The ideal way forward

[Luke]

good evening totalfreedomers

so basically i've seen 3 posts from telesphoreo, video and alco on how to move forward with tf. i don't really agree with alco or video's proposals, they have their merits but i think there is a better way. as for telesphoreo there isn't really anything to agree/disagree with lol so i shan't be mentioning too much of that in this post

so basically i think the reason that old tf died was because old tf was toxic. aint any sugarcoating that one. but i also think that the fault doesn't lie solely with the community, saying this as a member of management who watched ryan's server implode from the inside, and watched as tf:r reached the end of it's own lifespan. toxicity was ramp everywhere. i made a post about a year ago titled "What Happened to TF" where it mentioned community toxicity, but i think there's more to it than simply some people being awful.

i disagree with panther's goal for numerous, blindingly obvious reasons, but i do agree with his core thesis. panther is essentially arguing "want toxicity to go? stop giving it a place to be. anarchy is no rules, no rules means no rulebreaking, no toxicity." and to be frank, the "more to it" i was talking about is exactly this.

old staff and management (including/especially myself, and not just tf:r management) were too burnt out and tired by the constant influx of drama that eventually every transgression became a major thing. i'll give you an example: NukeCoderX. NukeCoderX was a little shit, but also he only did half the shit he did because we antagonised him. If you take him burning rainbow flags on TF, that only happened because my retarded ass kept spamming rainbow flags around his base. yes, he was absolutely wrong to burn them, but he wouldnt have done it if i didn't keep prodding him with them. because early on i decided "this kid has some dodgy views and will be a problem, lets keep an eye on him" which became "this kid is a problem, lets annoy him" which eventually lead to the behaviour i banned him for.

i will also state: nukercoderx was a human being with his own (supposed) thought processes and agency. he did the wrong thing, whether or not i prodded him.

another big issue is staff-player relations. neither had any trust for the opposite. there was certainly a culture of looking for things to ban for, as far back as when i first joined in 2018. by the end the management were actively waiting for the next crisis whereas the players lost all trust in management to handle things properly. i mentioned in my old thread ayunami's ban, and i'll discuss that now.

ayunami was banned because, from my recollection, he horrendously mismanaged a community full of children which somehow managed to garner the interest of kiwifarms. kiwifarms then did some digging and discovered tf. i banned ayunami because kiwifarms didn't ultimately look into us, and the server at the time had a large base of transgender, lgbt users, many of which were underage and honestly quite vulnerable. this was brought to my attention and something needed doing, so i banned ayunami, with the reason being "you're a liability". my intention was to direct any potential attention away from TF and towards myself.

now, people didn't like that. i didn't reveal the official reason for ayunami's ban because quite frankly i didn't trust any of the users and assumed one of them would copycat and go to KF solely to show me how wrong i was. people argued against me anyway despite having no knowledge of the ban which at the time i just attributed to comnmunity toxicity, but nowadays i think it's the prime example of a breakdown of trust between staff and community.

so, what can we do to resolve this? here's my suggestions:

1) Make the ban system private at the point of appeal. This may sound counterproductive for trust, however I'm suggesting we don't allow what happened in Seth's run to reoccur, the intention is to have the system be solely the staff's decision. Any discussion of any appeal will be removed from the forums. Once the decision has been made, the appeal can then be made public if there's any necessary reason to do so. We cannot police ban reasons, nor should we attempt to, all it takes is a single screenshot to say "This user has been banned for x" for people to know. But we can control ban appeals, which should hopefully provide some support to avoid the witchhunts of previous times. One incentive we could also use is to make a rule in the appeal "If the contents of this appeal has been shared, your appeal will be denied."

2) Relax the rules. Seriously, relax em. Give the players some more trust. For example of a change I have already made on the Discord: Previously any mention of slurs were forbidden on the Discord. This is no longer the case. You cannot use the words yourself. But if an image happens to have the word in it, that is allowed. This change trusts the users to make their own decisions in what to say/send. I don't have a firm list of rules in which to change, but I think it would be worth going through the old conduct policy and determining which ones are old or outdated and not necessary anymore. I also think jumping straight to 24h bans is a poor idea, and the alternative should be more use of lockup, very short bans, and so on before the eventual /gtfo.


Why these suggestions and not the whitelist or zero tolerance idea?

For one, the zero tolerance idea is flawed from the get go. Zero tolerance is not a new concept to TF, and it has historically not ended very well. Plus, give people a system and they will find a way to fight back, regardless of how rigorous you are. I think having ban appeals be private information would curb the massive issue of witchhunts, while also still providing a level of transparency when it comes down to it. In addition, having more relaxed rules treats the users like actual human beings instead of problems to solve.

For two, the whitelist idea will remove the ability for older players to return. Having a dedicated list would just be another hoop to jump through to join and play, which may work for friend-group based servers like OdysseyFreedom, but wouldn't for TF which is more general. We can (and I have) use a whitelist system at times of problems, where we are being raided where manual verification is necessary, but I don't think it should be a blanket whitelist.

