Alright, I don't mean to pull a Gossamer here, but this particular ban has been bothering me. I respect the staff ALOT and greatly appreciate what they do for the community but that doesn't mean I won't criticize them if I feel like some stuff they do was out of line. No-one’s perfect. Now put aside that this clown tried to report George (Plenty) for no good reason and failed miserably (lol), and take some time to read this report and ban appeal. http://royals.ms/forum/threads/swearing.41478/ http://royals.ms/forum/threads/goofygoober-ban-appeal.41542/ IMHO, this ban just felt unnecessary. Most harassment reports involve the offender being toxic, pestering the victim continuously and sometimes targeting the victim with insults and offensive slurs, which is easily something that I would justify punishing as it is behavior that we do not tolerate on the server. In this case, the offender (GoofyGoober) blew up out of frustration and decided to make that clear by whispering "fuck you" in response to a “victim” (BanHammer) allegedly taunting him with recruiting requests for LPQ but never actually recruiting him despite him repeatedly asking for an invite. Alright it was pretty unnecessary to cuss at another person over this but take note of the following. No pestering, no offensive slurs, not even a reaction whatsoever from the "victim" was in this case. Said "victim" made no effort to defend him/herself by saying something along the lines of "back off" or "please stop, I just don't want to party with you". Instead, they take it to the report abuse section because they found it offensive or something? This ban appeal was even a lot more cool headed than half of the other ban appealers and he openly came out admitting that he may have been a bit rude and apologized for it. Although I do disagree with his statement that whispering “FUCK YOU” is hardly rude… I’m on the fence of whether this should be considered harassment by the Terms of Agreement. -“Banhammer” is even liking all of the offender’s posts on the ban appeal as if he’s relishing in some sort of victory. Something about it just irks me >.> Honestly, part of me didn’t want to bother making this post because it has absolutely nothing to do with me, I don't even know anyone personally involved in this case. It’s actually kind of embarrassing how much effort I put into this post. But at the same time, it kinda does affect me, considering I cuss out every so often out of frustration too, granted past a lot more self-control than the offender but still. And now I have to be scared of getting banned for it because someone might take it worse than another person would have? This community's primarily made up of young adults who should be able to handle petty situations like this with a good degree of maturity among themselves, or at least have a tough enough skin to withstand a simple "fuck you" and move on with their lives. And with that, I'm gonna let my much more blunt Korean brotha take it from here. He sums up my feelings on a lot of the petty reports I see here. What do you guys think about this? Maybe I'm blowing this out of proportion, maybe I'm not. Thanks for reading. /rant TLR: I feel like the Staff recently has had to constantly babysit us to a point that they have to constantly ban other players over petty offenses because some amount of our community have become spoiled brats who can’t handle social encounters without a chaperone… This ban in particular was something I found extremely questionable. And it makes me worry over how future bans are going to be carried out.
I also agree entirely with that ban being ridiculous. I even commented on the report, which I would never do under any other circumstance. If swearing is against ToS, then censored words. Obviously the report was by a drama queen trying to grasp at straws and the fact that he actually got banned for such a matter is ridiculously petty.
First there is this, so the ban is following the rules. Engage in rude, unlawful, harassing, vulgar, obscene, hateful, threatening, abusive or otherwise objectionable behavior, including, without limitation, looting, kill stealing, making sexual comments; Not that it should matter but how he behaved after that ban I really think he could use a few days away from the game. Meaning the ban targeted a person that wasn't behaving very nice, making me think the ban was very accurate. If someone said fuck you to me I wouldn't bother so I do agree with reporting for it is petty. You can get banned for other things than just harassment since it says so in the rules, the decision is not wrong, if there should be a complaint it should be on the T&C. That is not acceptable and there is always the report button and various other means to contact a staff member when someone does things like that.
