Predatory Advances

135

Comments

  • That's just not right.  If you're playing a game with a set of rules, it's fair for the other players to know (i) what those rules are, (ii) how they are enforced, and (iii) that they are enforced.  That's a basic principle of fairness and equity that is reflected in the law, and other well run organisations.

    It shows us whether we're all being treated equally.  It shows what behavior the administration will tolerate, and what behavior it will punish (and how severely).  That's information I do think we, as a playerbase, have a right to.  Or at least ought to have a right to.

  • It serves no purpose to name and shame. Also, what punishment can be openly seen outside of a player being shrubbed anyway? Sarapis has already mentioned more than once that they comply and notify the Law Enforcement bodies of anything illegal, so what else do we need to know names for? I've been playing this game 15 years and have seen little to suggest Shrubs don't deserve it and have 100% confidence in the IRE team that anything that should go to the police has done and will do.

    (Party): Mezghar says, "Stop."
  • I'm not talking about when a law has been broken, nothing in the OP or the text is really discussing grooming or RL unpleasantness.  Just repeated unwanted sexual advances mainly (but not exclusively) directed at female newbies.

    It's also just not right to say it serves no purpose.  Shaming serves a very valuable purpose.  It's an additional deterrent, and punishment, particularly in a game like Achaea where your reputation is really everything.

    Seems to me that whatever administrative action is being taken has not stamped this out.  We want to stamp it out right?  What I'm primarily interested in is a discussion about how we can do more to achieve that.

  • Maybe I'm not aware of how bad this is, but when I last played a female character the only person that hit on me was Santar. Do people actually repeatedly harass the same person after being told no?
  • Not sure why people are against name/shaming sexual harrassment offenders. I mean... are you equally against Megan's Law, which provides a list of sexual predators in your neighborhood so you can keep your RL kids safe? When you sexually harrass someone, all bets on privacy should be off. 
  • There was a mud I played with a Punishment board, it would list people being punished for X reason (i.e. - For abusing a bug to duplicate items to make them not rot on death - 5000 hours in limbo)
  • These guys|girls or "predators" probably range from mildly annoying to super douchey, please get this nasty piece of crap of a player away from me. As stated one should just ignore them, and then actually ignore them after the fact. The perps have to be having some degree of success to be motivated to continue doing what they are doing. But, I got to be real here, this is not actually real world sexual harrassment. This is not a real crime because if being annoying were a crime I would have to lock up half the people I've ever met and throw away the key. It steps into the realm of reality if someone is trying to get your personal information and then harass you in real life. More often than not these guys are probably just into erotica and don't have the common sense to take no and walk away.

    I am not advocating this shit. I'm just saying there are greater evils in this world. Give them their warnings, if it gets out of hand shrub them, if it gets out of hand more then ban them if they are still too stupid to get the message. There is no need to break out torches and pitchforks. I'd be willing to wager 75% of the playerbase in this game is into that same kinda erotica stuff, they just conduct themselves in a more civilized manner.

    I know the admin punishes people without my needing to see a public wall of shame. I've seen a couple guys already I would of swore were autobashers, now they are shrubs. I met a guy that talked some of the most off the wall trash I had ever heard of, now also a shrub. This is just in the couple of months I have been back playing. Some may slip through the cracks but eventually they will be found out and punished. Thats what I like to believe anyways.
  • edited January 2016
    Kafziel said:
    Maybe I'm not aware of how bad this is, but when I last played a female character the only person that hit on me was Santar. Do people actually repeatedly harass the same person after being told no?

    Over the course of about 8 female characters, 4 of which were sirens, I have had 0 issues with anything mudsex related. I've had the random tells, but a cool response has always curtailed any sexual possibilities for me.

    I wouldn't want to see a public list of sexual offenders because it isn't a list of sexual harassers, but people convicted of sexual harassment. It works out alright in the real world due to the judicial system, but I feel like it's easier to get a false conviction here. Its too easy to alt and trap someone that you're feuding with OOCly through another character. Not to mention that sexual harassment/rape can be intentionally and consentingly RP'd by both/all parties. The question isn't whether it happened, but whether it was consented to by the players at the time and/or became OOC, which isn't always easy to prove or disprove.
    image
  • Some very interesting points being made in this thread. I have nothing to add, but just wanted to say that the posts here have made me think :)
  • AhmetAhmet Wherever I wanna be
    Matias said:
    It is no one else's business how someone gets punished. 
    I'm quite certain that it's completely the business of the community when someone who is an extreme detriment to the community is punished for their actions. While the deliberations of administration should be kept private, the community as a whole has the right to know that people who break the rules within their community will be punished appropriately, and that action -has- been taken when those rules are broken. At the very minimum we should know a general outline for what punishments will be handed out for what actions, even if that outline is often stretched, or disregarded on occasion due to specific circumstances.

