The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

My off-the-cuff mental definitions, probably colored by all the teasing I had to put up with from Kindergarten through Junior High:

Harassment: Anger-fueled incitement of arguments intended to challenge and ultimately break down the "opponent's: viewpoints.

Bullying: Acts of irritating someone to provoke a reaction from them, mainly out of curiosity or a sense of entertainment at seeing that reaction.

Stalking: A very long term form of surveillance, with the intent of eventually gaining some goal/reward from the one being stalked. (Though admittedly, online stalking wouldn't have quite as concrete a goal as physical stalking, and may at its core be a more long term, targeted form of the other two terms.

—doctorlit hits his weekend tonight, and can finally contribute to this thread more tomorrow.

So, you know those stills from Star Wars with the mangled English subtitles? Well, they're back... and this time, they're in Middle-earth.

Have a compilation here.

"Shut it, Seaweed Brain!"

Annabeth Chase glared at her boyfriend. She and Percy were standing outside Cabin 7, looking at the piece of paper pinned to a noticeboard next to the door.

"You're just jealous", replied Percy.

"I still don't get why we have to put on a theatrical production at camp this summer," said Annabeth. "It's not like being good at singing and dancing will help us against the next monster we encounter. And even if we have to, why are we doing such an outdated and boring show?"

"Lighten up a bit, Wise Girl," responded Percy. "It may not exactly be my favourite either, but Will Solace got to pick the show, and since he's chief counselor for Cabin 7 I guess we're stuck with it."

"The fact you got selected for the lead role wouldn't have anything to do with it, would it?" asked Annabeth sarcastically.

"Hey, I happen to think I make a pretty good Pirate King" said Percy. "And just because you didn't even get a part is no reason to be jealous. Not everyone can have a good singing voice".

"Percy. I am a warrior, dammit. I do not need to be able to sing well in order to defeat you in the next game of Capture the Flag... and I guarantee you that I will." Annabeth's grey eyes flashed dangerously at the gently mocking expression on Percy's face.

"Easy there, Wise Girl," laughed Percy. "You are the queen of all warriors, and there's no one at camp I'd rather have by my side in a fight... but please don't make me ever have to listen to you sing again!".

He stuck out his tongue and ran off along the line of cabins, leaving Annabeth fuming in his wake.

"Oh you'll pay for that, Seaweed Brain!" she shouted after him, and started off in pursuit.

Behind her, the paper pinned to the noticeboard fluttered in the breeze. It read:

Cast List for Camp Half-Blood Summer Musical:
Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance".

I don't have any coherent thoughts abut the proposed definitions right now.

However, there's something I'd like to point out. As Sergio pointed out elsewhere, people can be unaware of their behavior. Specifically, I believe that it's possible for Boarder X to harass/stalk/bully/... Boarder Y without any idea that they're doing it.

I don't think we need to be calling down the banhammer on people who honestly didn't realize they were doing bad things without prior warning. If nothing else, people here have their Article 7 chance to stop and apologize. This means that, before we hurl someone out the door for harassment/bullying/..., they need to have been clearly and explicitly warned that they were harassing/bullying/... someone, which includes telling them what behavior of theirs constituted harassment/bullying/... . If someone gets a warning like that and keeps doing the bad things, we can (and should) start talking about bans and the like.

I'm not saying the victim has to give this warning. But someone does.

... than what I intended to. I am not looking for anyone else to view me as able to act rationally. I am looking for approval from my own eyes. When I say I must prove it, I mean to myself.

On private discussion

I agree with a lot of folks that most sorts of private coordination aren't a problem. For example, there's nothing wrong with taking something you're going to propose to the community (like, say, a new FAQ section or a vote) and running it past a few people first to polish it up and check if it seems sensible. In addition, getting advice about something you're planning to do or say can be a very good thing. It's like beta reading for social interactions, and I don't think we should discourage that.

However, there are some sorts of private coordination that aren't good. One of the big ones I have a problem with is "trial by rumor mill". This is where people are having conversations behind someone's back about how they're a bad person (or a bully, a jerk, etc.) that create a group within the PPC that thinks "X is a [bad person, bully, ...]".

These trials by rumor mill are bad. They're bad for the community, since they lead to (eventual) drama and ganging up on people, or even the formation of pro-X and anti-X factions within the PPC. They're also rather useless, since it's a bit difficult to apologize, try to improve, explain yourself, or otherwise address concerns about your behavior if no one tells you there are problems. Also, from what I remember, this sort of thing has contributed to driving people out of the PPC, which shows that it's an issue that needs to be addressed.

