Discuss New Forum Policy Here - Pt 2

i think having your cake and eating it too is a tos violation. for the lack of any proper neutral pronoun for human beings, if people do not specify their gender on their profile should i resort to calling them it?

imposing one's rl gender on other people as a way for them to know one's self but then asking them to diligently conceal it is too much to ask. how many people must i keep up the charade for? i maintain that if someone tells my their rl gender, it's not a secret. it's entirely unfair to compare one's self to my mother and then expect me to maintain a second life fantasy of masculinity. the number of people who make this demand makes my head hurt if i try to follow through with it.

a good example of tos violation might be if i had used some kind of ip address account tracing google searching strategy to sereptitiously learn someone's gender and published it here. but that's not the case here, is it?

i don't know what the alt thing is about. i didn't post anything about alts.

I certainly wasn't referring to you when I spoke of passive-aggressive behavior - it was an observation of the situation in general. I'm not familiar with your posting history or whoever you may have had arguments with.

Brilliant! We could calculate their shrillness index, and like Zaphod's glasses, any post that's likely to traumatize their delicate sensibilities would be hidden.

I also support Andrew's idea of charging people who post too many words. If you have enough posts that are >2.5 standard deviations above the mean length for all posters, or maybe the interquartile mean (25%-75%), you either pay or go back and take out some words.

my suspicion is this is something that could be automated into the forum interface so it would not require active management by forum moderators. this would definitely make reading the forums much easier, but i can't help wondering if my post would survive the algorithms!

Jauani,

Not to split hairs here, but you once threatened to report a post of mine as a TOS violation if I did not edit it because I made reference to your being male in the forums at a time when you were still playing a female avatar. I found out your gender from you, not anyone else, and yet you came to me and asked me to remove it (and I did). How exactly is this situation different?

Am I right in thinking this means that banned people do not have access to the forums? I had a notecard dropped on me by someone who was banned referencing my comments in the forums. How is that possible?

They can read but not post.

it's not different at all.

i thought it over that very same day and realized i was wrong to ask you to go out of your way and constantly filter yourself for every single player who is roleplaying cross gender or in my case trying to maintain a complete ambiguity. i hope i didn't "threatened" you particularly since we were already friends in world by then, but i am certain at the time i believed, like coco does now, that it was a tos violation and would have said so. since that day i've never disturbed anyone about posting about me in any gender, and i can assure you the ongoing gender references on the forum towards me or my avatar are far from consistent.

Bothersome though it may be to people, Pathfinder has stated that it is against TOS to talk about any real life information about a player that he does not have on his profile - or, I figured another exception would be if he has publically stated it on the forums.


Moreover, the ingame help thingie specifically lists gender as something that is not to be divulged if the person doesn't wish it divulged.

This makes a fair amount of sense. Let's take an analogy. I tell my friend Misty that in real life, I'm in a wheelchair. (I'm not.) And unlike players who are in wheelchairs and don't care who knows it, and may even prefer it to be known, I clearly don't want that known.

Now say Misty comes on the forums and says it is too much trouble for her to remember not to say I'm in a wheelchair. I know the analogy isn't precise, since there is no "he" or "she" to stumble over all the time, but the underlying value - that of keeping private, rl information privileged from the populace at large - is the same in both cases.

You have broken the TOS. Even assuming what you say is true.

A similar case can be made for saying someone is someone else's alt. They may be either correct, in which case they have outed private information, or incorrect, in which case they have spread false rl info, which would also be (correct me if I'm wrong) slander.

So I think if I reported someone for continuing to state that I am someone else, I would win my case, a gag order would be put on that person, and that person would be sanctioned in some fashion.

coco

Thanks Aimee, I did not know that.

coco, your example is not adequate. a players physical mobility is not a determinant in common language as the gender is. the english language requires a gender specific pronouns and possesif articles. in which case my perception of anothers gendered embodied identity weighs heavily on my reference to them in words. you recongnize this yourself and still you throw in this example. secondly, how would one refer to anyone who doesn't include gender info in their profile without risking a tos violation?

can you please respond to my point that if i tell you to refer to me as a specific gender that is contrary to the perception of my self that i have constructed for you, that it is an imposition. i can not move further in a discussion with you if you are going to compare gender and language with other RL information. i can't operate in your all or nothing dialectic.

