The reason why our ToS needs to change

Exactly I've seen serious cases of this happening in real life that turned into police cases. It's really sad that things like bullying, harasment and prejudice still exist
Imagine at work your "colleagues" excluding you from the environment and you not being able to work effectively resulting in a dismissal. Imagine your children at school being excluded by the other children and they feeling isolated because of that, wouldn't you complain to the school board?

 

If you are being recorded inside your home, without your knowledge, while criticizing someone who is committing a crime?

 

Kinda depends what u do in your house. Maybe you are the crimer.

 

actually my comment was about the law, totally off topic,

I'm not a lawyer, but in this case there are two crimes, the crime itself and the invasion of privacy, you have to see which overlaps which

 

Are we seriously saying it's a crime to shitalk in private like in your house lmaoo
can you guys discuss the actual topics of the thread

 

These scenarios are skewed to highlight the victim in a better light.
Let me pose some different scenarios.

Imagine at work your colleagues start excluding you from projects they believe you are unqualified for, or are not a good fit. Imagine your child at school being excluded by other children because your child can't keep his snide comments to himself.

Sure, if the school board is only given evidence from one side, they might rule in favor of your child. But that's not the holistic truth.

Exclusion is a reaction. Start by questioning the cause.

 

They will not simply exclude the person because they know or they think he is not good at it, it is made clear to him beforehand why he is not being involved, or at least that should be the case, this is professionalism in my opinion and experience about the scenario presented by you.

What if they're doing this to the person just because someone else said it about them and they took it for granted without even interacting with the person first? I'm not instantly pointing the finger at the culprit and the victim, I'm showing how things escalate to a tipping point.

 

We can argue for hours about and run around in logic circles about this but at the end of the day what it really boils down to is whether you want to trust staff or not.

Obviously it is easy to paint staff as a whole as a scary NPC boogeyman who is only in a position of power to exert control over a bunch of mushroom gamers to satisfy their own ego and stealthily lurk in discords in their free time to be jerks. We forget that they are just volunteers who are players like us with feelings and comparing them to literal dictators provides no valuable discourse.

I feel like a few of the people who don't trust this new ToS, just fundamentally don't trust staff as a whole to execute it fairly and in a just manner. If that is the reason why you are uncomfortable, I encourage you to actually take some time to chat with staff members and get to know what they're like. They are friendly and always open to talking with community members and signed up to volunteer because they care about you all. Use your own judgement on whether or not these are people of character that you can place your trust in. Get to know them. This isn't a police state or a government, it's a small moderation team of an old school mushroom game.

I'm sure many of you have run content and spent time with some of the staff members. And if you have questions about how harassment cases are handled then you should ask about that too instead of just guessing and spreading conspiracy theories.

Obviously I am biased as I have spent lots of time with staff members, but overall I trust Kimmy and the supervising team to act in a way that's best for the server and the overall community.

Edit: I feel like I've exhausted most of the valuable input I can give in this thread so I'll probably be lurking for the rest of it

 

The onus is on the individual to take words from others with a grain of salt. Current rulings by staff try to pass the buck down.
If I speak poorly of someone (as I am in the right to do, especially in the privacy of my home/discord/wherever) and someone else down the road acts upon that rumor, should I be at fault even if I'm not associated with that person?

If I hear a rumor, it's up to me to decide whether I would like to believe it or not.

 

ralphjohnson I’d like to ask you to address some theoretical scenarios if you don’t mind.

Say you had a bad break up with a significant other who also plays ML, and want to try to avoid them to get over it. You decide not to invite them to content and ask others to not invite them when you’re running so you can get separation to get over them. Harassment or not harassment?

You host Pink Bean and a member of your roster is repeatedly 30 minutes late for 2 months in a row, forcing everyone to wait around for 30 minutes every single week. You decide enough is enough and kick them from the run and replace them with another player, and decide to never invite them again out of respect for other runners’ time. Harassment or not harassment?

You’re making an Auf run and have a strong archer on the squad for your NLs, and another archer wants to join. You decide you would rather pick up a cleave to help with clones instead of a second SE, and decline their application and tell them you won’t be bringing them. Harassment or harassment?


The fact of the matter is that there are perfectly legitimate reasons for not wanting to run content with someone, and none of them are required to be disclosed to another player. Intentionally going out of your way to exclude someone from content maliciously with the intent to inflict harm on someone is a dick move, yes, but unless someone is explicitly saying “I’m not going to invite you because I want you to suffer” then there’s no way to prove they’re doing it for malicious reasons. Everyone has the right to choose to invite or not invite others as host, or run or not run with others as a runner.

In the scenario where someone tells you “I’m not inviting you because I want you to suffer” you can make an argument for harassment under the edited ToS I posted because they’re clearly directly targeting you and attempting to create an unsafe and unwelcoming environment, but otherwise if someone says they won’t invite you and refuses to give an answer, that’s just tough luck. Better to move on and find other hosts or host yourself.

 

What were your thoughts on the ToS edit I posted? I actually advocated for giving more power to staff discretion at the cost of taking away the ability to permanent/account ban. It's not that I don't trust the ToS as a whole or staff discretion, but rather the wording I had issues with. I think ToS in it's current state just gives too much interpretation to be argued over. The more specific you get, the more players will attempt to find loopholes and argue their way out of bans, creating more staff headaches.

