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Bannings
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@Herja Definitely. I’m sure there are people out there that still hate me and refuse to play with me ever again. And that’s fine. An apology isn’t about being forgiven, it’s about expressing regret and making a promise to do better. That’s literally all.
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Banning someone on a game is kind of a, well, it’s not all that effective. Or I guess, it’s effective, to a point. Unless you want to get into IP banning, and even that can be mitigated if you’re really determined and/or feel like paying the money for a NordVPN.
Thinking about it, and how I view it, if someone was banned for really shitty behavior and then they eventually sneak back on unnoticed by any and all who they might’ve wronged. It tells me one of two things.
Either A, they’re sociopath who lacks social skills to realize they aren’t wanted and simply doesn’t care. In this case, their behavior will eventually show up and they’ll be caught, banned, rinse/repeat. See; Cullen, DWOPP, etc etc.
Or B, they realize the error of what they were doing wrong, did some kind of self-evaluation and changed their behavior. In light of B, that doesn’t make them coming back to the game right, but unless you get really draconian about tracking people, it’s just something that most games have to deal with.
I don't know what I'm doing. Poke at Seven Nations sevennations.aresmush.com port 2021
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Also, I am only speaking for Arx where the amount of players and story going on means that someone can come back and engage in play away from people that want nothing to do with them. I’m not sure that would be as easy on a smaller game where there isn’t space to do that.
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She had to engage with not only people that made it clear that they didn’t want to play with her before and put in no contact requests to that effect but also people that SHE PUT IN NC REQUESTS for.
If you feel guilty about hiding your identity, you assume everyone is watching you to try to see through it; and in that mindset, you think to yourself that avoiding the same people you avoided before would be a clue to the people investigating you.
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@Herja As a sort of confirmation to this point, I absolutely did that myself. Not on Arx, but just in general after I was fired from The Reach for being a gross power-abuse monster. I just… flew under the radar for a bit. I’m sure people knew it was me, but I didn’t let myself be in the same position to repeat the same behaviour.
When a behaviour has become a habit, it’s absolutely difficult to change. So I’m not saying that it’s going to be easy to be not-a-shit. But if @IoleRae and I can both manage that at least once in our MUing careers, anyone can do it with enough effort and will.
ETA: And to counter-argue against a point raised on my leaving post elsewhere: The main game I play now is run by a person directly affected by what I did back then. And the main coder is the guy that fired me. I’m absolutely not hiding what I did. I owned it (eventually) and I continue to do so. It was also a decade ago.
ETA2 (I have no self control): It was a decade ago and I stopped doing it.
Yup. Step one for me was also ‘put self in position where incapable of repeating problematic behavior that you want to stop’. One of my various issues is related to PVP…so I don’t do it any more. So on, so forth. I don’t trust that the habits won’t resurface, can’t guarantee my approach will be healthy, so I refrain. It IS hard. It’s also do-able. Everybody CAN change. They just have to want to.
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@GF No one was investigating her before her same bad behaviors started to come up and she was being pushy toward people who had already been burned by her. We weren’t actively looking for her. No one cared. When she ‘left’ the first time, she wasn’t banned. Had she come back and not reverted back to her usual manipulative behaviors, she never would have been found out because Arx staff has better things to do than keep tabs on every player that has flounced and then snuck back on a couple weeks later.
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As much as we have the reputation of holding grudges, I’ve found this community, on the whole, to be exceedingly forgiving - assuming two things have happened: 1) Time has passed, and 2) the behaviour has markedly changed.
How many times have our legendary creepers/problem people been given chances? It’s often to our detriment, but we forgive so easily - we never forget, but we’re willing to coat the memory with vaseline if you behave.
ETA (help I have a problem): This is, of course, only my own experiences and my own perceptions of the experiences of others.
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@Testament said in Bannings:
Banning someone on a game is kind of a, well, it’s not all that effective. Or I guess, it’s effective, to a point. Unless you want to get into IP banning, and even that can be mitigated if you’re really determined and/or feel like paying the money for a NordVPN.
Thinking about it, and how I view it, if someone was banned for really shitty behavior and then they eventually sneak back on unnoticed by any and all who they might’ve wronged. It tells me one of two things.
Either A, they’re sociopath who lacks social skills to realize they aren’t wanted and simply doesn’t care. In this case, their behavior will eventually show up and they’ll be caught, banned, rinse/repeat. See; Cullen, DWOPP, etc etc.
