The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

I mean, he's the one who threatened to go all Stalin on every single person who was even present for the discussion, and I don't think his comments in the chatlog are those of someone who was doing "nothing to stop it".

Was I critical of July? Yes, very. But I was also on record as opposing the witch hunt and wanting the matter dropped, or at the very least put off for later.

On the principle of making a public apology... I accept the idea of doing one for not doing more than one or two statements to Aegis to calm down during this mess, although I'll also tell that I couldn't really do more at the moment, given the fact that despite what my indicator could say, my access to Discord during the week is at the very best sporadic. I didn't have a real opportunity to tell more, I'm working during the week, and that lets me very little time for the PPC, especially when most of the dscussion are during American time.

But... Desdendelle, seriously? He pretty much told how much of a bad idea it was during the entire moment of the discussion he was present, stressing at every turn how wrong it was. How exactly does that account for doing nothing?

Besides... Well, I said my access to the chat was sporadic, but what about other people being automatically connected to Discod because they dowloaded the app but aren't actually following the discussion, or cannot? If they couldn't do something, punishing them for that doesn't seem to be really fair.

As for the apology, I'm ready to make a dedicated post when you see fit.

A cowrite with Skarmory to a Monster Hunter/Hunger Games crossover, and a solo mission to an MCU fic. Also a pending mission to a Steven Universe fic, which I'll get back to when I have slightly less on my plate.

What edition?

So, I have seen this idea pitched around a few times in the threads below and in Discord Logs. I'll post this here, since I have been considering it for a while.

I think we need to redo the entire Constitution from the ground up. My biggest issue regarding the Constitution is the humor inserted into it. Excerpted below:

1. "This webpage will self-destruct in thirty seconds.

*Hides; several hours pass*

Never mind, then...

*Comes out of hiding*

BOOM!"

2. (And all that other medieval mumbo-jumbo those town criers say. Forsooth verily!)

3. 6. All discovered mimes will be thrown into a pit, which may or may not be filled with various objects such as scorpions upon their availability.

6.5. There will be no clemency for these mimes until they learn the words.

4. There is no Article 19.

5. "Do not meddle in the affairs of assassins! They are heavily armed and quick to anger. And not noticeably subtle."

While I understand these are all quintessentially PPC, I am a firm believer that the rules that govern the community should not be played for laughs at any point. It can come across as saying Oh we really aren't all that serious here. This is a problem. I think the rules should be changed to reflect the fact that they are indeed serious business. I also think that we should streamline and simplify the current iteration as well. We essentially hold a PPC Constitutional Convention. We can trim the fat from the current Constitution, put in new rules that address events that we did not have before, and ensure that it is the best it can be.

Never before have I thought of the Discord channel as something that, under right measures, can be made public to pretty much anyone. Should've known better after that Reddit problem.

I admit to my lack of reaction to that potential danger that could've been inflicted on JulyFlame. No point in trying to defend myself there. To my future judges: Do what you think is right.

I propose to the community that the following actions be taken:

1) That Tomash be permanently banned from the PPC for sharing someone else's guarded information without their knowledge or consent. While it was could be interpreted as a negligent act more than a strictly malevolent one, the fact still stands that it was a gross violation of confidentiality and trust. Plus, as Neshomeh mentioned here, July is an actively serving member of the United States military. This action thus has the genuine potentiality to threaten her life. An appropriate response must be made.

2) That the following indivduals—Alleb, Granz, and Khrssty—be banned from the PPC for a period no less than a year. Their voices seem to have been the main driving force behind this witch hunt. And yes, it was a witch hunt, despite what some of you have repeatedly protested. To say otherwise is to be deliberately blind to something very obvious.

3) That Aegis and Ekyl be banned from the PPC for a period no less than four months. Aegis appears to be the major force behind pushing for the screenshot to be pushed to the board. He has also exacerbated the situation through his actions in Discord and muddied events due to his recent postings on the Board. His behavior in the logs suggests that he had already judged July as being guilty. Ekyl, on the other hand, seems to have been a regularly present voice, poking along the chat with comments such as "And let's not make it out like July is some angel who's never wronged anybody ever" or "But these feelings have existed for a long time among many people". An agitator, if you will.

