Improving the Community

[Ren]

Since that thread is locked: could you define rudeness?
I personally see passive aggressive posts as much more of an hindrance than people being less than incredibly careful with their phrasing.

But that aside, I thought that first point was incredibly vague, considering that the interpretation of the word seems to differ greatly from person to person.

[PyTom]

Since that thread is locked: could you define rudeness?

The answer is, no, I can't. Rudeness is something we recognize on a case by case basis, rather then a comprehensive sense of conditions. Certainly, I hope that most forum members have been taught by life experience how to avoid being rude to others, and I hope that that will be put into use online.

But fundamentally, it will be up to the forum administration (Lemma and myself) to decide what that actually means, and who to warn. I don't expect us to aggressively police this, but we want the ability to intervene before (or while) situations get overly heated.

Remember, the goal of this is to try and use our powers to help discussion on the forum become less heated and more productive.

[Jake]

Rudeness is something we recognize on a case by case basis, rather then a comprehensive sense of conditions.

Surely you could at least give some guidelines?

For example, as Ren basically asked - would you consider passive-aggressive behaviour 'rude'? I agree with her - I find it far more offensive than people who speak their minds but don't take care to word their responses in a politically-correct manner. And it's the kind of thing that flies past Lemma's "would I say it to someone's face?" test, because most passive-aggressive people delight in behaving that way to people's faces; that's the whole point of passive aggression.

[PyTom]

Surely you could at least give some guidelines?

Well, certainly I've started deleting outright two-line posts that begin with tl;dr.

For example, as Ren basically asked - would you consider passive-aggressive behaviour 'rude'?

To be honest, I'm not sure what passive-aggressive behavior is, when it comes to a forum context.

[papillon]

To be honest, I'm not sure what passive-aggressive behavior is, when it comes to a forum context.

.... me, when I'm pissed at someone and trying to manipulate them into losing their temper by following a cutting remark with a just-kidding smiley? I don't think I really do it on this forum, though I'm well aware I have the tendency in environments that are more flamey.

Arranging matters to make yourself look innocent while intentionally pushing someone else's buttons, cloaking viciousness in "I was only trying to help!", being overly sarcastic and then insisting you didn't mean anything bad by it... the whole nature of being passive-aggressive is that your real feelings and intentions are obscured. It's pretty hard to make specific rules against that, though.

[Jake]

To be honest, I'm not sure what passive-aggressive behavior is, when it comes to a forum context.

Several of these items are easily applied to a forum context. Specific examples, obviously, would violate the "no talking about people" rules...

Off the top of my head, though, we definitely see the "ambiguity" kind (for example, saying something that could most-easily be interpreted one way and tenuously another way, then turning around when the original interpretation is taken and insisting - often with the snide implication that the person who jumped to a conclusion is an idiot - that the other interpretation was intended). Not so much as some other forums that I visit, but it's around. That whole behaviour-intended-to-make-other-people-feel-uneasy-or-inadequate thing, we see. We certainly see some of the false nicety designed to engender sympathy from onlookers while simultaneously getting away with being fairly obnoxious.


It's an easy behaviour type to cite because everyone recognises the term, but there are lots of other destructive forms of behaviour which aren't so easily categorised as 'rudeness' but probably do equally much to damage a warm-and-fuzzy 'community' feeling. For example, supercilious arrogance could be considered 'rude', but it's often not insulting or directed against a specific person or anything easily categorisable like that. Overtly blankly ignoring one person's contribution while admitting everyone else's is definitely destructive from a community-spirit point of view, but it's not insulting or name-calling, it's just 'impolite', really... and again, not really easy to put in a bucket. Unnecessarily using jargon which not everybody in the community can be expected to know without explaining yourself - something which you do semi-frequently yourself - is a very socially-exclusive behaviour; it can be and is done maliciously with the specific intention of making people feel uncomfortable and unwanted... but obviously, sometimes people are just thoughtless and don't consider everyone else when writing their posts, and sometimes it's unavoidable when you're discussing a technical topic. You want to be able to ban people who do it on purpose, help people who do it by accident and ignore people who do it by necessity without making anyone feel like the rules aren't being evenly and universally applied, because actually, inconsistently and unevenly-applied moderation is going to kill a community just as quickly - if not more quickly - than a few rude users.

It's my opinion that 'rudeness' is a very bad choice of words, both because it's highly subjective and also because it's woefully inadequate; what you're actually trying to guard against is disrespect. One can be disrespectful and still not rude, whereas one cannot be deliberately rude and still respectful. Deliberate disrespect needs to be met with a ban, while inconsiderate disrespect needs to be met with education. In both cases it's obviously best to talk to the person in question and get their side of the story, but that's an administration matter.