Or B, they realize the error of what they were doing wrong, did some kind of self-evaluation and changed their behavior. In light of B, that doesn’t make them coming back to the game right, but unless you get really draconian about tracking people, it’s just something that most games have to deal with.
Bans – especially public bans – do have an additional value to a game or community beyond the immediate “get rid of the person doing the bad thing.”
They also make a public show of what a community will or won’t tolerate. They provide evidence to regular players of what behaviors won’t fly, which helps make it easier and safer for players to report bad behavior – which, as we all know, is always an ongoing struggle.
Bans aren’t technologically foolproof, and we all know that. But their value to a community, I’d say, goes far beyond that.
she/her | playlist
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Agree. “we saw/someone showed us this behavior and we stopped it” is the real value. That’s what makes people feel safe. Or me, anyway.
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@Roz Nah, not devaluing the use of bans. By no means am I saying don’t bother banning someone because they’ll ‘just come back’. I think it’s a good show of support to the playerbase to say “This is messed up behavior and we’re not going to stand for it.” That’s a good thing, to me.
I’m just realistic enough to tell myself that some of them will come back, because again, I think a lot of the trouble cases feel as if they’re not doing anything wrong. Along with that sense of not getting the last word in.
I don't know what I'm doing. Poke at Seven Nations sevennations.aresmush.com port 2021
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@Roz All of this. I have no expectation that a ban will prevent someone determined from jumping back on the game but what those bans do is establish the culture of the game and let people who aren’t manipulative jerks know where the boundaries are and, I think more importantly, know that they can report those related behaviors and that they will be taken seriously even if they don’t result in a ban right away.
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Locks aren’t there to keep bad people out, they’re there to stop good people making bad choices.
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@GF No one was investigating her before her same bad behaviors started to come up and she was being pushy toward people who had already been burned by her.
I’m not saying it’s rational. I’m just saying when most people lie, they feel a guilt or at least a self-consciousness about it that causes them to overcorrect. How many times have you noticed someone was lying to you because they started going into way more detail about the story than they would if they were telling the truth?
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@Testament I get where you’re coming from. It’s really easy to get around an IP ban if you really want to, and unfortunately for some weirdass reason people who get banned for assholery REALLY WANT TO.
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@Snackness said in Bannings:
@Testament I get where you’re coming from. It’s really easy to get around an IP ban if you really want to, and unfortunately for some weirdass reason people who get banned for assholery REALLY WANT TO.
That’s basically all I was saying, yeah. Not that bans weren’t useful or that they didn’t set a standard or expectation for how a gamer runner expects the players there should treat each other.
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@Testament said in Bannings:
Thinking about it, and how I view it, if someone was banned for really shitty behavior and then they eventually sneak back on unnoticed by any and all who they might’ve wronged. It tells me one of two things.
Yeah bans are frustratingly not very effective from a tech/staffing standpoint.
But on this other hand, when I was staffing (which i am not, and am not making any decisions on any game ps ty), I kind of felt like, if someone did get iced out or even banned for behavior, but they managed to come back and like, get away with it by NOT REPEATING THE SAME BEHAVIOR?
Great! Best possible outcome! I don’t think bans from RP games are ever about punishment, they are about (as people mentioned) showing your players what you won’t tolerate and what they should feel safe calling out, and stopping a harmful behavior.
The goal is always for the behavior to stop.
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I think one of the things that is most frustrating about the new MSB (I swear I’ll get off this horse anytime now) is that the whole point of the Hog Pit was to be able to call out abusive pieces of shit, so having her running around the kinder friendly message board pretending to be a new person who oozes rainbows and compassion from her pores is like shit icing on an ugly damn cake.
Yes, the celebrating of no longer being held accountable for actions is an odd one. But I’m glad the previous things are still accessible. I do like the idea of a perfect society and all that, but I am reminded of Demolition Man. And it seems weird to start off with Simon Phoenix already in the society, let alone more than one of them.
Oh, that works with the terrorists bit. We are the scraps. To Taco Bell!
When someone shows you who they are, over and over again? Believe them.
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@Narson Of all the analogies I wasn’t ready for, one for Demolition Man I’d suspect is on that list. That said, it’s also the one I didn’t know I needed.
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@Narson I don’t get the Taco Bell refence but ok
