Discussion about off-topic & forum rules

[Riotcoke]

That doesn't really make sense ngl

Walnut

[Papist]

I remember trying to get staff to separate the two into different categories because I didn't agree that ESOC Talk is "Off topic" and we were seeing very little overlap in the people who posted in those forums. And of course this scapegoating was pretty predictable. The separation didn't happen, and indeed we're now seeing the two get lumped together even though they have very little to do with each other, for the sake of a false narrative.

I'm not sure I understand the point you're making here. Are you suggesting that that Real Life Discussion is the real issue and that it's being unfairly used to smear Off Topic as a whole? Even if that's true, I don't see how that substantively changes the argument that's being made (that the ESOC forums foster toxicity).

I'd like to reiterate Dolan's question: Which animosities are getting carried over from the real-life offtopic section to other parts of the AOE3 forums?

The most obvious recent example is the Native American mining thread, and the same group of 2-3 trolls from Off Topic who've been turning every thread (including this one) into a debate over whether it's ok to use racial insults. They post ridiculous stuff, people feel obliged to respond, and the conversation turns ugly very quickly. It's obvious to me that most of those guys would leave ESOC if we deleted Off Topic or at least rolled back the Mad Max, "anything goes" moderation policy, and I think that would be an overwhelmingly positive development for this community.

Also, again, it's ridiculous that this became a discussion about off topic when the real problem is the generally high level of toxicity among AoE3 players. Frankly, it's disrespectful to the OP.

I don't think anyone would argue that Off Topic becoming an alt-right cesspool is the only cause of toxicity in this community, but it's absolutely a contributing factor. There was literally a post last week where someone was talking about how great the Nazi Party was. If you don't think that kind of stuff negatively impacts community culture, I frankly think you're being naive.

[Kaiserklein]

I get that but nowadays it is impossible to not step on anyones toes. How far should we go in that regard? Films, music lyrics, lectures, general speech. It is a slippery slope. But i will stop using certain words if it is offensive .

I'm glad you brought up that last point. Not being an asshole is a concept that seems to elude a lot of people here. If someone says something is offensive, just don't say it to them again. Making it a point to use the word as much as possible or throwing a tantrum about speech policing just makes you sound like a childish asshole. If you desperately need that word to be a part of your vocabulary, just wait to use it until the person who's offended by it isn't around.

Okay so literally anyone can make you stop using literally any word because they feel offended?
Do you even realize what you're saying

[voigt1240]

I get that but nowadays it is impossible to not step on anyones toes. How far should we go in that regard? Films, music lyrics, lectures, general speech. It is a slippery slope. But i will stop using certain words if it is offensive .

I'm glad you brought up that last point. Not being an asshole is a concept that seems to elude a lot of people here. If someone says something is offensive, just don't say it to them again. Making it a point to use the word as much as possible or throwing a tantrum about speech policing just makes you sound like a childish asshole. If you desperately need that word to be a part of your vocabulary, just wait to use it until the person who's offended by it isn't around.

Right. As long as freespeech is not impacted we should avoid words that Hurt others. My point is we should not use hurtful words, but we should be able to.

[dansil92]

Im so happy to see mitoes thread about toxicity turn into another toxic cesspool. Lemme know if any of ya'll turn into ninja turtles or somethin

[voigt1240]

Im so happy to see mitoes thread about toxicity turn into another toxic cesspool. Lemme know if any of ya'll turn into ninja turtles or somethin

I don't see how it is toxic. The closest to toxicity is the ridiculing of Ivan Even if it might be deserved. Toxic? No. Out of Lane? Yes

[comradecommissar]

I feel like this forum is turning into a good example of Karl Popper's paradox of tolerance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

[aaryngend]

Im so happy to see mitoes thread about toxicity turn into another toxic cesspool. Lemme know if any of ya'll turn into ninja turtles or somethin

Did you even read the last page? Tons of community moderators and retired contributors made excellent points. The cesspool is a few pages ago by now.

Continue from that point on and cease the useless discussions(which keep repeating with seemingly no end) which don't lead anywhere anyway.

[Sargsyan]

I have carefully read the topic and given the issues another thought. At first I felt like leaving it at the one post I made, but I just don't feel right about the narrative that is currently being created in this topic and I feel like I could make another meaningful contribution towards this discussion that would expand on my previous post.

