Let's Have A Talk.

The rules on language definately changed. I remember when words such as: "shit" or "damn" werent even allowed. Staff rules evolved over time but we need to still be family friendly.

To the OP:

EMC is a family place, there are children less than 8 years old playing and I am sure of that. You may say that you were using inappropriate language at age 8 (I know I was...) but you have to respect the rules that staff set down. When I joined I couldnt say damn out loud without risking a kick, and when I found out they let people say damn I was surprised. Staff are important and their judgement is important, if they think you did something wrong... I trust them 100% that it is true.

As for a mature chat channel, my answer is no. Who is to say an 8 year old doesnt enter the mature channel. It just doesnt belong on EMC.

My 2 cents.

Thanks for your answer. I agree that it's entirely possible that an 8 year old could join. However, when I put the third response "Maybe, but there should be an age lock.", I was thinking you'd have to , you know, prove you were of an older age.

Well, most of the time people put older ages then they are..

"I was thinking you'd have to, you know, prove you were of an older age."
Prove.
PROVE.
Don't ask me how they would prove it, but I know there are ways.

Rules:

(Source from rules.emc.gs )

Well said.

Thanks for the reply Aikar. I'll take all that into consideration. To the last paragraph, my real concern is the staff member who is entrusted with dealing with the situation. Sure, there are many staff, but they're not all going to be working on the same report. I don't know how everything works, but I'd assume that once a "sentence" has been made on the server, none of the other staff really look into the situation much further.
Once again, thank you for your time and comment, it's much appreciated.

I was highly considering not replying to this, but I just couldn't let it pass, especially since I was one of the staff members that muted you today.

1. I would never take any action against someone unless it was warranted, which in your case it was. If you would like the specifics of why or the chat logs, please pm me.
2. I have never seen you or talked to you before; I didn't know any of the reportees, or really any other person on your smp before muting you. So being "biased" toward anyone in any fashion is pretty far fetched. Which leads to
3. I would take similar action against anyone that I am close to in the game, if they deserved it. No one is exempt from the rules, up to and including ALL staff members.

If you have any other comments or questions please feel free to contact me.

-ET

Sorry, maybe the fact I had the screenshots of the bans made it seem like I was accusing you of bias. I wasn't talking about you, and I'm sorry if I made it seem like that. I really am talking about certain other staff. My opinion came from not only my experience today, but what I've heard from other people whose opinion I trust. I am not only referring to my own life.

Sorry as well if I misunderstood.

I also wanted to make a quick comment on something that biggin mentioned: if you ever have an issue with staff, as members you have the right to speak to the community manager: because this IS a community, and a really good one at that. This isn't some sort of dictatorship, and for me personally, everyone is important to me and their opinions.

I guess your talking about me then. I wasn't going reply to this thread because it was being handle by SS but after this reply I can see that your trying to make yourself out to be a hero of the community for standing up to a tempmute that you think was unjust. Well the 10 minute tempmute I put on you is because you said certain curse word in town chat in censored form which still breaks the emc chat rules. Now to the part you said some staff are biased when handling reports and some members get off worse than other because they know staff member and are buddy-buddy with them. Well guess we are no one friends or allies when dealing with case if a player is in the wrong we punish them if needed. I give you a example 2 months agos I caught a 3 year vet who I had a lot of miniadventures and did some builds with griefing/stealing from a player's wild base. After everything was said and done the griefer ended up permaban with appeal in few months. Guess what in that instance I burned a bridge and that player doesn't speak to me anymore because I choosed uphold Emc rules over a 2 year old friendship. Anyways that's I got to say in this thread you may reply back to me telling me what you think but I won't be repling back because it was pointless.

I feel like your view of the person who you think reported you is purely relative. It all depends on what position the person is in at the time (ie you in trouble, everyone else not). If by good terms you mean this person does not get in trouble, then a lot of people are in good terms with staff. If by good terms you mean a kissass, then you are wrong. Nobody in an authoritative position likes a kissass, nobody. If the player you are referring to has a history of over the top rule correcting behavior (basically the equivalent to being a forum grammr nazi), their input is likely looked over more closely just because of their history of exaggerating situations.

That said, from what has been posted in here, you clearly chose your wording with full understanding that you were breaking the rules, but you tried to do it in a way that could be considered borderline ok or not as bad. Whether or not this is a real place is irrelevant.