So, we should ... not do this. However, doing things like this shouldn't unconditionally be grounds for a ban, especially it'd be rather hard to pin down or enforce a rule against it. I'm also not completely certain what we should do about these malignant subgroups when they form. My gut instinct is that we should calmly drag everything into the light so we can resolve it, but I think that merits further discussion, especially since there are tricky social considerations involved in slamming stacks of fuzzy allegations and attacks onto the Board.

PPC spaces

In the PPC, we have several spaces that we hang out in. The Board and the chat are the big ones, but there's several others, like the occasional game of Cards Against HQ or our former Minecraft server. We tend to self-segregate into these spaces, and this is, in general, fine (my long-term concerns about a Board-Discord culture split aside).

However, there is one sort of space I have a problem with: secret, long-term PPC spaces. That is, a space for PPCers to interact in, where they generally talk about the PPC, that's more than a temporary place for getting advice about something (or similar things like that), and that not everyone can join (if they want to). To give a concrete example: a PPC chat server for just you and your friends, especially if you don't tell everyone you're making it.

There's basically no good reason to make something like that. Don't do it. Seriously.

If you happen to hear about this type of space forming (it seems to happen every few years), please give whoever had the idea to do it a talking-to about how we don't do that here. If that doesn't work to stop it, bring it to the Board's attention so we can determine consequences as appropriate (probably not more than short taps with the banhammer if it's egregious and malicious).

On a clarifying note, private long-term spaces that aren't PPC related (say, everyone involved in an RPG putting together some sort of chat about the RPG to not clutter the Discord) are fine.

I'm going to second what Neshomeh said about how there's decisions and decisions, and how not every small thing needs to be exposed to the Board, especially if the decision is about something internal to a particular space (such as the fiddly details of what should be rot13'd in chat).

The chat

A lot of people (me included) have pointed out that the chat feels more private than the Board or the Wiki. There's also a common thought that this might contribute to bad behavior of some sort.

One aspect that makes chat feel more private, I think, is that you can't see what happened there historically without signing in. This is different from the Board and the Wiki, where anyone can quietly flip through the archives whenever they'd like.

Therefore, I propose that (assuming there aren't fatal technical obstacles to this, which I don't think there will be) we publish the Discord's logs somewhere public, so people can look through them without making it obvious.

Some of the advantages to this are:

1. The existence of a "click here for chat logs" button might temper a tendency to witchhunt or flame people who aren't around (I don't think this is something that happens super-frequently, but it has happened before, and this might contribute to it not happening again).

2. If some topic gets discussed both on the Board and in chat, the discussion on the Board can more easily refer to or be informed by what happened in chat. I expect that such discussions will (and maybe should) happen, since getting advice from whoever happens to be around is one of the things that chat is for. Of course, for major decisions, the discussion should be moved to the Board very quickly, but I don't think there's a problem with bothering chat with a "Does this seem like something we need to talk about or is it just me?" before writing the Board post.

3. It makes the Discord the same type of public as the Board and the Wiki are, so that the whole community can see all the public events that take place here if they want to. One reason this is important is that the goings-on in chat are part of the PPC's culture, and we don't hide our cultural artifacts or history. This is one of the reasons I proposed "best of Discord" threads about a month ago (unfortunately, the idea didn't take off).

A potential disadvantage is that there might be a chilling effect on the chat because it's a bit more obvious that everything's being logged. Publishing logs would also make it ever so slightly easier to go build cases against people (whether such cases are deserved or not), since it makes ancient chat logs a bit easier to go through.

Now, when it comes to this thread, there's been a request not to discuss it in the Discord, since that would move parts of the discussion off the record. I think it would be reasonable to relax the requirement slightly and say that, if you do discuss the thread in the Discord, please post the logs here on the Board shortly afterwards so we can get a clearer picture of how the metaphorical sausage that is community consensus is being formed.

- Tomash

I haven't posted because I didn't know what to say, but now I do.

Disrespecting your Betas:

Both of these are rude, and disrespectful, but not punishable, in my opinion. This conduct is not something we want to have, and we can chide the offender for acting as such. However, I really don't think actual punishment is necessary.

Bad Conduct as a Beta:

This is definitely worse than the above, but ultimately not punishable. At least, not the first few times. After all, the author doesn't have to accept the beta's ideas.

Not Taking Concrit:

-Again, this is annoying but not punishable.
-If this happens, the critic should just explain what they meant. If the author still wants to take their fic down, that's on them

Falling Short of PPC Standards Elsewhere:

In response to the first question, the PPC should act. Perhaps by suspending Permission if they have it, I like that idea. If they don't, I'm not sure what should be done. I feel that something should be done about it, though. It is rather the opposite of PPC values. In response to the second question, I'm not sure any response is necessary. Roleplay is meant to be fun, and so I think we would be entering the territory of policing if we said that PPC-ers couldn't have fun with canons in their roleplay.

