Harvard Crescent, Springfield.
Ideally we'd remove the "Arsehole" from the equation, click our heels and turn the offenders into friendly, productive posters. But if you know a way to do that, then you can probably apply your godlike superpowers to much more than fighting trolls on internet forums.
*edit* Oh sweet tapdancing jesus, there is actually a "MastaKilla117".
The worst behavior typically happens in places where there is no one in power who can "fix" things -- YouTube comments, random public game servers when there's no admin logged on, etc. The community-wide positive/negative reinforcement system is an excellent solution.
I like the one where all the negative-rated people end up being pushed into servers together away from everyone else.
Oversight isn't going to catch everything though. People need to report things as they're seen (which is why, prior to the report button, forumers here were encouraged to PM a mod when she was going on). Having a staff big enough to watch YouTube comments as they are posted is an insane proposition. But again they have a means of reporting people who cross the line. I think.
Bioware is not a company that takes criticism. They pretty much delete any forum posts that aren't heaping them praise. This already creates undercurrent of frustration. They hire a writer who complains about gameplay in games, and then they make a couple of shitty sequels. Now how does said writer respond to her critics? Does she acknowledge their complaints in any way? No, she says they are simply jealous because she has a game industry job and a vagina, and they want both but can't get either. Of course she got abused. This doesn't mean death threats are in any way warranted, but how can you not expect some level of blowback? And its not like these threats are in any way unique to games. Name an industry figurehead that is in public view, and he/she has probably received threats of some kind. Threats from angsty adolescents who are upset at the writing quality of a video game rank with threats from retirees that spend time coupon clipping for discounts for the least likely to ever do a goddamn thing. Has ANYONE ever attacked a game dev for their work?
I think Phil Fish is manic-depressive. If not, he is just a special snowflake hypocrite who can't take any fraction of the criticism he himself dishes out.
Disproportionate response. "I don't like violence in video games." ironically is like a red flag to a bull around these parts. Of course she got abused? Come on man. Here's a writer doing what they love and suddenly they hit the intersection of an innocent interview explaining her personal beliefs that intersects with a perfect storm of nerds unsatisfied with a somewhat shallowly produced sequel (I still liked it personally) and they're crucified. So they got defensive, then they got death threat calls to their kids? I think if you can't defend the end result of that tunnel of rage you are on shaky ground trying to defend the beginning or middle of it. Angsty adolescents might look a lot scarier as anonymous phone calls and crazy things are done every day.
Bioware isn't required to "respond to criticism" and deleting negative comments on their forums, if they do so, isn't some sort of justification. If the writer made rude comments, it's not a justification or an explanation or a mitigating factor when considering the blowback she received.
And regarding actual danger, this sort of thing can get you killed by the police.
I'm pretty sure everything you wrote there is an example of the crap we want out of our community.
If I hate a game, I might write somewhere why I hate it, at worst suggest that the developer is lacking some required skill or talent, and that's about it. Attacking the developer? That's ridiculous.
This is a relatively self policing community as well. I've been on both ends of it: Saying something stupid and being admonished, and admonishing those saying something stupid. The mods here really don't have to get involved in every case of shit-headism, because we as a community tend to handle it up to the point where we cant. In general, the admonishment of your peers will always mean more than the admonishment of "the man".
At least for me, when I've opened my big mouth and stuck my foot three feet down my throat, the backlash of my peers caused far more behavior modification on my part than any infraction I've ever received.
The problem with that theory of course is that the internet is a giant echo chamber. Even if a total shit heel doesn't find acceptance here, he can go to 4Chan, or Something Awful, or some sub-Reddit, and find an echo chamber that will find his horrendous behavior amusing and encourage it.
I don't disagree. You need the strong arm of the law to be the punch when it's required, but I still feel that self policing is best when it can be used.
SA must have changed a lot since I last hung around. When I was last there, making raciest, sexist comments was still very much en vogue. Joking about rape and such were certainly not out of bounds. This was years ago though, so it wouldn't shock me if a new crop of mods/admins had come in and cleaned the place up.
When people are reminded that there are boundaries, and when they generally conform to RL social norms of polite public behavior, community members feel a lot more comfortable holding to account those who step outside those boundaries. Moderation provides the atmosphere, and over time pseudonymous communication creates a reputation that becomes valuable on its own, much as happens in RL. One key component to this is that accretion of reputation. We're not anonymous here... we're pseudonymous at minimum and in many cases known in RL as well.
I think self moderation is the ideal and the reality for most places is just harsh moderation. Riot's steps to help the community with the tribunal and high profile player bans basically amount to stepping in and saying 'look at how little your account is worth if you're a dick' and it really honestly makes the community a bit less suck.
