james8470

We care because xG is a community in which we respect one another! Just because you're apparently immune to being hurt on a personal level doesn't mean others are! Until you understand the background and stories of each and every individual, you have no right to make that statement. Just because you don't care if people hurt each other on xG, doesn't mean that everyone else doesn't.
 

 
No, it's not! If someone's going out of their way to verbally attack someone for no reason, THEY are the ones causing the problem!
 
I can sympathize with SOME of what you say, but please be careful in the future about making extremely generalized statements on how you think things should be on xG, without even justifying yourself.

As staff members, it's our duty to stop people from disrespecting other people and make sure everyone has a good time to as far as a degree as possible. People getting offended would make them want to leave the servers.

If you don't agree with it that's fine. I disagree with some rules myself, such as the old teleport-spawncamping rule. You just have to work with it though sadly.

I never said allowing slurs would help make the server reach a bigger audience, I just dont agree with it on a personal level

who the fuck cares if people get offended. Boo hoo

If People want to be offended then thats their problem

I agree inconsistencies happen between staff members and how they enforce the rules, however, what I don't understand is how allowing people to disrespect and insult each other based on skin color, sex, sexual orientation, or disability will somehow open us to a wider audience. These are insults, meant to literally get people to fuck off, rather than stick around.
 
Now, you have a point that everyone has their own thing which can be made fun of, and you can't watch everyone, even when they're attacking you personally. But we can still do our best to promote respect based around traits we all have in common, such as the one's I mentioned earlier.

I mean you'd probably still have regular porn by virtue of ISP(s) losing too much money by banning it. 50% of men ages 18 to whatever regularly watch/look at some kind of porn, the number gets greater if you reduce the maximum age. (say ages 18 - 40 instead of 18 - 88 or whatever). Women make up only 13%, but those who do are 113% more likely to look up "hardcore" porn.
 
My point being that generic concepts in general aren't as much at risk, it's really the multiple viewpoints and variety of the internet that's at risk. There's nothing really in the way post-neutrality of ISP(s) going after small, notoriously-disliked groups. That's where the problem is.

I'm glad you brought this up Aegean, I've noticed that the community has been a lot more tense recently, even though I haven't been in any xG discord groups. I think part of the problem is a lack of clarity on what kind of respect is tolerated on xG, a lack of clarity between both staff and players. Furthermore, I think that jokes involving the illusion of disrespect have set a precedent that disrespect towards players & staff is simply turned a blind eye to.
 
To me, it seems like racism is the biggest taboo, followed by disrespect centered around sex, sexual orientation, disability, and finally national origin (plus others I can't remember). I don't get why these are on a unspoken list of 'bad to not-as-bad", and even enforced by staff with warnings/punishments based on this list. Usually, insensitive jokes involving items lower on the list are allowed to pass, and I think this might be contributing to the issue. Now, I'm not saying every staff member does this, but I feel like I've noticed this mentality in xG over the past half-year I've been around.
Currently, some of the rule lists state that racism specifically is disallowed. There's another which states racism and sexism are disallowed, and yet another which states disrespect in general is disallowed, and even goes into detail listing of some of the examples I mentioned earlier. I think the inconsistencies in the guides are causing confusion on what level of jokes involving the illusion of disrespect are allowed to pass.
 
For example, imagine I've just joined one of xG's servers, and the first thing I hear over the mic is someone joking with their friend, saying something like "Girls can't play video games, they're too frail and delicate!". The players who are joking have known each other for years, the staff members online have also known them for years, and understand the satire in the joke. However, I would be under the impression that sexism is general is allowed on xG servers if I was new.
You could always argue that I should read the !motd, but honestly, what percentage of players are actually going to bother reading the !motd? Especially if they're newer to the server and don't have anything to lose of they get banned anyways, so why should they waste their time reading the rules? Besides, like I said earlier, there is inconsistencies in the rule lists.
 
I think it's kinda been a subconscious mentality, and frankly, I'm probably just overanalyzing the situation, but I wanted to share my genuine observations on this issue, and speculation as to what might be causing it. Has anyone else noticed this trend?

So for people who don't know the basics of net neutrality, I'll try to explain it. It's been a pretty popular topic, so you might be able to find a better/more clear explanation somewhere else.
Bear with me, this is going to be a long one, also keep in mind that this is a bi-partisan issue.
 
ISP(s) = Internet Service Provider(s) (Comcast, Charter, Frontier, etc.)
Title II Service = Services for the public good (Public Transport, Libraries, etc.)
FCC = Federal Communications Commission (Agency of U.S. Government that regulates communications.)
 
