wD Mafia Master Post

[dargorygel]

I recall reading it, of course. It seems to me that I said to put your name on the list. Perhaps I am remembering incorrectly. If so, I'm sorry. Hey brainbomb... Feel free to put your name on the list.

[dargorygel]

apparently i sent it to bo and not you. I was under the impression bo was in the council back then. my bad!!

I remember reading one, though.

[brainbomb]

M 63 - Just finished
M 64 Chaqa + President Eden?? (Awaiting clarity from Chaqa)
M 65 Jamiet99uk
M 66 ND (+darg)
M 67 Hellenic Riot
M 68 Fluminator
M 69 Chaqa + emc
M 70 Demon RHK
M71 brainbombs cult game

[brainbomb]

COMING THIS FALL
a brainbomb game

[dargorygel]

May the Calendar advance quickly.

[Chaqa]

For violations against humankind (and mostly for getting a bit too experimental/outside normal mafia rules/expectations), Eden and I will be running out Among Us game as a non-mafia forum game, probably simultaneously with other games.

It's not going to be as high-activity-required as mafia, so it should be easy for anyone to sign up for. Stay tuned (outside this thread) for details.

[Jamiet99uk]

Indeed everyone, just to expand on Chaqa's update there...

Chaqa and President Eden will shortly be running a pair of linked 10-player games (thus admitting up to 20 people) based in part on the "Among Us" phenomenon that you've all been so excited about lately.

These will not be official Mafia games but I'm sure they'll be interesting and fun. Chaqa has advised me that he and Eden will defer their turn to run a main Mafia game because they want to do this other thing now.

I, Jamie the T, will therefore swap M 64 with them (my name was down for M 65) and they can take M 65 instead if they want, or swap with someone further up the list, as they please.

I have a very exciting setup in mind for M 64 that will be real dose of crazy fun.

However, before I open setups for M 64 we, as a community, ought to have a discussion about personal attacks, vitriol, and general unpleasant behaviour which has arisen again in recent games. I will therefore not post setup or sign-ups for the next Mafia game until Sunday, 24th January, to enable some space for that discussion to take place. I know that some of you definitely have thoughts on this to share. I would encourage you all to (politely and calmly) contribute if you wish to.

[BunnyGo]

Are we supposed to share those thoughts about decorum and kindness here?

[Jamiet99uk]

Are we supposed to share those thoughts about decorum and kindness here?

Sure, if you'd like to.

[ghug]

Alright, since keeping my mouth shut isn't really something I've learned how to do:

First off, I think my coming in with the intention to vote people I don't like set the tone for a lot of this. It was a dickish thing to do, and I apologize. I still think avoiding killing valuable players early is good for town, but I'll be trying to use in-game merit to determine who I do vote for going forward.

As for the community as a whole, I think if we want to improve anything, we have to take a hard look at the incident from two games ago and look for lessons we can take away. I'm gonna give my thoughts, such as they are.

This site and this community specifically have a history of treating women poorly. Durga's borne the brunt of that for years, largely by virtue of tenure and small sample size. She can be a polarizing figure in her own right, but as a friend to her and as someone who's put a lot of time into making the site more inclusive in general, it hurts to see it happen at all, and it enraged me to see someone step so far over the line and be met with equivocation between that step and her reaction to it by the GM and by a number of the players. I didn't behave with much dignity or grace in response, which undoubtedly exacerbated the situation, but it's also pretty easy to trace back to one specific event.

I told the GM at the time that it wasn't going to resolve as cleanly without a strong condemnation of the worst action, which didn't happen, and while I obviously made my own prophecy self-fulfilling to an extent, I think it's a rule that holds in general: if we want to avoid vitriol, we need to cut it off at the head. If you as a victim or an empathetic bystander don't see justice being served, the logical thing to do is right the wrong yourself, since justice won't be served to you either, and then the result is chaos. The pragmatic thing to do and the right thing to do is to squelch it early and publicly.

Concretely, I guess I'd propose a public warning to anyone who crosses a line, with a threat of modkill for repeat offenses. There's a whole Pandora's box that opens of GMs being biased human members of the community themselves, but I don't think it's worthwhile to ask the site for moderation or particularly reasonable to ask the volunteer council to sit out of games, so the best we can do is probably to leave it to the council to settle disputes with GMs after games if they're all playing.

