I’m also going to step in and just say something that’s outright the truth.
While moderation can be exhausting; if you have something nearly as popular as Aura Clash has been/was, it is not that hard to not only implement a set of rules that are simple, commonsense, and humane - but also it is not that hard to find a group of volunteers who will gladly help you enforce them.
To add further to that, it is not hard to be a decent human being, and not an asshole. Like, okay… you want to write about your own things, you don’t want homosexual relationships in your game, fine.
You want to tolerate nazi propaganda, hate speech, homophobic content/views, and more? Not fine.
There is no typical job on this planet in which you will not be instantly fired for the kind of crap that is in that Discord. I joined for all but five minutes last night and an N-bomb was said within those five minutes.
This is simply a way to blow up a successful career, slander yourself, and destroy any goodwill you have. At the end of the day, the pool of degeneracy is small, and we’re already a small niche. So to Anon?
All you’re doing is ensuring you never succeed. That’s on you.
EDIT: I’m going to throw in an edit while we’re here. Sure, we all have our own lives, but to say that you do not have any form of time available to regulate the community and install volunteer staff is outright dishonest.
I have a child of which I am a single parent, a full time job separate of that, run my household, do my chores, and have a neurodegenerative disease. Somehow, in all of that time… I still develop/write, and talk to others?
Now, sure, you may not have wonderful time management skills. But in the name of simple reality:
Pause work on the game for one day and install staff. It is not Choice of Games’ responsibility to police your work and ensure this community is safe from your fans simply because you won’t keep them in line.
You know it’s an… eventful thread when there’s an eight-hour timer between posts.
I don’t actually know what the game was about, I just clicked because it seemed like a big event and this being so controversial kinda surprises me a bit ngl. I didn’t think there were this many “free speech absolutist” types on here tbh. I.e. “you should be allowed to say whatever you want no matter how harmful”.
Venting is different from making bad faith, inflammatory, and/or egregiously specious arguments. Or committing outright violations of our rules.
I would take these back-to-back posts as examples of venting. These users are upset and I imagine they feel better having expressed themselves in a place where we can hear it. We may disagree with their points, but it’s productive for them to have a place to say this.
For example, I would describe this as specious argument, but absent a pattern of behavior, I’m willing to give the author the benefit of the doubt that he doesn’t know that mods are volunteers, and moreover that it’s no one’s job to parent the users of this forum. In case it weren’t clear, we’re not your parents, and we’re not here to clean up after you.
This comment, on the other hand, is inflammatory and made in bad faith. Should we hide it? Maybe? But someone would screenshot that and say, “look, they’re censoring me/us! Tyrants!” Moreover, I don’t really see how hiding it would help, so I’m leaving it up. But me, I have better things to do than be bothered by it and others of its sort.
Another specious and inflammatory comment. Should I hide it? I don’t see what I gain. Should I suspend the user? They didn’t specifically target anyone. While “sensitive” has much larger implications, it’s a pretty mild accusation as things go. Now, I don’t like the fact that this is the first time this user has been here in two years, and they show up to comment on this thread and this thread alone…it tells you what sort of communities they run in. But again, absent a pattern of behavior, I’ll issue an official Warning and move on with my life.
All I know for sure is now that this rule is set in place, the cog police have a vital responsibility of cracking down on other examples of this rule broken. Racism, Homophobia etc. is prevalent on this site, on social media and in the world. They have got a huge job to do to ensure this is not seen as a ‘once off’ ban and an abuse of power. This sort of ignorance towards racism, homophobia etc, is evident all over, so it is only fair now that this punishment is further utilised for the sake of the cog community, other platforms users linked to cog and of course(considering the rule involves these outside platforms now) and of course… the author of Aura Clash…
This form of definitive action needs to be consistent moving forward. End of.
The thing is people who cosplay as nazis are more likely to actually become nazis if given the opportunity. These “edgy” jokes are not really jokes, we all know that. I have seen a user from that discord going on a rant on another social platform, about killing all the queer people and confirmed that it’s not a joke and and is completely serious. So yeah they are not fooling anyone when they are cosplaying as free-speech defenders, as bigots fall back on this whenever they loose their right to spew absolutely abysmal things about jews and gay people on their first run. And to the users who are defending Anon, you all are just outing yourselves. It’s absolutely so satisfying to see your bigoted cult leader get booted of the platform.
