Mumberthrax

Schererererer, I'm happy to read most of what you wrote, though I disagree with the characterization of the "homophobia" issue as a fallacy. It unfortunately is not quite so simple as that. I suppose if we will use informal fallacy terminology we can also throw out argumentum ad populum, or moral high ground fallacy. I believe that when we start relying on informal fallacy labels which are commonly used to dismiss arguments out of hand then things can devolve rapidly. I am afraid that I could write an essay's length list of arguments as to why it is wrong to *willfully* choose to define homophobia as any bigotry against gay people. As someone who cares about truth, who cares about sincerity, who cares about equality and respect, who cares about history, and who cares about effective and proper precepts in a governing document such as nerd.nu/rules, it bothers me deeply to hear this dismissed casually. A word does not lose its meaning just because a loud group says it does. It is not linguistically prescriptivist to say this. To call English a "living" language in an attempt to prescribe a single meaning to a term in the same breath is ironic and... irritating. If we are to assume that a word can mean whatever people agree that it means, then let us agree that it means what it originally meant when it was coined just 50 years ago - that is, an irrational fear of homosexuality and homosexual people. In fact, of the dictionaries online that I found in a quick internet search, most seem to be themselves a bit confused about the word, some saying that it means both an irrational fear and a hatred, some saying it means just a fear, some saying it means a fear and prejudice. What do all agree upon? I discovered a nice article, and a paper published in a scholarly journal, outlining the history of the term and its place in the gay rights movement. Anyone who is interested in this subject may find these stimulating reading material. http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/faculty_sites/rainbow/html/prej_defn.html http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/faculty_sites/rainbow/html/Herek_2004_SRSP.pdf Do we want to choose to officially support a bad definition? Do we wish to consent to that as a community? Laugh if you must, but the meaning of words such as this one have wide-ranging social and political implications. Given the level of seriousness with which we treat violations of this rule, I would expect this to be something not taken lightly or dismissed casually. It is not just about being precise. It is about the implications of conflating things which ought not be conflated. An irrational fear of homosexuality or fear of gay people is not the same as bigotry against them. Bigotry against homosexuality or gay people has not been demonstrated to originate from the psychological ailment of irrational fear. Further, homophobia can be and has been used in our culture as a stigmatizing label for those critical not of gay individuals or the nature of homosexuality, but critical of organizations claiming to represent gay people or critical of political actions related to gay people. Now what of people who have a discomfort around gay people? Maybe they are mentally ill, and maybe they have *societal* influences, but regardless just because they feel uncomfortable does not mean that they should be shamed. We should not promote a culture that pigeonholes such people in with the likes of the kkk or hitler. I apologize if this comes across as heated. I mean no disrespect to you personally schererererer. I also apologize for this having turned into a rant, though I know of no other way to express my thoughts on this matter. I think the best thing to do would be to rephrase the rule to use language that encompasses all forms of pejorative language and hate speech, and if examples must be used then to use something like "sexual prejudice" or to list "sexual orientation" as a topic not to be bigoted about. Other than that, again, happy to hear your stance on these things, particularly the support for standardizing mod training materials.

I chose to set the poll up so that names were visible so that I would be able to ask those who voted no to the proposed revision of the rule if they had any suggestions for improvement, in case they did not feel comfortable posting a comment in this thread. I am not sure that I understand the concept of discovering dissenters, I had not considered this from a confrontational perspective and more as a collaborative one.