 
The issue is that there's not enough ISP(s) to provide competition for the service (of providing internet). If net neutrality altogether is abolished, part of what is abolished is ruling that pretty much states ISP(s) cannot charge an unreasonable amount of money, because the internet is a Title II service under the FCC. A Title II service is a service that is essentially regulated out of the public's "need" for it. Title II services are not literal needs like food and water, but near-needs for living in modern-day society, (like public transit, another Title II service). When a service is regulated as Title II, it allows private businesses to fulfill the need of the public by providing that service, but under somewhat hefty regulation. Businesses that provide public (Title II) services aren't allowed to inconvenience the public with prices, or discriminate based on race/class/religion/political affiliation, etc. If there's one private public transport system in your area, as a Title II service, they can't hike the price through the roof and try to gouge you solely because you require that service and they're the only supplier. Unfortunately this is an issue the internet experiences.
 
There's not many ISP(s) within the US (there's not generally many ISPs anywhere in the world, but America is disproportionately affected by this scarcity of supply.) If these companies lobbying for the abandonment of net neutrality get their way, they'll essentially have monopolies over the business of providing people internet. In this hypothetical situation, if there's only one ISP in your area, they can essentially charge whatever they want for the service. Imagine Comcast is the only ISP in your area, they could theoretically charge some obscene amount of money per month. You're stuck because your only options are to either cough up your hard-earned paycheck for what is probably the lowest quality internet service (we'll get into this later) they can provide, or going without internet.
 
The other big benefit (to the public) of a service being Title II, is that Title II services have to provide equal access to everyone, regardless of almost any factor. On the internet, this means regardless of where you live, who you are, what you believe, or whatever, ISP(s) cannot restrict your access to legal sites. This also works for people hosting websites, ISP(s) cannot restrict other people's access to your website for arbitrary reasons, or give it lower "priority" or "visibility" for their own reasons. If the internet is no longer a Title II service, this is all reversed, and basically ISP(s) can restrict your access to websites, and traffic, visibility and priority for your own theoretical website for whatever arbitrary reason they want.
Let's imagine the internet is no longer a Title II service, now let's imagine there's a site called "Comcast Eats Crappy Donkey Schlong and are Assholes" that documents all the horrible abuse and service customers receive at the hand of Comcast. What do you think Comcast is going to do in this hypothetical situation? Do you think Comcast will allow the very service it provides to be a pathway of information about how awful it is? You're absolutely insane if you do, Comcast customers would never be able to see this site. This becomes very grim very quickly if you think about how any ISP could apply this method to literally anything on earth.
 
Here's another hypothetical situation:
 
Let's say a politician runs for office, and one of his/her stances is supporting net neutrality. If net neutrality is ever abolished, it will be neigh impossible to ever oppose it in the future, as ISP(s) essentially control the public's access to your information. As stated before, ISP(s) are not going to willingly provide their consumers access to information that makes them look bad. ISP(s), in effect, would control by-and-large the public's access to critical information, including that of politics, and would most certainly manipulate it to keep themselves in power. Sites about how awful a post-neutral internet is? Gone. Politicians opposing these ISP(s)? Unknown about. It's borderline Orwellian control of public knowledge.
 
Finally, what internet providers would really really like to do is split parts of the internet into "packages", almost like cable. Imagine having $20 tacked on for YouTube and other video streaming, $30 for Facebook and other social media services, etc., etc. They could literally charge whatever "premium" they want, for whatever site they want, on top of already literally being able to charge whatever they want for basic internet. The most disgusting part about this whole situation is that ISP(s) are already making a fuck-ton of money hand over fist with Title II regulations in place. They already make soooooo much fucking money, and they're basically saying "We will literally make everyone in America's quality of life worse in order to make more than the obscene amount we're already making".
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Oh and also, if you think this somehow won't affect you, or whatever, as soon as some puritan hits a head position in one of these companies, any and all of your fetish porn is gone. Hell it wouldn't even have to be someone high-ranking in the company in general, it could just be some puritan members of the public threatening them with a boycott, and in order to appease them and keep business, the ISP just blocks everyone's access within the area. A large enough amount of people in a certain area don't like furries? Access to furry sites gone in that area. A large enough amount of people in a certain area don't like Asians? Asian porn gone in that area. A large enough amount of people in a certain area don't like hentai? Hentai sites are inaccessible in that area.
 
People are going to think that I'm just making a funny joke about porn here, but seriously, as funny as it is, it's what could happen. All it takes is enough crazies who just want to ban whatever's not their opinion or preference, and it's gone!
 
So in short, no, it wouldn't be anarchy and chaos, we'd all be ruled under the iron fist of authoritarianism, arguably worse. A awful, sanitized, safe-for-work, clean-fun version of the internet that you have to pay even more money for, and that likely is provided for you at the speed of snail mail.

If you don't know what the net neutrality event is, here's some background info.
 
