First, I appreciate you calmly and rationally explaining your side of the story. I choose to believe you're telling the truth, and I sympathize.

But I'd sympathize more if you hadn't said this:

"simply because it might possibly maybe cause someone at some point to poke fun at that person"

I happen to agree with a lot of what you said in point 4, but that right there is far too flippant. To understand the reasoning, try putting yourself in the shoes of someone who's been shamed and possibly abused for their feelings and/or identity their whole life, and imagine what they must expect to happen any time they dare to be open about them. Then imagine how it would seem for someone they don't know and don't trust to demand that they be open at a time they're not prepared for it.

There's a big difference between encouraging your girlfriend, who presumably has rational reasons to trust you that she can use to counter her fears, and badgering someone you barely know online. The stakes, even if you don't believe they're the same as violence, are still loads higher than just "poking fun." That's a completely unfair minimization of other people's experience. Please apologize.

~Neshomeh

Honestly, I will admit that you tend to badger people. OTOH, that's not a crime. And the issue of whether or not it was made clear to you that you should stop was one I raised with the mods. At the time, I eventually sided with them, but... I'm having second thoughts. I dunno. I will continue to reserve judgement on whether you should be unbanned or anything, because I genuinely am not sure, but there are some things I wanted to say.

Namely this:

Grimal, do I think that some of your actions were inappropriate or wrong? Yes. Absolutely. I'm not sure they warranted a ban (as I said, I'm abstaining from that), but I don't believe you were perfect.

Do I feel that the mods would have been more forgiving of your, deliberately or no (I genuinely think the mods are trying to do their best, and I do applaud them, despite what I'm about to say), if you were more politically aligned with them? Yes. Absolutely.

I believe it was Nova who said that if Grimal should be banned, he isn't the only one. I concur. There are others who have committed acts I feel are similar. (with the caveat that I never read #heavy_stuff. So I cannot speak for what went on there, only the act that, allegedly, actually got Grimal banned).

It was some time ago, long enough that I'm not willing to submit it as any more then an anecdote, as I fear my emotions may have amplified it, but on the first night in the Discord, another member gave me what felt very much like a third degree over a philosophical disagreement. Had it not been for some private discussions with several other members, there is a possibility that I would have left, for fear that I would be unwelcome for my opinions. Thankfully, this turned out not to be the case. Again, it felt like a third degree, but it may not have been that extreme, I was a skittish newbie at the time and this was more than half a year ago at this point. Don't take this as evidence of wrongdoing, more as an indication that some of the more strongly political characters on the discord are more than capable of scaring people off.

In any case, from my perspective, the mods have been less willing to go after both longstanding community members and those who agree with them for violation of community standards. I don't think this is deliberate: I think it's just simple bias of the sort that is present in every human being on earth. But it is not helped by the fact that moderator power is centralized in very few hands: PoorCynic is rarely online, so most of the time, our moderators consist of two occupants of a single house in a single city, who tend to agree with one another a lot.

In effect, we do not have a council, as the board does. We have a pair of benevolent dictators. Dictators who are trying very hard to get it right, but dictators all the same. And not necessarily ones who always represent the will of the community as a whole (although it is hard to say for sure): I know for a fact that I was not the only one who questioned Grimal's ban.

Before we go any further, I would once again like to emphasize that I don't hate the mods. I don't think they're evil. In fact, again, I feel they are doing a largely admirable job. But they're just two people often of one mind. That's not their fault, but I feel it can create problems, contrasting with the larger pool of administrators we have on the board—especially in light of the fact that any regular member will be afraid to challenge someone who can get them banned, even if they think that person is wrong about something.

Finally, I do want to address one thing here that I definitely think was wrong. Perhaps the only thing that I can entirely say was so. That thing is that Grimal was not really given a reason for his ban. That is absolutely a problem. Everyone at least deserves to at least know why they were banned, and I suggest we adopt a policy about this in the future. Regardless of whether or not it was just, his ban felt abrupt, unfair, and arbitrary, even from the perspective of other members. Had I not had an extensive conversation with a mod afterwards, I would still summarize their reasoning—even AFTER the explanation Grimal didn't get—as "they were tired and he was annoying."