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at base value one thing i learned in school is "if you ignore that fat dickhead who keeps calling you short, theyll stop calling you short and move onto the next kid". if you call that fat kid fat, you'll just ensure they keep returning. let's not call the fat kid fat, just let him be fat in peace and eventually he'll chill out. this is probably the easiest way as staff we can move forward, while still maintaining a level of rules

i may be missing stuff cuz i'm largely freestyling this but i'll try edit and amend where possible

 

[Telesphoreo]

I agree that zero tolerance policies have never worked. And "zero tolerance" itself is very ambiguous. I do agree that bans should be privatized. I do not care about Video or Alco saying we need "democracy" or "checks and balances". I disagree entirely. I have not published anything at this time relating to my thread to see the general consensus. My changes (that will be happening) are fairly radical. One non-negotiable here is that we cannot start a new chapter in TF if we continue to operate the server how it's been operated in the past. That is a very clear thing that I'm not backing down on and some of the changes coming will be unpopular I imagine. One of the things that kind of follows into bans being privatized is the extraordinarily high standard that staff will be subject to. Staff will be going through a significantly different application and training process. Your actions of provoking NukeCoderX wouldn't be tolerated on my new system. Staff has always been a goal to reach because of the power and permissions it unlocks. That's not going to happen anymore. For too long, we've held regular players at such a high standard and staff get to be in a relaxed club. I'm flipping that dynamic. Regular players will be the one who will get to just enjoy the server and have a relaxed time (this sentence does not mean we're doing anarchy). Actions of staff members are going to be the ones watched and penalized SIGNIFICANTLY harder. The goal of having such a high standard for staff members is so that bans CAN be privatized among other things. There will be no "funny business" or grudges allowed behind closed doors during the ban decision process. Staff members will have an exceptionally high standard and any staff who would engage in that would be vetted out before being allowed to make a decision on a ban appeal. So, that is the point of my post. A private ban system is (very likely) going to happen, but with that change comes significantly higher standard for our staff.

 

[Panther]

i disagree with panther's goal for numerous, blindingly obvious reasons, but i do agree with his core thesis. panther is essentially arguing "want toxicity to go? stop giving it a place to be. anarchy is no rules, no rules means no rulebreaking, no toxicity." and to be frank, the "more to it" i was talking about is exactly this.

You're right on the money about my core thesis. In this thread, you propose that relaxing the rules and leniency is a way to achieve this. And I agree with that—to an extent. Relaxing the rules would help achieve a necessary point that @videogamesm12 brought up in that we need to calm down and realize this is a Minecraft server. However, this is TotalFreedom. People are still going find the line where they can be as toxic as possible and start causing drama because that's what they want to do. Relaxing the rules will allow more wiggleroom for petty behavior to not immediately spiral into dramatic events. But because the line still exists, chaos-makers are still going to try to cross it.

Anarchy is indeed a radical solution. Even though it hasn't been seen on TF for a long time and many aren't used to it, it isn't a new concept for TF. But I keep pushing everyone to go one step further than just relaxing the rules because it really removes that line where people can start causing drama and issues. Ultimately, we need to learn to just respond maturely to those people ourselves and ignore it. To me, anything else is still "feeding the trolls" because they have systems to bypass and knock down and people to make upset.

You also brought up the issue of safety in this thread, and anarchy at the server level is understandably not great for the purpose of ensuring safety at the server level. But the truth is, despite all the changes this place has been through in attempt to make it safer, it's still TF. This ain't Weenie Hut Jr's. You need to learn to protect yourself here if you want to be safe. And with the people that inevitably are around here, I think a better approach would be to allow anyone to join at their own risk, and provide good documentation about how one should practice good OPSEC/protect themselves online, and make clear what you're getting into when you join this place.

 

[Panther]

There will be no "funny business" or grudges allowed behind closed doors during the ban decision process. Staff members will have an exceptionally high standard and any staff who would engage in that would be vetted out before being allowed to make a decision on a ban appeal. So, that is the point of my post. A private ban system is (very likely) going to happen, but with that change comes significantly higher standard for our staff.

You agree zero-tolerance policies won't work, but it seems you've outlined one of your own in your handling of staff ban decisions. How is this going to work/be enforced? I'm having trouble believing this could ever actually be properly put in place. And even if it did, what do the bans mean anyway? People are little shits and will make new identities and bypass the bans.

 

[Telesphoreo]

You agree zero-tolerance policies won't work, but it seems you've outlined one of your own in your handling of staff ban decisions. How is this going to work/be enforced? I'm having trouble believing this could ever actually be properly put in place. And even if it did, what do the bans mean anyway? People are little shits and will make new identities and bypass the bans.

Zero tolerance policies won't work for the players. That's a given. However, I believe we can make them work for staff members.

 

[Panther]

Zero tolerance policies won't work for the players. That's a given. However, I believe we can make them work for staff members.

But again, how would this not just play like every other zero-tolerance policy fail in TF's history? A lot of the staff is frankly similar to the general playerbase anyway. What makes them so different? I'm finding it super hard to believe that it won't just result in drama and tension over whether or not someone crossed the line.