You bring up a point about how punishing you does potentially expose people to new inappropriate words, so does not punishing you. Someone would be wondering what that means and thus look it up, leading to a bad situation. They might even repeat what you said later on not knowing what they were saying. Also, it is not bad when a younger person learns a new inappropriate word (assuming it was not used in excessively). It is more common that people learn something like that and move on with their life unaltered than it is for someone to be so largely affected by it that they are a whole new person. Ignorance is not how people learn right from wrong and what is appropriate and inappropriate.

I can tell you from experience that staff do not have a bias. There have been a few times (I am not a career rule breaker >.>) when a staff friend of mine has tempbanned or kicked me (these were times when muting was not around), and I am fairly well-known on the forums (but a mere ghost in game lol).

If you are talking about Dwight, I have seen him ban some of his very good friends before, people who were upstanding members of the community.

Nothing above is meant to be hostile, just trying to provide possible viewpoints and/or explanations. I have been in your situation a few times here and I know what it feels like when you are convinced that the situation is staff buddies > true "justice".

Okay, well I suppose I should've pointed out that I wasn't talking about either of you. I'd like to apologize for the misunderstanding. I am not making personal attacks and I can see that you take your job seriously, which I respect.
The whole point of this thread was not just to address what I see as staff bias. That was really about a third of the point. My real drive to make this was that I felt we should have another chat. Which is why I made the poll "Should there be a separate chat for mature subjects?" and not "Do you think staff have bias?"
I probably should have put this in the Suggestion box, but I do think my post was a mix of a suggestion and addressing a problem.
Before I finish this response, I'd like to also say I don't really appreciate the condescending tone your comment gave off. I accept criticism, but it feels like more of a personal attack when you say I'm trying to be a "hero". The point of this post wasn't to be sociopathic and make myself look good. I know what I did wrong, and I'm not going to cover that up and say everything I said and did today was right, because it wasn't. I'm not a perfect person, and I know for a fact that I don't try to make myself look like one.
I apologize if it seems like I implied you were biased or accused you of that. It wasn't the situation today that made me believe there was bias among the staff, because as I said, I have been told about quite a few staff members who practically segregate against some players because they don't know them well or they trust the member who reported them. It was really only today that triggered my thoughts of staff bias, and really, as I said, the point of this thread was more to address the idea of another chat.
Thanks for your reply and for your time. I hope I didn't offend you any further.

Being that I am by nature very anti-authoritarian it really bugs me when anyone tries to throw their weight around. That said (anarchy ftw) the staff here have been really fair and lenient in "almost" every instance I have seen them have to resolve a confrontation. "Almost" isn't perfect but I wouldn't expect anyone to be perfect and there are ways to appeal something if you feel that it was unfair. I quite like "most" of the emc staff XD Not because they are green, I do not like caste systems, but they are good people and try to be fair... for the most part. Some are more emotional than others.. <--- just gonna leave that there

Normally I stay out of these threads because it's simple: I realize like no other that I cannot be unbiased here because of 2 simple and important reasons. First, I wasn't there. Very important, so I'm not even going to try. Second, I'm biased. Mainly because so far I've never seen injustice happening but also because I come from a server where the moderators were... How shall I put this; much more strict.

But despite these things I still have a valid comment to make. You see; I've been here myself. Not with getting moderators on my bad side, fortunately not, but by chatting about things which are absolutely, completely and totally out of the question where public chat is concerned. I'm not saying off topic: I'm saying completely out of place.

When my friends and me first joined the Empire we were only familiar with our previous server. Because of the circumstances of our departure we also had lots on our mind regarding the whole thing and felt the need to talk about that, and pretty in depth. In a way which was totally inappropriate for public chat because the other server got mentioned dozens of times, we discussed off topic issues (like mcmmo not being present), we talked about certain people where we all had our own personal outspoken opinion off, and we even commented on how the moderators in general were quite lenient and relaxed in comparison to where we came from.

We weren't reprimanded. Not at all. Because we discovered group chat. Now this may sound quite obvious and all but I can also say that we have made a few (very few) pretty stupid mistakes along the way. Nothing too serious, but still something which made us feel pretty bad. Like accidentally mixing up chat channels (town chat vs. group chat) where a comment went the wrong way. It happened twice; once to a friend of mine and once to me. The reason I remember this quite clearly is because we both knew that was a problem, and even apologized in the town chat right after it (it wasn't too serious out of line, not as if we spouted off a direct server address, but still...).