First of all, I really want to adress the discourse regarding off topic. I think it misplaced to blame toxicity on off topic in general. Other people have raised this point already, but I want to reiterate that there isn't a lot of direct contributions of toxicity in off topic directly affecting other forums. Some people have mentioned how the DE native civ thread got out of control, but that actually was caused by comrad and diarouga: a newer user and a user that hardly posts in off topic. I don't understand how this conflict has anything to do with off topic.

Furthermore, I feel really bad about how some people try to leverage Mitoe's post into a campaign for more political correctness. Don't get me wrong though, I too would prefer to have a forum where slurs, racist, discriminating and/or anti-semetic comments have no place. However, I find it rather ridiculous to blame every problem ESOC faces on a very small group of users that posts things that are questionable at best. Overall these posts are extremely rare and I remember only four or five posts that made me legitemately feel uncomfortable. But that is not really toxicity, is it? When I read a post like that, I generally don't really like the contents of the posts and I would rather not read stuff like that, but it doesn't make me feel bad. It's good if those sorts of comments are moderated (if they exist at all) and it can be okay to point out to people that what they are saying is not okay (good examples include people not realizing 'paki' is a slur and people being unaware that it's better not to use the verb 'to rape').

I actually feel like a slightly different aspect of off topic is far more toxic: Some users seem to believe that it is okay to flame forum users if their opinion is undesirable. When this stuff happened to me, it made me feel really bad. It wasn't like I read some politically incorrect post. That personally doesn't really affect me, as I know that unfortunately those opinions are still out there. But when I read a forum user, or multiple forum users, personally attacking me because of my opinion - which is actually not racist or anti-semetic or even hateful - that makes me feel sick. Especially in the past year there have been a handful of occasions where this happened and it really ruined my mood for the day. That is actual toxicity. You don't have to look hard for this sort of stuff; In this very topic Incog blatantly insulted and attacked diarouga for expressing his opinion (I believe this post has been removed afterwards).

One underlying problem here is that European values are generally very different from American values on these issues. Part of America has become extremely progressive on certain areas and has a particular way they want to solve these problems. I feel like there are clear elements of political correctness, social justice warriors and cancel culture that have also surfaced on the forum. I actually thinkm that these elements can be extremely toxic. There is a slight tendency to try to 'cancel' or generally attack people for having an 'incorrect' opinion. This has been particularly problematic because of the currently rather large cultural differences between many Europeans and many Americans. If the community wants to move forward, I think the American userbase needs to be more understanding of the fact that there are large cultural differences on this forum and I believe that they have to stop personally attacking people for their opinion.

These attacks are not just limited to off topic. ESOC has created a culture where it is acceptable to insult users if you consider their opinion to be 'unacceptable'. If someone thinks very differently on balance issues from the rest of the community, he risks getting flamed for expressing that opinion. When someone has a different opinion on what is good game design, he will get attacked for that. If you have a different opinion on what is cheating or what is not cheating, people will flame you hard. It's not that the forum users are necessarily intrinsically toxic. I think that we've slowly created this culture, to the point where people don't go to ESOC anymore to be positive. People go to discords or maybe twitch chat (though not as much I suppose) for positivity. I noticed that I stopped expecting ESOC to provide positive feelings. For positive feelings I would simply chat with my aoe friends on discord. The result was that whenever I did decide to post on ESOC, it was to either argue (which I suppose is fine) or just to vent real life frustrations. This is what ESOC had been like for years, so I suppose I subconsciously joined the culture.*

I think that the community should work on breaking this vicious circle of toxic behaviour. The best way to do this is to actually moderate insults. It has consistently surprised me how users can get away with blatant insults and attacks on other community members. I feel like ESOC has always been too lenient with regards to this, but I also feel like there has been almost no moderation at all with regards to insults for the past two or even three years. I hope we go back to strictly moderating personal attacks. I think that's the only way to break this toxic culture.