So better explanation of mod actions, both to the people they are acting on and to the rest of the members, need to be a thing, so that we can understand an action is just, and also because (and this part may not be necessary at present—I still believe that are mods are generally pretty good mods) it leads to better moderation: having to write a statement of reasoning forces you to think harder about a ban, and if you can't write one, the ban may not, in fact, be just.

Hey, no worries -- apology accepted, and I hope you continue on with the hobby you enjoy.

My main problem in this matter was when Maslab kicked Grimalkinii because it was 'bad for his blood pressure'. Obviously I don't know the entire decision making process, but was that kick discussed, and was going to happen anyway, just with a really bad reasoning behind it when it was done, or was it an act done just by Maslab? Because if it's the former I'd understand, but if it was the latter than I would say that that does not constitute (in my books) 'fairly enforcing the rules'. I haven't had a problem with Maslab at any other point, but that one is just making me question whether I personally would be happy to be in a server with him as a mod without constraint. I'm sorry if that sounds a little harsh, but it's true.

Novastorme

I'm not feeling huge support for a review survey, but since no one's objected, either, I'll put something together as soon as I can—next weekend if I can't manage it sooner. I reckon it's just as good a thing (if not better) to do later as it would be right stat now.

And I agree that more mods sounds like a necessary and good thing. I'd invite someone else to spearhead a nomination and election process for that, possibly in its own thread.

~Neshomeh

First of all, I support this survey, especially since complaints like the ones you mentioned came up. That's not good, and we really should address that type of behavior.

Now, here's some things I think that anyone on the Discord should be (and generally is) doing:
- If people are breaking the Constitution (or, in the more common case, the Discord-specific adenda like rot13-ing NSFW stuff), others should ask them to please stop, edit their massage, or whatever else is needed to fix this.
- If people are leaning on you as described above, you should generally do what's being asked (assuming that the people doing the leaning have a point, since this isn't always the case).
- As a specialization, if discussion is getting to the point where people want it dropped, taken to PMs, or moved to the Board, the participants should go along with that.

The community in general should recognize that moderating a real-time chat will involve making judgment calls. This doesn't mean there can't be appeals or discussions (see, for example, this thread), just that we shouldn't go after moderators for moderating unless it's clearly becoming abuse of power.

The moderators' jobs, from my perspective, include the following:
- The moderators should keep the chat safe (and having handled that, fun) for all* (using Nesh's footnote) participants.
  - As a subpoint, if someone's having a safety or harassment concern, I'd say it's fine for the moderators to bring it up/tell someone to knock their behavior off instead of the victim.
- The moderators should take action to enforce the rules if the usual community-based mechanisms aren't working (and it's preferred if the moderators just lean on people like everyone else instead of putting their mod hats if possible).
  - It's unclear what form this enforcement should take. Kicks are an option (with the expectation that you can come right back, because it's just a very stern "knock it off".)
- If there seem to be trolls or people acting in bad faith on the Discord, moderators should remove them.
- Moderators should be transparent about what they're doing and remain consistent and fair (up to the fact that they're human and all).

I'd also put in a vote for adding another mod, especially someone who isn't on Pacific time.

- Tomash

And a suggestion- there are currently three mods total, only two of whom are regular visibly active. We could use more- at the moment, it feels like I'm always on call and only rarely have backup. This is not a good way to mod- as we're discussing the role of mods, we should also talk about how many there should be.

IIRC, you and Pentagon appeared at the same time, both of you got into politics rather quickly, and neither of you made introductory posts of much note. This was an immediate red flag raise for me, because staying in the Discord is, like you said, not "the primary means of engagement with the PPC... as a whole."