I have to say I'm quite pleased at all of the ideas and suggestions that you all have put forth in this discussion. I'll try and aggregate them here into a list - please forgive me if I've butchered anything or missed the point or overlooked any of the ideas mentioned, I hope that if I have someone will point out my error. 1. Enforce rules/moderate more consistently, fairly, effectively, intelligently 2. A direct ban on certain words/topics likely to produce inflammatory discussions (slurs, sexual orientation, etc.) is simpler and more likely to be universally enforced 3. Enabling discussion of these subjects will encourage abuse by bigoted players or trolls 4. Making the rule broader is not good, will make it more likely people will break it, will encourage abuse of powers by moderators 5. "etc." is ambiguous - who decides what fills that space? potential for an expansion of rules power-hungry abusing mods will use to ban players they don't like 6. the proposed revision is still a zero-tolerance rule, and should not be in place 7. Use more common words - eg. not pejorative - make it accessible and easy for young players to understand 8. Make use of the community interaction policy. Perhaps revise it. perhaps combine with the rules 9. More specificity is useful, less ambiguity, less potential for misuse 10. "Don't use the name for a group of people as an insult, and don't direct insults towards groups of people." 11. A plugin that notifies players when they use flagged words to be mindful not to use them for hate-speech 12. "No sexism, racism or any type of hate speech towards age, sexual orientation or religion." 13. It just needs to be simple and to the point, people hate reading rules and if they see long rules like that they aren't going to bother reading them. They need to be succinct and easy to understand. 14. Simple, straightforward, succinct rules are less likely to be twisted or abused by dishonorable staff 15. "Keep talk on differences between people to a level that everyone finds comfortable, whether or not they know you or sense the seriousness of your conversation." 16. Having a formula that aims to pre-empt all possible situations will not work as every conversation is different 17. share expectations of how this rule may be enforced in future so that people can understand why certain actions are taken, regardless of who is moderating. 18. Creating a detailed list of circumstances, example scenarios, and how they are moderated, would provide a reference for staff and illustrate the intent behind the rule.

roastnewt, if you had asked me that a few years ago I would have felt similarly. However back a little while after I was added as a moderator I was browsing old ban appeals to learn how they were handled, to get a better feel for how to moderate different situations, and I came across two appeals for two different players involved in harassment of another player, both of which were handled by Tharine. She phrased her position well, and I realized that on several occasions I had indeed observed players discriminating against younger players, and that it was not fair to them. https://nerd.nu/forums/topic/558-abiuv-tharine https://nerd.nu/forums/topic/562-n00ble-6-tharine I mean no disrespect to abiuv or n00ble by linking these here, and I am sure that nobody will hold these acts against them given how long ago they happened, I only link to them as they are public record and they contain the arguments which changed my perspective on the subject of ageism. edit: grammar

TheAcademician has mentioned an interest in doing this since i suggested it to her months back, but from what I understand she has been busy with other projects and hasn't had time to invest in adding more features to cobracorral beyond the latest 1.8 version (which includes horse stat information and other bells and whistles - I highly encourage padmins to update to it)

A rule forbidding the use of the word "gay" has never existed so long as I have been here. As a moderator and admin never once was I informed that such a rule or policy existed, whether codified or de facto. We do warn and ban people for certain usages of the word "gay" when it is meant to be an insult or pejorative, used to denigrate or malign. It is not difficult to tell from the context of its usage whether it is being used in that way. Now I don't know if the current admin team has been discussing this since I was removed as sadmin, changing policy or whatever without announcing it, and I don't know if some kind of revisionist history is going on either... Slurs referring to gay people? yes those are banned. Slurs referring to people of certain ethnicities? yes those are banned too. Because they fall under "homophobia" and racism, which are disallowed by the universal rules. I will never recognize as truth that "gay" has ever been a banned word universally at nerd as long as I have been here (survival rev 18).

Just because one staff member says something is true does not necessarily mean it is so. We have never had a rule that bans the use of the word gay, no matter how much that may be implied. We have never had a policy de facto or otherwise that states that players who use the word gay are told not to say that word. I have the utmost respect for ladyravenowl, and I understand the perspective of keeping things simple and easy by just shutting down discussion whenever sensitive topics come up. Nobody wants drama on a game server (or at least not excessive drama :P ). But I think it's dangerous to have that attitude, no matter how appealing it may be, in terms of policing what a community may discuss. Ok, if it were something like shutting down discussions about something really vile or disturbing, then I agree that there's not much benefit from that and warning people and whatnot is appropriate. And if someone is using the word "gay" as a pejorative or an insult, then that shouldn't be permitted either. But I don't think gender identity or sexual orientation should be banned topics. Sometimes people make mistakes. There's no shame in that, nor in admitting it. It is a mistake to pretend a mistake was not a mistake, and to attempt to justify it with reasoning which is unjust or irrational.

