SSCU Gestapo

[Epinephrine]

Originally posted by Jerome Scuggs
lol, yeah. a few alumni debaters come back at sometimes and tell us of the horrors of university debating :P

I am pretty sure ill do college debate,though.

Well Canadian university debate is quite good, and IMO the style much more fun. Same with British Parlamentary (which is used at Worlds and sometimes in Canada) which is also more fun. The tournaments are much better run too in Canada from what I've seen and heard.

-Epi

[destruct]

debate league???
Like the people in our school who wants to yell at people to claim that their points are correct?
Why on earth would you want to be those people?

Plus, dimboy, love you 4eva
and I don't get it
Why isn't virginity a good thing?

yours
-destruct

[GuruMeditation]

As staff have said. This is their zone and they make the policies that they see fit. No one is forcing us to use these forums. No one said this was a haven for someone to speak their mind. It's always professed itself to be a forum to discuss TW matters, not to be a soapbox.

The options? Plenty of other forums out there. If you don't like the policies of TW then play in another zone. You could even make your own zone or forums.

And of course, no one is moderating the ?chat area. Yet.

Sadly the racism issue has been blown out of proportion by one side that thinks people of another colour are the root of the worlds problems going against another side that thinks the world is a happy place and we can all join hands and live happily ever after in a fairy land of acceptance and tolerance.

You're both fucking crazy.

[Dark Commando]

Instead of making a bot why not force everyone to not see obscene messages.

[Misc] ForceObsceneCheck= allows sysops the choice if a zone forces everyone not to see bad messages. If set to =0, its up to the players. If set to =1, it forces them to start with obscene checking on. ?obscene allows players to toggle if they see bad messages or not. The obscene.txt is used on server side to say what words are bad or not.

I think it would be easy to add words to a list then to program a bot to block words and give warnings.

[Relief]

DC,

Your idea sounds pretty good. I just think its bullshit that I cant even enjoy a game anymore, I feel like im in jail when im in TW. I mean, what the hell is happening to this game? Staff has become a government and it's getting out of control. I was banned for 1 week due to 2 of Luis Logics fake logs about me and a typo. My ban was then changed to 60 days and I was never told why, even after I asked numerous times. Your new rules make me sick and you should take a step back and realize what kind of ludicris actions your taking on this game. "Conform or Suffer", you people are fuking pathetic.

[Miku19]

I don't feel like being in a jail. Maybe it's because I don't feel the urge to break rules like some of you seem to do, DUH!

If you feel jailed in tw, why not play another zone then?

[Relief]

Ive tried. All these other zones suck. Chaos is the only decent one. I love the gameplay here, its just that the rules are getting out of hand. I dont have an urge to break the rules, I was actually screwed into my ban, but Im done bitching about it, Ill see you ppl next month.

[Live-Wire]

You guys are looking at this arguement in entirely the wrong way. Words and statements that are offensive to a particular group of racial or cultural background are simply not nice. They do not promote the ideal subspace community, in which people are viewed first and foremost as subspace players, and only later as belonging to any other group. The feeling of community in subspace is the first and foremost priority of the people "running the show." Their choice to prohibit certain things from being said is a direct manifestation of their desire to make you, the very person who is reading this post, no matter who you are, happy. Because it is inherently impossible to tailor the rules to you, the people creating the rules must make an educated guess, and assume that all players want precisely the same thing. Keeping in mind that rules must be created to cover all players equally, it then becomes a simple question of logistics. There is more of a dead weight loss to the community when a naive young player is offended, or their parents encounter said offensive material, than when a higher-educated wants to vent their anger and is prevented from doing so in this particular mode. That being said, because rules must be all-encompassing, it is best to have rules designed to prevent events that cause the most units of 'harm' to the community.