She did tweet that, but she took her Twitter down during all the abuse. Since the account no longer exists, I can only point to referent articles.
More importantly, someone lashing out at haters in a not-great way themselves in no way excuses or justifies the ridiculous bullshit in the first place. Her entirely reasonable position was that it's a virtue to let gamers skip past cutscenes and conversations if they just want to get back to the gameplay, and so there should be a corresponding way to let gamers skip past combat if they just want to get back to the story (especially since combat in most games focused on writing has been shitty and tedious, e.g., Planescape, Vampire, Alpha Protocol, Dragon Age). There is zero connection between that and any general problem with DA2 or ME3 (which she didn't even write for), so the idea that she didn't measuredly reply to insane internet histrionics (charitably referred to as "complaints") is a non-starter.
And I don't think it's a consequence of dev feedback, either. Bioware gets tons of shit because they have more exposure, not because they handle it poorly. Do you think that the Black Ops 2 devs getting death threats over slight weapon rebalances is because of the way they interact with the community, or is the problem entirely on the part of idiots issuing death threats?
Moreover I suspect the frequent "it's just dorks on the internet, no point worrying about it" refrain can only come from someone who hasn't experienced anything similar. When people are inserting themselves into your life through the phone ringing off the hook or details about where your kids go to school, you can see if you laugh it off or if you instead worry that the bigger the crazy storm the greater the chance one actual psycho will be included.
In any case, that's a serious tangent. Regardless of what she said, the abuse was uncalled for, and bringing someones children in to a discussion is beyond unacceptable. It's the mark of a sociopath.
I was in meetings earlier, but as I was sort of spacing off and thinking, I got to wondering: How much responsibility do we need to start foisting on to social media sites to police this sort of behavior? Is it not at least somewhat incumbent on the Facetwittergrambooks of the world to not allow this sort of clearly unacceptable speech on their site? If I walked up to someone in person and screamed "I'M GOING TO KILL YOUR CHILDREN", I'd be arrested for making bodily threats. I know the laws are very different when it comes to online speech, but at what point do we as a community demand that these sites begin to police this behavior?
This becomes even more prevalent when you see the repeated news stories about kids bullied on these sites killing themselves. What level of responsibility do the sites themselves have to remove this sort of speech and remove the offenders from the associated communities? And what level of responsibility do we as the users of these sites have to demand they do so?
I don't have the answer, I'm just posing the question.
e: This obviously doesn't cover or solve people calling her house, but there are already real world avenues for that sort of harassment. That is clearly illegal and someone could get the police involved in that case.
As a telecom employee, I sometimes have to notify screaming customers that it's a federal offense for them to threaten me (which has the desired result of those people calming the fuck down).
Obviously something like that is a lot harder to pin down when it comes to the internet.
We had that story about that LOL player arrested for making inflamatory comments on facebook, and pretty much universally the gaming community was mad that he got arrested instead of being mad that he hadn't discovered before the age of 16 that talking shit in public has consequences.
Since disturbing the peace is just a misdemeanor, arrest was obviously over-harsh in that case. But what if people started being fined $700 for telling other people that you are going to rape them on the internet or Xbox live? Would it result in behavior modification assuming it could/would be carried out by local government?
Issuing fines for threats is a start, suggestion wise. I dunno if $700 is right though, that's pretty danged high. People get fined for less for traffic violations - something is actually physically harmful.
How is threatening to kill or rape someone or their children online any different than calling them on the phone an doing the same? In the latter case, it's already illegal and you'll already get arrested.
I wasn't sure what the fines were for disturbing the peace, so I looked it up and the internet said $700.
Why it costs more than traffic fines I dunno.
And disturbing the peace, if you read the link I posted, speech alone was counted as a citeable disturbance:
How do we determine what counts as acceptable and unacceptable speech, though? Especially on a service as confusingly disconnected as Twitter, where comments are forced to be short and are only loosely strung together into a conversation, I don't know how anyone has any idea what is being said on there, let alone whether someone is being sarcastic or is making true death threats. Perhaps we need to simply not be tolerant of sarcasm that errs so far on the side of a threat, but what if the context is actually a video game?
Imagine if the tweet to which I am responding is from a friend about playing CoD later, and I respond with "I'll shoot you in the face tonight, bitch!" Is that actually hate speech or bad? I would say no, assuming that I am talking to my friend. If I were posting in response to someone who works on CoD, on the other hand, talking about game balance, it would be unacceptable. But, how do we make that call properly on a large scale? Will a report button and removing someone's account, after review by a moderator, work on Twitter or YouTube? Is it already there and not working, or just not really being enforced?