I know Aikar already mentioned this above but, no offense what so ever, that is basically the theory while my friends and me form the living proof of that statement. If you feel the need to talk about off topic things: use group chat.

It works. It's why its there (in my opinion) and it'll keep you out of trouble.

Something else to keep in mind... I really understand your frustration and I also understand that you need to spout off. Not only do I understand, I also respect that. But also keep in mind that there are ways to officially appeal if you feel to be under the receiving end of unfair reprimands.

But... As said, I'm not going there myself because I cannot say if this was justified or not because of the simply reason that I wasn't there. But I do hope that my experiences might help you in the future.

I truly appreciate your response. I always enjoy discussing things with people that I don't agree with. I also appreciate the time you took into reading my thread and writing this response. However, since this is a relatively long post, I'll respond to it by paragraph.
1)I was going to avoid giving in-depth detail as to what this person is like since I don't like the feeling that I'm singling players out. But if I'm being honest, I'd say that from my own experience - good person to staff, "over the top rule correcting behavior" when they're away.
2)I'm not even sure what you mean by that. If you're saying I'm downplaying the situation, than (HAHAHA) no I'm not. I said I wanted to move to a certain place in Austria. Now my memory sucks, but I'm pretty sure that afterwards all I did was argue with my attackers in chat, defend myself from a few people who I felt were attacking me, then called someone a smartass. I probably did some miscellaneous things in between, but I mean, all I really know is that I made mistakes and served the punishment for those mistakes.
3)I think you've completely misunderstood that section. The town I named in chat (the one that earned me my first mute, that day and of all time) happened to be the English equivalent of a bad word. That place was somewhere in Austria. I'm pretty sure Austrians didn't name that town that name for the fun of it. Also, in German, it's pronounced with an "ooking", so if it were spoken aloud, it wouldn't even sound like a "bad word". If I say the name of that town, and there are kids who don't know what the ENGLISH CONNOTATION of that word means, why should it be pointed out, especially if the real context I used was to name a place. That is why I used the example of the Danish word bae. I compared the two since I know that "bae" means "shit" in Danish. We don't mute people for saying that, so why should we be muting others for saying the name of a place in another country? And I'm not just referring to myself here. As Salman said before, he too named a place with an English connotation that people considered "inappropriate" and was muted. (This may seem a little irrelevant, but why are we only siding with the English language here? lol)
4)You've just generalized staff here. Not all staff are good, and not all are bad. There are still staff members who choose friends over the job. Not that I don't understand that, but I don't think people who can't handle that should be dealing with that situation (which I know someone said happens earlier).
5)No, as I said in my last comment. It was my mistake that I didn't address that I didn't mean either of the staff who muted me.
6)Thanks for understanding. I don't have much else to say about this post other than that I took about half an hour writing this. As I stated before, this post wasn't all about staff bias, it faded into being about having a second chat. Nonetheless, thanks for responding and giving me another viewpoint on this subject, it was much appreciated.

As for this subject (a mature section of EMC), this was my experience with that. I know you didn't have an age set on it, but it is similar. The post that seemed to prevail was post #7, but in general it was "feared" (staff confirmed this through PMs) that if there was a chat/forum where more mature subjects were allowed, it might turn into a sort of cesspool, and eventually spill into normal chat. I have seen this happen other places as well. After it would spill into regular chat, people became uncomfortable on the server and ended up leaving.

Thank you very much for your reply. I can see it most likely took a bit of time and thought, which I greatly appreciate. I'd also like to thank you for not coming off as angry, irritated, or (as I've said many times today) condescending.
About group chat: I get that group chat would be a place for conversations that aren't fit for town chat. It seems like you were quite content talking with your friends there, and I completely get that. However, I do Skype with my friends and usually talk about things I know don't go in town or group chat. But, these are my friends. A very small group of people, in other words. I am the type that likes to discuss things with not only people I know, but people I don't know too. It's hard for me to ask certain people in chat if they'd like to talk about mature subjects. There are actually some people in town that I value the opinions of, but at the same time, I'm barely on a first name basis with. I agree that group chat is great for friends, but it's awkward for acquaintances.
Thanks very much for your time and input. I really do appreciate hearing everyone's side.

That was interesting. I can definitely understand how people could see that happening. I do believe that anything can happen with this sort of thing. Sometimes we have to take a leap of faith, and other times we have to take precautions.