I get what you are saying, but the users from his discord are everywhere and post whatever bigoted things they want to like “The Gay people in COG are retarded and obsessed with gay sex” and wherever it allows them. This is the reason COG doesn’t want anything to do with Aura Clash and Anon. But let’s take your words at face value and say that they are harmless edgelords. But consider this, people hate edgelords whether they are nazis or harmless. They create disruption and make the place toxic. So look at every other professional institution, because they ban edgelords in their own property, and Anon’s fanboys have been creating this problem here and the mods took a drastic action.
I heard about all this and having read through the whole thread, I just wanted to say thanks to everyone at CoG for fostering such a great community. I thought Aura Clash was a bit questionably written when I read it, but wrote it off as just the quirks of the current state of the genre (not every cultivation story can be a Jin Yong novel, after all.) As disheartening as it is to find out a fairly popular IF has cultivated such a toxic following, it’s been really nice to see how many members in the community have zero tolerance for that behavior and will actively speak up about it. Especially considering the honestly impressive patience a lot of people have had here when confronted with a clearly in bad faith argument. I haven’t spent much time on the actual forum before, but seeing how the majority of the platform has reacted to something like this (and seeing that CoG really is willing to put their money where their mouth is when it comes to having a safe and inclusive platform) has made me want to pick all the stories I’d canned back up again. Thanks to all the good eggs on here, keep up the good work!
Not your bro. And I have literally seen jewish people posting that meme as a joke regarding expecting people with genocidal views to change their mind. Context matters more and from the screenshot it didnt look like something praising Hitler. If there are other screenshots with him actually doing those things then those should have been the main ones shown. So far it seems like guilt by association and i cant agree with that. If other proof emerges I will change my mind but so far the only crime I see is not moderating a discord server.
Funny, I was just thinking the same thing. Pretty delicate to get up in your feelings over someone wholly unrelated to you being banned from a niche forum because they failed to give a shit about directions they were given over a year to follow, lmao. What about it got y’all’s panties in such a twist? Is this an enemies to lovers thing, are we all going to kiss?
It’s been… a while since I posted in the forum. I don’t generally have much interest in it past the ‘upcoming games’ section.
But I just wanted to write in to say that the mods made the right call, but they probably need to go a little further and ban the people trying to defend this cultivator-chan dude.
Honestly, I loved Aura Clash, never having interacted with the discord I was quite unaware of this, since I am bit of a lurker on these projects, but people defending the author saying it’s difficult to moderate a discord.. what’s such a problem making an announcement condemning this? There are literal bots to make writing slurs impossible, and they’re reported to moderators. I gather there’s been 0 effort on it, and if there was a move the situation MIGHT have been different. If there was an effort I probably missed it since I did skip a portion of the thread, large as it is.
Also someone saying “why does it matter if the author dislikes colour or gender” is an insane take, there’s a LOT of strange hills people here seems willing to die for.
I just saw this post, and just went through this thread.
More than a few people banned, just from this thread alone. Some of y’all have got to calm down and rethink this. Getting all angsty on this website isn’t going to do anything for you, considering the thing you’re getting upset about is one guys ban.
Regardless of if you think this was moderator overreach or not, Cultivator had multiple run-ins with CoG Mods and Staff and still refused to listen to what they had to say regarding his behavior. In the end, you gotta do what you gotta do. At least for the betterment of the site.
Honestly, I think this thread should just be locked already. It’s over and dealt with. Anon has been banned. At this point nothing productive is happening and all we’re getting is flame wars between people who were never involved to begin with. My take is that I honestly don’t know if Anon is a Nazi or not, I haven’t seen anything that would convince me that he is yet. That Naruto meme that he posted is definitely not a pro nazi meme, but that has already been explained by others. However, I agree with banning Anon because at some point enough is enough. I don’t want to see this place turn into 4chan degeneracy and the fact is that’s likely what we were in for if the mods didn’t do something. I think the fact that the mods waited this long to actually ban Anon is evidence that they were reluctant to take such a heavy measure but at some point, if nothing else works you kind of have to. The mods tried to warn Anon multiple times that his discord community was getting out of hand, but he never listened, so now this is where we are.
I hate that it came to this because I’m a pretty big fan of Aura Clash, but also, I understand why the mods did this and frankly I think they made the right choice. I think that this thread continuing to be open is unproductive and only serves to lead to more insults and venom which isn’t what anyone here wants. If his community over there wants to continue to be toxic, let them. That’s their right as long as they keep it over there. We just don’t want it here and we have the right to not have it here. So, let’s not have it here, and be a bit more charitable to each other.
