Regarding the recent drama

#1

Hey folks, we’ve had a lot of drama recently so I’m going to go ahead and clear things up.

Basically, the chat as it is right now is off putting to new players. If you joined a server and it was filled with penis jokes and raise your donger spam, you’d assume everybody was 11 years old and probably wouldn’t stay too long.

I don’t want to be strict with the chat rules at all, I don’t want to tell you guys you can’t say things - But as of now, a lot of the time the chat isn’t welcoming at all. It doesn’t represent us very well as a server.

Today, Dclem was demoted for refusing to follow this rule. We require our mods to act mature, and making penis jokes certainly violates that. Dclem argued with me, jugglingman and morios, and even insulted us a good bit. He directly denied a request from me - Specifically to not make any more penis jokes - He actually made a penis joke in the public chat, directly after I’d finished explaining why I was against that and he needed to stop. He acted very immature and rude, not something we want in a moderator.

Hopefully, you guys can understand why he was de-modded. If you have any questions, please don’t be afraid to post them here or message me privately.

#2

What? Why would DClem do this when he kicked me for making a penis joke myself. -_-

#3

Because I was provoking Agent and I wanted to make the point that nobody really cares about jokes :wink:

You got kicked at the time because I was doing my job as a mod. :unamused:

#4

Warning, essay incoming. This is my own opinion and may not necessarily represent that of Arcane or its sponsors.

That’s exactly right, you were provoking him. Trolling him. You certainly got a reaction, eh?

Now, before I continue, let me just say: sometimes my chat gets… less than professional. Sure, I’ll admit it. I’ve chuckled in public chat when a new player gets the “Getting Wood” achievement. Most of the people on the server are fine with it, expressing their own amusement in chat. I’ve never seen anybody complain about the occasional joke in bad taste. DClem’s right, nobody cares that much. Here’s the thing, though:

This wasn’t about the joke. It’s about sending a message. joker.gif No, really.

I don’t have the chat logs, so I have to listen to both sides of the story and decide my opinion from that. As I understand it, Agent posted the rule changes here on the forums, then brought them up in private with DClem on the server. Makes sense, mods should be given a heads-up on things like this. Agent told DClem that he wants mods to give a certain impression when they speak; basically, Agent believes that it’s off-putting to new players to see dick jokes and the like coming from a mod when they first join. I get that. Even a ‘mature’ new player might be worried about playing on a server where even the mods sound like they should be in school this time of day.

When I stay up late on the server on quiet nights, I see a huge increase in the amount of off-color or even outright inappropriate jokes. I’m not going to blame anyone, we’ve all got our gremlins. I just try to make sure people know how to rein themselves in. There’s only so many bad jokes I can take before they stop being funny.

Anyway, I’m getting off-course. Agent has a certain image of how mods should behave. DClem has a different view. We can talk this out, right? No need to go full Jacobin here, we (as mods and players) can explain our concerns and Agent can explain his reasoning. Obviously, that didn’t happen. What did happen, was that Agent asked DClem to not make dick jokes, and DClem responds (in public chat) by making a dick joke. Oh boy, here we go. The argument that started lasted over an hour, most of which I was there for. Neither side really made any progress, until finally Agent and Jugglingman decided to demod DClem, and actually temp-banned him too.

I honestly didn’t want it to come to that. It shouldn’t have come to that, but it did. It hurts me to say it, but Agent did the right thing. Making a dick joke isn’t the issue here, I’ll say it again. The issue here is that Agent, the admin, made a request, a very reasonable one (to me), and DClem purposely went against it. We’ve banned normal users for ignoring admin requests, there’s a precedent for this. I’m not saying you have to do everything an admin says, but really, it wasn’t even that big of a request. DClem’s a great member of the community because of how friendly he is in chat, it’s part of the reason he got accepted as a moderator. He could have accepted Agent’s request, gone about his business and written up a post on the forums expressing his concern (which he did).

Damn, I wrote way too much. I have opinions on the internet, deal with it. :sunglasses:

TL;DR: DClem got demoted for disobeying an admin, not for making a joke. Civil disobedience is fine, but don’t complain about being arrested.

#5

I posted the questions on the rules before the last joke :slight_smile: This last joke is actually linked with the fact that I just had posted my questions and was asking people to react to it.

#6

First I have to say that I’m delighted that there is an explicit (and enforced!) will to raise the standards of chat. I remember how welcoming and friendly Arcane was when I first joined and it would be wonderful to have that feeling again.

I also understand, both from this post and the lengthy and repeated discussions about this both with DClem himself and other people on the server, the why and how of the demotion and subsequent ban. And the logic of them are sound.

But while DClem might have acted ‘immature and rude’ in that particular occasion, I think we all know it’s not representative of his character. I mean, we all know DClem is a stuck-up pompous jerk, not a foul-mouthed simpleton.

And that’s why he was a good mod, and I’m sad he isn’t anymore - because I also am a stuck-up pompous jerk and I felt secure in the knowledge that we had a mod that was very serious about any and all rule-breaking, always ready to drop everything to investigate and if necessary punish any offenses.

Once again except for that one out-of-character occurence, DClem has consistently shown himself to be one of the most mature and principled players around. As he has repeatedly proven during recent chat kerfuffles, he also has very little tolerance for immature and offensive bullshit [size=50](ironic, right?)[/size] and he’ll inevitably point it out and put it down. Even with no mod powers - no because it’s some chore he has to do, but because it’s part of his character.

So I’ll only say it once, but I’ll say it explicitely: I think it’d be neat if DClem was a mod again.