It is obviously important to continue moderating racist/discriminating comments, but I don't think that doing so even more strictly will solve any problem. If the more politically correct part of the community does not change their attitude, I feel like the restriction of opinions would need to be very severe. Otherwise these people will continue to attack forum users for their opinions (which are technically not racist) and thus will continue to contribute towards the toxic culture. You could restrict opinions very severely and avoid this conflict, but in that process you will alienate a very large part of the European community and I think that will ultimately be a ticking time bomb. We really shouldn't try to blame all the problems on a very small amount of posts that are racist. As a community we should reflect on our behaviour more thoroughly and we should take more responsibility for the generally toxic environment we have created, rather than trying to blame the problems on a few particular forum members (which actually hardly participate in many other toxic aspects of the community).

*To not sound like a hypocrite, I want to emphasize that I am also to blame for the current culture. When you made over 5% of all the posts on the forums, it would be ridiculous to act as if this toxic culture magically appeared without any input from my end. I have also made toxic comments in heated discussions and I should have been moderated and warned for these mistakes.

Lastly, I want to thank Sarg for letting me use his account for these posts.

[Papist]

Okay so literally anyone can make you stop using literally any word because they feel offended?
Do you even realize what you're saying

I never said that other people should be able to "make you" do anything. My point is that you should choose not to use words that make people uncomfortable because that's what a decent person does. If your friend or family member asked you not to use a word or discuss a certain topic because it made them upset, would you respect their wishes or would you ignore them and keep doing it?

[Papist]

Right. As long as freespeech is not impacted we should avoid words that Hurt others. My point is we should not use hurtful words, but we should be able to.

In public sure, but not on this forum. This is a place for people to bond over AoE3; anything that detracts from that should not be allowed.

[voigt1240]

Right. As long as freespeech is not impacted we should avoid words that Hurt others. My point is we should not use hurtful words, but we should be able to.

In public sure, but not on this forum. This is a place for people to bond over AoE3; anything that detracts from that should not be allowed.

Respectfully disagree

[n0el]

Right. As long as freespeech is not impacted we should avoid words that Hurt others. My point is we should not use hurtful words, but we should be able to.

In public sure, but not on this forum. This is a place for people to bond over AoE3; anything that detracts from that should not be allowed.

Papist may OOS but he’s a wise man.

[chris1089]

How do your two posts not contradict each other @Papist ?

[Papist]

How do your two posts not contradict each other @Papist ?

I believe there should be different standards for ESOC and real life. In real life, I am a free speech absolutist -- I think anyone should have the right to say anything that isn't slanderous or incites violence. However, that doesn't mean I think you should say certain things, and you should be prepared for criticism if you do.

ESOC is a different story because it's a private organization. If people behave in a way that damages its brand or interferes with its mission (including being racist or spamming), they should be banned.

[t3rror1sta]

I have carefully read the topic and given the issues another thought. At first I felt like leaving it at the one post I made, but I just don't feel right about the narrative that is currently being created in this topic and I feel like I could make another meaningful contribution towards this discussion that would expand on my previous post.

First of all, I really want to adress the discourse regarding off topic. I think it misplaced to blame toxicity on off topic in general. Other people have raised this point already, but I want to reiterate that there isn't a lot of direct contributions of toxicity in off topic directly affecting other forums. Some people have mentioned how the DE native civ thread got out of control, but that actually was caused by comrad and diarouga: a newer user and a user that hardly posts in off topic. I don't understand how this conflict has anything to do with off topic.

Furthermore, I feel really bad about how some people try to leverage Mitoe's post into a campaign for more political correctness. Don't get me wrong though, I too would prefer to have a forum where slurs, racist, discriminating and/or anti-semetic comments have no place. However, I find it rather ridiculous to blame every problem ESOC faces on a very small group of users that posts things that are questionable at best. Overall these posts are extremely rare and I remember only four or five posts that made me legitemately feel uncomfortable. But that is not really toxicity, is it? When I read a post like that, I generally don't really like the contents of the posts and I would rather not read stuff like that, but it doesn't make me feel bad. It's good if those sorts of comments are moderated (if they exist at all) and it can be okay to point out to people that what they are saying is not okay (good examples include people not realizing 'paki' is a slur and people being unaware that it's better not to use the verb 'to rape').