Without net neutrality, ISPs (internet service providers) can control what websites they can fee for the user and can also control what websites are fast or slow for people who don't pay the extra fee as said before.
 
With that being said, many people are creating letters to Congress, as well as contacting local politicians, to keep net neutrality to not let these circumstances happen.
 
This is a major event and could determine the fate of the Internet.
 
You could visit https://www.battleforthenet.com for more information.
 
(sorry for sounding like a sponsor)
 
 
 
 
With these being said, I created a very pessimistic poll in the thread.

I think it's pretty clear to a majority of members that there has been feelings of hostility amongst a large number of staff and members, varied from group to group. I just wanted to shed some light on the issue, and would like to have an open conversation to hopefully resolve some of the underlying matters behind it. We know there's a lot of "cliques" amongst all the different discord servers with xG members, but still our stance is not changed that although we prefer you to use our teamspeak server, we have no plan to force you to use teamspeak as long as you don't encourage members on the server to use discord instead.
 
First of all, you do NOT need to like everyone, as a community there will always be people who prefer their own group of friends to others, or just don't mesh well with a certain individual. That being said, to not like someone is not an excuse to make them feel unwelcome or to gang up on them with your friends. We are a gaming community, and as we are getting bigger, there will be more groups of friends who have different personalities and interests, the last thing we want is for new members to feel the hostility or to feel unwelcome.
 
In regards concerning attitude towards staff, even if you're staff yourself, please understand that you do not know their situation and that treating them like garbage because they should be doing their "job" is definitely not okay. Being a moderator or higher on our servers is a position that we can't give enough thanks for, because the staff are what hold our servers together. We would not be where we are today, if we didn't have so many willing mods, admins, or higher ups who were willing to sacrifice their time (and sometimes money) to give everyone else a more pleasant experience.
 
The overall message is just to be more respectful towards one another, and try to have some empathy the next time you interact with someone you aren't familiar with.

Division:

Team Fortress 2 In-Game Name:

Bad Mother Fucker Identity:

85568392920042749 Ban Type:

Communications Ban Information:

I was gagged permanently becasue I made the claim that the rule against slurs was pointless as it didn't actively protect anyone from harm. Frankly this is is abuse of authority. Permanently gagged for nothing but a civil debate.

-1 based off of what others have said and

that.

Actually fuck off for that comment, people are in fact allowed to joke in this clan.
If you cant take it then contact a higher up and they will remove the post if necessary.
 

Idubbbz*

wamen

It'd probably be better to just delete it. Especially since it would be better to add the FF2 plugin specific added attributes to an actual FF2 gamemode guide (like here), rather than making a separate one.
Especially since it's a part of base FF2, and not an added plugin/setting.
 
I'd do it myself, but I'm busy with 8 other projects currently.

A few things to clear up
 
"making fun of people for their conditions, or words such as 'retarded' or 'autistic' should be added to the racial slur (or whatever we call it) whitelist?"
 
1) I mistakingly said whitelist, I meant blacklist
2) I mean just add it to the "do-not-say" list or whatever. NOT the racial slur list as they're not racial slurs :P
 
Thanks to @Kypari for the info

You have a few good points, but a few more dumb ones, and here's why.
 

Yeah it actually is, Nigga is slang for Nigger, which is an offensive term which has been used to insult blacks every since America's slave days.
There's a lot of weight carried in the word. Black friends who use it as a term of endearment do so because they have just as much love placed in their friends.
There's a lot more to this, and I suggest you be careful of what you say before you know exactly what your saying entails.
I find it disturbing that you say "Nigga is NOT an offensive slur" as an absolute statement.
 

So "literally no one" is going to get offended by people insulting each other with racial slurs? Do you realize how contradictory you're being?!
 
A breech of free speech because you can't use racial slurs while on xG servers? That's an exaggeration. No one cares if you call your friends Nigga, just keep it between you and your friends and don't take it to our public servers. Furthermore, unless YOU were using the term in an endearing way (which you weren't) on the servers, then your point is moot, as you had to be using it as a nickname for someone, or in an offensive way.
 
Again, saying people who intend to create hate-seech simply use "Nigger" as opposed to "Nigga" is a moot point, because "Nigga" is short for "Nigger"!
 

 
Eh, you bring up a good point here. But we can either promote and allow people to call each other whatever they want, or discourage the use of these words. We either give "words like this" no meaning due to overuse, and new curse words are created in their place, or we encourage players to respect each other. I think I'd chose the latter for the future of xG.
 

 
I appreciate that you don't complain about every little thing which gets thrown your way, but honestly, the example you described is a lot closer to teasing then demeaning you by your race. I'll to the first to admit it's borderline sexist, but that's still no excuse to use racial slurs.
 