    As Achaea doesn't have much in the way of this, any time I see reference to "administrative action" in help scrolls, I just replace that with "permashrubbing" in my head and I am quite content.
    Huh. Neat.
  • "the community as a whole has the right to know that people who break the rules within their community will be punished appropriately"

    Is this point in doubt? I don't need to know what they did, and to whom in order to know that they are taking care of something. 


    "At the very minimum we should know a general outline for what punishments will be handed out for what actions"

    With regards to this, it would raise the issues of things not being accounted for. Right now the harassment help file
       "In our sole determination, if the offence is serious enough, we may alert your service provider (ISP), your workplace, your university, or other relevant institutions, giving them details of your use of their resources." 
    This leads me to believe that if someone is harassing another, it will be dealt with, up to and including that level, which I am sure you can agree encompasses perma-shrubbing. 

    I think it is important to keep in mind that while we may not like that there are more than a handful of people out there trying to get the young (and not so young) to do things with them, this is a game with more points of view than just our own. These guys (or girls) could be being misconstrued, or perhaps the person they have approached have been too shy etc. to just say "no". I believe that the level of harassment needs to be higher than "he keeps chatting me up", and closer to the realm of "he is intimidating me" before the admin should step in with severe OOC reactions.

    You can always ask your city for help, or on newbie channel if you don't have a city. Much like with most issues, it should only get to OOC punishment once IC resolution cannot be found.

  • If people act without regard for your feelings, in a way that denies you a reasonable sense of comfort and safety, you owe them no such regard. Make them burn. If not out of personal vengeance, then for the sake of every newbie who, lacking knowledge of their alternatives, would sooner quit the game than suffer through such treatment.

    At first I thought, name and shame! Why do people who'd act this way deserve the protective cloak of privacy?

    But as @Skye says, naming and shaming risks turning the accuser into, "That bitch who got X banned." At least in the eyes of people who wouldn't believe or could personally justify or doublethink away that behaviour. You don't need the splash-back.

    And @Tibitha's excellent point about witch-hunting is reason enough not to do it. It can be hard to tell truth from opinion or outright fiction, and mob lynchings aren't justice. The admins have the impartiality and access to informational tools, and the punishments they can levy are serious enough.
    image
  • SkyeSkye The Duchess Bellatere
    I've got mixed feelings about this really.

    On one hand, name and shame may elicit a kind of mob-justice that can go horribly wrong.

    On the other hand, some of these people may actually be established characters. They know what they're doing is dodgy shit, they know it's something wrong and they wouldn't want that tagged onto their mains. I think this is where cross-character accountability should really come into play. You're not allowed to make a troll alt to go into cities and attack random denizens to bother other players, why should you be allowed to get away with making alts to take advantage of new players who don't know any better? 

    And like I said before, the ones who make female characters with suggestive descs and play prostitutes at Minia archway /brass lantern aren't just 'doing their own slutty thing', because the genuine newbs get mixed up with them since their usual pickup spot is precisely where real newbies go. 


  • Jarrod said:
    I think a lot of people are looking at these issues through their own perspective, and completely ignoring what it would be like for actually new players to IRE/Achaea. So you know about IGNORE, and ISSUE, and what to expect from these kinds of people. Who the fuck cares? You're not the people being driven away from the game by the predators, so how you would handle the situation in their shoes is completely irrelevant.

    Imagine actually being a new player. Someone makes a potentially sketchy but seemingly nice comment to you in passing. You have no concept of who people are, what the environment is like, anything. In an attempt to fit in you try to keep the conversation going, you heard this was a roleplaying game on the website and you think this is just one of the spontaneous instances of roleplay popping up. Suddenly things are really skeevy, and your first interaction in the game is some dude trying to feel you up during a conversation.

    There's no guide to issuing or ignoring in the intro because the admin want a game where quality interactions happen, and the first response is to play a situation out as opposed to just blocking all communication. The predators are taking advantage of that environment to prey on people who don't know the intricacies of the game.

    So again, nobody gives a shit how you would handle a situation as an experienced player.
    Adding a little blurb about this in the Intro would probably be a good idea, to be honest. It doesn't have to be like "If someone's sexing you up, consider issuing", but wording it in a way so that newbies know it's there and that the Admin are there to help with any sketchy situations is pretty important.
  • TectonTecton The Garden of the Gods
    Aegoth said:
    Jarrod said:
    I think a lot of people are looking at these issues through their own perspective, and completely ignoring what it would be like for actually new players to IRE/Achaea. So you know about IGNORE, and ISSUE, and what to expect from these kinds of people. Who the fuck cares? You're not the people being driven away from the game by the predators, so how you would handle the situation in their shoes is completely irrelevant.

    Imagine actually being a new player. Someone makes a potentially sketchy but seemingly nice comment to you in passing. You have no concept of who people are, what the environment is like, anything. In an attempt to fit in you try to keep the conversation going, you heard this was a roleplaying game on the website and you think this is just one of the spontaneous instances of roleplay popping up. Suddenly things are really skeevy, and your first interaction in the game is some dude trying to feel you up during a conversation.