I personally believe that not taking concrit, especially when there are big issues with the relevant piece, should not be acceptable in the PPC. That's one of the typical behaviours of the authors of the badfics we mock - if the same happens in an official PPC mission it would make us all hipocrites.

Of course I don't believe this to be grounds of banning someone from the PPC - however, if there are repeated quality issues and lack of taking concrit in a spinoff, we might want to tell its author to stop releasing missions (Permission Suspended?) until the issues are solved.

After all, I've only started posting today for that exact reason.

I do think there's value in discussing what we agree with and don't agree with in principle, though. If it turns out that what we've said in principle doesn't jive with how we've behaved regarding particular cases, that's an indication we need to rethink either our reaction to that case or our principles. Critical thinking with self-reflection is always a good thing.

Where I think this is going wrong is that only, like, ten people have commented so far, and only a handful on more than one or two issues. I know it's a heavy set of topics, and I respect that people may want to give it some thought before joining in. All the same, I am feeling frustrated about being one of the few to consistently make an effort at this sort of thing, knowing it may be perceived as me flaunting my authority.

Maybe more people will turn up over the weekend?

~Neshomeh

On Keeping Issues Private

No clue what can be done here. It's basically up to the person with a problem to decide for themselves whether they value trying to solve the problem more than not solving it. It's a matter of weighing the potential risks and rewards of each course of action, deciding what's worth it to you, and then living with the decision.

On Ignoring Complaints

Well... I agree with the text of the original post? Specific complaints should be discussed without jumping to conclusions.

I guess I should note that I think form matters, though. If you want to be taken seriously, it helps to present your concern in a serious, straightforward manner. You can't expect people to read your mind and magically know you have a serious problem if you only talk vaguely around it or act like you're joking or don't really care that much. It's also not particularly fair to throw a huge fit and then get offended when people suggest you might be overreacting.

On Never Even Joining Abandoning Discussion

... You know, I don't think I can talk about this without ranting right now. Too many personal feelings regarding recent (and current) events.

On Bearing Grudges

I think this refers up to Statute of Limitations and Keeping Issues Private. If you've got a problem with someone and you don't do anything to resolve it, at some point you have to accept the consequences of that decision and move on.

I don't think strictly encoding the "second chance" thing is probably wise. People are complicated, behavior is nuanced. A little more wiggle-room might be acceptable for someone with more challenges to overcome, less acceptable for someone who can reasonably be expected to know better.

It depends on the severity of the offense(s), too, though. Some things may exhaust the Board's collective patience more than others.

On Lack of Reform

Again, people are complicated, behavior is nuanced. Unrepentant bad behavior should certainly not be ignored, but backsliding, even repeated backsliding, on the part of someone who is legitimately doing their best might be worth tolerating if we find them otherwise agreeable. It's hard to encode this sort of thing into a specific response or set of responses. It's got to be case by case.

~Neshomeh

(Sorry for not taking part in this sooner, but I wanted to think carefully before writing anything)


I've seen a lot of abstraction, of "what ifs" in this thread - however, by what I've seen here, the problem is another, and it is the awareness of own's behaviour.

For example, during the doxxing incident many people believed they were doing nothing wrong, and some insisted on such a belief even after their fallacy had been brought out and explained.

This is not to say that we need to strike the people instead of the behaviours, but behaviours aren't an entity living on it own. There's a person behind it. And if that person (let's call them Boarder X) doesn't realize that their behaviour is a bad one, we're not getting rid of that behaviour by saying "behaviour X is wrong", because Boarder X doesn't believe they're doing Behaviour X and will keep going none the wiser.

So it could be a good idea to poke Boarder X and say "Boarder X, you're doing Bahaviour X. This is not good for Reason, can you do anything about it?". It would both make a good, non-abstracted example of the behaviour to avoid, resolve a potential ignored problem, and also give Boarder X a way to improve.

Does this make any sense, or am I rambling misunderstanding things as usual?

Contributing rationally to discussions does tend to help build the impression that you can behave rationally.

Just putting that out there.

~Neshomeh

It's not gonna make me walk out. (I should note I've been avoiding this thread because I don't think, after that and other events, that I've got any say in this until I can prove I can behave rationally.)