And I personally wish we could avoid political discussions and talk of tragedies entirely on here. But I understand why that isn't necessarily feasible. It's just that I come here to escape such things rather than be surrounded by them.
But not everyone copes that way. I can understand why some may need a space to talk of these things safely. And therein lies the rub.
Namely that one person's coping mechanism or healing may be another's trigger.
And both have theoretically an equal right to speak and be heard.

To start off, I'd like to make some distinctions. I'll define "light politics" to be things like "[Country] is debating a net neutrality bill.", "[Country] just [legalized/banned] [gay marriage/weed/...]", "There's an election on/Here's some results." and so on. It probably also includes things like discussing political ideology and who you're thinking of voting for, so long as it's not straying too far into heavy stuff.

Another type of content under discussion is what I'll call "heavy stuff", which is usually also political in nature. Heavy stuff encompasses things like shootings, bombings, police brutality, and so on, and probably the follow-on discussion.

From what I can tell in both this thread and elsewhere, light politics isn't something we appear to be objecting to. It seems to fall into about the same category as "[Media company] just [announced/cancelled] [thing].". Therefore, I don't think we should really do anything about them, other than clarifying that if you have someone asking for a conversation/posting (especially about this sort of stuff) to stop or be moved elsewhere, that needs to happen.

In contrast, heavy stuff is a more divisive topic. Some people want to talk about it. Others plain don't want to see it. So, how do we resolve this? I'd like to point to an analogous situation - NSFW (or near-NSFW) badfic quotes. Some people want to see them, others (like Silenthunder) don't. The solution we hit on there is to rot13 that sort of thing so people trying to avoid it can do so.

I again propose the same solution. Heavy stuff (which someone needs to try and define more concretely, please) should be posted under rot13 with a warning, and, for lack of a better term, "heavy" discussion about it (discussion that's still referring a lot to the heavy thing in a concrete way) should also stay under rot13.

I again oppose labeling a chunk of the Discord "politics" or "politics OK" because we tried that and it blew up in our face. If anyone has reasons they think it'll be different this time, I'd be more than happy to hear them.

tl;dr: rot13 for tragedies and other heavy stuff, and back off on politics when people ask you to

- Tomash

As for politics... I think a solution might be similar to what we might do with the Categories. If we could, perhaps, separate some channels off as ones where discussions about politics could be tolerated, without making a #politics. The idea behind this being that it would allow people who didn't want to get into politics to mute certain areas and avoid that kind of thing, but it wouldn't be the kind of please-talk-about-politics-here thing that #heavy_stuff was. And, I think, some sort of stop button or threshold. Like, calling a vote or something and over a certain threshold stopping the discussion and moving on to something else.

Beyond that, I'm staying out of this. I'm exhausted, and I'm got way too many irons in the fire to worry about this at present.

One thing I've been learning over the past couple of years is that everything can be political in nature. Politics affects all of us, and it affects some of us more directly than others. Trying to ban all politics risks ignoring a crucial part of (at least some) people's lives, and I don't want to be part of a community that refuses to care about its members in that way.

Besides, the PPC is supposed to be a bit broader than just laughing at bad fan fiction. Ideally, we'd help each other write good stories with complex characters and worlds. Nobody's tried to talk about politics as it relates to writing fiction to my knowledge, but we don't want to discourage people from asking questions about writing. We should be doing the opposite.

I'm opposed to having two servers. The writing and community aspects of the PPC are rather intertwined, and I'd prefer to keep them together.

However, adding a #writing or similar would be a good idea, just to make it clear there's a place to discuss that sort of thing. I don't think we're in danger of having too many channels at the moment (too many channels can lead to channel-selection paralysis).

In addition, Discord recently added a "categories" system that lets you group channels. If we wanted to implement something like your split, we could possibly use the much lighter weight solution of grouping our channels some.

If anyone has any other suggestions for how to reorganize the chat, I'd invite them to post them here.