Just putting my 2 cents in here. I believe that there are two sides to this particular situation: There is the side that believes this ban is fair and reasonable. In my case, I'll call them "Rule Abiders". The other side looks at this in a broader, perspective-wise view that looks beyond what the rules plainly state. In my case, I will call these people "Externals". Okay, here we go. In the perspective of a "Rule Abider" it is fair and reasonable that he deserved the ban. The rules state that swearing at others and harassing is not permitted, as you all might know. The offender clearly said "Fuck you", and by that fact, the rules penalize the offender as guilty of the rules. Therefore, he is guilty of violating a rule and is permitted to be banned in the case a GM views a report of this incident, which has happened. Thus, the offender consequently will receive a 3-day ban for a true and just reason. Now, I'm going to say right off the bat that I am on the side of "Externals" in this case. Wondering why? I'll explain. While the offender DID in fact violate a rule, in my true and honest opinion, I do not believe that a ban should have been executed in that specific situation. I have confidence that GoofyGoober, in fact, was not in a state of absolute guiltiness and that the ban was scarcely unjust. Let's put ourselves in GoofyGoober's situation. He stands in LPQ spamming J>PQ whilst MIXTVPE repeats R>PQ 2. Now, right of the bat, this is worthy of being annoying! Yes, MIXTVPE did not have an obligation to invite Goober to the party, and thus he shouldn't have received a "Fuck you". Keep in mind that we are all different. Everyone has their limits, and in this case Goober's limit was the 4-5 minutes spent trying to have MIXTVPE invite him to the party, including the fact that he requested and spammed to join over and over. Now, you and I may not have acted as he did, but Goober did in fact have to release some anger. In case some of you aren't informed, but humans have a tendency to sometimes release anger sometimes. Amazing, right? In this case, Goober decided to release his frustration pent up in a "Fuck you". NOTE, that this is not any threatening "F you". This is a "F you" that had been built up inside and had to be released. What I'm trying to say that when he said this, it is clearly obvious that he wasn't meaning to be harassing and threatening, but rather have a statement that released both his frustration and his anger towards the person. I don't care what all of you think. If you think that his words were truly meant to be a harassment and intended to be a statement of cursing, then go ahead. But I know for a fact that that is wrong and my opinion can be understood by some, and hopefully, most of you. Moving away from the "two perspectives", let's look at the screenshot. Do you see anything other than that "Fuck you"? I sure don't. Is that short, brief statement that can be easily brushed off by the vast majority of us mature players just and worthy of having a ban imposed on a player that was willing to play on this server even until the LPQ levels necessary. I think not. What I'm trying to say is, I believe MIXTVPE completely overreacted and might actually be taking advantage of how easily players can be banned these days. I'm sure that as mature, grown-ups, a "Fuck you" isn't a statement as traumatizing as the rules can paint it to be. You're probably thinking, "Why is this Ngooyen guy taking the time to speak up for this guy he has never even met and has only known of until a few minutes ago?" As a person, I truly believe in the act of speaking up for others if I think they are in a just position. This entire passage is opinion based and opinion based only. As viewers and GMs alike read this, I sincerely hope that you can take his ban into consideration, as I believe it is unnecessary and unequitable. Thank you, Ngooyen
This is what I'm basing my argument on, if the Staff considers his action to be classified as "harassment", that is against the rules and therefore the ban is justified. But I consider the whisper as a blown up frustration bomb rather than something said with the intent to "harass" the player. If that is considered harassment, I witness harassment on quite frequently on the server and that doesn't seem to be true... I'd also like to add the concern that the Staff banning people over petty reports like this encourage the childish players to continue to make petty reports and laugh as the other gets in trouble. It's seriously something you'd see at an elementary school playground, one kid get's moderately butthurt and tattletales on the other. Then laughs about it afterwards, like how Banhammer was liking the ban appeal posts to tease him after all this. It's incredibly immature. Who's really the toxic player in this circumstance?
Can I offer a little advice here? If you find yourself in a situation where you are getting annoyed and frustrated because of what someone is saying/doing, please make sure to get screenshots of what is happening before you blow up at someone, and if possible/necessary/relevant, try to politely reason with the person in question or ask them why they are behaving like that. If it's clear from the evidence that someone was provoked, we do take that into account, as long as their response isn't excessive.
The whole conversation leading to the offender's response is in the report screenshot, and I personally didnt find the response to be excessive at all.