    There's no guide to issuing or ignoring in the intro because the admin want a game where quality interactions happen, and the first response is to play a situation out as opposed to just blocking all communication. The predators are taking advantage of that environment to prey on people who don't know the intricacies of the game.

    So again, nobody gives a shit how you would handle a situation as an experienced player.
    Adding a little blurb about this in the Intro would probably be a good idea, to be honest. It doesn't have to be like "If someone's sexing you up, consider issuing", but wording it in a way so that newbies know it's there and that the Admin are there to help with any sketchy situations is pretty important.
    While I can appreciate the intention, not something we'd advertise in the in-game introduction. Just be sure to point them to the right direction if you hear of the situation arising.
  • @Tecton what about pointing them in general to the policy collection?
  • KasyaKasya Tennessee
    Does that not do that at the end of the tutorial anymore?
  • Matias said:
    It is no one else's business how someone gets punished. 
    It is when it's a problem that affects us all as a playerbase. I know of some people that stopped playing because the proposals and the harassing were crossing the line.
    If we want to retain players then we should ensure that they feel comfortable in the game.
  • No, actually the tutorial blends rather seamlessly into actually playing with the general populace (which is a credit to the team). The only thing that pops up is a small warning that you are, in fact, about to join the general public.
  • KasyaKasya Tennessee
    Honestly, the best way to curb it to me seems like it would be genuine players asking newbs how things were going, and letting them know if they need anything/have questions that you're available. And when people are rolling their supernoobs, if you get those sort of predatory advances issue yourself and let the admins know. Because yeah, a new player isn't going to know to do that, but also may not know how to bring it up to someone. 

    Maybe have R&J throw HELP POLICIES into their rotations of newbie tells, explaining what that scroll is. I don't know. You definitely don't wanna throw "If you get unwanted advances, do this..." into the newbie intro, cause that would be a red flag, "How bad is this game that they have to preface it with this?" I'd close the window right then. 
  • That's one reason I try to approach newbies on an individual basis. Seconding the Romeo and Juliet message, though - haven't been paying close attention to their rotation lately but that seems like a reasonable alternative to the idea of having it in the intro.
  • It might be worth it for the cities to handle this. So in a kind of "we protect our own" way, let them know that if anyone bothers them or makes them feel uncomfortable to let someone know (as part of the intro to the city kind of thing) because we protect our own.

    That way it comes over less as a "hey this has predators, watch out" from admin and more IC patriotism. 

    And then the senior player can advise them about ignoring or issueing themselves, thus also alleviating the feeling about over reacting.
  • Skye said:
    The ones who make female characters with suggestive descs and play prostitutes at Minia archway /brass lantern aren't just 'doing their own slutty thing', because the genuine newbs get mixed up with them since their usual pickup spot is precisely where real newbies go. 
    All the 'real newbie spots' are, iirc, part of what @Amunet refers/referred to as "Whore Corridor." I think it's because all those people want plausible deniability in case someone has something harsh to say to/about them. Problem is the opposite: those there for the legit reasons are assumed to be some of those people.

    The easiest solution I see is if we stop demonising sex stuff. That takes away the shame that keeps a lot of victims quiet, and the need for plausible deniability we see in those who embrace it - so they no longer feel they must do their thing at Minia, but can happily chitchat at the Doxy House or someplace.

    The biggest obstacle I see is the large size and great frailty of the average male ego. (Not that the tiny size of the average female ego in my experience is any better.)
    Miin-aan baash kimini-sij-i-gan bitooyin sij-i-gan-i bukwayszhiigan = blueberry π
  • edited January 2016
    Areas like Minia attract the predators not because of the stigma of mudsexing but because that is where newbs hang out. These newbs haven't built the player base connections or the knowledge that this behaviour that is making them uncomfortable isn't an optional part of RP.

    When Tahquil was a newb she got into a situation with a higher up in the house. I thought it was just part of the established RP for Mhaldor. however, I was extremely uncomfortable with it and straight up QQ because I didnt what I could do about it. I didnt have anyone I could ask if the behaviour was appropriate either. Next time I logged in I had to be portalled out of the house by Gildenlow and was questioned about what was happening. I explained things OOC and next day Gildenlow proposed to Tahquil and began running a one man interference show making sure I could still play comfortably even though I had to work with this elder housemate from time to time.

    Point is, I was young and didn't know better. I hadn't established any connections I felt I could report it through. I was just lucky Gildenlow was awesome when asked him if mudsexing to gain ranks was what was expected of me.

    Point is: even if the stigma of mudsexing was alleviated people would still target newbs because it's a hunting ground full of naive individuals who don't know what they can do to stop it.
This discussion has been closed.