[President Eden]

I have a post I've drafted that I'll submit in a minute, but since I saw ghug's post before I did, I'll chime in with a brief response there first.

I agree with ghug that I was too passive in handling the bad behavior early in M62. I think I set a bad tone for the game by not publicly warning ND specifically for his behavior during day 1. I don't think any of the subsequent drama occurs if I take a stronger stance then. I think a lot of that subsequent drama came because players didn't have confidence in me to prevent misbehavior, and felt a need to defend themselves and attack back. If we don't want players to feel that way, then GMs need to be proactive in creating an environment that makes the players confident that the GMs will police misbehavior and not let other players make them feel unwelcome. I failed at that and deserve some of the blame for what happened as a result of that failure.

[President Eden]

State of the Game

Despite some heavy drama in the last couple of games, there is a lot to celebrate in webDiplomacy Mafia right now. We have a great crop of new players, there’s a lot of positive energy toward the game right now, and the gameplay has generally been both skillful and enjoyable. We need to fix some issues, though, if we are going to make this place as great as it can be.

We Are Hidden

I don’t know exactly what transpired prior to M62—I wasn’t here for it when it happened—but our M62 signup thread was set to “hidden.” For those who aren’t familiar, on webDiplomacy’s forum, you can add a [HIDDEN] tag to ensure that the thread doesn’t appear on the webDip home page forum preview.

It was quickly realized that hiding a signup thread was probably unnecessary and detrimental to the game, and the signup thread was quickly unhidden, but on the condition that the main thread be hidden.

dargorygel, my cohost for M62 and a member of webDiplomacy’s superb moderation team, lobbied hard to get the hidden tag removed from the game thread. His lobbying was successful; M62 started out unhidden.

We then proceeded to have one of the worst drama blowouts in recent memory, which resulted in one modkill, multiple requests for replacement, and ultimately culminated in one veteran player leaving webDiplomacy altogether—including subbing out of ongoing Diplomacy games and, as I understand, even a site tournament which had nothing to do with M62.

The moderator team decided that it was in the site’s best interest to hide M63, and I assume that we are going to remain hidden for the foreseeable future.

I Don’t Blame Them

Playing Mafia on webDiplomacy is ultimately a privilege. We’ve had a fantastic run for the past six and a half years, and I think on balance, mafia is a net positive addition to the site. However, that judgment call is rightly left to the moderation team, and it’s hard to disagree with their assessment that our games have been a net detriment lately—after all, at least one user left the site completely, and solely (as best we know) on account of Mafia drama.

Additionally, heated personal arguments appearing right on the front page is undoubtedly a bad look for the site. It’s the same reason why the entire Politics subforum is hidden from the front page, even though it’s the site’s most popular non-Mafia subforum.

Anything that follows should not be interpreted as criticism of site administration. To the extent that any of their decisions regarding us being hidden hurt us, it’s our own fault. They’ve been patient and fair, and if we are to earn back our front-page status, it’ll be by making changes on our side.

The Fix: Incorporate Site Forum Rules Into Mafia Rules

Technically, we already incorporate site rules into Mafia rules via Rule 12 of the standard Mafia rules, which require that players abide by typical webDiplomacy and forum rules. However, in practice, we have been more hands-off in applying those rules than site administration is in other areas of the forum. Largely, we have been allowed to run our business the way we think is best for the game of Mafia.

Over time, this has led to a divergence, in practice, with forum rules with regard to forum rule #2 (discussed in detail later), which bars personal attacks. Even though the wording of the rule is the same, our enforcement is different enough that in practice you get a very different experience.

And honestly, in M62, that experience was not worth having. Granted, I think I could have, and should have, intervened earlier in the game to head off some of the worst personal attacks. Were I in that situation again, I would have.

What would that entail?

Most Of The Rules Require No Change

For example, we already don’t allow threats against people in real-life (Rule 1). I don’t think this has ever come up and I don’t think it ever will, but that’s obviously beyond the pale and has no business in a Mafia game.

