Right. First CM to comment here.
What we can do in all honesty is ban the word from being used throughout the main channels. Leaving Shitposting alone and as it is. Reason being that not everyone is being serious and 100% meaning what they say. They may not have the intent to offend, no intent on actually being racist. You have to look at the context of what they are saying as in:
- Are they directing it towards another person in a position which may be hostile
- Are they clearly saying it in a context which is memeable, not serious.
- Does the person saying it have any past offences of actually being a racist.
That's one thing.
If you want to make jokes in private, then who are we to stop you? However, I don't think this is a 'pointless argument', as it's clear that multiple people within the community feel strongly about this issue. I can definitely agree with your 'levying punishment' argument, however - the rules need to be much clearer so that they can actually be enforced; these jokes are allowed, or they aren't. Sitting in the middle doesn't make either side happy, hence the discussions we've been having recently.
Yes, I think it is best we do take a look at our own guidelines and rules page on discord to see what we can make clearer to the players of what we do and do not tolerate.
Why is the freedom policy non-negotiable? Is it integral to the continuation of the community/server?
'We allow them to continue as long as they do not abuse their abilities given to them or make members feel unwelcome' is written in that freedom policy, but I've seen multiple examples of unwelcoming behaviour in the community (think the Jewish caricature emoji or slurs in general chats from Willard staff). Recently, more people have been voicing their opinion and saying that they do feel somewhat unwelcome.
Whether or not you're for or against censoring X, Y or Z, I think it's imperative you re-write the freedom policy to be much more clear and concise for these situations; we're a community hundreds strong, so it's going to be difficult to 'self-moderate' with vague and unspecific rulings.
The Freedom Policy itself is something that we don't want to remove, it is one of our core foundations since the beginning of TelsaCloud all the way through to Willard and has really let us voice that we do not want to restrict the players.
Now I can agree that there are individuals and commenters on Discord who certainly have not given the best of welcomes, and most of the individuals have been punished internally and been given warnings via Dyno (Hidden to players). Though there are some who do get through as staff aren't always watching every chat to see who is saying what and what the context is. It is becoming a common trend as of late which I now know as people are actually pointing it out now, to be I never would've noticed as I personally ignore a lot of the channels on every discord I am in.
And like I said above, it would be good for us to look over our policy and make things more clear to the player.
have you allowed it? yes. have staff actively refused to moderate it? yes. are staff doing anything against it? probably, yes. is it enough? no. will removing the freedom policy somewhat solve this? yes.
This is something we can honestly be open and transparent about as Internally, it may not have ever been addressed. While removing the policy is out of the question, changing it is not. It is always best to note that while our Gms are staff, they do not have the same power as staff on most servers. They do not have the ability to warn, kick or mute people for being an ass or breaking our guidelines or rules. They can do nothing but call a mod over... and learn to behave for those which do tend to say questionable stuff themselves.
Our mods on the other hand have the power, but they are not always looking at the discord either. While it is their job, they won't spend their time reading hundreds and hundreds of messages. Instead, we have now got a bot called "Admin BOT" in discord for people to DM to report users in a chat or you can tag moderators if and when needed if you find someone breaking a rule, then they can handle the situation accordingly.
Hope this at least answers some of your questions for now. We are meeting about this internally tomorrow.