Broadly I agree, but I think it's important to note that the behaviors are unwanted by the target. It helps very much if they can say so explicitly (e.g. "Please leave me alone"; "Seriously, I said no, stop it"), but since that's not always the case, it may fall to observers to discern as much.

With bullying, I definitely agree that it has to be a pattern of behavior, not just one or two dissociated incidents. I also think it's generally understood as an attempt to empower the bully by disempowering or enforcing the (perceived) lower status of the victim. I think it's that aspect of power dynamics that sets bullying apart from just being a jerk.

Being a jerk is also bad, of course.

~Neshomeh

I tried very hard to make something that would address behaviours and not people, but so far I've had to directly address the people behind the behaviours twice, and there's at least a couple more behaviours that people are getting the wrong end of the stick with (including at least one person arguing that the person they accused didn't do anything wrong).

Do people think there is value in the discussion here, or should I just go ahead and list the people who've been pointed out as issues so we can address their behaviour directly?

Rereading VixenMage's post, I agree that we shouldn't be looking to punish people - but I also don't think we do. We ban people because we don't want their behaviour in the community and don't think they can change, not to make them feel bad. The only place I've seen anyone say differently was in the doxxing discussion, which wasn't about Constitution violations at all.

hS

1/ I'm not specifically saying it needs a ban, but I am saying that it should be stopped quite harshly.

2/ We're not talking about a hypothetical repeat of #ppc2, as it happens. We're talking about the actually-happened event where, at the time when it looked possible a bunch of people were going to be banned from the Discord over the witch-hunt, one of those people created a separate PPC Discord for the sole purpose of circumventing the ban. That's proven very hard to anonymise, and it looks like doing so has clouded the issue in your mind. I'm sorry for doing that.

3/ If people's response to you and Maslab trying to interact with the community in a way they don't like is to create an anti-you-and-Maslab server to get away from you, then no, I disagree that the problem is you and Maslab. That strikes me as victim-blaming. "People attacked you so you must have needed attacking" is a message I don't believe is ever valid.

hS

Okay, big assumption first: I am assuming that when you said that splitting attempts "should probably be whacked with a hammer" you're referring to the Banhammer and saying that we should codify such as our response to splitting. If this is not the case, please say so and feel free to disregard as much of this post add you like.

My point is more that the scenario you're talking about requires:

A: the creation of a seperate but still ostensibly PPC space
B: by a faction of existing PPCers
C: with intent to exclude some non-faction-members
And presumably D: with intent to enable organisation against the excluded

This seems to me to be a very specific sort of hypothetical, and I really dislike the idea of setting some sort of blanket punishment for situations that the punisher believes fits the criteria. This is for a couple of reasons:

1: I really don't think that a situation that specific is likely to repeat itself exactly enough that we can prescribe a course of action from this discussion
2: let's be honest, we're taking about a hypothetical repeat of #ppc2 and I don't think that applying the banhammer would have been the right thing to do then either
3: I dislike the idea of requiring punishment on that scale, it strikes me as very un-PPC.
4: a rule calling for application of the Banhammer by default encourages immediate action, which could easily happen before the Nameless Admin has the knowledge to react justly.

I am of the opinion that splitting is most likely to show up as a symptom of larger concerns, and should be investigated as such. If people are creating a new wiki to conspire against PPC Canon and the Permission Givers, that conspiracy and the reasons behind it are far more important than the artifact of the new wiki. If people are creating a new Discord server to get away from Maslab and my bombarding the server with cute cat pictures, the problem is really with Maslab and I, no?

So, you are correct, I do not believe that splitting is a situation that requires immediate action against the splitters. I believe that splitting is a very serious warning sign that things have gone wrong, and we need to get to the bottom of it and heal the rifts in our community with urgency. I believe that that healing may require banning, I don't want to take that tool off the table. But when something is breaking apart, just hitting it with a sledgehammer is usually not the right solution.

Ultimately, a split in technology is an echo of a split in the community. That has the potential to be a much, much more nuanced situation than "these people are Bad and must be banned."

