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[Ohaeri]

Actually... Nobody apart from yourself and maybe some random folk knows what 'Klan Rally' actually means. Certainly none of the ops do, we had a meeting. If I'm piecing it together from the context it means 'pretending to be vile and racist without actually being so'.

A Klan rally is a gathering of the Klu Klux Klan, or KKK. "Playing Klan rally" would be staging a mock rally. I'm . . . really hoping that you know what the KKK is. I'm guessing that you do and just didn't make the connection, which is understandable. If I'm wrong though, I'd really appreciate it if you'd look at the wikipedia page for the organization. A great many discussions on racism center or at least tangentially involve the KKK, for good reasons. And since it's turned into an international organization and is still active in some areas today, it's good to know what it is.

What Captain Mayday meant was that it was difficult to gauge what, exactly, it meant in that context.

I apologize for misunderstanding Captain Mayday's meaning then. I was just momentarily alarmed at the possibility of someone not knowing what the KKK is; to me it's an organization that people need to know about due to its great historical significance. (And believe it or not, I have run into adult Americans who have somehow not been informed!)

[G-Flex]

I'm on IRC probably far more often than I should be, and I can say that I've never had a problem with any of the operators there.

Like has probably been said, that log represents a fairly isolated incident of crude humor. That's pretty much it.

I mean, sure, we argue about stuff and so forth, and ANY IRC channel will get a bit out of hand sometimes (naturally), but there are usually operators present and I know they'd be willing to work with Toady with regards to how they should moderate the channel.

As far as first impressions on IRC are concerned, I don't think we really give a terrible one. Maybe not the best all of the time, but in a realtime chat medium you can never guarantee that. We aren't exactly driving people away, and if someone shows up while some argument is going on or whatever, I find it hard to believe that they'd immediately give up on it AND let it tarnish their image of the game and Toady. When a newbie shows up to the channel, we generally do a pretty good job (in my experience) of answering their questions and treating them civilly.

So yeah, the IRC channel definitely isn't another VN. We're off-topic a lot, as is to be expected, but for the most part we act almost nothing like what's represented in the log. I mean, I can understand how that sort of thing can be off-putting, but really, it was just an instance of humor in bad taste, and like I said, if the operators there are presented with clear guidelines on how to run the show, I know for a fact that they'll comply if it means actually being the bay12games IRC channel in an official capacity.

[axus]

Flinging poop at each other is just regular old internet good times, but it looks wrong to some people.   Toady's reaction is exactly the same as anyone who doesn't spend time on lowbrow chats and forums.  He's closing it because it bothers him, and it would bother people like him, and the people he wants to chat with.

[Footkerchief]

Flinging poop at each other is just regular old internet good times, but it looks wrong to some people.   Toady's reaction is exactly the same as anyone who doesn't spend time on lowbrow chats and forums.  He's closing it because it bothers him, and it would bother people like him, and the people he wants to chat with.

You're missing the point.  Whether it bothers him personally is secondary.  The primary concern is that it will bother some potential DF players/community members.

What Captain Mayday meant was that it was difficult to gauge what, exactly, it meant in that context.

Yeah, I'm Australian, so if there's some more US-centric meaning to that term, I'm unaware of it. I'm aware of the KKK, but if there's slang regarding them, I have no idea what it is. Thus I was unaware of Toady's exact meaning. I'm not trying to be pedantic here, I am actually trying to understand the meaning here, since I'm quite certain Makrond isn't racist at all.

Key word is "playing."  As in, if you walked by a group of kids play-acting a Klan rally, you would probably think "Wow that's fucked up" even if they weren't actually burning crosses and lynching black people.  Likewise, it doesn't matter particularly whether he's a Verified Genuine Racist -- the fact that he considers lowbrow racial humor an endless source of lulz is plenty bad enough.

The fact that he's getting offended that somebody called him out on his racism isn't going to help either.

Also, from that log, I think Heph was just trying to defuse the racial comments, not chime in with them.

[Zangi]

DF draws in all kinds of people, from immature to hard-ass.  Many people are here and play or played DF for various reasons.  From torture to fortress building.

You can't please everyone all the time when you are bringing in everyone, their mother and their wierdo uncle.  That is just fact. 
(I would be considered one of the wierdo uncles in this case... >.>)

Either way, it does seem easier to pander to the more 'wholesome' group... but, in DF forums itself, you have a better chance of finding wierdo uncles...
That is a large part of the demographic.