As to logs, Discord generally keeps a permanent record of anything that isn't deleted. However, unfortunately, the #heavy_stuff channel got deleted, which got rid of all the messages there. If we wanted editing and deletion-proof logs, there are bots for that (but there's also reasons that people might want things to be deletable - accidental/temporary posts of photos of themselves, for example).

- Tomash

When you point at the constitution here, it's not written in the context of creating badfic for missions. That's been done in the past, several times. When it says to write goodfic, it means... you know, fanfic-fanfic.

I'm otherwise staying out of this conversation because I don't want to get embroiled in more drama.

I'm not sure that the desire to not talk to someone should be absolute. Of course, that's probably why mediation is in the constitution.

There was this guy I knew who said he wanted to be just like Christopher Columbus. When the situation was finally resolved it turned out it meant that he wanted to do something worthy of being remembered as a hero. He was just going off of what he was taught in school.

One girl in the group knew the true history where Columbus was a sociopathic monster. She called him some pretty nasty names without explaining why she was mad. The guy kept his cool and asked her why she was going off on him, but she walked away and demanded that he not come near her.

He was bothered about it, but there was nothing he could do. The girl told others that the guy wanted to torture people that he didn't consider human. It wasn't resolved until after he was beaten up.

Was it actually clear to him? Did he get an explicit "No, I will not explain. Stop asking." or a "I am very uncomfortable talking about this, please stop pestering me." or even a "I don't think they're comfortable talking about it, so drop it"? I don't know about what happened in the HS channel, but the clear, explicit request to stop didn't seem to be present in the final ban. Or maybe I missed it.

I do not intend to mean that a person deserves it for not being clear about their refusal nor to mean that they are obligated to do so, but it would give Grimalkinii a clear message and if he kept pestering them, then Grimalkinii's ban would be less questionable (saying this because some people have objected to the ban at first).

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KJdkOGfxDVEbtPBv0rLO-KXNCygyxzAT22Up47l4Vw/edit#heading=h.8nkdfsmmuocp

I don't have logs from the #heavystuff channel- I don't know if someone else grabbed them. Suffice to say, it was very fractious, although I strongly object to Grimalkinii's description of it as "dogpiling"- while everyone disagreed with them and Pentagon (who was a pretty obvious troll), there were multiple times where people said "hang on, let's let them reply".

It was rather disappointing, and having a channel for angry political arguing was wearing on everyone in the server, so we dropped it.

And as to the incident in which it is alleged that I took something as an "attack on my person"? I remember no such incident, and have searched through every message Grimalkinii made on the Discord in an attempt to either find it or jog my memory. The closest I could find was in the discussion of "prejudice and -phobia", which is in the link I posted earlier.

The discussion re. writing your own badfic: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xfG-7GJNv9whz2052QgBjIOm36zznF58hkKvhc7xpII/edit#

As can be seen, there were a lot of reasonable points given too- I quote Calliope herself:

Calliope, Master Critfailer-02/21/2018
And Grim... yeah, I do see your point. I can so see how you get that, and I'm beginning to think you're kind of right. But the concept of "I need a thing to happen, how can I make it happen in a way that fits the overall arc" is something that all writers deal with - my method is "if I can't find what I need in a way that fits all the criteria needed" (which are that it has to be in a fandom both myself and the cowriter of this pair know, it has to be reasonably short, and it has to have a way to be non-combat-oriented in the takedown) "I will make the situation happen myself".

Which was, in my opinion, at least as nuanced as Grimakiini's position of:

Grimalkinii-02/21/2018
you're essentially engineering a situation so that what you want to happen can happen by writing your own fanfic and then writing a mission based on it. that's not really improving your writing in any regard.

The "she can do what she wants" started coming up not as an immediate response, but when Grimalkinii fell back to just repeating his same points without adding anything to the discussion.

(Also, Grimalkinii, if/when you read this- why did you use they/them pronouns for me consistently through your post, except in the "attack on her person" quote?)