I already did, when I said:

"I know the analogy isn't precise, since there is no "he" or "she" to stumble over all the time, but the underlying value - that of keeping private, rl information privileged from the populace at large - is the same in both cases."

Anyway, it's not my rule; it's theirs. I'm just telling you about it.

coco

My opinion here, but I support the forum rules changes. I've been involved in many forums and it is more the exception to find one where the moderators don't have ability to give someone, who can't keep their mouth under control, the boot. The people who will have the most difficult time with this are those who can't enter a discussion without calling people names or making insulting remarks. I've read them here and they aren't just a pack of alts. Some have many 1000's of posts under their belt and birthdates going back several years.

I support giving the forum rules some more teeth. It cuts down on bully tactics by making people think before they post a venom filled diatribe. If they choose not to consider their words wisely, they cancel their own account. Everyone's fate is in their own hands.

i don't even think it's their rule. as a test i welcome you and all your friends to abuse report me. in fact i welcome the entire forum community to abuse report that post. when LL contacts me, i'll show them a chat log. then i'll let you know what happens.

I hope someone does.

coco

I truly think that when it comes to any real life information that people don't want known, the burden has to be on that person to keep their own secrets. My short term memory just isn't that good. Should we all be keeping detailed notes of what things we know about people are supposed to be common knowledge and what's supposed to be kept under wraps? Also, when most people post to the forums they don't have access to anyone's in world profile. So, to anyone and everyone that has anything they want to keep hidden, don't tell me... ever. Please. I have no interest in being deputized into being the keeper of other people's secrets. Thanks in advance.

I can vouch for Chip's indiscretion. Once, in a private conversation, I confessed to him, in confidence, that I am not a human after all and am in fact from a small planetoid somewhere in the vicinity of Alpha Centauri. Chip later divulged this information in the forum, much to my chagrine.

I did not file an abuse report because I like Chip, but still, a lot of my friends put on little alien antenna things on their heads when they see me as a result of this revalation. I try to laugh it off, but in truth, I am dying a little inside each time.

Actually, prok has (backhandedly) specified a gender in forum, using the term "queen" at least once to refer to Prok, and though I don't remember the specifics, I do recall similar slips once or twice before.

And if you aren't allowed to use gender references on the offchance you might guess a hidden RL secret (With the exception of a few names, I couldn't tell you the gender of most forum posters from their names), then things are going to get really awkward.

Oh wow, I didn't know this. I thought it was information obtained through other means other than being told or revealed.

Just to play Devil's Advocate, didn't the individual reveal that information in the forum by saying they had their real life gender revealed? If this person really wanted it kept a secret, wouldn't they have refrained from revealing it in the forums themselves?

Also I believe privileged information refers to info obtained by a professional person necessary for the care or in the case of a lawyer, the defense of an individual. When one tells someone in world rl info, I don't think it falls under privileged. Am I wrong in this particular assumption?

Legally, you're correct.

That said, I in generaly don't go around blabbing RL details (Of which I know fair few about my friends)... Because they were told in confidence to me, I don't feel they are my secret to divulge.

Ah, now see I thought it was the webbed feet you didn't want people to know ab.... ah crap. Did it again. Sorry man.

I was going to say something really, really important, but then I read this debate about "how many angels of either gender can dance on the head of a pin," and "does that information constitute a violation of the ToS," and I forgot everything I was going to say.

So here's the answer to everyone's issues: Wisdom and Restraint.

Anyone who disagrees is innocent of either.

Forgot to add this:

/me forces a cheerful smile, trying not to betray the tears that well powerfully behind his eyes

Minimize it all you want. It's still a TOS violation.

And the fact that you do it on PURPOSE, just to get his goat, makes it doubly wrong.

coco