The other rules that we already follow, or could follow, without meaningful change to our game rules:
• The “no-doxing” rule (Rule 3)—several of our members know each other outside the site and interact accordingly, but to my knowledge we’ve never had any kind of threat of doxing someone in a way that would violate Rule 3, and I’m pretty sure we never will.
• The “no spamming” rule (Rule 4)—Mafia games are inherently insulated against spam because they are self-contained to a single game thread, plus DMs and QT threads off-site. You can’t spam in a way that violates Rule 4 without already violating Mafia game rules.
• The rule against circumventing press (Rule 5)—again, I don’t think this has ever come up, but there’s no reason players should be discussing ongoing Diplomacy games in a Mafia thread anyway.
• The rule against public cheating accusations (Rule 6)—see above.
• The “common sense” rule (Rule 7)—the structure of our community, with GMs handling problems within the game and appealing to a Council before ever going to site administration, dovetails nicely into this rule. Further empowering our GMs and the Council to handle these issues will better allow us to meet what rule 7 seeks.
• The rule against evading silences (Rule 8)—We have already incorporated precautions against evasion of forum silences into our ruleset by forcing a replacement of a silenced player for the duration of their silence.

I skipped one, of course…

Mafia And Rule 2

Rule 2 is a rule against “abusive, bigoted, or degrading content,” and explains that “[c]reating threads or posting replies that target a member, group of members, or group of people is prohibited,” as well as “bigotry toward another member or a group of people.” “While some discussions on our forum can become heated, attacking another member is not permitted on the forum. Players who post a reply in a discussion attacking another player may be warned and/or silenced depending on the severity of the offense. Consistently harassing another player or going out of one’s way to attack another player, instead of contributing to discussion, may also classify as grounds for a silence or further action depending on the surrounding circumstances.”

Bigotry

I’ll start with what I think is the more cut-and-dry topic to address—bigoted content.

I don’t believe any of our players are bigoted in any meaningful sense toward any group of people or toward other players. I don’t think this is why we get hidden. But all the same, it wouldn’t be too hard to incorporate this rule into our ruleset: we can ban racial slurs or sexually charged or engendered insults (calling people bitches, cunts, etc.) without meaningfully impacting the way we play the game, I think. I recognize a lot of us are friends with each other here, and we may use that kind of banter with each other normally. But in the interests of both keeping our games as civil as possible and in reacquiring front page status, this strikes me as a small price to pay.

The site doesn’t create a comprehensive list of “banned words” and I don’t think we need to do the same right off the bat. I think we can leave the development of that kind of thing to GM and Council discretion. And frankly, we’re all mature enough that we should be able to figure out how to avoid using these terms, now that we’re on notice that we should.

One thing I am going to push for on this front, though, is consistent and objective application of this rule. It doesn’t matter to me if the two people involved are good friends or only know each other through webDip Mafia—creating multiple standards based on subjective evaluations of friendship simply won’t do. It shouldn’t be hoist upon the GM to decide that me calling Chaqa a name is okay, because he and I play a lot of games together and banter each other all the time, but me calling someone else a name is not. If you have friends here and you like to call each other certain names, then I’m sorry to be a wet blanket, but it needs to be left out for the sake of getting us in line with site standards.

Ad Hominem

Now for the other one: personal attacks. Criticizing bad play is fine, and healthy insofar as it inspires improvement. Attacking players shouldn’t be allowed. Denigrate the play if you must, but do not denigrate the player.

There was a very insightful comment in the last game:

Do you feel like Maniac is a better player than rdrivera or HR?

Regarding a question from bb: I'm curious why you chose to mention rdr and HR of all people. The short answer is no and the longer answer is that it feels wrong to rate people's mafia skills on a 1D scale.

We tend to refer to a player as “bad” a lot, and it’s usually due to a specific weakness in their playstyle, or even based upon just a couple of instances of bad play. I doubt this is hardly ever meant to be taken personally.
But regardless, I think it would be much healthier if we stopped referring to people as bad and instead made our criticisms specific to their play. Even if you mean to be criticizing the play and not the player, it’s easy for it to come off as attacking the player when you refer to the player as bad. Making the criticism specific to play is much more constructive, as it calls attention to the weaknesses themselves without assigning a value judgment against the player for having those weaknesses.

I don’t want to bright-line ban calling people bad, but I think it would improve our games if we stopped doing that—especially since it seems that our Day 1 voting decisions often get governed by subjective perceptions of some players as being bad or net detriments to their team or whatever.

---

This is to say nothing of behavior like what follows. I have mostly avoided specific reference to individual behavior to avoid the feeling of attacking someone, but the broader point here is more important:

Btw is peterbot still a thing or something similar? or something that collates posts/votes?

