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Bias and hypocrisy

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In all honesty and it’s already been mentioned by bone and most likely thought of my many members as well, the idea of just removing sprays in general is a pretty good idea in the end. Servers are still able to be highly successful even without the option. If you don’t think the cs:go example is enough to back that claim up, there are still Glubabble servers. (Mainly ff2 and slender) The whole banter of revising the same spray rules is always going to be pushed to the edge and loopholed by someone.

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As listed before by many other members, staff, and community members the rules for and against sprays are quite vague and, for lack of a better word, puzzling. I myself never agreed with any type of pornographic, or even explicit sprays, but then again, that would be too repealing of the community member's "spray rights," let's call them. From what I have seen, there is a definite switch in mood and enforcement of the "no bad stuff" rule for sprays, especially between staff. For an example, a while ago, the rule for sprays was, in general terms, "no explicit nudity". This was then changed as time went on due to either complaints, issues, behaviors of staff, or a mix of it all. A seperate example is seen for chat. For a major chunk of time, rudeness and racism were strictly prohibited. Now, after changing and comforming of rules there's such a vague line between what is "rude" and what is "just messing around" it's almost recoiling my want to interact with the server. That shouldn't really be happening to anyone, and it's also in the realm of sprays, not just chat. Imagine if the bending of this rule got to a point where on nearly every wall there was a close-enough-to-porn spray, and it was accepted. We have to remember that there are kids who play the game, restricted or not. And even if the playerbase is old enough, the grotesque amount of these sprays could lead to a lacking drive to come back.

Now, as stated before, I'm not in the highest stature to say or even suggest, but possibly if we come back further to changing the rule to say, per chance, "no nudity (whatsoever) is allowed on sprays", this would help out with such confusion. Just a thought, sorry for the length.

-1 for punishment on Krampus's part

+1 for revision of the rule(s).

Edited by OneGlove
Forgot to add the actual vouch, sorry (see edit history)

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There is no way to find a solution to this without it ultimately being unfavorable for some peoples. 

There's a lot here, so Im going to start with saying even though this was something worth bringing up, this was a very poor way to do so to say the least.  There are much better ways to address dissent about something other then getting a group of people together to prod and "test" someone, purposefully start up an argument creating a scene on the server, bloating it into an issue that occurred by your own actions and could have gone by without creating such uneccissary drama, all in a pseudo witch hunt. The situation could have been handled better by krampus, but I personally think people got off very easy here considering how intentional of a mess this was. Now that this rant is over....

6 hours ago, Bone said:

why don't we just disable sprays server wide?

This is (almost) the worst possible solution. Not to say it isn't a solution, but it is effectively just giving up on the issue. Comparing this to csgo is a very poor example because of the stark difference between the two games in regards to it. Custom images (as near as Im aware) effectively don't exist in csgo where as they are actually prominent in tf2,so it's pretty foolish to assume they would be treated the same across both games when they don't exist across both in anywhere near the same capacity. If we disable sprays, then with how this whole situation is treated by extension we can't allow objectors or other items with custom images as well.

All in all custom images are a notable part of the game itself and just disallowing that part in it's entirety creates a lot of alienation to it as well as a very unwelcoming outlook. We have two extreme options looking at it in this manner, either disallow all images and risk looking unfriendly, incredibly strict, and uptight as a community, or allow any kind of images, which I hope I don't have to explain why that would go south.

Before being able to come to an alternative to either of these though we have to just accept that there is no plausible way to find a solution to something so frivolous without there being some level of entirely personal opinion, vagueness, or however you want to word it as to where the line can be drawn.

There is no statement that covers everything because of how incredibly vast the subject matter is. The only way to do that would be to list every possible thing that would not be allowed, a list that would grow ever larger and make the jailbreak rules list look like a footnote as well as be so insanely strict it would be infinitely more suitable just to disallow custom images (which again is incredibly unfavorable in itself due to how prominent they are not just in the game, but on our servers). Trying to implement something a more "universal" ruling to cover everything unallowed such as pornographic, questionable, or pg-13 only will (and have proven to) make the attempts of loopholing and opinionated rulings far worse due to being incredibly vague in overall coverage. 

