I like that this thread was made, don't like that it had to be. I enjoy having open discussions about things and I am going to attempt to give my perspective on different things people have said, I think there's some validity to some concerns, and I am going to be engaging with all of you in good faith here, especially those who may not be my
biggest fan
Hey everyone,
I’m going to be direct about this because it’s been building for a while. There is a culture issue with staff on this server, and it’s getting worse over time. This isn’t about every staff member. There are genuinely good people here. That’s part of what makes this frustrating. But there is a specific group that continues to push things in a certain direction, and nothing meaningful is being done to check it.
What I’ve been seeing isn’t random.
There’s a pattern. Certain staff members seem to decide they don’t like someone, and from that point forward, everything that person does starts getting picked apart. Things that would normally be ignored or brushed off suddenly become problems. I’ve seen conversations where logs and messages are being combed through, not to determine whether something clearly broke a rule, but to figure out whether it can be framed that way. Once moderation starts operating like that, it stops feeling fair.
Depending on who you ask I may be among that certain group trying to push things in a certain direction, but I can agree with you there are times where there have been actions taken that are overly analytical. The example you have given here where people have had conversations where logs, messages, whatever have been combed through to figure out if it can be framed that someone broke a rule? I don't entirely agree with that characterization of what those staff members were doing, I believe this is referencing that "vibe audit" meme that's being circled around our space. To give as much context to what this was as possible, there was a wide net being cast by the people involved in that discussion on purpose, and it was around the time Jabba was directing / having conversations with us about "what we do and do not want to allow in discord". The people you mentioned combed through said messages, and after that there was supposed to be identification of "okay, of everything, what REALLY is the problem?" It was meant to just be "Hey yall, we want to clarify this is the kind of shit we don't want posted, we're gonna crack down on it, thanks".
Now, I don't personally agree that was the best way to handle wanting to reset expectations around what can and cannot be said in Discord and I definitely think we, me included, dropped the ball on properly communicating what we were and are trying to do here. I think the order of operations was off or wasn't done properly. Essentially all we had to do was "Hey, femoid / moid posting isn't gonna be allowed anymore, we don't want any messages or references to kill all X, we don't want racism, etc." I think just saying that and then maybe messaging the people that make those jokes like "Hey, this isn't gonna be allowed anymore from anyone, I know you joke around like that, but if you do in the future you'll probably get yourself in trouble". I think we did the reverse and instead looked for users as examples of behavior we didn't want and based it off of that, which honestly probably feels pretty shitty. I do sincerely apologize and do not want anyone, even the people who aren't fans of me or decisions I make or how I handle things, to feel targeted. Jabba isn't wrong when he says we in leadership are targeting behavior, not people. At the very least this is my intention and I do believe him when he says it is his.
It should be as simple as don't post that stuff in Discord, and follow the other written rules, and you'll be fine. But also, there are times where a certain image or gif or whatever falls under a label like Disturbing Content to a staff member that someone may not agree with, and I do think it's important that especially if you aren't on the best of terms with someone to ask yourself "would I have an issue with anyone else posting this?" before any action is taken.
From a player perspective, this kind of environment changes how people behave. You start second guessing what you say, not because you’re worried about breaking rules, but because you don’t know what might get taken out of context later or who might already have an issue with you. It stops feeling like a place where rules are applied fairly and starts feeling like certain people have more influence over how situations are interpreted. Situations like this don’t continue unless they’re allowed to. Whether it’s being ignored or just not addressed properly, the outcome is the same. A small group ends up having a disproportionate amount of influence over how things are handled, and that shapes the overall culture of the server.
At some point, this needs to be addressed directly. There needs to be consistency in how rules are applied. Staff should be held to the same standards as everyone else, if not higher. There also needs to be a clear distinction between moderating behavior and targeting individuals, because right now that line feels increasingly blurred. There are a lot of good people on this server, which is why this is frustrating to watch. But when moderation starts to feel selective and personal, it affects the entire experience. It creates an environment that people don’t want to stay in long term.
If the goal is to actually grow this community, this kind of environment is going to hold it back. People don’t stick around in places where they feel watched, singled out, or treated inconsistently. They either leave quietly or disengage over time. I want to see this server grow. There’s enough here for it to be something genuinely strong. But that’s not going to happen if this kind of behavior continues to be encouraged or ignored.
That alone should be a red flag. When people feel like speaking up is going to put a target on them, that’s not a healthy community. That’s exactly the kind of environment this post is calling out. At that point, the problem isn’t just the behavior itself. It’s the fact that people feel like they can’t even talk about it without risking consequences.
I don't think we should do, or have any plans to, do any more large scale audits like that of people's history. It was an approach that was had that "worked", or rather functioned, sure. However, something better as I previously mentioned could have also worked. Consistency around how rules are applied is brought up by you here and a couple of people after, and I'll do my personal best to try and be consistent and look out for instances of other's not being consistent, but if it does happen, and you or anyone else aren't comfortable still bringing it up privately, bring it up publicly in a thread in staff discussion or in general discussion depending on what makes sense.
I am unsure of the secondary portion of people speaking up feeling like a target will be put on them, but with as many disagreements and arguments are had at the staff level, there's never any repercussions for outright speaking your mind and even the people who disagree frequently are valued members of the team. At the member level we have attempted to divulge ways for you guys to speak your mind without fear of anyone knowing who you are to avoid bias in what we are reading, those surveys are valuable for that, but sure in an ideal scenario those same things are able to be said without anonymity.