I actually feel like a slightly different aspect of off topic is far more toxic: Some users seem to believe that it is okay to flame forum users if their opinion is undesirable. When this stuff happened to me, it made me feel really bad. It wasn't like I read some politically incorrect post. That personally doesn't really affect me, as I know that unfortunately those opinions are still out there. But when I read a forum user, or multiple forum users, personally attacking me because of my opinion - which is actually not racist or anti-semetic or even hateful - that makes me feel sick. Especially in the past year there have been a handful of occasions where this happened and it really ruined my mood for the day. That is actual toxicity. You don't have to look hard for this sort of stuff; In this very topic Incog blatantly insulted and attacked diarouga for expressing his opinion (I believe this post has been removed afterwards).

One underlying problem here is that European values are generally very different from American values on these issues. Part of America has become extremely progressive on certain areas and has a particular way they want to solve these problems. I feel like there are clear elements of political correctness, social justice warriors and cancel culture that have also surfaced on the forum. I actually thinkm that these elements can be extremely toxic. There is a slight tendency to try to 'cancel' or generally attack people for having an 'incorrect' opinion. This has been particularly problematic because of the currently rather large cultural differences between many Europeans and many Americans. If the community wants to move forward, I think the American userbase needs to be more understanding of the fact that there are large cultural differences on this forum and I believe that they have to stop personally attacking people for their opinion.

These attacks are not just limited to off topic. ESOC has created a culture where it is acceptable to insult users if you consider their opinion to be 'unacceptable'. If someone thinks very differently on balance issues from the rest of the community, he risks getting flamed for expressing that opinion. When someone has a different opinion on what is good game design, he will get attacked for that. If you have a different opinion on what is cheating or what is not cheating, people will flame you hard. It's not that the forum users are necessarily intrinsically toxic. I think that we've slowly created this culture, to the point where people don't go to ESOC anymore to be positive. People go to discords or maybe twitch chat (though not as much I suppose) for positivity. I noticed that I stopped expecting ESOC to provide positive feelings. For positive feelings I would simply chat with my aoe friends on discord. The result was that whenever I did decide to post on ESOC, it was to either argue (which I suppose is fine) or just to vent real life frustrations. This is what ESOC had been like for years, so I suppose I subconsciously joined the culture.*

I think that the community should work on breaking this vicious circle of toxic behaviour. The best way to do this is to actually moderate insults. It has consistently surprised me how users can get away with blatant insults and attacks on other community members. I feel like ESOC has always been too lenient with regards to this, but I also feel like there has been almost no moderation at all with regards to insults for the past two or even three years. I hope we go back to strictly moderating personal attacks. I think that's the only way to break this toxic culture.

It is obviously important to continue moderating racist/discriminating comments, but I don't think that doing so even more strictly will solve any problem. If the more politically correct part of the community does not change their attitude, I feel like the restriction of opinions would need to be very severe. Otherwise these people will continue to attack forum users for their opinions (which are technically not racist) and thus will continue to contribute towards the toxic culture. You could restrict opinions very severely and avoid this conflict, but in that process you will alienate a very large part of the European community and I think that will ultimately be a ticking time bomb. We really shouldn't try to blame all the problems on a very small amount of posts that are racist. As a community we should reflect on our behaviour more thoroughly and we should take more responsibility for the generally toxic environment we have created, rather than trying to blame the problems on a few particular forum members (which actually hardly participate in many other toxic aspects of the community).

*To not sound like a hypocrite, I want to emphasize that I am also to blame for the current culture. When you made over 5% of all the posts on the forums, it would be ridiculous to act as if this toxic culture magically appeared without any input from my end. I have also made toxic comments in heated discussions and I should have been moderated and warned for these mistakes.

Lastly, I want to thank Sarg for letting me use his account for these posts.

I will wait to release the movie

[chronique]

I never said that other people should be able to "make you" do anything. My point is that you should choose not to use words that make people uncomfortable because that's what a decent person does. If your friend or family member asked you not to use a word or discuss a certain topic because it made them upset, would you respect their wishes or would you ignore them and keep doing it?

i am gona extend your question and take an exteme exemple.

If we have a converstation between a jewish and an hindouist, and the hindouist used the svastika as avatar. What we are suppose to do? Or you ask to the hindouist to not used that avatar because it can be considered like an offense, but if you do that, you offense the hindouist because in is own culture this symbole is a good one.