It is true that the part which clarifies that players are allowed to say words like "gay" or "black" or "muslim" means that it is more challenging than a strict ban on those words. However this is really only a clarification of the current policy as it is usually enforced. These words have never been explicitly banned, and indeed there have been discussions involving them which did not devolve into bigotry nor result in instabans. I am not saying that we currently have an explicit zero-tolerance policy. We have a situation where some staff have the ability to adopt a de facto zero-tolerance policy on certain words as is their right under the de facto discretionary abilities under current staff training. The last sentence in the proposal would seek to limit the inconsistent enforcement, provide a more uniform and hopefully more fair and rational experience for players. I would like to quote a section from the wikipedia article on zero-tolerance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_tolerance#Criticism I am not saying that we have fascist mods going around doing irrational things. Most mods are pretty sensible. I just think a rule change to reflect the general policy as it currently exists would be appropriate.

UNP, I'm very sympathetic to concerns about misleading polls or poll data being used inappropriately, because I've seen it happen plenty of times. What changes would you recommend happen to this poll that would expand options without overwhelming the person filling it out and without creating a false dichotomy? I still have the ability to edit it as far as I am aware, and anyone can also create a new poll if this one is deemed to be misleading. Do I understand correctly that your concern is not so much with the existing rule, but the manner in which it is enforced? Are there any specific changes you would like to see happen in the way that bigotry or intolerance is moderated on the servers?

What would you see as ideal enforcement of the current rule? Perhaps we can effect a change in moderator training instead of modifying the rule itself in order to ensure a healthy balance.

As this discussion prompted me to put together a proposal for a rule rephrasing, I'd like to share a link to the post I made about it here. https://nerd.nu/forums/topic/3197-proposed-revision-to-universal-rule-regarding-hate-speech/

I want to mention that in cases where a discussion on one of these subjects begins to become heated or start to get out of hand or upset people, then the rule regarding discussion of inflammatory subjects would apply and the participants would then be requested to move it to private messages or clanchat. The intention is not to promote flame wars, but rather to treat people as though they are responsible while still retaining the means to stop bad situations from occurring.

I would like to propose a change to one of the rules in the Universal section of nerd.nu/rules. The rule as it exists currently is: My proposed change is the following: I originally wrote this as part of an overhaul of nerd.nu/rules that I attempted, in which I created two forms of the rules, a simplified succinct version for the casual player, and a more verbose and precise version to be used in cases of ambiguous violations or in moderator training. The above version of my proposed rule is essentially from the latter, whereas the simplified version includes only the first sentence: I rewrote this rule because I perceived there to be three issues with the current rule and its enforcement. These are not monstrous issues threatening the stability of the server or the community, but I feel they are appropriate nonetheless to address rationally. 1. Sexism, Racism, and "homophobia" are not the only forms of bigotry. Maybe the "or any type of hate speech" bit is supposed to be a superset of those, but the way it reads is as though hate speech is a specialized and extreme kind of bigotry separate from the other three. Maybe just rearranging it to "No hate speech, including but not limited to racism, sexism, homophobia", following the pattern of the other lists in the rules, could work. 2. "homophobia" is a crappy word for bigotry against gay people, since someone can have a fear of a thing and not be bigoted to people about it, someone can be bigoted without having some fear, and calling bigotry a fear just confuses everyone and kills brain cells. Also, it puts the focus of the issue of gender identity and sexual preference all on the gay/straight dichotomy, leaving transgender people for instance out in the rain. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophobia#Criticism_of_meaning_and_purpose) 3. Lazy-Hypervigilance born out of a fear of appearing bigoted leads to occasional heavy/nervous moderation of otherwise civil discussions, speedy moderation of specific offensive terms but hesitant moderation of situations not conforming to a watson-highlighted signal. This is less about the rule's contents as it is, and more about what has filled the void that it leaves open. HOWEVER, this is all meaningful only if the rule is there to deter bigotry and intolerance on principle. If the rule is there just to cut down on the most common crap like people trolling and spamming terms that watson highlights then it's probably fine as it is. Again, the situations that these changes are intended to help with are not common, and nerd's defacto moderator discretion policy on these things *usually* takes care of things well enough. I'd just feel more comfortable with the rule written better. Anyone have opinions or suggestions for modification of this proposed change? Does anyone here on the forums support or object to this proposal? I'd like to request the comments here remain civil and respectful. Thanks. Edit: I'd like to clarify regarding the third issue I noted with the current state of moderation of bigotry/intolerance, that I do not believe that all or most moderators moderate these matters in the way I described, but I have observed it happening on a few occasions, and I myself when I was on staff have even been perhaps too zealous or quick to /ban on a few occasions for homophobia that may not have been warranted so soon.