Now I honestly don't understand why one little word, explicit, has caused so much issue for understanding for so many people. Since it has though, ill try to lay it out as simply as possible here. Explicit-obvious-your mind immediately recognizes it as what it is upon looking at it. This is designed to still uphold the general idea of what should be allowed, but also give some amount of leniency due to again the significant variety of images that pop up because there is a substantial amount of people (namely from surf, but far from limited to) who prefer this lenicancy over strictness.

People do very often forget though that the rules don't just state explicit genitalia. Nudity is also included to cover these very borderline situations that should not be allowed even though they "don't show genitals so 100% ok fam" and by that reasoning, all of these images shown are in fact explicitly nude and therefore against the rules. This is something I myself have felt strongly towards but haven't strongly enforced due to the general level of leniency that people seem to have desired for some time now. I do want to push this fully at this point though because had it been then this situation would not have happened at all, at least not in the way it was conducted. 

No matter how we try to word what is and isn't allowed though, there will ALWAYS be people trying to loophole and edge what is allowed. That's not something that is exclusive to this rule. That being said, from my own experience the only time that we end up back in this situation (which doesn't happen anywhere near as often as some people are trying to state it does), its due to someone purposefully trying to make this be a problem, just like happened now. This is such a non-issue 99% of the time otherwise that it is painful people insist on doing so in such an overdramatic way it becomes far more of an issue then it should.

As I see it, we have two options here. Except that we are a bunch of nitpicky children that shouldn't be allowed to turn the safe search on google off and thus disallow all custom images, or grow up and realize that a gray area is absolutely necessary for something driven solely by opinion like this to be able to have the best middleground for everyone. If we can accept to go with the latter, then I would push for fully enforcing the concept of explicit nudity properly finally and attempt to get this to be a better understanding among staff. In regards to that, there is one very important thing I need to state.

We are people too. We are not perfect, and because of that there will always be at least some variance between us. There will always be situations where "one staff said this but another said this" but it is incredibly important to bring these up when they happen instad of just using them as reason to complain about in consistency. We NEED to know when this is happening so we as staff can come to better understanding of how to treat things amongst each other so we can better serve everyone else.

 

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3 hours ago, Elcark said:

Comparing this to csgo is a very poor example because of the stark difference between the two games in regards to it. Custom images (as near as Im aware) effectively don't exist in csgo where as they are actually prominent in tf2,so it's pretty foolish to assume they would be treated the same across both games when they don't exist across both in anywhere near the same capacity.

12 hours ago, Bone said:

The CS:GO Division doesn't have this issue. You know why? Because CS:GO doesn't have sprays (at least not to the degree of TF2's system).

It's like you didn't read past the second sentence I wrote before you quoted me and used it in a response. 

 

3 hours ago, Elcark said:

If we disable sprays, then with how this whole situation is treated by extension we can't allow objectors or other items with custom images as well

Objectors and decals are already treated the same way as sprays, and we've had a problem before with Objectors and players (including staff members) using pornographic Objectors so... hey, you might be on to something there!

 

3 hours ago, Elcark said:

Now I honestly don't understand why one little word, explicit, has caused so much issue for understanding for so many people. Since it has though, ill try to lay it out as simply as possible here. Explicit-obvious-your mind immediately recognizes it as what it is upon looking at it

By this definition then cropped porn sprays shouldn't be allowed whatsoever, because you can definitely tell there's more going on off screen, even if there's no nudity shown.

 

3 hours ago, Elcark said:

No matter how we try to word what is and isn't allowed though, there will ALWAYS be people trying to loophole and edge what is allowed

 Which is what's happened every time we've "clarified" this rule. It's gonna keep happening. So be ready to come here and type all this again in 6 months when we have to clarify it again.