4) That the remaining PPCers who were privy to this incident but did nothing to stop it make an official public apology to July. That includes Desdendelle, Akrinor, Storme Hawk, Matt Cypher, SkarmorySilver, Jay - Awesomeness Central, and Hardric. If the PPC had some form of official censure between that and ban, I would have asked for it, but that's how things go.

I have no doubt that this proposal will be heavily debated. I welcome your input and hope that we can come together on some sort of agreement.

PoorCynic

I'd gladly join in, though I'd need to know the edition before I could figure out what I'm doing.

It's not just this incident, though. It's everything that I've observed tends to happen in an environment where people feel they're behind closed doors and don't have to consider their words and edit themselves before they speak. It's much easier for things to get blown out of proportion in that environment. Up til now I've thought this group might be better than that, but honestly, when emotions run high and mob mentality kicks in, the group is only as smart as the lowest common denominator. I'm not pulling that out of my butt—I actually took a class on it in college. Hence, while I still think the people as individuals are mostly just fine, I distrust the environment that encourages groupthink.

~Neshomeh

Haven't played any RPGs before, but I'd like to take a swing at it.

Some observations and thoughts:

1. You lot decided to have one of Iximaz's posts deleted from the Board without her say-so and without bothering to tell her? I understand that the idea came from Aegis, who you understandably trusted to know Ix's mind, but still, that was not smart, and clearly added to the problem. I feel that should be openly acknowledged.

2. You're taking one person's feelings as hard evidence that the community is broken and everyone in it is a failure of a human being. That's really messed up. However much we like Iximaz and however serious her troubles are, she is just one person. Do not base your self-worth and your judgement of this group on one person's feelings. It's not fair to anyone, especially not Iximaz. How on Earth do you think it makes her feel to have the community fall apart because of something she said while undergoing a bad drug withdrawal? That's an incredible amount of pressure to put on her, and it's not fair.

I know you all care about Iximaz and want to help her, but please see my reply to Aegis here about the necessity for Iximaz to be responsible for herself in order to be an empowered, well-functioning adult. We can be as supportive and attentive as you please, but if she doesn't tell us something is wrong, we are not to blame for not knowing. If she's not doing the work she needs to do to move past her trauma, nothing we can do will fix it. Do not take away her power by denying that.

3. Feelings are not facts. I just want to state that flat-out. Feelings are not facts, especially when you all are well aware that the person having those feelings is not of sound mind at the time. See above comment on the unfair amount of pressure that puts on Iximaz, who has enough to worry about without all of you going on a crusade if she says boo when she's high or detoxing. Taking her seriously does not mean unconditionally believing that everything she says is an accurate representation of reality.

3.5. I'll add here that I'm not comfortable with the nightly sessions of hanging out with her in voice chat when she's taken her meds and ought to be trying to sleep. I was there for it a couple times, and I get it—I experienced a sense of bonding and freeing from inhibitions, which I enjoyed even as I felt kind of icky about it. However, I'll note that I also urged Iximaz to go to bed. Nobody can make her do that—I repeat that Iximaz is responsible for making her own choices—but might I suggest that we no longer enable her fighting her medication by participating in those sessions, should she return to Discord? We all need to be more responsible toward her, and this is one concrete way to start.

4. I suppose I should address what was said, or rather implied, about me. Yes, I advised Iximaz not to throw away what had been a very close friendship with July over one stupid misunderstanding. I think dropping July was an overreaction based on past trauma that was not relevant to the situation, and I stand by that. I will not support allowing trauma to run anyone's life unchecked, forever.

I also think that, if you can understand and forgive Iximaz's issues, you should also be capable of understanding and forgiving July's. She was not just "tired"; she had worked a grueling 22-hour military shift, and I daresay she was in fact triggered by something that felt, to her, similar to a past trauma she went through with the IRC. In keeping with not letting trauma run our lives, however, she realized she had done wrong, regretted it, and repented. Maybe Iximaz had legitimate reasons for being unable to process that at the time, but none of the rest of you do now.

5. The witch-hunt was, in fact, a witch hunt. Someone said "we should DO something!", someone else said "yeah! who are we gonna punish?", and y'all decided it was July you wanted to burn to set a precedent for the future. Yes, there was talk about getting her side, but it's pretty clear that at least some of you had already made up your minds. Des was the only person who spoke up to defend her, and you disregarded him.

