Hello! Over the past few weeks, I'm sure most of you (namely NA because that is what is active lol) experienced 2 things: NA1 and inconsistent admin actions regarding certain rule transgressions. Hopefully this will get changed now)
Main thing I'd like to adress is our admin's team stance on racist slurs in chat, and in general chat abuse. For the longest time, the general idea was "react to worst offenders, otherwise wait untill a complaint lands", but recently we've come to terms that it's a shit position and we need more concrete, unified guideline on how to react to those problems. We've had many different situations arise that were problematic - what about words like "nigga", or what about using slurs while talking to your friends, where it seemingly doesn't hurt anyone intentionally?
Certain cases from our community are the cause why we can't have nice things, so we have to put a stop to some of those practices, even if not all of them were harmful.
The official server rules are getting slightly changed - the racism paragraph will be extended to contain more specific examples of what is wrong and what is not.
It'll read as following:
- No abuse of in-game chat (racism, insulting, griefing, spamming...)
- NOT OK: Intentionally using racial slurs, like friend, chink, cracker, jap and so on, towards any player, admin, between friends, towards groups of people
- NOT OK: Substituting a slur with a synonym that's not outright offensive (i.e - saying nigga instead of friend, whereas context makes it clear what the intention of saying it was)
- OK: Accidentally using a slur without knowing it's connotations or meaning (It's up to admins to decide how probable it was for offender to not know what the word meant - for example,
word like jap may just appear as a short for japanese at first) - NOT OK: Continued use of a slur after being explicitly told what it means
FAQ:
Q - Does it mean we cannot say nigga anymore? That's not offensive in all meanings and is a part of culture!
A - No, it means that if someone is being a smartass and writes whatever offensive sentence he wanted to write earlier, but replaces "friend" with "nigga", despite his superior intellect he'll not escape the consequences.
Keep in mind, the
common sense rule still applies - finding a new way to be an idiot is not gonna end well for possible rule breakers.
Above all else, remember: this is a game, people hop in here and want to play it, kill other players, and have a nice time, if they come here purely to spam obscenities, and not play the game, they are not welcome here.Regarding the admin guidelines, if an admin is present while the mentioned above rule breaking would take place, their first step should be to
remind and warn the player that what they are doing is against the rules. Next, if the behaviour doesn't stop, they should be
muted or
kicked or
banned for a short amount of time (read: 30 minutes or 1 hour), but only kicked or banned if a mute wouldn't have solved the situation.
Muting is the prefered way of dealing with the situation. If the player continues to break the rules despite recieving a warning and the first punishment, admins should ban them for a period of time anywhere between 1 hour and 24 hours, in extreme cases more if it's deemed that a shorter time out would not solve the problem.
Repeat offenders who show no hope of improvement can be subject to a much harsher punishment, including but not limited to: longer bans, permament bans, character removal.
FAQ vol. 2:
Q: But no one complains about it!
A: Because many times, people don't bother complaining - they just leave the server. Many potential new players expressed their disgust with the enviroment they have found on the servers, and said it was the main or one of the reasons that they wouldn't continue playing.
Q: This won't work, people will continue being insensitive with their slurs and will flame on. Being banned for 24h tops is nothing to most of them.
A: This will work, because the aim is to deter people from behaving like little children in the first place. If someone doesn't stop and will continue to act like a troublemaker, he'll recieve a much longer timeout, or possibly another fitting punishment.
Q - muh freedom of spee-
A - This is a free mod to a game, worked on by enthusiasts who hate seeing people use excuses like "freedom of speech" to justify their obnoxious behaviour. If you come here purely to spite us, or to use it as a safe space so you can shout racist slurs seemingly without fear of consequences, this ends now.
That would be all for now, thank you for reading, if you have any further questions, feel free to ask. Ultimately, we don't want to make this game any less fun than it is, we just refuse to agree that this sort of behaviour is in any way
fun, quite the opposite - it takes from the enjoyment of the game for some players when they see how toxic server enviroment appears to them.