 

3 hours ago, Elcark said:

All in all custom images are a notable part of the game itself and just disallowing that part in it's entirety creates a lot of alienation to it as well as a very unwelcoming outlook

 But you know what's really unwelcoming and off putting? Joining a server and seeing spawn covered in cropped porn sprays while a staff member is telling a player that their spray isn't allowed, but this one over is because because it's juuuust zoomed in enough to not see anything.

 

3 hours ago, Elcark said:

We are people too. We are not perfect, and because of that there will always be at least some variance between us. There will always be situations where "one staff said this but another said this" but it is incredibly important to bring these up when they happen instad of just using them as reason to complain about in consistency. We NEED to know when this is happening so we as staff can come to better understanding of how to treat things amongst each other so we can better serve everyone else.

This is the biggest problem though. The majority of players who have rule breaking or borderline rule breaking sprays are the staff members themselves, it starts with them. Staff members need to be the first to change their sprays and lead by example. Imagine a newcomer or regular seeing a staff member with a rule breaking spray, they're gonna think "Oh, this is ok, because they know the rules pretty well". Until that happens, rewording a rule isn't going to do anything as long as staff refuses to follow it themselves. 

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7 hours ago, Sesh said:

I honestly have to wonder how many times the rules need to be clarified or revised before people can be held accountable for what they do.

To be honest, I think it mostly comes down to staff discretion and opinion here. We are all different in our own ways, such as Elcark being far stricter than myself in terms of sprays. I don't entirely think it's down to bias, but it may be a factor of course. I don't think a demotion is necessary at all here considering how this mostly bides to staff discretion. Demoting staff isn't always the answer.

3 hours ago, NitNat said:

In all honesty and it’s already been mentioned by bone and most likely thought of my many members as well, the idea of just removing sprays in general is a pretty good idea in the end. Servers are still able to be highly successful even without the option. If you don’t think the cs:go example is enough to back that claim up, there are still Glubabble servers. (Mainly ff2 and slender) The whole banter of revising the same spray rules is always going to be pushed to the edge and loopholed by someone. 

Pretty much what Elcark said about how it's appears very unwelcoming and a lot of people like to show each others sprays and have fun with it. I know I personally like using my spray a lot, and I know a lot of others who do too, so I don't entirely think this is the most optimal solution. The same goes to allowing all sprays since this could firstly violate against other rules, such as racism or whatnot, though that is a lesser issue comparative to people spraying things such as disgusting fetishes, ultimately leading people away from the server.

3 minutes ago, Bone said:

Objectors and decals are already treated the same way as sprays, and we've had a problem before with Objectors and players (including staff members) using pornographic Objectors so... hey, you might be on to something there!

We are not disabling weapons because people can customize them. If there's a single worst way of handling this situation, in my opinion that would be it. A lot of people use the objector and use completely harmless decals on it, so why should we punish them for the minority of people with suggestive decals on them?

6 minutes ago, Bone said:

By this definition then cropped porn sprays shouldn't be allowed whatsoever, because you can definitely tell there's more going on off screen, even if there's no nudity shown.

Yeah, I really don't like the wording being "explicit" nudity at all. I know I was one of the people who had opposing opinions on how explicit is meant to be interpreted, so me and Elcark have butt heads quite a few times on what should be allowed and what shouldn't. A re-wording of this should sort this problem in my opinion. I am definitely for revisiting the spray rule and just adding or removing some words instead of making a huge list of what's good and what isn't good since over-clarification can be a mouthful and not many people would want to read it, so I'll bring it up in discussion.

 

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23 minutes ago, Bone said:

It's like you didn't read past the second sentence I wrote before you quoted me and used it in a response. 

The very second sentence I state address exactly your second one. You're saying sprays aren't a problem on csgo because they don't even exist on csgo. Well tough luck using that here because they do in tf2. I honestly don't know where you got lost in what I had to say for that. 

23 minutes ago, Bone said:

Objectors and decals are already treated the same way as sprays, and we've had a problem before with Objectors and players (including staff members) using pornographic Objectors so... hey, you might be on to something there!