It's like this scene from Moneyball: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTjhHrcyiQI
Don't give people an out to argue or complain. Just give staff the tools to deal with them and get it done, less headache for everyone, but cap the ban duration to account for possible false positives and give people less incentive to fight back after a ban. (After an account ban, people generally only have one route available to them: appeal and fight to the death)

 

Yep, what I mean is the line in the sand has shifted since 3 years ago. Enforcement went from very strict to very lax. I'm not supportive of blocking out all the smegas, but ideally wording should be changed to reflect the current population.

I'd also rather ToS be very detailed which prevents any change in interpretation. If it's not explicit on ToS (can't rely on last sentence for everything), there should not be a ban. ToS can also be patched regularly to fix any grey area.

 

My suggestion:


1- Grief, mass grief, and harassment are separated as they have always been and require three strikes on any of them to result in a permanent ban. However, after two bans in any of these sections, every subsequent ban will be for a duration of 30 days. This will effectively dimish the chance of players to break the law and subsequently creates a better enviroment for the players and reduce the risk of an injust permanent ban.
Option 2 (which i prefer)- Remove permanent ban and on the third punishment onwards of any section results in a 60 day ban. I believe this is more than enough to make people reconsider their actions.

2- Avoid including the last line of the Terms of Service (ToS) for the grief, mass grief, or harassment section, as it is a controversial topic. This could lead to unjust outcomes. Mirrors humans aren't perfect, and impartiality doesn't truly exist. It's not about trusting the staff, but rather, laws are created to prevent common injustices resulting from human judgment. Harassment bans are not as objective as bans for real-world trading (RWT), botting, or hacking.

3- Completely rework or eliminate section 3.3.3 in a way that prevents leaks from private Discords from being used as grounds for banning, especially when the content was not intended to be shared with the offended party, except in cases involving racial slurs, gender/sexuality discrimination, life threat, doxxing and sexual harassment, like it always been

 

The concern with 3.3.3 is that it encroaches personal space and weaponizes Staff into areas of our life they should not be involved in.
My personal suggestion would be to lock the two opposing parties in a chatroom or forum thread along with staff so that they can hash things out. Give players the space to communicate with each other, explain their side, and maybe untangle some bad blood that could have stemmed from misunderstandings. Hell, maybe it could lead to a sincere apology that could facilitate for new friendships (I've seen this happen many times before). Ultimately, let the players settle their own terms, with Staff nearby giving agency to a safe space.

My issue with the four strikes system is that it tries to simplify/make rigid a complex matter when we, as a small community, should have the bandwidth to try harder towards actual conflict resolution. If the goal is preservation of players, I believe that guided communication between both parties is the best. Let the players set their own terms and boundaries, and Staff can help facilitate them. If a player oversteps these boundaries again, Staff should have all the power to exact punishment as is provided by the last clause.

A four strikes system is a one-way funnel for expunging players from our server.

I don't think the ToS needs to be specific, and trying to perfect it only adds to scrutiny. Every player understands that they can be removed from the game under any circumstances, and that should be the underlying premise for all of the ToS.

 

My opinion: Making decisions to relate to someone based on rumors that someone else told you instead of your experiences and your conception of the person and the environment you share is irresponsible.

I've already had serious disagreements with another player on ML, but I wouldn't give the slightest importance to participating in the same content as that person, I'm here to play a mushroom game, make content, play the game itself. If by any chance I were to participate in a content with that same person that I have dislikes, I would normally play the same as if it were anyone else, however uncomfortable my presence there would be for that person, I personally would not feel this problem. The hoster being a neutral person when the relationship with both parties has nothing to do with our intrigue, neither side has the right to fill it up by asking to kick someone just because they don't like that person. Like I said whether I like him or not, I won't be there to fight, talk bad, insult or harass the person and he won't be there to do that to me either, if that happens to me obviously I would report it and rightly so because how I said we're not there for that.

Do you realize that this is totally different from hosting my own content and being free to invite whoever I want? I have issues with this person and he have issues with me I will not host a run of mine and invite him, we clearly have no relationship for that.

I don't remember saying to other people I'm in a relationship "Don't call me for content or do content with person X because I don't like him". If I have disaffection with this person, that is my problem, I will not involve other people, alienating them from not interacting with this person because of my problem, they are the ones who will interact and have their own experiences with this person, or take their conceptions of what they turn from the person to get their opinion. If I didn't want to go because he is there I'm just going to refuse, I'm not going to say "I don't make content with person X because she's a bad person, I don't like him ". Many said we're all adults, that's the way that an adult acts.

 

These are the kind of things that should fall under 3.3.2, which explicitly does NOT cover off platform events, for whatever reason.

 

ralphjohnson my point still stands that people can join whatever content they want and hosts can invite whoever they want. Refusing to run because another player is present isn’t harassment, and a host choosing one player over another isn’t harassment. You say we’re all adults, and I agree. Adults have the ability to choose who they run with for whatever reason.

 

beegoratto Totally correct! Adults also have the experience and ability to make their own decisions without relying solely on rumours. If not, imagine how much they could be missing out on.

 

That's an excellent point.
I also wonder if the sexual harasser and doxxer mentioned earlier in the thread is still in the game despite, apparently, multiple people knowing who it is.