Whilst there is show of progression and some of regression from non-advocates or/and participants of the new community.
I cannot help but recall to a thought expression that many probably know of and have heard of.
This thought expression is called the Ship of Theseus.
In turn a lot of the parts have been replaced the people who once led, those who officered. Yet, the guild names are still the same, the sails are still the same.
It’s repainted with a new name and branded the A³ or as some have said AAA.
Though everybody remembers when this ship was the other three letter acronym and the guilds represented in it was still part of that previous three letter acronym.
My question to the those would be; Is this still the same ship you think it was? Or is this a wholly new ship that people are looking to board on?
That is the only question you can leave to the wider community to think on and act on.
Whilst the ship goes back out onto the waters to reset it’s roots.
You need to think on your own thoughts and your own nature because regardless or not the ships back out on the water anyways.
Sure, that’s one way to handle it. But what if the guy keeps kicking your door down and coming back into your house, smearing dirt all over your furniture and the officials can do naught about it? A different situation, no? Goading and aggravation are easy to ignore in limited supplies, this is true, very little restraint is required to shrug off such. But continued goading? Over several years? A much more nuanced and complicated situation, as you can imagine, one that would always end poorly when the environment for it was an online roleplaying forum.
What if this person, then, as Koiffen has just posted, harasses your members individually as well? Over their sexual orientations? Over their sheer existence? Touting Fire Nation Dogwhistles by the dozens? Should I offer the Fire Nation an olive branch, or should I commit myself to the time-honored, god-blessed tradition of scourging the Fire Nation supporter.
The thing with Sig is that while he did behave as he did, there were also moments where he was just a normal person, abd unfortunately sometimes when he was just minding his own and not saying anything daft, people did try (and often suceed) to provoke him. I think shutting down the silly things he said was fine, but we really didn’t need prople agitating and antagonising him during his breaks from the usual posts.
I might’ve been guilty of that too, i honestly can’t remember, but yeah there were a few times where people would scold him on unrelated topics and threads long after the initial conversation was finished.
Unfortunately, if you keep talking for years in German 1938-1945 dogwhistles, people are eventually going to stop taking you serious in your entirety and just treat you as the silly 1938-1945 German dogwhistle guy.
Respecting of empathy though everyone may be, a lot of people agree the line stops at German 1938-1945 Supporters.
Edit: Importantly, whether Sig was doing so consistently as a “joke” actually doesn’t really matter either. He kept doing it, for a few years at least.
I hope this isn’t inappropriate but in regards to this claim of sexual harassment in DM. That’s definitely something that was not brought up to us as a group, which makes me think the officer contacted was not very forthcoming. That is a failing, and a regrettable one.
Even if the person responsible is not with us anymore, I think it’d be worthwhile to know what we missed. If you could throw a mail or DM somewhere to one of our officers giving us some details, that’d be appreciated. Which officer you spoke to, and what the DMs entailed.
If you want to just keep it all where it was, of course, if revisiting it isn’t easy or wanted, I’ll respect that too.
Ignoring somebody is inaction and allows them to continue running a platform to spout their rhetoric.
I don’t know the extent of what was said so I’m not going to claim to know: I agree there’s likely better ways to handle it, but I do think if people are saying toxic things, people should stand up and tell them to get bent in some capacity and show there’s people actively challenging these views.
Age old adage: don’t feed the trolls. But some cases it’s a catch-22: you don’t feed the trolls, they continue and won’t run out of steam, just embedding deeper into things until removal becomes more difficult. You challenge them, you’re feeding the trolls.
Tricky.
Ultimately, I’d say it’s better for people to speak up in as mature and as clean a way as possible instead of silence. Consider it from this perspective: if he says these things and people ignore him, other people will look at the zero responses and say “does nobody really think this guy is wrong”?
Has Sig been around for years? I only remember him popping up (and consequently off) on the forums for about 6 months, including the time he accused me of being a PCU agent.
Sig’s been off the forums for a while and to be honest, I’m surprised to be talking about the guy again considering how long it’s been. I hope he’s doing better these days without the forums to be a source of stress for him.