Just to say, I’m not “answering for Jason” in what follows, nor do I think other people were. We’re offering our own responses to questions raised on the thread. I also don’t think the fact that we answered some posts while Jason was focusing on replying to others is “sketch”. Nor should anyone expect CoG staff to drop everything and answer big questions like “how are you going to reduce the likelihood that people will spread rumors on bits of the Internet you don’t control?” within an hour or two of the question being asked.
As someone with no authority but who’s been here a while, I’d say a lot of that is on us forum members (and in this particular case the CYSers… though as omnidirectional vitriol-spewing is a foundational part of their forum culture I don’t think we can expect too much help on this one).
When people who have less than half the story start speculating destructively about what they don’t know, why is that on CoG and not on them? Jason’s written extensively about how negative conjecture breaks forums and asked us to refrain from it.
“What steps will be taken to nip rumors in the bud?” is a great question, but it’s also one where we need to keep our expectations of CoG reasonable and take responsibility ourselves. We’re the front line of defense against rumors. We need to be the ones to say, “Slow your roll and don’t get riled up without knowing the facts.”
This is perhaps especially true of forum members who chat on Discord as well as here. I’m not on the CoG Discord, and I’m sure most of what goes on there is great…but it does also seem to have fed most of the uglier panics and pile-ons that have recently spilled over onto this forum (and occasionally onto CYS).
CoG has as far as I’m aware not taken any responsibility for policing any Discord servers, all of which were set up by fans (i.e. there’s no “official” CoG channel). That’s the only choice they can make; they’re a small company with very little resource to put into community management, even when it comes to this their own forum, let alone other fansites. Even more than here, the Discord channels rely on self-moderation.
As a non-Discordian, all I can do is appeal to those of you who are highly active on the CoG Discord to keep it from becoming a toxic community. Don’t pile on your least favorite authors, and don’t stay quiet while others do. Don’t speculate about negative things without knowing the facts, and don’t stay quiet while others do.
As for transparency: in all the CoG-author disputes that I’ve seen on the forums, the justification for non-publication, reclassification as Adult, etc. was stated publicly but briefly by CoG, and seemed clear enough to me. I’ve seen other rumors and slanted perspectives festering…but I don’t believe additional “transparency” by CoG would have done much to nip them in the bud. The rationale had already been stated transparently.
In every case I’ve seen, there’s also whataboutism-- “what about this game that did the same thing?” – and to that, too, we have repeatedly had CoG’s answer: they look at games in response to specific complaints or questions raised by us. They don’t systematically police WiPs, or review HGs for grossly offensive content until the verge of publication. If anyone wants to flag up a particular section of any WiP (not a vague memory requiring a mod to dig around the whole thing, please) that merits staff action, I’m sure action will be taken. If not, please don’t expect it to be.
On the broader point of:
volunteer mods have often been the ones making the calls, falling back on CoG staff where things are unclear. Gower’s done a commendable job of writing up the moderation norms. If you think there’s an issue that needs further clarification, why don’t we take it over to that thread?
Finally,
Let’s remember what we’re talking about here. It was an announcement for a game that’s been published off-site–not a HG.
If someone were to post in the Other Interactive Fiction section about “Extra Super Rape Game” just published on Steam, whether or not they phrased any of it in terms of a “trigger warning,” CoG would be under no obligation to read through the game before deleting the post, and there would be nothing “underhanded” about its upholding forum standards.
I didn’t see Avery’s actual post, so can’t speak to Jason’s account of its contents. But the content of the post, not of the game, is what’s at issue when we’re talking about anything published outside of CoG.