You've played on this website for years and you don't know what Peterbot does?

This, is the definition of a trash tier quality post that is posed with stupidity because this snake probably doesn't think the rest of you low IQ dolts will call him out on it.

I read the first page and saw that from Drugna. Literally the only page I have read so far lol.

Ok if we're talking about useless and terrible as criteria

##vote nd

Bye see y'all at night

Yeah about what I expected from a trash tier player like you.

This is so -expletive- weird. Flum posts his D1 "DAYKILL" and I am going to all cap and put it in air quotes every single -expletive- time due to this site's ridiculous PC policies. Anyway, Flum posts his newb kill list on page 11 and then TWO.. TWO of them immediately weirdly meme vote him lol.

OK nothing suspicious about that /utter sarcasm

Bruh you think we have legit reads that are anywhere near accurate?

So, you play a reading game and don't make reads? Are you a mentally impaired (sorry if you are, but just asking)???

This behavior should not have been tolerated in M62, it is my failure that it was. I think it fairly uncontroversial that it should be barred. What interests me is the rationale [clipped for readability]:

Maniac stated, paraphrasing, “ND is the poor man’s Krellin” now I wager a lot of you don’t know who Krellin is. But, it’s not something that I disagree with. Krellin is a provocateur and so am I. There used to be a time on this website where provocation was understood. It apparently is no longer the case. Everyone sits down with their furry hat on, sipping on their juice, holding mommy’s hand.

“OH MY GOD THE BAD MAN ND!” seems to be the general vibe from these care bears

Obviously, when times change and one person is playing in what is now an unacceptable way that person is going to be the odd man out. I get a lot of hate for it. And, if I die because of it then so be it. I’m proud to shake things up even if it’s for one day. It might hurt some feelings, but in the end it is justified. More on this in a second.

I’ve seen Vecna reference a few times my previous and most recent games before I quit. He argues that I am playing in a similar way. Yes. true. This is a good analysis. But I would counter the point by stating that in the last few games I played, regardless of alignment, in a provocative way whether that was in a bizarre way or more in your face aggressive manner. At best me being provocative is NAI. I would continue my counter by stating that I deeply believe that playing in a provocative way is the best way to play D1. Especially if you have a longstanding history with people in the game. Or even with new people to test their response. Being provocative allows you to get reactions that would fall outside the normal bounds of the game discourse. That’s why I do it. Maybe the way people responded to my provocation will be important later in the game, maybe examining their reaction will aid in my analysis of the data later in the game, maybe it all turns out to be nothing. Either way, it’s something that I can re-examine if need be at a later point in time if I am not killed or someone else can down the road. Maybe they crack on the spot and there is an instant result.

But, to say that my provocation did not already lead to something would be an understatement. It has already shaped the D1 discourse. That is something I am happy about. It worked and it may yield future dividends.

I believe ND when he says he uses this as a tactic to get reads. I have seen plenty of reaction testing that used anger as a tell; some players are more emotionally invested in arguments as town and therefore get angrier when provoked as town than as mafia.

I also believe that this tactic hurts our community enough that we should disallow it completely.

teacon’s discussion of this idea in the webDip Mafia Master Thread is on point:

I'm not in the current game, and not reading the game, for reasons that (on seeing this thread) now seem fairly justifiable. I like mafia, and have good feelings for most of the community that plays it here. Here's some grist, ideas to get started with a rule to defend it:

"In the course of investigative, deceptive, and persuasive play, players have often used appeals to emotion, intentional fallacies, and/or behavior to elicit reactions from others. Such rhetorical tools have proven to be harmful to the community as a whole when used, not to determine/mask in-game alignments, but to attack the character of other players. Ad hominem, however useful it may seem in advancing a player's win conditions, is not a tactic that is "in bounds" for playing mafia. Since the use of rhetoric admits degrees of harm, and since tempers often compromise a player's ability to judge the effects of their own speech, the GM may privately solicit input from other players, and yet retains sole discretion on both what speech qualifies as ad hominem, and also the extent to which outside-of-game personality differences affect in-game play. Questions of free speech in the public square are to be left for the public square - this thread is a game, for the purpose of advancing specific conditions."


Anyone have thoughts on this? Could you make that second-to-last sentence more readable?

I want to make it okay to call someone "scum" in the game, but not call them scum in real life. If we want to do that, there are different threads.