Each time you make a serious threat over the Steam system, Valve randomly removes one game from your library.
World peace within a decade.
I like the idea of applying current harassment/stalking/hate-speech/whatever laws to the internet. I'm not a lawyer so maybe they'd need some rejiggering, but I think it's a decent idea to start with.
On the internet, they would flood the reports for everything imaginable. Impersonate people to make false reports, and generally make it an impossible system that'd further just require huge manpower to accomplish almost nothing.
That's pretty much the hard part there. How do you make something that works online, that isn't easily abused and generally a huge waste of money?
You probably need to rely on the recipient to determine intent, e.g., the report button. I don't have any concrete thoughts on it but I like Microsoft's idea of a reputation system where you can shunt people into different communication circles based on their behavior-over-time. Maybe a version for Twitter would start a new user at 0 rep, or negative rep if attached to a disposable email address, and accumulate rep for time active and activity and follows by other high-rep users. Tweets reported and reviewed as harassment would incur huge reputation penalties, and users would be able to modulate the tweets that show up in their feed by blocking people below a certain rep and/or with a certain number of reported instances. Reports would be sorted in moderator's queues by the rep of the reporter, to diminish the ability of trolls to make dummy accounts and repeatedly flag everything they object to.
I think systems that work in parallel with moderators like that are necessary for high-traffic operations like Twitter, because simply relying on a limited number of moderators reviewing flagged cases lends equal power to disposable trolls as it does legitimate complaints, which leads to the system being bogged down. To someone being abused, an inefficient system is indistinguishable from an ineffective one.
People have mentioned LoL's Tribunal system as a sort of peer review. How does that work?
People always go so self-righteous on this point, calling on the ghost of George Orwell to ward off evil, but I mean you already realize that when you go out in public your speech is greatly curtailed, right?
Like I love Louis CK as much as the next lady, but if I went quoting his rape jokes at work I'd probably be put under discipline and that's not a bad thing.
Similarly, if you went to a bar and started yelling "Compulsively you'll die... I hate people!" a bouncer would have your butt out the door in short order, no matter how cultured you are.
At the end of a matchmade game of LoL you are given the ability to report (or honor) your fellow players, as well as write a description of why the report was sent. If a player receives a sufficient number of reports over their games (ie: a significantly higher number than the average player) they are sent to The Tribunal, which is a basically a player-jury. Any level 30 LoL player can judge a case on the tribunal, though they don't get to choose their case, it is selected randomly from the list of available cases. The tribunal system selects a set of cases it considers representative of the player in question, and the judges can vote to either Punish or Pardon. If enough people vote to Punish, the system can mete our temp bans, and eventually the cases are escalated to Riot for permanent bans.
It's a fairly simple system in concept, but in practice there are a lot of little details behind it that make it work and prevent abuse. For example, if a tribunal judge consistently votes against the majority (ie: their vote is for the 'wrong' outcome), their votes in the tribunal eventually start to count for less and less. This is to weed people out of the system who choose randomly or use standards too far away from the community's standards.
Overall, the system works all right, but LoL as an environment is still incredibly toxic to play in. So it's probably not an answer on its own.
As far as legislation - well, harassment is already illegal in most places. Actually enforcing those laws in web communities runs into the same problems as enforcing internet piracy laws. It tends to bring disproportionate punishments down on a few people (ie: Justin Carter), while letting the problem largely continue unabated. We just aren't able to enforce speech laws across the internet very effectively. Even if you put a watch one online community, the people you are trying to target will just move to another.
Social pressure also doesn't seem to be very effective outside of the community the pressure is coming from. PA people can effectively apply social pressure to PA people, but out words have much less sway with Reddit and 4Chan (and conversely, theirs have less sway with us.) The further you get from someone's community, the less effective your social pressure is going to be - this is part of why harassment is worse in games where you never expect to see the person you're harassing again. It's not very effective to apply social pressure to random teammates in a LoL match or FPS lobby.
So what's the answer? I honestly have no idea. I've never heard a suggestion for solving this problem that sounded to me like it would be effective. I absolutely think we should put pressure on companies to clean up their individual communities; there's no reason Live or YouTube should be the cesspools that they are. But that doesn't really solve the problems of mass internet harassment as we saw with Hepler, Sarkessian, et al. Those people aren't coordinating on Xbox Live, they're coordinating on 4Chan and Reddit, and if you shut down 4Chan and Reddit there will be a hundred other communities springing up to replace them.