Is it possible for moblimiter to distinguish between breeds of rabbits, like it does for colors of sheep? Or does the bukkit API not support this?

What i wrote above might sound simple - and it is in principle - but implementation is another thing. Trying to take into consideration all the ways that players may accidentally or intentionally abuse it, how it might break or cause problems, etc. means a lot of careful thought has to go into anything like this if non-staff have access to it. I don't think a fully-featured armor stand configuration suite should be a high priority for the techadmins compared with some of the other projects that they were working on when i was last privy to admin meeting discussions (website, improved techadmin collaboration tools, automatic rollback plugins for grief, etc.) But I do think someone with CH experience could make at least a basic interface for players or mods to have access to these three different armor stand configurations: * normal with arms * short with arms * short with no arms /stand /stand small /stand smallnoarms Maybe a bukkit plugin is better. I don't know - I'm not a plugin dev. I just know it is possible using commandhelper for the basic functionality. The real tricky part is preventing accidents and abuse if regular players have access to this. CH lacks the ability to edit NBT data in entities directly, but vanilla minecraft may have a command for that which CH could sudo() like the summon command. I would worry about people using it to edit others' armor stands though. I also don't know what would happen to any items the armor stand is holding or wearing if you remove its arms directly. I think the best/simplest thing is to just have a command that lets you place the custom stands, rather than edit existing ones. Placement should be logged somehow. CH does not integrate with logblock, PRISM, Coreprotect, etc., so probably the simplest thing would be to log placement details to the console for admins to check in the case of armor stand spam via the command - and possibly an in-game notification to mods on C if they are already getting them for regular armor stand placements or item frames. I think if it were my server, I would let it be something that can be modreq'd. Roll out a quick and easy CH alias that all mods have access to. Maybe work on the plugin in spare time when other projects are not urgent or high priority, but if you want a quick fix with little fuss, make it a modreq'able affair. Yeah it means more work for staff to fill the reqs, but i doubt it would be as frequent as flowing water reqs. Maybe writing a plugin is easier for dumbo or another tech than I imagine it to be compared to writing a couple of aliases for mods to use. But this is something that could be written in CH using the sudo() workaround in a fairly short period of time. Just need to toss on the other two forms, a check for staff perms, a message to the console. --- I realized while writing this that I spent more time writing it than i would have just writing the darned ch script if it's for moderator usage, so i stopped and went and wrote it. *:'/armorstand' [$] = >>> _assertperm('restricted') if ($ == '') { msg(color(DARK_GREEN).'usage: /armorstand <type>') msg(color(DARK_GREEN).'types: arms, small, smallarms') die() } if ($ == 'arms') { sudo('/summon ArmorStand ~ ~ ~ {ShowArms:1,Rotation:['.pfacing()[0].'f]}') } if ($ == 'small') { sudo('/summon ArmorStand ~ ~ ~ {Small:1,Rotation:['.pfacing()[0].'f]}') } if ($ == 'smallarms') { sudo('/summon ArmorStand ~ ~ ~ {Small:1,ShowArms:1,Rotation:['.pfacing()[0].'f]}') } console(player().' summoned armor stand at x:'.ploc()[0].', y:'.ploc()[1].', z:'.ploc()[2].', world:'.ploc()[3]) <<< forgive my derpy ploc() array referencing... I'm a bit rusty and tired, and can't remember how to pull out a sequence of values from an array and don't feel like looking it up. done some minimal testing, only problem I noticed is that it doesn't align to grid like manually placed armor stands. it creates an armor stand exactly where the player issuing the command is standing in the direction they are facing (yaw, not pitch. Not sure what nbt tag matches pitch on these). recommend adding this to nerdch and letting mods handle reqs for these three custom armor stand placement dealios. --- edit: actually now i think about it this sort of setup might be a pain if the modreqing player has placed a lot of armor stands :/ might be possible to do something with pcursor() and entity_loc() edit2: preliminary tests with pcursor() worked ok, except if you have more than one armor stand in a small area, like one adjacent to the one you are aimed at - in which case entities_in_radius() tries to get both of them and i don't know how to figure out which is which in the resulting list. Setting radius to 1 returns no results, but setting it to 2 checks too large of an area - and it only accepts full integers not floats.