Assuming authority: A long time ago (and it's far too close to bedtime to search for it), Neshomeh said something along the lines that even if permission givers don't have any official authority in this community, they still lead by example. This is unavoidable in any situation where one human has been doing something longer than another. (Imagine if, say, the PPC had never developed into a community, and the last three months' worth of newbies had happened across the deleted Original Series in 2017, and tried start a writing community around it. How would they even go about it? Actually, don't imagine, because now I'm starting to make an AU in my mind . . .) And in spite of leading by example, they still don't have official authority; if anyone here started trying to "take over," they would be summarily ignored, and we would all continue doing as we've been doing. The only punishment necessary would be the lack of trust and respect that individual had engendered for themselves. Moving on to the matter of "staking claims:" This does get a little difficult in a mass multiplayer setting, doesn't it? On the one hand, one person shouldn't be locking up design and development space from the rest of the community, other than their own characters and plot arcs. On the other hand, it would suck for an element to get changed by one author when another author was in the midst of working something that said something else . . . Full disclosure: I'm currently terrified that someone is going to name the head Flower of the Cafeteria before I can get a story draft I'm working on through beta stages to publish, because my story literally hinges on that Flower being the kind of Flower he is. (For the record, I did ask Vixenmage, the only other current author with Cafeteria characters, for permission before going forward with the story.) Ultimately, as another poster somewhere above or below said, if you're planning something in the setting, either do it, or don't complain. But please no one beat me to the Cafeteria head. Again, I don't think a formal punishment is necessary (assuming the claim-staking didn't devolve into bullying); the setting, and its other creators, will steam-roll past the offender.

Oldbie speak: I guess I covered a bit of this in the above section. I'll admit that I'm typically a bit mistrustful of newbies until I've gotten to know them for a while. But I've also seen times when (relative) newbies have joined in to debates, games, discussions, RPs, etc. with energy and strong will. I think we are quicker to chastise newbies when they do something out of line, but that's partly a form of showing our newest members the ropes of the community in which they find themselves. I've also seen oldbies talk each other down when one crossed the line. Ultimately, it's a matter of each of us reading the words/actions being said/done, and not the name behind them, and responding with an appropriate reply.

—doctorlit noticed earlier today that he passed over section 2. He will return to that next time he has time to type.

Though admittedly, I did forget there wasn't as much of a power structure on the Board. It's been a bit, yeah?

For the role-play question:

I personally was involved once in a role-play hosted by the concrit-"allergic" mediocrefic author that I keep talking about, and it did break canon a bit (anybody with me on the fact that Xenomorphs can't be tamed as pets?).

So, I'd like to offer the idea that as long as the person themselves didn't do anything canon-breaking (especially if they made the noble effort to fix the canon and got retconned out/ignored), they'll be okay. Otherwise, give them a short warning about sticking to canon in role-plays and discipline them further if the behavior continues; more points to them if they reply to the warning and acknowledge that they did something wrong. Also, keep in mind the host's rules and what was considered acceptable in the role-play: the one I was in was a big sci-fi crossover, and even beyond that, players were allowed to teleport stuff in from other universes or even real life (which I did, since I very much dislike having the Force as my only weapon.)

Make sure they understand the consequences of their actions, and offer help to them if they need advice when encountering further situations where they'd need to break canon to get what they want (e.g. crazy admins and stuff like that.)

Is this a good idea? I hope you don't mind me putting in some stuff - see, I can be logical when I've calmed down from the "oh boy new people" hype. ;)

-Twistey

We see a different picture than the one you are painting. Let us explain.

Link 1: Doing exactly what the Constitution says you should in this case. Seriously. It was explained what Tomash had done, and you gave him and anyone else involved Step One in making amends.

Link 2: You say demanding, we say pleading. You were clearly in pain and asking people to please not leave. You then presented a means by which we might, as a group, heal some of the wounds. And it seems to have been wanted, or you wouldn't have had anything to share now.

Link 3: "Please do not...because..." Politely asking that people not do something, and backing it up with a reason is not the work of the dictator you seem to think yourself to be.

Link 4: Because we, as a group, pretty clearly said we didn't want them.


All in all, we think you're confusing assuming authority and assuming responsibility. What we see from those examples is not an arrogant jerk issuing arbitrary demands for the sake of his own advancement, but rather a poor schmuck who always steps up to try to solve problems in the best way he knows how, and who sees things through to an end result even when it's difficult. This is often called "being a leader." You're welcome to stop if you want to, but we'd rather see more people start.

And, we know you've been attacked before for peoples' perception that you were becoming a tyrant. But you know what? Perception is not reality. Just because someone believes a thing, does not make it true.

Maybe we're off base, though. We're also subject to that bit about perception, after all. But we really think you are being too hard on yourself.

-Phobos & Neshomeh

Here's me doing it to Tomash. Here's me demanding that nobody leave, and decreeing how we're going to deal with the problem, which you'll note I went ahead and did despite absolutely nobody saying they actually wanted it to happen. Here's me instructing people not to discuss this thread on the Discord. Here's me insisting that there be no discussion of moderators in this thread.

As I said, I recuse myself from this part of the discussion, because I put it in primarily to let people tell me to stop.

hS

Scurvy epidemic?

-Phobos