Racism, and offensive material in general, is a completely subjective thing, this much everyone agrees upon. Although it is completely subjective, it is again impossible to tailor each person's experience in subspace so they can shield themselves, or express themselves, in exactly the way they want. Therefore, somebody needs to choose, and that person is the one with the most authority, which in this case is Priitk. He is not being a tyrant, nor is he being democratic; he is doing what he personally thinks is best, because he legitimately cares about you.

-----

As a seperate arguement, I'd like to say something about the horrible way in which most of you are arguing your respective points, regardless of the validity of either side. First, to the people who question whether certain words are racist or not: Yes, calling someone a Jew is racist. No, calling someone a Christian is not racist. When you call someone a Jew, whether you mean it or not, you are implying that this person is a stereotype, and this subconsciously - whether you believe it or not - promotes discrimination. You call someone a Jew because you intend to insult them, implying that being a Jew is a bad thing. If you tell them to stop being so Jewish, substituting the word Jewish in for cheap, you are implying that all jews are cheap. You all understand this arguement, so I'll move on to why calling someone a christian is not racist.

There is a reason why minorities are called minorities; they are of a smaller size than the majority. Christians are the vast majority in subspace, like they are in western civilizations. You are not implying anything when you call someone a Christian: there is no stigma about the fiscal policies of that religion. There is no common history to christians in which they were persecuted in some universal way. And, most importantly, most christians do not chose to identify their most defining attribute as "christian", which is unlike minorities, who oft name their membership of the minority as their defining attribute.

Yes, the words Gay and Faggot are just as offensive as the words Jew or ******. However, preventing the use of these words is simply a logistical nightmare -- they've entrenched themselves so deeply in pop language. As such, silencing or banning people for the use of the word often would result in many, many people being unable to play the game.

But the words Gay or Faggot aren't as much in "common usage" as you claim. When I was in highschool, nearly every single person used these words in their everyday language -- we were young, ignorant to the connotations of what we were saying, and frankly didn't care. In a college of decent academic standing, I'm happy to inform you youngsters, these words are almost never used. Therefore, I'm absolutely content to chalk up the use of words like Gay and Faggot to ignorance, and hearing someone use those words helps me quickly picture what they're like in real life.

I do not understand the arguement for allowing racist language on principle. The logistical arguement, or rather that it provides an unnecessay strain on staffmembers who could use their efforts to pursue some more important purpose, is a far better one. Why do you consider your inability to use racist words as infringement on your freedom of expression, when you can as easily achieve the same expression with the use of words that are offensive only to a specific person, rather than a group? You are achieving the same purpose when you call someone an asshole as when you call them a ******. Sure, you get that little extra umpff by doing something naughty, but that wears off when you exit your teen years, so you really shouldn't get used to it.

------

As a side note, speaking without the use of racism makes you appear more intelligent, knowledgable, or mature than otherwise. Getting things that you want depends largely on your ability to carry a good arguement, convince people, and win their respect, in subspace and in life. The rules do not damper freedom of expression by dissallowing the use of particular words or phrases, then empower you to better express yourself. Its ironic that those people who will be able to understand this arguement and refute it with intelligent, convincing points, are the people who don't use racism in the first place. Infact, many people who use racism probably skipped this post because it was too long.

So it boils down to this: Why should players be unable to use racism in Trench Wars? Using the arguement "because we said so", or "because Priitk said so" is a cop-out. It is true, but you owe your players some explanation as to why "we said so". The answer is not dependant on who is in charge, who is more important to the community, whether players can adequately express themelves, whether enjoyment with the game is lowered if aggression can't be taken out, or whether people are being unfair.

You shouldn't be allowed to use racism because it simply isn't the right thing do, and all the fine print and explanations aside, you (the specific person reading this post) using racism is not a good thing for the subspace community, or society at large.

------

Ironically (given the nature of this post), I've decided to allow racism in Hockey Zone, but I've given moderators the power to use their judgement in enforcing another rule. It is against the rules to be an overwhelmingly huge jerk in Hockey Zone. This rule is completely ambiguous, completely open to abuse, and completely dependant on the situation at hand -- exactly how it should be. The people who end up getting in trouble are the ones who's actions are detrimental to the building of our community anyway, so the rule has proven itself effective.