You can have the same problem with some words, or some subject. Sometime refusing to talk about something is a problem (exemple : homosexualty is a taboo in a lot of family).

Because ESOC is universal, you can't make everybody happy and i have no solution to deal with that ^^.

[[Armag] diarouga]

I get that but nowadays it is impossible to not step on anyones toes. How far should we go in that regard? Films, music lyrics, lectures, general speech. It is a slippery slope. But i will stop using certain words if it is offensive .

I'm glad you brought up that last point. Not being an asshole is a concept that seems to elude a lot of people here. If someone says something is offensive, just don't say it to them again. Making it a point to use the word as much as possible or throwing a tantrum about speech policing just makes you sound like a childish asshole. If you desperately need that word to be a part of your vocabulary, just wait to use it until the person who's offended by it isn't around.

Okay so literally anyone can make you stop using literally any word because they feel offended?
Do you even realize what you're saying

I feel offended when I see someone using the word "you". Please don't use it ever again.

[[Armag] diarouga]

I feel like this forum is turning into a good example of Karl Popper's paradox of tolerance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Totally agree with you on this.
The problem with this paradox is that the notion of "intolerant" people who should not be tolerated is totally subjective.
The people one sees as racist, are intolerant in his opinion, but the people who call him racist are intolerant as well, because they don't accept his opinion. In the end, one is always going to think that he is the most tolerant toward both sides, and there is no objectivity.

[gibson]

I think every topic should be allowed to be discussed and every word used in discussion, what shouldn't be allowed is people antagonizing each other.

[Papist]

i am gona extend your question and take an exteme exemple.

If we have a converstation between a jewish and an hindouist, and the hindouist used the svastika as avatar. What we are suppose to do? Or you ask to the hindouist to not used that avatar because it can be considered like an offense, but if you do that, you offense the hindouist because in is own culture this symbole is a good one.

You can have the same problem with some words, or some subject. Sometime refusing to talk about something is a problem (exemple : homosexualty is a taboo in a lot of family).

Because ESOC is universal, you can't make everybody happy and i have no solution to deal with that ^^.

It's definitely not always a black and white issue and that's why we should have (1) site rules that clearly delineate what is and isn't acceptable and (2) a team a moderators to make a decision when it isn't 100% clear whether something is permissible or not.

However, I think it's worth noting that these kinds of grey areas are rare and calling people racial insults, the incident that started this discussion, is not one of them. There is no ambiguity there -- those are offensive words, they've always been offensive words, and it's not really open to interpretation. It annoys me when people conflate a situation like that, where it's very clear who's right and who's wrong, with the kind of situation you're describing.

[Papist]

I feel offended when I see someone using the word "you". Please don't use it ever again.

The guy who harassed another user and called him a "nigger" repeatedly thinks this is all a big joke? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you!

[Squamiger]

Show hidden quotes

I get that but nowadays it is impossible to not step on anyones toes. How far should we go in that regard? Films, music lyrics, lectures, general speech. It is a slippery slope. But i will stop using certain words if it is offensive .

I'm glad you brought up that last point. Not being an asshole is a concept that seems to elude a lot of people here. If someone says something is offensive, just don't say it to them again. Making it a point to use the word as much as possible or throwing a tantrum about speech policing just makes you sound like a childish asshole. If you desperately need that word to be a part of your vocabulary, just wait to use it until the person who's offended by it isn't around.

Okay so literally anyone can make you stop using literally any word because they feel offended?
Do you even realize what you're saying

I feel offended when I see someone using the word "you". Please don't use it ever again.

It's actually not even about someone being offended. It's about showing respect and humanity toward other people by not trying to debase them with racial slurs. Do you think someone is actually offended when you call them the N-word? No. But they do register that you don't respect them as a person and hold lots of callous and insensitive views, and that you are a type of person with a toxic mindset, and you are best avoided.

You cannot build a community based on respect when you act like that.

It's a subtle distinction that I feel like the people who are pro- being able to say whatever slurs they want all the time are not getting. I'm not pro-banning people who use racial slurs because I really, really care about protecting people's poor sensitive feelings. I don't actually care about the feelings of individual people on this forum very much. It's just that I want a community where people respect one another and argue in good faith and aren't mean jerks to each other.