Brother what are you on about? It’s not even about the damn game, that’s not even the primary reason he got banned. Have you read anything in this thread?
Hear me out, I love the game but I hate the idea of an author being ok with his fanbase using slurs people have called me before. It’s hard to love a game when the author is ok with people straight up saying the n word.
Correct me if i’m wrong but rather than blatant racism, it’s more of a Patch the leak before the flood scrolls in. I wont deny that banning for that Naruto meme is a bit funny and kinda stupid, because the meme itself isnt really nazi or leaning into that but more of a “Come, you can be good no matter how evil they are” (Questionable but it’s a meme) but the other reason seems fair. While it is essentially gate keeping, more than often fandoms/community do it for the sake of community integrity and way. Might want to change how the title worded imo. Well I’m not that much in this community and more or less a lurker. So hey, who am i to say.
Also kinda off topic but it feels as if challenging someone on their turf ground lmao.
It remains wild to me that in a forum dedicated to written media, so many people seem to struggle to read what has been illustrated multiple times in multiple ways, either meaning they didn’t read the enitre thread and thus missed it (A fair if flawed reason.) or they are geniunely being disingenious to stir up trouble. I don’t refer to the people who may be worried that the new rule can have bad implications, that is it’s own discussion, but the majority of the trouble isn’t people complaining about that. It’s complaining about the subject that brought on this rule to be formalized being deserving of it or not.
That, to me, is the crazy part. Placing aside hand waving slurs and hateful stuff I did not expect to see come from a WIP here of all places. (That’s its own red flag thats been discussed at length.) The main issue isn’t that the discord is a vile place that breaks all established lines and code that COG follows, Its the fact that this NOT* private space, was so troublesome and vile that people from it would be a regular cause of trouble here, Bar and Restaurant analogies have been made and they are pretty clear analogies for why this is unacceptable. But the question I really think should be asked is if after a year of dealing with this, with the author not only aware of and refusing to alter or moderate it in the most barebones of manner. (It literally doesn’t take more than 30 minutes to institute a bot that auto deletes messages containing slurs.) And the problems persisting even after removing direct links to the discord.
What would you have COG do? Just keep getting harrassed from a very clear source? Wait another year hoping Anon finally grows up and moderates it? This is not a Rhetorical. I am seriously at a loss for what decision you think would be right if Banning and removing the offending thread that caused the start of this is not just the right solution but the only solution. I cannot fathom a reason that isn’t just tacit approval of slinging slurs because “muh edgy” or such clear ignorance of nuance that actively running a community who says slurs on such a common basis that it could be speedran should be allowed to keep hosting his game and eventually get published by the company just because the vile happens just outside the door, and thus isn’t their responsibility?
Is that really reasonable? If a guy is actively, and documentedly seen hanging about with people who bleed homophobia and his own homophobia is leaking out, should a gay bar be forced to allow him to hang about there just because all of that happened outside the bar?
This is beyond the fact it does not matter if Anon is a goddamned angel who did jack about it. The point of these screenshots provided is not to say Anon is a racist prick. It is to show proof of how vile the community is, how it actively denegrates this community and also. As the “Hitler meme” showed. That he was personally aware of these things. And that is the key point. It does not matter if Anon’s meme was a “anti-nazi” meme or a “pro-nazi” one. That’s like arguing about rope color at the gallows. He clearly knows, and we can see clearly that he does nothing to actually stop it.
So he was aware, he was aware for at least a year of this, he was told and warned for a whole year. Multiple times, for repeated offences trailing back to that discord. And the best he could do was just remove the link from the thread.
As others pointed out. This matters little because he is not owed anything just because he is a family man. If anything the fact he has a family and is still okay with that behavior is what is worrisome. And again. It doesn’t matter if he isn’t the second spawn of satan. He refused to make reasonable changes to stay within the established lines. And he was given a more than reasonable amount of time to fix it. And he didn’t. That is the root of the problem.
So, every group irrespective of beliefs just should have an insane person who is allowed to go on racist hateful and toxic rants just because he’s one guy and people think it’s funny? Reasonable people see “Man being virulently toxic for no discernable reason” and go. Get that guy out of here. Not “Hey, he would make a WONDERFUL clown. Keep him around.”