Either way, the 'Finally...' section shouldn't have porn or any of that crap.  Half the internet is dedicated porn in some form.  Bay12 does not need to contribute to it.
Bay12 doesn't have room for racism either. 
But yea, those 2 are the most important aspects to keep out...  As I can figure for the time being.

[Toady One]

I feel bad for saying this, but maybe the long time between releases is affecting Toady as well, or maybe something else is making him over sensitive? This is one of the best communities on the net, but toady seems just... tired of having a community at all, it has because noting but a source of bug rapports, revenue, and annoyance. I'm not saying he treats it as such, he certainly dosn't and he answers question and is generally awesome, but I'm suspecting he's starting to THINK of it that way.

Hm, I have to admit Toady seems to be rapidly losing patience with the forums.

I wouldn't paint with such a broad brush.  It's true that I have lost a lot of patience as a general property, and I've become quite annoyed with a small handful of people on the forum.  Overall, I think the forums are doing great, and I'm happy to continue answering questions and reading suggestions and hosting discussions.  The bad has been pretty bad sometimes, though, and it has irritated me.

I invite you to please create a list of rules for us to follow.

The list of rules in the forum guidelines work fine, I think, aside from particular references to forum functions like topics and the report to moderator button.  I can adapt it if you like.  I don't want this to become a job for anybody though, and that's more or less what this amounts to.  If a great deal of people there think the complete forum guideline list is too restrictive, I don't want to impose an unwanted "officialness" on what is essentially a fan-created area after my extended lack of involvement over the last year or so.  It's ultimately your channel, though, so I'll go with your decision, and I'll continue to consider relinking it.  I'm still nervous about it.

Yeah, I'm Australian, so if there's some more US-centric meaning to that term, I'm unaware of it. I'm aware of the KKK, but if there's slang regarding them, I have no idea what it is. Thus I was unaware of Toady's exact meaning. I'm not trying to be pedantic here, I am actually trying to understand the meaning here, since I'm quite certain Makrond isn't racist at all.

Yeah, Footkerchief has my meaning exactly right in his post above.  This is not slang exactly, but it is a phrase local to the KKK and those that have been exposed a bit to their formal activities (such as "rallies"), whether on the news or school or whatever.  I apologize for being unintelligible in that sense.  With the "BURN THEM!!!" and following banter, it was the term that came to mind.

- Toady may be The great, but he can't complete his megaproject game and moderate a forum with an average of 1000+ post per day at the same time.

We received quite a few moderator reports, but not nearly so many that we can't attend to them.  If people reported more often the things that they've been put off by, this might no longer be true, but we won't know until that happens.  I encourage more moderator reports, to the extent that there are legitimate reasons to make them in the first place.

- The "I don't want to show a bad image of the forum to newcomers" problem can be fixed by throwing all the "bad content" into a new forum and to put warnings about it.

<next post> by forum I meant a new section in this forum

That is precisely showing a bad image to newcomers.  A warning doesn't mitigate that.  Imagine if a car company's forum had "The Anything Goes section!  warning: porn and racism ahead!".  It wouldn't work out well for them.  In any case, the old VN is more or less what you wanted, with a few more restrictions, and it didn't end well.

[Areyar]

@ Capt. Mayday: I'm sure that T1 will replace the link to your IRC channel if the content is friendly and DF related for a while, just give it a bit of time. Sometimes a person just gets fed up with something and need to go cold turkey for a while.


Didn't realize there were two General Discussion forums, been using the DF_G_D forum for socializing mostly ...and life advice for religious discussion practice.

BTW Have you checked out the MSPA tribute adventure thread? Its very funny, had to laugh at several of the images (and text): a good thing for happy thoughts. 

[G-Flex]

@ Capt. Mayday: I'm sure that T1 will replace the link to your IRC channel if the content is friendly and DF related for a while, just give it a bit of time.

DF is still a common denominator amongst the DF IRC-goers, as far as I can tell.

But, by the nature of IRC, most of the conversation is going to be off-topic anyway. I mean, nobody has something to say about DF 24/7.

And usually the content is pretty friendly. Toady just walked in on something that was pretty rare and looked a lot worse than it probably was. I honestly don't consider it to have been any form of actual racism, unless satirically emulating something is the same as actually doing it, in which case I guess you'd have to consider Blazing Saddles racist too. Obviously the language and stuff used would have been off-putting to someone who wandered in right in the middle of it, but again, that kind of stuff is not normal for the channel and all of us on IRC were fairly confused by what was going on in this thread and with Toady's comments.