While I'm sure people do actually feel offended, mostly this is just about the issue of not wanting to interact with and be around people who feel the need to act like jerks.

[Dolan]

chronique came up with a great example, that of the swastika as a religious symbol for Hinduists and Buddhists and one of horrible memories for Jews. It's the perfect example of cultural clash in a globalised space of communication. Sorry about the incoming wall of text, but I started off by picking up on chronique's example and then I kept elaborating, until my reply grew too large.

That's the result of globalisation and of using English as a lingua franca. Americans think that if we are using a common language in the global space (doing them a favour, btw), we also share their puritan, moralistic code, that is ridden with colonial guilt (due to their unique history).
Some of us come from cultures that didn't have colonies or multiracial societies, so we always used to make fun of strangers and we never saw anything particularly serious about that.

That's because we didn't have multiple ethnicities (from different parts of the world, not neighbouring ones) and races in the same society, so we never got this perception that by stereotyping or mocking other ethnic groups we would be wronging them, since they were never part of "us" as a group. They were always some people that lived elsewhere, in a faraway place, so cracking jokes about them was fair game. We used to crack jokes about Turks or about Russians in Eastern Europe and the Balkans and nobody would ever think that we were monsters for doing that. But now if you do that in the space of some media where Americans are present, you might risk being labelled a nazi, especially by their leftwing or far-left supporters, who have turned this kind of uber-moralistic attitude into a global crusade to chase and de-platform anyone who even dares making any comment that is not politically correct. They really don't understand that other cultures are not like theirs and not because other cultures have a "nazi" mentality, but because most other cultures still have that native mentality of mono-ethnic societies, which has always mistrusted strangers from other ethnic groups. That doesn't mean that people who still have this native monoethnic mentality are overtly nasty towards people from other ethnic groups, they can be very polite and very gratious hosts during, say, sports events, but they wouldn't welcome 1 or 2 million people from that ethnic group settling in their country and changing their cultural ways that were established as a result of a common experience of centuries. The Japanese are a great example of this native monoethnic mentality, they are very polite and nice with strangers, but they don't integrate them, they keep a distance from them and call them gaijin. And they don't welcome mass immigration.

That's not the case for Americans and that's why they are so sensitive about this subject, because their society has gone through colonialism, slavery for the sake of commercial profit and civil war (which was motivated, in part, by racial issues). So for them, race is a very loaded word, for us a lot less so.

But now that English has become so popular as a lingua franca, this has brought lots of people from cultures, that were not connected before, in the same space. And now we're seing their values and different cultural norms clash, because they come from such different historical backgrounds. And (some) Americans are getting agitated and demanding that people from those cultures outside their own need to adopt their politically correct norms or else they will be cancelled and banned from whatever platform has spread its tentacles across the world in the form of a "free service" like Twitter or Google. And they think if you're not adopting their moralist code, you must be some kind of monster, because you're not conforming to cultural norms from their society, that was shaped by their specific historical experience. Little do they understand that outside their society, the world is still divided in separate, local, native cultures that have a completely different mentality about these things, that they're not so obsessed with these things and don't find bad-mouthing other ethnic groups as some kind of abhorrent thing, which again doesn't mean these local cultures wouldn't be generally polite with strangers, but they would also crack jokes about them when they are not present.

That's why for example, Romanians are mistrusted in most of Europe and called gypsies (even though it's just a meme, we aren't really), Italians are mistrusted by Nordic Europeans who make fun of their carefree lifestyle, and Polish people are also ridiculed as being low-class plumbers in the UK. It's part of that spirit of mocking other ethnic groups, thinking your culture is better and foreigners have some qualities which are ridiculous, even though you wouldn't normally tell them that in their face. The internet and globalisation have made this possible, though, since it's a medium where nobody is face to face, and anonimity can make people feel a lot freer to speak their mind than they would be in a real life context.

[aaryngend]

Can you guys stop with the religious and political talk here??

Looking at you @Dolan, @Squamiger and @voigt1240.
I think some of you guys just want to talk about the same shit over and over, and you use something else as an excuse to do so.

Just stop. This topic is not about ethnicity, politics or religion. This is the aoe3 General Board if I have to remind you.

Every time the same old discussion finally comes to an end, someone needs to regurgitate the same crap again. Keep moving in circles...