I think we're more likely to see inert TNT before functional TNT on P. https://nerd-pve.uservoice.com/forums/275987-general/suggestions/6813273-implement-aesthetic-only-tnt-no-block-damage-no Buzzie says that tnt is still on the table even though they have had some issues. There was another post on that uservoice page about functional tnt, but it appears to be gone now - I'm not certain if the padmins responded to it or not.

So i was eating a bagel a few minutes ago and thinking about this, and decided I'd look up how people did the armor stands with arms like ninja posted those pics of, and i learned it's just nbt tags. Now I'm no master coder or anything, i don't know if there's a way using the bukkit api to summon entities with specific nbt data or not... but i know commandhelper has a simple command that lets you run another command as if an OP were running it. so i wrote a super simple ch alias that anyone with a server running commandhelper can drop in and test. *:'/chsummon' = >>> sudo('/summon ArmorStand ~ ~ ~ {ShowArms:1}') <<< that'll summon a plain armor stand with arms. modifying that nbt tag area can let you do all sorts of fun stuff. http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Armor_Stand#NBT_data I also found this plugin that someone wrote that allows you to modify armor stands in all sorts of angles and positions in-game, but i haven't tested it. Maybe it could be of interest to anyone looking to write a plugin instead of implementing a ch command that checks for the presence of an armor stand nearby the player or in the player's inventory and then issues the summon command. http://www.spigotmc.org/resources/armor-stand-tools.2237/ I don't think there would be any security concerns with players being able to run a command that uses op perms just for a summon command, as long as the rest of the ch command were written well with the proper checks in place - but then I am not a tech and don't know the repercussions of such magical things in the hands of the ignorant or malicious. I'd be interested in hearing from any techadmins who are going to pursue this, whether this seems like a viable option - and if not what the concerns would be.

oh dang, if the api doesn't support it then we should prepare for some NMS funtimes come next mc update.

A plugin or CH command could be written that would allow players to place custom armor stands so long as they have an existing armor stand in front of them or in their inventory. The current command to produce these custom stands may be OP only in vanilla minecraft, but nerd runs spigot and that means it isn't impossible to find a way - if there is an interest in doing so.

Alright gizzletinks. A 1 week ban seems fair given the circumstances. Next time a moderator or admin warns you to stop doing something, you need to stop. Next time you make a ban appeal, treat it seriously. As it's been a week, you're unbanned.

Hey bluewarrior. This was a mistake on my part. I'm very sorry for the inconvenience. You're unbanned now.