[Live-Wire]

To add on my thoughts, in the section in which I call it a cop-out to tell players "because we said so", I want to defend the staff a little bit. The idea of "this is just a game, leave us alone to play it" is as silly as the idea of "this is my life, I want the government to leave me alone to live it." If the government left all the happy people alone, all the really unhappy people would rise up, kill the happy people, and make themselves happier.

Likewise, players gain tremendously from staff contributions to the game of subspace, and this place would be dead and gone without these contributions. As a result, staffers get to walk around with their noses up in the air, maybe abuse a player here or there, have a couple noses in their butts, and probably get listened to more, but thats what they get for their contributions. It may be an unspoken payment, but thats how the world works: people do services because they see some percieved form of payment. The community's overall wellness is higher with this transaction taking place -- for anyone studying economics, this is simply a manifestation of the idea of free trade.

[Relief]

LW __/--\O__

Thats a damn good explination. Im not so pissed about my ban now, though it still sucks. I can understand now where staffers are coming from.

[Diakka]

Lets just stop being racist...

[GuruMeditation]

I wonder how many people here have lived in a multi-cultural enviroment.

And I don't mean black people here, white people there asian people over there. I mean getting on the bus every day and 75% of the people on the bus are talking other languages (portugese, arab, god knows what else). Where people have totally different ideas of how to live life. Where a black guy will come up to you and utter racist remarks against white people without any concern, all the arab youths can preach about is how they're being opressed and half my white colleagues at work would be scared to take a bus after 8pm.

There's nothing wrong with disliking a culture you don't like and saying so. Just don't say they aren't human beings with the same rights as you.

[Tigerex]

Originally posted by Diakka
Lets just stop being racist...

lol i couldn't be bothered to read LW's whole post so i assume this is a summary. Good plan $

[Epinephrine]

Originally posted by GuruMeditation
I wonder how many people here have lived in a multi-cultural enviroment.

And I don't mean black people here, white people there asian people over there. I mean getting on the bus every day and 75% of the people on the bus are talking other languages (portugese, arab, god knows what else). Where people have totally different ideas of how to live life. Where a black guy will come up to you and utter racist remarks against white people without any concern, all the arab youths can preach about is how they're being opressed and half my white colleagues at work would be scared to take a bus after 8pm.

There's nothing wrong with disliking a culture you don't like and saying so. Just don't say they aren't human beings with the same rights as you.

I am from what might be (proportionally) the most multicultural city in the world (Toronto), a city in North America where white people are visibly less than 50% of the population in a metropolitan area of 4.5 million people, and it isn't even nearly as racist as you make whatever place you're talking about to be. People who are used to multi-culturalism for the most part accept it or learn to accept it and realize that it's pointless to be racist. It also helps that the Canadian constitution specifically goes against discrimination of any kind.

I feel uneasy when I go to some other places where it isn't as multicultural sometimes because you can feel the racism much more than at home from both how people treat you and their attitudes.

-Epi

[Jerome Scuggs]

Originally posted by yung OH NO! MY POST GOOOT OBLITERATED!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *ZAP*

nifty

Jerome, when I choose to waste time "debating" with you, you'll know who the boss is.

k, until then, ill own you here

I just dont feel it necessary to respond to you becuase nothing you say and/or "argue" has any real merit.

except all of it? give me specifics

While you were wasting your weekend waiting for me to reply, I went out and did something other than masterbate, my dear friend.

cool. have fun?

Stop trying to pull a Revenge of the Nerds on me, it's not gonna work.

never saw that movie. it good?

P.S: Why do you even post here? You don't play TW...

?squad jerome

OH AND PLEASE, DON'T OBLITERATE ME AGAIN MR SCUGGS!!!!

MAKE GOOD ARGUEMENTS?????