Really, most of the talk on IRC is about games, DF itself, and whatever random eclectic topic. It's pretty normal for us to have weird discussions about ethics or sociology or metallurgy or chemistry or whatever other subject. I mean, come on, we have a guy there who makes stone tools as a hobby. I think, or at least hope, that the impression we tend to give newcomers is that of being a bunch of quirky intellectuals, since, for the most part, that's what we are, and aside from arguments getting heated sometimes and some other exceptions, we tend to get along and be mature enough to discuss things rationally.

Flinging poop at each other is just regular old internet good times, but it looks wrong to some people.   Toady's reaction is exactly the same as anyone who doesn't spend time on lowbrow chats and forums.  He's closing it because it bothers him, and it would bother people like him, and the people he wants to chat with.

He never said anything about closing it, per se, just disassociating it from the forums/site.

And nobody was flinging anything at anyone. It was a friendly, if incredibly lowbrow, conversation. No one was getting offended by anything and I'm pretty sure they can back me up on that. There are times on the chat (as with pretty much all human interaction) when people do insult and have insulted each other, and this just wasn't one of those times. Again, it was just people joking around in what most people would consider poor taste.

Key word is "playing."  As in, if you walked by a group of kids play-acting a Klan rally, you would probably think "Wow that's fucked up" even if they weren't actually burning crosses and lynching black people.  Likewise, it doesn't matter particularly whether he's a Verified Genuine Racist -- the fact that he considers lowbrow racial humor an endless source of lulz is plenty bad enough.

The fact that he's getting offended that somebody called him out on his racism isn't going to help either.

It was literally about two minutes of lowbrow banter. It wasn't people roleplaying a klan rally, it was a few tasteless jokes and nothing else.

Also: "An endless source of lulz"? This is the only time I've ever seen Makrond say something like this. I don't know how often you've talked to him yourself (I'm guessing virtually never), but he's not some kind of self-styled ironic hatemonger or whatever it is you're trying to make him out to be.

He's not offended that someone called him out on his "racism" (btw, references to racism are not racism; it was all obviously pretty sarcastic). He's bothered by the fact that a single two-minute log, and mostly just a scant few lines of text, seem to have managed to get the chat room delinked from the bay12games site with no forewarning or discussion whatsoever, nor does he like the fact that he might have done something somehow wrong in order to cause this.

I highly suggest you don't form strong opinions of people based on single three-minute snippets from someone's IRC logs and a few forum posts.

[Areyar]

Then I'm sure it will all blow over and be like old times in no time at all.

You must realise that while most people just find racist remarks (even in jest) in poor taste,
some people are more sensitive about racism than others.
The USA is fucked up over racism.
And also toady remains an american, however well traveled.

enough said. peace.

[Leafsnail]

Having read all of the last few pages, I am now deeply depressed.  Toady is, as I expected, wanting to distance himself from these things, for legal and PR reasons.  I don't think officially linking to the New VN would be good either - if it's linked too, that would still be partly his responsibility.

Incidentally, I think the community is good for another thing - advertising.  Seriously, Boatmurdered is a better advert than anything you could get an agency to come up with.

[Toady One]

And usually the content is pretty friendly. Toady just walked in on something that was pretty rare and looked a lot worse than it probably was.
<snip>
No one was getting offended by anything and I'm pretty sure they can back me up on that.

I don't thing I've misinterpreted what was going on.  I'm fully aware that the participants in the conversation were joking around.  What concerns me are the other 80 or 90 people or whatever that were in there.  Can you vouch for them?  If you were in a room with 80 or 90 people, of mixed ethnicity and background, and everybody could hear exactly what you were saying to your friends, would you be saying anything remotely like that?  The IRC channel isn't a private chat between a few people.

If this is a matter of differing standards and experience between different countries and so on, we'll just have to take forum policy as an arbitrary rule, if you like.  Every country has their own standards -- for example, take Holocaust denial laws in Europe vs. taboo racial jokes and general racial issues in the US.  They are similar in that they have their source in historical atrocities.  I know those differences are not entirely the cause of these problems though, speaking in a broader context than the particular IRC exchange.  A lot of it has to do with anonymity on the internet.  This kind of joking around in public forums on the internet is quite common, doubtless a lot of it being done by people that grew up in the US.