Why are you even bothering to mention this (unless your sole purpose is to just try and claim staff use porn objectors, which i'll get into shortly)? Of course they're already treated the same because it all falls under the same category, and if we're not going to allow sprays because it's "too hard  to agree on the rule" then it should be a no brainier the same would have to apply for anything else otherwise we'd just have the exact same disagreements about them. 

23 minutes ago, Bone said:

By this definition then cropped porn sprays shouldn't be allowed whatsoever, because you can definitely tell there's more going on off screen, even if there's no nudity shown.

By first glance, hardly. You can infer what may be there as well, but you can absolutely not say that you know for a fact solely on what is displayed before you when it's not actually there to be viewed. Something along the lines an outlined penis is something you can look at and know there's a penis there. Something where it's the upper half a male with the lower half cropped out, you can not say that you KNOW that there is a visible penis included because, quite simply, it's not there and you're just making a personal inference at that point. 

23 minutes ago, Bone said:

But you know what's really unwelcoming and off putting? Joining a server and seeing spawn covered in cropped porn sprays while a staff member is telling a player that their spray isn't allowed, but this one over is because because it's juuuust zoomed in enough to not see anything.

Just like how having to clarify this "all the time" is over exaggerated, so is that example. I'm sorry, but you're not on the servers often, and because of that you don't see how they commonly are. As someone who is, that example and what has happened here is a VERY rare occurrence. What will be off putting and will be an everyday occurrence guaranteed will be people coming on the server, going to use their spray, and discovering it's disabled entirely, and that's because there is an extreme abundance of people who use sprays of all shapes and sizes. Only a fraction use them like you are claiming are everywhere. 

23 minutes ago, Bone said:

This is the biggest problem though. The majority of players who have rule breaking or borderline rule breaking sprays are the staff members themselves, it starts with them. Staff members need to be the first to change their sprays and lead by example. Imagine a newcomer or regular seeing a staff member with a rule breaking spray, they're gonna think "Oh, this is ok, because they know the rules pretty well". Until that happens, rewording a rule isn't going to do anything as long as staff refuses to follow it themselves. 

Saying the majority of people with borderline sprays are staff members are, forgive me for being so blunt, bullpoop. I won't claim I know every single staff members sprays but I will claim i'm fairly certain I know them better then you and personally have only ever encountered three individuals with sprays of this kind with this example today being one of those three and by far the worst. I fully agree staff are the ones who need to lead by example and should refrain from sprays like this one, but the reason it has been allowed to slide in this manner isn't due to staff being biased and wanting to flaunt around porn sprays, it's because the general opinion on servers has been in acceptance of this. This is something we clearly want to change at this point and I already stated need to get staff on the same page for it, but saying staff are refusing to follow rules is just being daft to how things are on the servers.

Edited by Elcark (see edit history)

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3 hours ago, Elcark said:

I'm sorry, but you're not on the servers often, and because of that you don't see how they commonly are

Because I'm not very active should be even more proof then. If it's not "common" why is it taking place on the servers the few times I'm actually able to be on? Throwing out my opinion because I can't be active is pretty awful too, btw.

I think you guys are under the assumption I'm here to kill everyone's fun and take away everyone's furry porn sprays, but that's not the case. Allow me to educate you on something you should already know as DL.

See, the entire reason we have our spray rules isn't because the xG founding fathers signed a constitution that said: "Rule 1: no anime tiddies". It's because we have to follow our server provider's ToS, much like how we have to follow Discord's ToS on our Discord server, lest it get incinerated. Which is why we recently nuked our NSFW channel, because people kept posting things against ToS.

Our server host states that we are not allowed to: Publish, transmit, distribute or store content, material, information or data that contains content that is "illegal (including child pornography), obscene, defamatory, libelous, threatening, harassing, abusive or hateful or that advocates violence or threatens the health of others"

So in order to follow the ToS, you have 2 options. 1. Disable sprays so that players don't download data from other clients (or disable client uploads) that contain that content, or 2. Form a set of rules that must be followed so people don't use their spray and transmit material that's possibly ToS breaking to other players.