I appreciate you working with me on this. It means a lot. Lets clear up the definition of spawn camping real quick. You're right that spawn camping isn't clearly explicated in detail in our rules. The basic idea is sustained repetitive killing of players in or around the spawn area, which prevents players from escaping out into the map. The existence of other spawn exit points is no excuse for continual player harassment in this manner. The intention behind the rule against spawn camping is to allow people the freedom to play the game. If someone keeps on killing them over and over, preventing them from getting out and collecting resources or getting back to their base, they are going to become bored (if not frustrated or upset). The teleport signs are there not as a substitution for the rules. They are provided as a convenience for the player, as well as a deterrent to campers - same as with the mechanism that causes players to return to spawn if they die near their bed. You can argue ignorance of the rule, and even by your own definition you were not simply preventing them from going down gold road, but killing by gold, red, emerald roads, as well as several times right in spawn proper even after being kick/warned. I'm really happy to hear you providing an alternative course of action to solve the problem your villainy was meant to address. I consider this proposed course of action to be a sign of reform to a degree. If you were to follow through with that plan I'd be ecstatic. I'm glad too that you acknowledge that you took it way too far. Reading the trolling in the logs posted up above is concerning. I understand the idea that you were trying to provide a villain, a reason for people to PvP. That's understandable, and I applaud and thank you for your intention of helping the server. What continues to concern me is your initial response to being warned for taking the trolling too far. You saw the warning, and you kept on. Then after you were muted, you messaged the player directly continuing it. The pattern of disregard for warnings repeated when you were kicked with the warning to stop spawncamping, and you continued. I'm not going to worry about the modreq spam or lying about being warned. It was annoying, but not a major part of the reason behind your ban. Lastly: your appeal, which you treated like a joke previously in a similar style to the way you approached your appeal for your last ban. This kind of conduct was even recently clarified as explicitly disallowed by a head admin in a post at the very top of this appeals section of the forums. https://nerd.nu/forums/topic/2865-ban-appeal-policy/ I'm willing to accept that maybe you were operating in ignorance of the rules about spawncamping - I'd be willing to be lenient for that reason and because this is the first time you've been banned for spawn camping. That you acknowledge you took it way too far even by your own definitions of spawncamping, and even offered an alternative course of action is great too! We're almost through this, I can feel it. I just want to give you this opportunity to respond to these remaining issues/concerns: 1) disregarding the warnings 2) treating the appeal process like a joke. I think you've been treating this second appeal seriously, which is wonderful, and it doesn't really explain why your last appeal, and the appeal for your last ban were treated differently. Its okay too if you don't have an explanation or don't want to offer one. But I'll give you a bit to offer any comments you'd like before setting an unban date. Also, merry christmas! (and if you don't celebrate, then Happy Holidays!)

Earlier in your first appeal you denied that you were spawn camping, then you apologize for spawn camping and promise never to kill anyone at spawn again, and now you're back to denying that you were spawn camping. So i'm a bit confused because you're telling me two different things. I'm not here to be a big meanie to you, gizzle. I'm here to find out if I unban you if the rules are likely to be broken again, and I decide that by trying to discern if you feel any remorse or if you have reformed in any way. I'm curious as well to find out is what's behind the conduct I outlined above - because maybe if I know what the deal is then I can feel more at ease letting you back onto the servers if i know how to help. Help me help you to get back on the servers, gizzletinks. Are you claiming the ban was not just, or are you conceding that you made some mistakes and want to play again? If you're conceding you made some mistakes, show me some sign that you've got some remorse beyond being upset at not being able to play, or some sign that you have reformed and won't be spawncamping or trolling again. I mean heck, looking at the logs above its apparent this person was getting pretty upset by your behavior, even to the point that they disconnected from the server. That's not good. If you believe the ban was not just, maybe we don't have a clear enough common definition of spawn camping? Is this all a big misunderstanding? What would you define spawn camping as? Maybe we can come to figure out where the problem is and fix it for the future. Or hey, maybe it's a little of both. That's ok too. But I need to know where you stand before this appeal process can proceed.

Hey gizzletinks, Thanks for taking this seriously this time. Just so we all have the same information available to us, here are the logs relevant to your ban: And here's the album of images i took at each location you killed derpymarshmellow within a 128 meter radius around spawn in the span of about 13 minutes. https://imgur.com/a/HecKQ I think the images speak for themselves, personally. So I see a few issues here, in more or less chronological order: 1) trolling 2) disregarding the warning about trolling, and continuing 3) spawncamping 4) spamming the /modreq command 5) lying about being warned for spawncamping 6) disregarding the warning about spawncamping, and continuing 7) lying again in your previous appeal about spawncamping 8) treating the appeal process like it is a joke in your previous appeal So what's going on? Your appeal for your previous ban just two weeks ago you treated with similar disrespect. Do you actually want to play on our servers? What explanation can you offer for your conduct with this stuff?