In any case, we'll continue with the guidelines I've set in this forum.  Most of my players are American, and many of them would be deeply offended by that IRC exchange (as would many of my players that are not American, based on my limited experience).

[Enzo]

Having read all of the last few pages, I am now deeply depressed.  Toady is, as I expected, wanting to distance himself from these things, for legal and PR reasons.  I don't think officially linking to the New VN would be good either - if it's linked too, that would still be partly his responsibility.

Incidentally, I think the community is good for another thing - advertising.  Seriously, Boatmurdered is a better advert than anything you could get an agency to come up with.

Indeed, Toady's livelyhood comes from the DF community. He is managing his business here, not trying to ostracize anyone. In general I'm widely anti-censorship, but lets not bitch out Toady for trying to preserve his professional image, hmm? There has been a lot of apparent ranting in this topic (not just in the last few pages). If he thinks the channel is a benefit to the community instead of a liability he will probably relink it. Just show him it is.

[thvaz]

Toady didn't update dev_now for some days now. Let the man work, and go be weird somewhere else.

I support the idea of this forum being solely for game related subjects, how it was when I first joined. We may not have too much to talk for now, but when the release comes we will have a LOT to talk, for months to come.

[Makrond]

He's not offended that someone called him out on his "racism" (btw, references to racism are not racism; it was all obviously pretty sarcastic). He's bothered by the fact that a single two-minute log, and mostly just a scant few lines of text, seem to have managed to get the chat room delinked from the bay12games site with no forewarning or discussion whatsoever, nor does he like the fact that he might have done something somehow wrong in order to cause this.

Yes. Apologies if this wasn't clear. Admittedly I've hardly been contrite about my actions which probably doesn't make me look good.

Put simply I'd like to apologise - to Toady, to #Bay12Games, and to the community as a whole. What I said was unacceptable, and I knew this when I said it. Another second's thought between typing my message and hitting 'Enter' would have seen the message deleted forever and this whole issue, perhaps, behind us. However this is not what happened, and I don't like dealing in what could have been.

As has been stated numerous times, these are my actions alone that have brought harm - worse simply because as a channel operator I should have known better. If the issue had been raised at the time, I'm sure the rest of the operators could have come to a reasonable and satisfactory solution; however for whatever reason Toady decided to delink the channel as a whole. It is this action that I primarily take issue with as I do not feel a single statement by a single person - even one in a position of power - should have such a severe effect on the channel, when action could have been taken immediately to come to a satisfactory and diplomatic resolution - even if that action was merely a public "What the fuck, Makrond?" (Or perhaps more politely worded.)

So, while I am more than accepting that what I did was wrong, I don't feel it should have hurt the channel as long as it has, and do not feel it should continue to hurt the channel.

[cowofdoom78963]

He's not offended that someone called him out on his "racism" (btw, references to racism are not racism; it was all obviously pretty sarcastic). He's bothered by the fact that a single two-minute log, and mostly just a scant few lines of text, seem to have managed to get the chat room delinked from the bay12games site with no forewarning or discussion whatsoever, nor does he like the fact that he might have done something somehow wrong in order to cause this.

Yes. Apologies if this wasn't clear. Admittedly I've hardly been contrite about my actions which probably doesn't make me look good.

Put simply I'd like to apologise - to Toady, to #Bay12Games, and to the community as a whole. What I said was unacceptable, and I knew this when I said it. Another second's thought between typing my message and hitting 'Enter' would have seen the message deleted forever and this whole issue, perhaps, behind us. However this is not what happened, and I don't like dealing in what could have been.

As has been stated numerous times, these are my actions alone that have brought harm - worse simply because as a channel operator I should have known better. If the issue had been raised at the time, I'm sure the rest of the operators could have come to a reasonable and satisfactory solution; however for whatever reason Toady decided to delink the channel as a whole. It is this action that I primarily take issue with as I do not feel a single statement by a single person - even one in a position of power - should have such a severe effect on the channel, when action could have been taken immediately to come to a satisfactory and diplomatic resolution - even if that action was merely a public "What the fuck, Makrond?" (Or perhaps more politely worded.)

So, while I am more than accepting that what I did was wrong, I don't feel it should have hurt the channel as long as it has, and do not feel it should continue to hurt the channel.

How noble of you to take the blame for everything.