Site rules already ban ad hominem behavior elsewhere, and it’s clear that we can’t allow it if we’re going to be on the front page again. I completely agree with and wholly endorse teacon’s assessment of the harm that causes, explanation of the principle behind the rule, and assessment that enforcement can be left to GMs and the Council.

Other M62 Notes

It’s been pointed out to me that the modkills in M62 threatened a significant imbalance to the game, and that it might have been better to use a different remedy that would less dramatically impact the ongoing game—namely, bans in future games. In retrospect, I’m inclined to agree.

At the time, I viewed modkills as a less threatening measure than future game bans, since the modkill punishment contains the problem to the ongoing game; the only way that someone can continue disrupting a game after a modkill involves blatantly ignoring GM commands, to the point where a future ban is justified by default as the only solution. I didn’t want to modkill, and darg can attest to that, but I thought it was the best solution to contain an in-game issue to that specific game. (It should be noted that while force replacements are the actual best solution, darg and I had exhausted our available replacements at that point and were struggling to find additional people.)

In hindsight, I think it’s better to use future game bans, and I will be using those before modkills going forward.

Wrap-Up

I am highly confident this community can implement these changes successfully. I think we would enjoy the changes, too. Undoubtedly, I think if I had taken the approach outlined above to my moderation of M62, the game would have been more fun for everyone, we wouldn’t have had such drama, and we wouldn’t have gotten hidden for M63.

I recognize there will probably be growing pains with this—but we implemented the “daykill” rule without much trouble, and I think we want the kind of games this tighter ruleset will lead to, anyway.

TL;DR:
1. We are hidden because our existing ruleset permits personal attacks, which are against normal site forum rules, and the admins rightfully don’t want us on the front page if we’re going to allow personal attacks.
2. Being on the front page is great, and personal attacks aren’t.
3. We should apply the site forum rules against personal attacks to our games in the same way the site administration does for the rest of the forum. Criticize the play if you must but be mindful of how you do it, so you don’t attack the player. Don’t deliberately attack players as part of a strategy.
4. Ban slurs and engendered insults and the like, in line with the existing ban on bigoted behavior. If you are friends with players in the game and that type of banter is normal for you then that’s fine, no one is judging you for that, but leave it out of the Mafia games so we can keep things civil and within site rules.
5. I will be implementing these rules on my own in games that I host going forward; I leave it to the community to decide if they should be standard.
6. Future game bans are a superior alternative to modkills as escalating punishment if warnings are not sufficient, and in the future, I will attempt to use the threat of those bans to police bad behavior before resorting to modkills.

[Jamiet99uk]

Thank you Ghug and PE.

Speaking personally and not with any particular hat on, I agree with most of PE's proposal.

Re (2) I personally don't think being on the front page is all that important. It can be good for attracting new players, but I never understood experienced players claiming they "couldn't find the game" if it wasn't on the front page. Go to the Forum Games subforum, and there it is. Easy. But I don't want to make a big issue of this - because the reason we got hidden from the main page absolutely is evidence of a problematic issue.

Re (6) I agree that Modkills should generally be a last resort. I would only add the slight caveat that the GM of a particular game should probably not be banning players from games in the future, after their turn as GM is over, without notifying the Council of their intention to do so (which as both Tom and PE will know from recent games, doesn't involve waiting around much, as Darg and I are both online lots, and we're in two different time zones, so we've got you covered).

Otherwise, I very much agree with the most important elements of President Eden's proposal. That is, applying the normal WebDip forum rules to Mafia posting, and thus banning slurs and personal attacks on the same basis as the rest of the site. I would stress that I'd still, at this stage, be totally open to hearing from those who don't agree with this - if anyone does take that alternate view.

Polite discussion yay.

[worcej]

I already posted my major comments in the Unhide Mafia thread, so I won’t repeat them here.

All I will say is I agree with what everyone has already said here - a consistent rule of no provocative behavior and banning specific ad hominem behaviors, regardless of your friendship status with the players in question, would cover almost all the recent issues and prevent them going forward.