[PyTom]

It's my opinion that 'rudeness' is a very bad choice of words, both because it's highly subjective and also because it's woefully inadequate; what you're actually trying to guard against is disrespect.

I think you're right here. I've updated the rule a bit to take that into account.

[JQuartz]

If still relevant:

OK, firstly, you should be aware that 'censorship' does not only mean 'complete removal from the public eye'. It means (definition of censorship)

I see. I apologize for my misunderstanding.

You completely missed the point. Regardless of what you call it, the person who wrote the post will notice that you have decided it's a bad post. A lot of people will find this offensive. Shockingly...that one obvious side-effect is that you're going to piss a lot of genuine users off.

Well, if you label it as bad and give an explanation why it is so, as well as instructions on how to make it good and once it is good, remove the bad label...maybe they won't be offended if they're really genuine users...

Cute, but this is completely unlike the example you gave earlier. "So offended that I decided to speak negatively about you and crack a rude Your mama joke." Not to mention that this is a pretty classic example of acting the judge; you're deciding that the poster was definitely acting to offend and not - say - being sarcastic.

Yeah, the guideline is actually for myself since I acted as judge by saying it was rude. However it seems I still haven't followed the guidelines since I used the word 'offensive' which is also judgmental. So thanks for informing me.

The person who is offended needs to be the one who raises the issue, not some group of jumped-up politeness police going around making assumptions about the behavior of other posters and self-righteously 'correcting' their language.

I see. It seems I've misunderstood about the post. Perhaps due to me skipping most of the post and never maintained a forum before, so I don't really know about this issue.

OK, so now you're recruited two necessarily-well-populated groups of trusted users (moderators and rephrasers), given them all various back-and-forth procedures to follow and (valid criticism)

Yes, I agree that the rephrasers idea is very naive.

Ok, for the sake of the argument:
-Valid points

Yes, I agree. Rephrasers is impossible since they're translators and being translators they would need to know two languages, which in this case cannot be formally taught making it unique to each individual thus the likelihood of a person knowing the exact two languages(the language of the offender and the language of the offended) 0%.

OK, honestly - to be blunt - your answer to every flaw in your idea appears to be to come up with increasingly (and unnecessarily) complex ways (valid argument)

Understood, rephrasers is bad.

[Tsundere Lightning]

The changes you've made make a lot of sense to me, Blue Lemma, Py'Tom. I particularly like the redefinition of the Art/Music/Writing board as a place to post your work for critique and review.

I'd like to second a call for better guidelines on being respectful/polite. I also agree with Jake that respect is more important than being polite; being blunt and rude can be a form of respect, especially in art criticism boards. I know that I'm not alone when I thank people for savage, rude reviews that improve my work. (I'm thinking of a specific incident, but not one from the Lemmasoft forums).

The Works In Progress Board is now only for announcements, not for updates, correct?
Does this mean that posters cannot ask questions about the proposed game in that thread? If not, should those questions be referred to off-site progress logs? Private messages? Game Designers Corner forum threads?
Basically, I'm wondering how one solicits input about a work in progress or a proposed work.

[PyTom]

The Works In Progress Board is now only for announcements, not for updates, correct?

No, there hasn't been much of a change in the actual focus of WIP. At some point, there may be a rule as to how extant a game must be to get a WIP thread, but we haven't done anything there yet.

[Adorya]

Can you please explain a bit more about

- Art/Music/Writing has been renamed Skill Development, and now also covers smaller games.

What is "smaller games"?
Does that mean thread about smaller games release/beta can/must be created there?

[DaFool]

Can you please explain a bit more about

- Art/Music/Writing has been renamed Skill Development, and now also covers smaller games.

What is "smaller games"?
Does that mean thread about smaller games release/beta can/must be created there?

Maybe the Ren'Py Launcher can link directly to the Skill Development forum, so that all the

"Hi, I've been playing with Ren'Py for a bit, and this is my first attempt..."

kind of posts will congregate there.

That way their efforts can be critiqued in the proper context, before they embark on something more ambitious.

[papillon]

Well, we were talking about trying to set up single-scene game challenges for skill improvement discussions. That would count as 'small'!

[Der Tor]

I saw F.I.A. include a YouTube Video a little up in the thread... and i am wondering, how do you include YouTube Videos? I mean i know how to include Videos in the php Board as i even made buttons for it on mine. But here i can't see any buttons and you are not allowing HTML to be pasted in just like that or are you? So how was F.I.A. able to post a video?

[Adorya]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poEDuOYpA_Y[/youtube]

tag is

Code: Select all

[youtube]