6. There's been some sentiment floated about how the oldbies defend July because it's the status quo or something? And how we give her a pass because she's seen as an authority? That's such BS. I can't speak for anyone else because we are not a hive mind, but for myself, I defend July because I know her, I trust her, and she's been a good friend to me. As such, I also call her on her behavior when I think it's wrong. You don't always see it because I communicate with her privately, especially since she's not on the Board as much these days (and who can blame her when half the community is just waiting for any excuse to string her up?), but if you want to go and look at the thread surrounding Ix's falling out with her again, I believe you will see me doing just that. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

I'm sure there's more I wanted to say, but I haven't had breakfast yet. Maybe more will come to me later. I think those are the most important points I wanted to hit, anyway.

All in all, the main problem I see here is that enough of you have wound yourselves so tightly around Iximaz with your concern for her feelings that you've given her the power to destabilize the whole community. This is dysfunctional and absurd. Please unwind yourselves so that she can have a more normal relationship with the group and so that we can all return to being individuals with our own normal, non-Iximaz-related agendas.

~Neshomeh

Clearly, I made mistakes in my handling of this entire situation.

One thing I would like to note is that, when I sent those emails, I did not have the full story. I only had Iximaz's side of the story, since I didn't know what had happened privately during all that. Something felt off about Iximaz's descriptions of how the PGs (including you) were painted in her version, but I took the accusations seriously enough to look in to them by talking to you.

Before talking to you, I asked Iximaz if I could do that, since I would be writing an email going off the details of a private conversation, and I didn't want to betray her trust. I included her on the email because I thought the reply would be something she needed to see. I didn't think through the harm to Iximaz of a reply saying that you didn't think it was serious, and for that, Iximaz, I'm sorry. (For the record, I interpreted your initial reply as indicating that you didn't know the full extent of the situation, and that you didn't think it was serious based on the information you had.)

I also included Iximaz in that conversation on the advice of Aegis, who I trusted to know the right way to handle this situation. Given Nesh's reply to Aegis below, I acknowledge that this trust may not be as fully deserved as I used to think.

Throughout a lot of this, I was taking Iximaz's version of events extremely seriously. It has become clear to me that my actions over the last week have been guided by misinterpretations and misunderstandings, both of Iximaz's state of mind and potential reactions to events and of the actions and intentions of many of my fellow PPCers (including especially Iximaz and you).

Because of my mistakes and failures, I have hurt Iximaz. I certainly didn't want to do that, and, Ix, I hope you can forgive me for whatever part of the blame falls to me. I have also taken actions that have harmed the community as a whole, and JulyFlame specifically. I hope that I can make amends.

I will strive to do better in the future.

I've never played D&D, but I wouldn't mind trying given how many other tabletop RPGs I've done.

I doubt I can speak for anyone else, but I personally had no idea that the Discord channel was as public as the Board - the invite-based nature led me to think that only those who were invited to the channel at all would see it. I should've known that this could potentially include everyone who's ever been on the channel should they hop in and scroll up to when the conversation was happening.

As I noted yesterday, I did speak to Aegis about not posting the screencap on the Board, but in hindsight I should've taken offense to it being put up on the Discord in the first place or anywhere that could be seen by anyone online for that matter, even other community members. Again, my deepest apologies go to everyone involved, and I guarantee that I'll be more vigilant regarding these kinds of acts in the future.

I mean, the PPC Discord does have a dedicated chat and voice channel for non-PPC roleplaying, so you could host it there.

I'd also like to know what edition you're thinking of running, because this affects the amount of weirdness I can crowbar into one character.

There were several objections to posting the image on the Board.

Absolutely no-one took Tomash to task for posting it in the public Discord channel.

I am glad that some people were aware that the image should not be posted on the Board. But that does not make the lack of reaction to it being posted on the Discord okay.

hS

The reason I'm only posting this now is that I needed Iximaz to delete the copy she sent me from our private message history before I could truthfully say they were all deleted.

I have no saying on the matter, nor do I have anything that would in any way, shape or form justify Tomash's idea. I will not deny that my personal problems with July led me to be a part of this conversation, however nowhere in the logs you see me saying that her real name and face should be made public.