[Hamilton Brian]

I was sorry I didn't call out the behaviour myself. My ADD brain and low-patience for reading the walls of post that were written were no excuse. Still getting used to the WebDip Mafia community, I've seen a range of comments posted about people, and I would wonder what the boundaries for acceptability would be. Was this two friends just harshing on one another? Obviously with last game, that was definitely not the case. The Diplomacy game itself, with whom I have played with some of you, is different. One can easily shut that conversation down. Not stepping in to say something because I thought the other person was suitably able to stick up for themselves is not a justification or excuse. I was a bystander, and I am sorry.

I look forward positive changes moving forward.

[Tom Bombadil]

I already posted my major comments in the Unhide Mafia thread, so I won’t repeat them here.

All I will say is I agree with what everyone has already said here - a consistent rule of no provocative behavior and banning specific ad hominem behaviors, regardless of your friendship status with the players in question, would cover almost all the recent issues and prevent them going forward.

This is such a cop out and a revisionist spin on what happened over the past 2 games.

This is basically saying that context doesn't matter.

It should be pretty obvious that worcej calling Durga a bitch in a demeaning way is completely out of bounds because it is a personal attack, and specifically based on her gender.

Durga calling her friends bitches for shading her and not voting for her is a different context. In this context it means cowardly. In the prior context it is a derogator, sexist term for an unpleasant woman.

These two are completely different things. And worcej's argument that Durga used the word bitch, the same as he did, and there is some double standard is a fucking joke. So lets not pretend putting some rule that says "regardless of your friendship status with the players in question" in any way is an accurate depiction of what happened. Nor is it a good way to solve anything.

Similarly, the people who then attacked worcej personally should be admonished. I don't remember everything, but its already been pointed out that things like ghug's comments about his wife should be disallowed. That is very obviously a personal attack and has no place on the site.

Saying someone is being a moron, or is bad at mafia do not seem like personal attacks. And being honest about your views about someone is important in mafia - so saying that you think someone is bad at mafia is sometimes necessary. There is probably more nuance here. "He is bad at mafia" reads different than "he's fucking trash at this game". Like try to be somewhat pleasant everyone.

[dargorygel]

" Like try to be somewhat pleasant everyone."
I'll write more in the morning. But this is a good summary.

[kgray]

it enraged me to see someone step so far over the line and be met with equivocation between that step and her reaction to it by the GM and by a number of the players.

I think this is a really important point, and something that bothered me with the way we handled the situation. I'm not saying that every reaction to the initial offense was warranted, but the overall response of our community to a prejudiced comment and the aftermath was "both sides need to let it go and move on." This is unacceptable, honestly. Even if the situation deteriorates to both sides making personal attacks, the original offense was the catalyst, and the response was reactionary - and I honestly believe it was reactionary largely because of the general consensus to let the original offense slide.

And it was a prejudiced comment. I know worcej reacted very strongly to Durga calling him a misogynist, and I understand why. It's a pretty loaded word and it implies a lot of things that I'm sure are not applicable to worcej. But that comment in that context was misogynistic, and treating the label of "misogynist" as being just as offensive as a gendered insult is harmful. Calling out prejudice is not on the same level as prejudice itself.

So I guess my contribution for us moving forward is that yes, it's great to advocate for us all to be more pleasant and kind. But I also think that if these types of things come up, we should call them out for what they are and condemn them. If the overall community does not tolerate these interactions, then the person being targeted has no reason to get defensive, and we can avoid a lot of what we saw in that game. I have no idea how this could (or even should) be translated into a game rule. But it's something we should think about.

[worcej]

I already posted my major comments in the Unhide Mafia thread, so I won’t repeat them here.

All I will say is I agree with what everyone has already said here - a consistent rule of no provocative behavior and banning specific ad hominem behaviors, regardless of your friendship status with the players in question, would cover almost all the recent issues and prevent them going forward.

This is such a cop out and a revisionist spin on what happened over the past 2 games.

This is basically saying that context doesn't matter.

It should be pretty obvious that worcej calling Durga a bitch in a demeaning way is completely out of bounds because it is a personal attack, and specifically based on her gender.

I did not call her that simply because of her gender.

I frequently use the word in my daily conversations when labeling people who are being unjustifiably rude and demeaning, as I thought she was doing. Regardless, she was offended and I was in the wrong for this and have apologized several times. Is there another way I need to pay atonement? Because I will if I need to.

I did not treat Durga any differently due to her sex. Period. End of Story. Continuing to promote this as 'revisionist history' is frankly insulting and gives a 'pass' for the actions that were directed at me.