 
I've never heard someone make fun of trans people on xG. Maybe I've just not been online at the right time, but if it's disrespectful to the extreme you describe, you could've used !calladmin, you know.
Apparently you didn't know, but child-porn sprays of any kind were recently cracked down upon, hard.
xG isn't perfect, but at least we're constantly improving.
 

 
Oh I agree rules should be made more consistent, which is why I spent two days writing a thread suggesting mainly revisions to make all of our rule lists more consistent. Again, we're constantly improving.
Like I said earlier, it's a complex issue and while it's very debatable, but I think nothing good can come out of allowing people to demean and disrespect each other freely.
 
I've seen some extremely nasty shit on the internet, people who talk like absolute assholes and will do anything to ruin your day and put you down. I think we've all seen that. But are we going to do something about it? At least xG is, even if we're a little inconsistent at times.
 
Oh, and finally, I appreciate you taking this the the forums, even if you're upset as you wrote it. Because with your help, we can continue our constant improvement. ;)

Division:

Team Fortress 2 In-Game Name:

Bad Mother Fucker Offender's Identity:

76561198083787705 Rules Broken:

Racism, Disrespect, Trolling Ban Type:

Server Ban Evidence:

Overlord Bad Mother Fucker : casue i have a few nice pieces, but im in canada so i can't get anything good
Snyoper [xG] james8470 {wFF.} : Bad Mother Fucker could you please not use racial slurs and otherwise be disrespectful
*SPEC* Overlord Bad Mother Fucker : i am black, that means i get to say that word
Snyoper [xG] james8470 {wFF.} : Doesn't matter
(The word seems to be missing? Might have to exclude the racism rule, but he was called out.)

*SPEC* Overlord Bad Mother Fucker : i would if i gave enough of a fuck, but it is kind of fun to piss of the admins
 
 
Sir Dr. QueQue PHD : Okay saying you like to piss off admins might now be the best thing to say
*SPEC* Overlord Bad Mother Fucker : there are other servers, this one just has virtue signalling admins that i can troll.
Sir Dr. QueQue PHD : I mean, you do you B, ain't my job to stop ya
*SPEC* Overlord Bad Mother Fucker : that would be the admins hob
*SPEC* Overlord Bad Mother Fucker : *job
Sir Dr. QueQue PHD : Don't fuck with me, and we'll get along fine lol
(This covers disrespect and trolling, towards admins, but not to other players. Not exactly rule-compliant.)
 
This player admitted to having been unmuted and unbanned recently, saying "Overlord Bad Mother Fucker : to the mod that muted and banned me, i'm black."
Unless it's a stupid play on words, he admits to having previously been muted and banned for using racial slurs and proceeds in the same line to try and defend himself in some way, which is out of the question when talking about server rules.

I would have grabbed a screenshot, but chat boxes are tiny and my console box was a disaster. This is pure copy/paste from the console box. The only change is the fact I removed all the killfeed junk and background information.

@james8470 Thanks for the informed reply, you bring up some good points as well.

Go to a black guy and call him a nigga, see what fucking happens.

I recently got gagged for asking why Nigga is considered a slur and it just pisses me off to no end.
 
Nigga is NOT an offensive slur, it's used by black people all the time as a term of endearment. Literally
NO ONE is going to get offended by people saying it, so why punish people for it????? I find this to be
a breach of free speech. When people are intending to create hate-speech for people of color they just
say Nigger, plain and simple. It's just wrong and unfair to ban words like this because it just gives them
more notoriety for absolutely no reason. You can do a simple fucking google search and learn that Nigga
is used in a positive way unlike Nigger. I understand that the word has evil roots but that's really no excuse.
 
This is just an example of blatant hypocrisy employed by xG Staff, for example I get made fun of all the time
on xG for being a "girl gamer xdddd make me a sammich lmaooo xdd" but do you see me cry about it to admins?
No. Because I'm not a fucking pussy ass bitch, Admins don't even do anything about it when that happens.
xG claims to be a "safe space" but it really is not. There's talk of traps all the time which is considered a slur by some
transgender people, things like lolis are encouraged by titles like "Loli" or "Loli scout legionaire" and some people even
have sprays of it, which is sexualizing children which is wrong, and illegal and people like Rub1dium get hunted down
through facebook by an absolute creep.What's with all the double standards??????
 
Really xG staff needs to either get more consistent with their policies or just get rid of punishment for slurs altogether
because all you are doing by making slurs this big bad thing is giving the words more power and cultivating absolute SJW
pussies who get triggered at any sort of slur.

There's already a tag next to guides specifying what game they're for; adding the name in the title would just be redundant.
 

I changed that to "Do not encourage other players to break the rules or attempt to trick them into doing so" and added it to the General Server and Community rules as well.