To be completely honest, if we're going to "clarify" the rules, we might as well use the phrasing that's in our ToS, since that's the entire reason we have the rule to begin with. Just with a few adjustments:

"Sprays, avatars, and customizable items cannot contain content that is illegal (including child pornography, drawn or otherwise), obscene (including pornographic or implied sexual content), threatening, harassing, or hateful"

Sure, it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but it's about as long as our current rule. Plus it covers all the bases with the word "obscene" which can mean "pornographic", "lewd", "indecent", or "offensive". Which covers porn (cropped or otherwise), hate symbols, gore, slurs, etc. Rather than "explicit" which can mean "graphic" or "uncensored", pretty much saying porn's ok as long as it's blurred, which is where we are now.

It's either that or we disable sprays entirely.

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23 minutes ago, Bone said:

I think you guys are under the assumption I'm here to kill everyone's fun and take away everyone's furry porn sprays, but that's not the case. Allow me to educate you on something you should already know as DL.

See, the entire reason we have our spray rules isn't because the xG founding fathers signed a constitution that said: "Rule 1: no anime tiddies". It's because we have to follow our server provider's ToS, much like how we have to follow Discord's ToS on our Discord server, lest it get incinerated. Which is why we recently nuked our NSFW channel, because people kept posting things against ToS.

Our server host states that we are not allowed to: Publish, transmit, distribute or store content, material, information or data that contains content that is "illegal (including child pornography), obscene, defamatory, libelous, threatening, harassing, abusive or hateful or that advocates violence or threatens the health of others"

This is incorrect and i would provide some proof but im in a bit of a rush right now. I can edit this post once i get back home if you'd like. We are NOT responsible for what people spray on our servers, it doesnt affect our status with NFO at all.

Also, lets change the tone a little bit, shall we? No need to be aggressive.

Edited by virr (see edit history)

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I'm honestly surprised this rule needs to constantly be reworded for TF2, since in CS:S, it was very understandable what is + isn't allowed. I think the issue right now is a few staff + a few members try to really play around the rule's wording as tightly as they can. I personally just don't think their game-play will suffer if they don't have a lewd image (cartoon or not) any chance they get.

I totally understand the reasons for disabling sprays, although I personally prefer a solution that doesn't require removing them.

Edit: Virr is correct as well, we aren't responsible for sprays as people can come onto any server and spray porn, gore, CP, etc and it wouldn't be the fault of the server. It's something that isn't easy to moderate 24/7 unlike discord. I also thought that the host might get mad but I only found out about it a year ago or so.

Edited by Aegean (see edit history)

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2 hours ago, virr said:

This is incorrect and i would provide some proof but im in a bit of a rush right now. I can edit this post once i get back home if you'd like. We are NOT responsible for what people spray on our servers, it doesnt affect our status with NFO at all.

Also, lets change the tone a little bit, shall we? No need to be aggressive.

That's cool, my dude. I'm open to correction if needed. 

Also, I didn't think I was being any more aggressive than him, but alrighty ?

Edit: Also I've seen posts before in which Rhodo has even said NSFW material isn't allowed on the servers due to ToS, but I may have misunderstood

Edited by Bone (see edit history)

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@Bone I'll double check with Rhodo, but I'm pretty sure he was the one who informed us about how we aren't responsible specifically for what people spray on our servers. We have a map on CS:GO for example that has a section with just cartoon dicks everywhere (it's a randomized gun game I believe lol) so I think there are some things that we don't really need to worry about with ToS for our host.

Edited by Aegean (see edit history)

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I was the one who asked NFO support about the potential ToS violations, they just replied saying "it's not something we could fairly control" or something along those lines, basically saying it's fine if it's in game. Would only be a ToS violation if a website ran through NFO had pornography hosted.

Edited by Vexx (see edit history)

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15 minutes ago, Vexx said:

I was the one who asked NFO support about the potential ToS violations, they just replied saying "it's not something we could fairly control" or something along those lines, basically saying it's fine if it's in game. Would only be a ToS violation if a website ran through NFO had pornography hosted.

Ah, so I'm just a moron like usual, good to know. 

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