Also, you specifically are saying '2 games' - what did I do to anyone wrong in the last mafia game, Tom? Please provide any context - because as far as I am aware, nothing happened inside of the game nor did I bring any drama into the game myself.

Durga calling her friends bitches for shading her and not voting for her is a different context. In this context it means cowardly. In the prior context it is a derogator, sexist term for an unpleasant woman.

These two are completely different things. And worcej's argument that Durga used the word bitch, the same as he did, and there is some double standard is a fucking joke. So lets not pretend putting some rule that says "regardless of your friendship status with the players in question" in any way is an accurate depiction of what happened. Nor is it a good way to solve anything.

It isn't a joke and these rules need to exist for this exact reason.

We are playing a game in a public atmosphere where all interactions are available to see. This double-standard that some people can call someone something and others cannot needs to be removed from the game to prevent 'gray areas'. The use of the B word in both context was ad hominem and that, at the root, is the issue with all of this drama.

It was said pretty well already - not everyone knows each other or interacts with each other the same as others and some people can read into interactions more than others. All I can tell you is if I see someone calling someone a negative word, then I won't think twice about using it at them themselves.

Similarly, the people who then attacked worcej personally should be admonished. I don't remember everything, but its already been pointed out that things like ghug's comments about his wife should be disallowed. That is very obviously a personal attack and has no place on the site.

Saying someone is being a moron, or is bad at mafia do not seem like personal attacks. And being honest about your views about someone is important in mafia - so saying that you think someone is bad at mafia is sometimes necessary. There is probably more nuance here. "He is bad at mafia" reads different than "he's fucking trash at this game". Like try to be somewhat pleasant everyone.

The issue is they weren't admonished - I continue to take my licks and own them, as I should because I did cross a line, while the people who made comments towards me continue to make statements pointing back at it's my fault for starting it.

Reality check time: Just because I behaved poorly doesn't forgive bad behavior from others. The issue is when presented with the opportunity to apologize, they didn't and instead doubled down.

Here is what hasn't happened yet:

1. I still have not been given an apology directly for those comments labeled at me. (Durga and ghug [worth noting he did, then retracted it in-game])
2. I still don't have an apology for people +1'ing negative comments directed at me. (Durga, kgray, and ghug)
3. I still never got an apology for having to ASK to be modkilled because I needed to remove myself from the situation. (Durga and ghug)

And the fact that none of them have said a word about this until recently is telling of how little admonishment they've received.

And to be perfectly clear, I am not dismissing my involvement or how I was wrong. I was in the wrong for my portion and it was serious. I hurt our little community with my actions and I deeply regret how I contributed to this situation. I've apologized and tried to have a dialogue to come to an understanding and a way to move forward, but never was given the time or effort to try to move forward.

So once again, it isn't revisionist for me to say what I said. Just because I threw the first stone doesn't excuse the stones others threw too.

[worcej]

it enraged me to see someone step so far over the line and be met with equivocation between that step and her reaction to it by the GM and by a number of the players.

I think this is a really important point, and something that bothered me with the way we handled the situation. I'm not saying that every reaction to the initial offense was warranted, but the overall response of our community to a prejudiced comment and the aftermath was "both sides need to let it go and move on." This is unacceptable, honestly. Even if the situation deteriorates to both sides making personal attacks, the original offense was the catalyst, and the response was reactionary - and I honestly believe it was reactionary largely because of the general consensus to let the original offense slide.

And it was a prejudiced comment. I know worcej reacted very strongly to Durga calling him a misogynist, and I understand why. It's a pretty loaded word and it implies a lot of things that I'm sure are not applicable to worcej. But that comment in that context was misogynistic, and treating the label of "misogynist" as being just as offensive as a gendered insult is harmful. Calling out prejudice is not on the same level as prejudice itself.

So I guess my contribution for us moving forward is that yes, it's great to advocate for us all to be more pleasant and kind. But I also think that if these types of things come up, we should call them out for what they are and condemn them. If the overall community does not tolerate these interactions, then the person being targeted has no reason to get defensive, and we can avoid a lot of what we saw in that game. I have no idea how this could (or even should) be translated into a game rule. But it's something we should think about.

I was literally told part of the justification for calling me a misogynist is for how I talked to you, kgray, when I scum read you and was building a case on you during M62.

I asked for more information and was blown off because it just 'seemed that way.'