If Anon wants back in. He has a ridiculously easy path of actually putting his foot down, moderating the cesspool for once and after a reasonable period of time, showing that it has changed, and that he has taken the reasonable measures to insure the server he runs is not a vile hatepool. If he is willing to bend the knee to slur slingers but considers the reasonable demands spread out over a year by the forum moderators to be too much. Then I believe that would really say all that needs to be said about him.
And again. Because people are fearmongering over a point that was never there. No, people randomly dropping slurs in your server (placing aside that such a thing can easily be prevented with a bot) or trying to tear you down by making hate raids to forcefully make your server seem shit so as to target you for removal will not get you removed. The moderators aren’t robots obliged to follow the letter of the rule without any nuance or thought. If you are being harassed, the mods will understand and not hold it against you. If the effort is clearly there to just harass you with manufactured crap. You can very easily showcase that it is just that by pointing out that your server does not in fact, sling slurs every 3 seconds like its necessary to stay there.
Anon’s case is exceptional in how extremely vile it is and how long he was allowed to be content with that. Unless you yourself have plans to replicate it. Or consider moderating slurs in your personally run server that you would link to a forum such as this to be far too much work and oppressive. Then you have nothing to worry about. There are other people with far more enemies who have had far more reason to actually worry about that happening to them and there’s a reason they aren’t concerned about it.
People forget the mod team isn’t a council of hive minds tied to a robot. They’re people. You can talk to them and explain yourself. You don’t need a lawyer or feel self incrimination like its a legal court. It is not that deep.
Now I’m the one who needs a shower smh…
*by linking it to the very popular thread that was more often than not on the front page of this forum. It makes it open to the greater public and thus should be expected to have a reasonable degree of control. No institution or establishment will want to hang a “Reading club” memo on their announcement board near the damned entrance, only for that “Reading club” to be “Mein Kampf appreciation reading.” You want to be free to chat about without worrying about the words, because you know you’re just being edgy and stuff? Make a private server where the people there are people you know are just being edgy, and where they know you are just being edgy, and more importantly are okay with it. “Mein Kampf appreciation reading” could in fact be a satire title mocking hitler and praising the achievements and less known acts of defiance against him. But that doesn’t mean everyone who joins will know it is satire. I do not refer to people who would be rightfully offended, I refer to people who think it is actually what the title is and are happy to be a part of that. Anon’s server was that. Sure they could all just be edgy nerds who in all seriousness are actually really nice when they are not shooting the shit together.
Or they could straight up just be Nazi’s who feel this place is a safe space for them to vent and be hateful while being able to immediately and freely hide behind “edge” when they get rightful pushback on their hate. Of course this is the devil’s proof. You cannot prove that someone is in fact a nazi and not just and edgy nerd. But that also means you cannot prove they aren't a nazi and are just in fact, an edgy nerd. And so long as that is the case, No company in their right mind should or would allow that to be advertised on their front door. And most of them aren’t openly expressing the beliefs COG states.
P.S Someone should keep a jar count of all the cultivation puns this thread has cultivated.
just popping back in to enthusiastically second this point by cataphrak.
i did read through most of the replies in this thread, too. i kind of understand why some people are concerned about how rules/bans will be enacted going forward—it’s good to have consistency, and all that, so boundary lines are clear as day. even so, it just doesn’t feel quite right to me for that to be a real point of contention within the forum here.
in this setting, it makes perfect sense to me to prioritize maintaining a safe and inclusive environment, and i have 0 issue with the mods’ having final judgment on that matter. it’s a main principle of the COG company, anyway—i don’t see any reason not to respect the mods’ judgment on removing individuals who make the place less safe and welcoming.
i also simply cannot see a legitimate reason to view possible infringement on “free speech” (a rather loosely-applied term in some of this thread’s discourse, anyway) as a more pressing issue within this specific setting, the CoG forum, than the need to maintain the space as a safe one—especially for groups/people who are regular targets for hateful rhetoric. it makes perfect sense to me to kick people who threaten to infringe upon very basic boundaries of not saying hateful, awful stuff. people who want to, imo, can go spew bigoted nonsense and edgy jokes literally anywhere else—the world is their oyster. they absolutely don’t need to do it here. i see 0 issue with this.
anyways. sorry, that got a little long!
tldr: people who get limited/banned on this forum for saying gross stuff aren’t literally oppressed by said limits/bans. they can do their nonsense (and exercise their free speech, or whatever) wherever else—just not here.