@Frosty this relates to some of what you brought up - hardly the point, but doing a Trump impersonation is fine, it's not against the rules, granted nothing that was said was against the rules. I can see how from your perspective if someone started doing one 30 minutes later and was saying similar stuff and it wasn't moderated how that would be annoying. There are some different and arguably more strict guidelines than when you first joined for the Discord server, that much is true, but for the server we largely are still pretty lenient and should not be moderating stuff like that. In reference to someone sitting and recording general VC and not interacting with you guys and watching you guys specifically, I don't think that's something we should be doing either and I'm sorry it felt like that, but genuinely that definitely goes against the spirit of what we are trying to do if that's what happened. I obviously wasn't there and if it was awhile ago I hope it was addressed in some way.
COI's are done by Leadership at the Leadership level, only we can approve those to be handed out and are reserved for people we know aren't here to contribute in a positive way at all or have contributed in an especially negative fashion or did some gsu level stuff. You broke some discord rules, others you are friends with broke some discord rules, sure. However, we genuinely aren't building a case against you, or proper, or whoever. We just genuinely want to change the Discord interaction to be a more positive enviornment free of the things that I believe were made clear to you all, and if it still is not clear, or you feel like you need clarification on something or something feels unfair, ask me or tell me here or anywhere, I am more than happy to have this discussion.
@YoAmTrash I read your post and I know what you went through man - I honestly find myself agreeing with you. I don't think the level of scrutiny for how you played the game was appropriate and having to respond to a discord dm about a certain kill or report every day would make me quit too. I wasn't in a position to directly handle your situation at the time, but I am sorry you felt like you couldn't challenge or were discouraged from reporting your peers. I valued you extensively as a Staff Member but I even more value you as a community member and want you to know that if the human element is missing from interacting on the TTT server, that sucks, and it should be corrected. I know if I false slayed you I would at the very minimum say sorry and probably slay myself because you know eye for an eye. If that's missing I'll make sure people know that it's okay to make mistakes and argue incorrectly, but only if you earnestly admit when you were wrong and apologize for it.
I think this comment here made me realize that there's probably two distinctive issues here which is probably what makes this conversation more difficult. In the "vibe audit" there were absolutely comments that we brought forward that were an issue- but frankly, for the most part it actually worked. Most of the people in that have been avoiding the behavior specifically that they were asked to stop, maybe with a couple slips here or there, but it is vastly different than it was preaudit. Despite this, the constant nit-picking has frankly driven people away. I've for the most part have cut my interaction with the community. Last night, I had two other personal discords that I am personally in that I saw that were made specifically because they felt more comfortable interacting there than in GL. They were talking like friends, playing games, and doing everything that used to happen on GL. But they feel like they can't. I think what's most telling to me here is that the same people that were hanging out in the community before that are missing, are still around. They're just not around at GL. And this includes not only community members, but staff members as well in all ranks.
I'm going to give a specific example, that I probably shouldn't know about but I think gets the point across. Last night, a spammer joined the discord, and dropped a funny copy/pasta style spam message. 6 people were having a hilarious time with it, joking around, and it lasted about 15 minutes or so? In staff channels, this got presented as a problem that needed to be a addressed. Friends having fun with each other, for a short burst of a time just laughing between each other... was a problem. And shoutbox was declared especially bad that night.
I guess my point in my post here is that I think your post missed some a lot of the points rick is getting at here, but I understand why. Despite that, I think this is a solvable problem that would require just some definition of what y'all really want in a community. If posting like that really is a problem to y'all, say it. It would be different than how both SGM and AHG approached communities, but hey, GL is different and has a different goal. The problem is now, is that no one seems to want to be upfront about it, or it seems like maybe that goal for what they want the community to look like is. That's okay too. But where the problem is that in figuring that out, there's group of people here that feels like they're being targeted while y'all try to work that out. I didn't include Crescent when I said that it would be different- because honestly, we had a different approach there. We literally banned people because we just didn't want them there. They didn't match the vibe of the community, so we just didn't deal with it. I'm not sure if that's the solution here, but at least it was honest and upfront which is what's being asked of here.
Saved this one for last - I am very happy that people have connected through Giant's lair and made new friends, different friend groups, or reignited interest in old ones. I am glad that people are interacting with each other still that once interacted in here. I am obviously less glad that interaction is no longer happening here. I can say for sure, no, we don't have any interest in banning anyone right now just because we don't like them or want them here. There is currently nobody on Leaderships radar who we have had a conversation even remotely close to "we may need to perma ban this person soon". The conversations have absolutely been centered around "Is this behavior something we want in the server?" in referencing discord moderation. Now whether or not people agree with a certain thing being allowed or disallowed, I'm sure there's thoughts and feelings about that, and I don't personally agree with every single thing we allow or disallow either but I do follow it.
I wasn't on Discord last night but yeah, if some dude named Benjamin joined the Discord and started crypto spamming / scamming or whatever? I would also think that's hilarious if my friends were around to joke about it, I really don't think any of them did anything wrong there assuming nothing has been deleted. I think this may be an example of us looking too deep into something that doesn't need to be looked into for sure because I am looking at it right now, there's nothing here that I would say we should care about. You guys should feel free and happy to joke about a scammer named Benjamin or whatever like you're right, who cares. That's a problem that it was MADE to be a problem.
@veL that ban was fucking dumb, I'm glad we apologized for that. Waffle being the person who got banned wasn't considered there it was just us being pretty stupid about an image.
Siddo stole the words from my mouth, but yeah, call shit out, I responded to what's been already brought up, and I have some things to address with others, some behavior to adjust myself, but know that I personally am listening and watching this thread and appreciate all the feedback.
