This topic has 10 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 6 months ago by 
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Hey everyone,
Overall we as a community have done a really good job at staying on topic, and keeping this forum as a game-centric place for community building and discussion. However, like any group, we are occasionally prone to negativity. Complaint threads, whining, attack posts, these are all things that have the tendency of sparking fights that both draws attention away from Lust topics and also causes damage to the community as a whole and draws in negativity that we don’t need.
They start simple enough, someone will do something like complain that they haven’t gotten any interactions or haven’t received replies fast enough. Not an absurd complaint. But then other people feel that they need to chime in. The topic quickly jumps to a dozen or so people all telling one person why they’re wrong. The responders feel that the topic poster are out of line, the topic poster has a dozen people shitting on them so they’re defensive and people just coming online don’t see anything about Lust, they see bickering and posturing. It’s not good for anyone, especially the narrative.
During Tension, we had the luxury of taking a Laissez-faire approach and allowing fights to run their course. However, Lust is larger, we have more people and we have more opinions, personalities, and expectations. We need to grow along with it. So, starting now, we will be immediately deleting any off topic post whose focus is primarily negative. Of course, light hearted semi-off topic posts are always welcome, especially during down times, and we have no intention of deleting jokes or games or anything that builds community in the positive direction. But any topic whose primary focus is negative through direct attacks or complaining are no longer allowed on the short leash that we used to abide by.
This does not include in-game complaints. Complaining that Horace has too much power is legit. Complaining that Noah is being treated like shit or not shitty enough is legit. Complaining that “That Guy got a call even though I’ve been around posting a whole bunch more than he has” is not legit.
As always, you are more than welcome to come to either of us if you think that an error was made or if you have a complaint or issue that you’d like brought up, and if you feel that one of us has crossed a line, you can speak with the other. We do not want you to think that there are no avenues for bringing up issues, but doing so publicly doesn’t help your cause any and brings down the rest of us. Further, we don’t want people to think that a topic deletion means that you’ve done something wrong or are being punished. If you are unsure if you should post something or not please come to us first and we can talk it out and decide if posting to the forums is the correct avenue or not.
We do not want anyone here to think this is a power grab or censorship. It is simply us trying to preserve the narrative and story. We hope everyone understands and can move forward under these new guidelines.
-@TheBuz & @TheGilded
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This thread is off topic. Banned.
In all seriousness though please note that this isn’t a condemnation of anyone in particular but just something @thegilded and I sensed in the air that needed to be addressed.
At the end of the day we’re all here to propel this thing forward and we can all help each other do that by staying on topic.
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Gentlemen – I want to preface this by saying that I understand the reasoning behind this and I respect it. It’s always good to sense something and cut it off before it grows into a bigger issue, but I think with automatically deleting posts will cause more harm than good in the long run.
I know your decision as mods is already made, but please hear me out. In my opinion, this will only weaken the community and further segregate it. Instead of people publicly venting (which I agree, can get annoying), I feel like it’s going to drive more and more people into private, back alley chats which will splinter off into even more cliques than we already currently have. Then you’ll have people become even more volatile because those chats are not monitored. Those chats could become toxic shit talking chats instead of a Community support type of thing. Without the public support, it’s a downward spiral.
Personal attacks are never ok, I think we can all agree on that. While not pleasant, I think in game “fights” help shape, sharpen, and build community respect rather than tear it down. If all the points of a “fight” come from in game/things said on the forums, why not let it go? Then if a line gets crossed, delete that shit with the quickness.
Also, where is the line drawn? For example, last year BoS and OOA said nasty things about each other’s organizations, would that be tolerated here since it’s in game? Or would it be deleted because it’s negative? It seems like a slippery slope.
I know this is not Tension, but if the people reading the boards back then (Gatekeepers/OOA Guide/etc) let things go and they were the ones behind it all, how come we can’t?
Just my 2 cents
PS Have I told you both how good you look lately? I mean, GODDAMN!
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@mike you get extra points for the added compliments at the beginning and end.
You’re not wrong about forcing conversation elsewhere. It’s been a huge problem and one of the main reasons why we’ve tried to moderate more hands off all throughout Tension and the beginning portions of Lust. However, there have been repeated complaints over the past couple months of people who are growing uncomfortable with the increased perceived negativity. Criticisms are fine and great for a community and in-game issues are definitely fine. This move absolutely isn’t to stop pro-Noah supporters from straight talking shit to anti-Noah people and if someone wants to call someone else a coward piece of shit because of something they did in game I love it and am down with it.
However, we’ve recently seen a spike in complaints that are made worse because they are in public. If a conversation is shut down as soon as it hits the public we run the risk of having it go underground, but we are also avoiding the phenomenon we’ve been seeing recently which is that a huge number of people pile onto a negativity wave when they wouldn’t have even been aware if it weren’t the biggest argument on the boards at the time.
The line being drawn is a hard one, it’s purely going to come down to judgement. That’s something we may get wrong a couple times so it’s another thing that I absolutely ask that people make appeals to us if it is an issue.