So since I ended up banning the person, I'll give my few cents on the issue. Has there been tons of petty reports made? Yep, absolutely. Will there be tons of petty reports made in the future? Yep, absolutely. So let's take that whole thing out of the picture because it is something that will keep happening regardless of whether we accept the reports or deny all of them. Let's look at this one particular case. The offender got mad and whispered "fuck you" to the victim, it happens to all of us, we lose our cool, I get it. However, just because you lose your cool does not make it acceptable under any circumstances to curse at someone else. This is something clearly against our rules and something I think we need to rid the community of. I did not enact a ban to be "politically correct" (those who know me know I am so anti-PC it isn't even funny), but rather because this type of behavior is not permissible on the server. There are plenty of other ways to vent your frustration and anger without diminishing another player's game playing experience. As for claims that the victim didn't say anything after getting the whisper, I completely agree with what they did. If someone said that to me in person, I'm not going to say anything back, I'd either hang up on them, block them on Skype, or if face to face walk away from them as no one as the right to speak to me like that. So the victim did the right thing by posting a Report Abuse claim as no one should be speaking to them in such a manner, especially over a game. Simply put, no one should be tolerant of people insulting them or saying rude things to them. Treat others the way you want to be treated and we won't even need to be having this conversation.
totally agree with ur opinion on this. I'd also be an external in this case. He had to let out his anger in some way. What GM John says about how it is unacceptable to curse at someone, I don't agree with. Even if you are trying to keep the server as clean as possible with the terms and conditions stating "no cursing whatsoever," there should be some leniency. In this day and age, if someone can get offended by a simple "Fuck You" then they are clearly too sensitive and shouldn't be playing any online game. If GoofyGoober said "fuck you retard," that would be different because then it can't be argued that that is harassment. I also personally believe that mixtape is abusing the really easy ban system.
I'm with OP on this one. I've read through a lot of reports, and it seems like theres some kind of trending thing to report someone. The goal is to get someone banned. For simple stuff like a cursing, a defame, ANYTHING questionable gets reported. This is after all, the internet? If you're planning to stay on it, i'd advise getting a certain thickness of skin, which would allow you to brush stuff like this off, and move on. Beeing upset about it is immature.
Then what's the point of the word "whatsoever"? Whatsoever insinuates zero tolerance yet immediately after that you say "there should be some leniency" I realize my brain is fried from work today but that makes absolute zero sense.
Honestly John, it's yours and Matt's server and if you wanna flush out cursing to prevent toxic behavior, it really is your guys' final say and I won't argue further after this. But I don't find a two letter statement to be able to ruin a player's experience, if anything, the reporter found the situation comical to him... Scamming, however, exists on this server and not just for leech (Item selling, zak looting etc). And it ruins the player experience a lot more, yet gets little to no reaction from the GMs. I think if we simply weigh the gravity of certain offenses in comparison to this one, discouraging scamming is way bigger step forward to ACTUALLY removing toxic behavior on the server, rather than limiting foul language in petty reports. I really feel like there's gotta be at least one of the staff that is uneasy about this ban, but is just too afraid to go against your word.
I can totally understand how people may think that banning somebody for something as minor as in the example given is over the top. But without punishment being handed out in situations like this it would only encourage further verbal abuse on the server. We haven't suddenly started doing anything differently in regards to situations like this, it's been like this for 2 years now. People also need to remember that it's only a 3 day ban for first offences, so it's not the end of the world, but hopefully a 3 day ban will make people think twice when they feel like retaliating to a situation in future. Scamming is a completely different subject @galbixd, and there is a feedback thread open for that where we are listening and trying to see if there are any viable solutions to combat the issue.
I'm not really against this ban in anyway, but I feel like if this is bannable, then http://royals.ms/forum/threads/harassment.41025/ this should have been a bannable offense as well because if someone interpreted "kys" as kill yourself (which is a completely reasonable interpretation), it seems to be more threatening than "**** you." The reason given for the person in this thread not being banned was that there was nothing said after "kys" afterwards. Since there was nothing said after "**** you" and there was no continued harassment before or after, this is the only reason why I think these ban outcomes should reflect each other (for consistency's sake). Again, I still feel like whispering that way wasn't in the right either though so I could see why a ban would be justified
@Matt the sole purpose of my scamming statement was to address John's concern of what diminishes the player experience here