Two days ago, a certain somebody (to whom I am still thankful) gave me few good arguments as to why narrowing down JulyFlame as the sole source of PPC peer abuse was not the right path to take. Everyone at that time in Discord was concerned for Iximaz, true, but it's evident that they we should have focused on the issue as it was whole, not just what one person could have been guilty of. For that approach, I was ready to offer my apologies to JulyFlame (and not because Des said so), however doing so would only worsen the already hanging-on-a-thread relationship we have, as it was evident by my IWD post. Therefore, even if I regret voicing my opinion at the time, I can't bring myself to apologise to JulyFlame directly.


However, I would like to address one of the things you mention here, hS.

"I'm looking desperately for anyone objecting to this. I've found one "I'm not sure about posting the image", one "you should probably censor July's name and face" (note: future tense, not past"... and one "If July really has been verbally abusive, why protect her?""

It actually goes a little more than those three (well, two, since the last one isn't really an objection) sentences. You can see the logs below in my reply to Des's ridiculousness, but just to bring them out once again what I managed to find:

"Actually, in a way it is part of exactly the can of worms we're about to open. But I agree with not putting the convo on board."

"You should probably censor July's name and face."

"If July wanted her real name known on the board, she would go by it."

"We could quote the conversation.
Instead of using the screenshot."

"I agree that showing face and real name is not cool and disrespectful. (...)"

"And IMHO, putting that chat screencap in public view would be extremely disrespectful to all parties involved, which won't help anybody's case."



As you can see, the objection was there. Not everyone present in the conversation was perfectly okay with doing this.

Moderators are not the solution. The solution is for every person in this community to do what we've said all along that they should be doing:

10. The PPC as a community is responsible for upholding the Constitution. If following Article 7 doesn't resolve a situation, any and all uninvolved community members have a responsibility to back up the person who is in the right, or to defuse an unclear situation. It is never wrong to ask a third party to comment on a dispute, but try to find someone uninvolved; a mediator will be more useful for resolving a dispute than a supporter.

When Iximaz and July had their argument, I talked to both of them, and helped July with her apology. When July and Matt Cipher had their argument, I talked to both of them and helped Matt with his apology. When Iximaz and GlarnBoudin had their argument, I looked at what was said and offered an opinion - and when my view was challenged, I reconsidered it and posted that I had. When Desdendelle shamed Iximaz, I spoke up. When I heard July had been doxxed, I got hold of the chat logs and spoke up.

I do not stand by. I do not let things happen. You may disagree with the conclusions I draw, the actions I suggest, the blame I lay or withhold, but you can never point at me and say I just ignore problems. If everybody in this community can do the same, this will never happen again.

And I want desperately for that to happen. This place, this Board and this PPC, is something precious, something unique. It's a place where we don't look to authority to keep us in check, but where we take responsibility for our own actions, and where we stand up for our friends when they are attacked. It's a place where we want to know the facts before we form our opinions - and when new information comes to light or our views are challenged, we don't lash out, but reconsider and reevaluate.

That's what I believe. That's the PPC I have stood for, for nearly fifteen years now. That's the community I trust every one of you to stand up for.

I want to give a huge shout-out to ninny4370 here. They are literally the newest person here, but they have stood up and called out the problem they see, and what they think we should do about it. I may not agree with what they suggest, but I am immensely impressed that they are saying it.

hS

1. The interlude taking place immediately after "Pick Your Poison," resolving the conflict there, as well as the never-wrapped-up Poison Joke RP. The second draft is completed, so I just need to heavily go over it one more time to get it ready for betas.
   
   2. Taking place right after that, my contribution to the Blackout event. I haven't even started this.
   
   3. The "Thirty Hs" mission. I have most of this in draft form, although certain scenes in the second half depend on me fleshing out the beginning into a second draft form before I can properly continue.
   
   4. An interlude for my Cafeteria characters, which is also arguably a mission, and is also arguably linked to Phobos's Catastrophe Theory series, even though it takes place in the main timeline. Also names the head Flower of the Cafeteria Division, so no one beat me to that, please. This is also in its second draft form, so one more editing pass from me before beta time.
   
   Unfortunately,
   
   0. Archiving the entire, already existing PPC is always my toppest top priority.
   
   —doctorlit has too much hobby work to do. No wonder he stays so late at his actual job!

I would like to play, but I have a feeling that my schedule will be very limited.
Which edition were you thinking of using?