Maybe this isn’t the right way of proceeding but negativity has always had a history of spiking and being present and it’s done more harm than good so far when we used the hands off approach. If this more restrictive approach doesn’t work then we can absolutely switch back off to the old way, but it’s worth trying a new approach since the old one hasn’t worked as well as it should have
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Mike does have a point re: last year’s OOA vs BOS stuff. While it did get ugly an argument could be made that that was “in-game” sort of, and we’ve been told the game is going to be NOT fun at times. At the beginning of this it looked like we might be asked to sell out close friends repeatedly for possible interactions, and that brought on interesting conversations. What happens if the game itself causes that negativity? Is that allowed? I’m not talking about whining, but about the backstabbing that really *might be* part of it, whether we like it or not.
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That’s going to be a case by case basis. By and large, almost all in game arguing is not only okay but condoned and encouraged. With the exception of things that cross obvious lines and attack people viciously and horribly, fights over in game stuff is a-okay and I’ll probably be doing a lot of it myself.
We cannot and should not ever moderate real emotions that are brought out of Lust, but if you are just whining and complaining about Lust itself then that’s where you’re going to get deleted. Complaining that your iConfidant burned you is a-okay. Complaining that your iConfidant isn’t responding enough and you’re bored is going to get deleted.
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@thegilded (and @thebuz, too!)
What you guys do is incredibly under appreciated by the community and I know part of the reasons I can make sense of the Forums at all is because of the maintenance you guys do.
Hats off to you both.Here’s my question… so we are only allowed to be positive? Since there is no “Off Topic” area and we have been told the the Forums are the Gameboard, it seems odd that there is no way for people to express criticism or ask valid questions… except in private chats.
What about the recent safety conversations? That is stuff the community has a right to express and communicate and discuss, correct? Also, it’s important.
Obviously, numerous people are having enough out-of-game thoughts that THIS thread exists.I realize – those are “game related” conversations and not exactly what you are mainly referring to here – but there may be negativity and confusion present in them. Valid feelings, at times.
In the last week, two people have expressed that they are leaving LUST because of the story elements. If it’s not that interesting to any of us personally, can we still play? Or do we have to force ourselves to keep posting repeatedly in an effort to get noticed? These are the type of things people are asking me in private and I believe it why some people are choosing to pull away. Group negativity or bullying can only encourage people to leave.
To leave completely is anyone’s choice to make. But, maybe if there were an open conversation and there was a place members of the community could openly discuss involvement and actions some people would not feel the need to pack up and leave.
After all, the story elements already present have actually encouraged a competitive vibe between the patrons, with characters encouraging behavior to “get noticed.”
In such an atmosphere, feelings are likely to get hurt.Now – the problem I see with my own points? Some people are just going to complain no matter what happens. (Yes, the conversation would require a Moderator’s touch at times, for sure.)
As far as how good looking you guys are, @mike has already pointed to that.
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Excellent points and questions @russell, and indeed the reason for the topic in the first place.
First, no I absolutely don’t want to limit anyone to post only positive things. That’s pure censorship and not what the goal is. What is the goal, however, is to cut down on the negative posts that are nearly solely for the purpose of being negative.
But you’re right, due to the nature of this media it is often difficult to bring up real concerns. Safety concerns absolutely have a place here. Concerns in which someone has an issue with something that they’re seeing absolutely have a place here. Those aren’t the complaints we’re trying to crack down on, because those all have a positive end goal, the betterment of the game, despite the negative connotation. That is not the type of negativity that this action is meant to address.
But the biggest issue that I personally have seen is that people keep coming to me with perceptions of unending negativity on the boards and in the community. The biggest culprit of that is the repeated pattern that we have of someone posting something that is basically just a complaint.
Normally that’s someone complaining that the story isn’t as personalized as they’d like or that they aren’t getting the attention they think they deserve. That doesn’t have constructive end goals, that’s jealousy. And when it happens, 5-15 people are quick to jump on them telling them that they’re wrong. So because one person wanted to complain, I now have one person who feels personally attacked and a dozen who are distracted and whining that the whining happened in the first place.
It isn’t a perfect solution but shutting it down at step one seems the best way to avoid this. I can’t stop people from feeling attacked when someone complains about the experience that they’ve contributed to so the lesser of these two evils is to shut it down before it turns into the same thing we’ve seen over and over – a board full of vitriol and a bunch of people who are hurt.
But I don’t admit that this is a perfect solution. Maybe it isn’t even the right one. But we’ve tried the other alternative of letting a lot of it slide and it hasn’t worked. What we have now isn’t working. This seems like the most logical way to approach this right now.
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@TheGilded has already wonderfully responded to our fellow handsome fellows (@mike and @russell) so there’s not a whole lot more I need to say on the matter.
I will say that this is most definitely a case by case basis, and Sean and I will use our best judgement in each matter. And we will 100% be open to appeals as we can undelete threads if a good case can be made.
As far as the concerns go with pushing negative talk to back ally chat rooms… This will forever be a concern with these experiences however I do feel like the community has grown up SIGNIFICANTLY from last year and that the chatrooms are much better than they were last year. Sean and I are actively keeping eyes on as many as we can to make sure that kind of thing doesn’t happen. That’s really all we can hope for, but I have a lot of faith in the people that come here. Nothing but love.
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