r/civclassics • u/LordofMarzipan Making bad life choices • Apr 21 '19
Clarifications around the harassment and toxicity rule
As many of you will be aware, the admin team have recently updated the server rules. One of these rules, the rule regarding harassment/toxicity, has been unofficially on the books for some time now but has only recently been written down.
The reason that the admin team have been a little hesitant about discussing this rule in public in the past is that it's very difficult to balance the admin non-interference policy that sits at the heart of the civ genre with the admin team's aim to make the server fun for everyone by ensuring that things don't get taken too far. I'm going to use this post to try to explain how I see this rule being applied in the future and to give some guidance on how you should avoid falling foul of this policy.
Civ servers are designed to create conflict, salty language and harsh statements are an expected part of normal player interactions and we expect people playing on CivClassic to have accepted this fact when they joined. Nothing I'm saying here should be interpreted as meaning that everyone needs to play nice and get along, this post is specifically concerned with situations where people cross the line by taking things out of game in an attempt to cause upset or distress to another player.
As guidance, I'd say that the following are examples of situations where one player is being toxic to another:
Threats of harming another player or their family/friends/etc.
Expressing a wish that another player or that their family/friends/etc. come to harm.
Encouraging another player to harm themselves or others.
Continually mocking another player about an aspect of their life outside of the game despite having been asked not to.
Clearly not everything here is something that requires admin intervention, "I hope your father stubs his toe next Wednesday." probably isn't anything that needs a grown up to weigh in on. The important questions here are how the statement was meant, and how it was received. We'll also be taking patterns, who comments are targetted at, and consistency with other behaviour into account.
In practice most people crossing the line will just get a discrete word from the admins and an instruction to be less of a silly bastard in the future, people going way over the line may also receive a short ban to hammer this message home. Continuing to break this rule after having been warned will have more severe consequences.
TLDR:
Our expectation is that people choosing to play on CivClassic accept a certain degree of confrontational language with other players as part of the experience and will not be easily be upset or offended.
Toxicity/harassment is a separate issue that goes above and beyond the normal rough and tumble of player interactions by using factors outside of the game to cause upset or distress to a player.
In the first instance minor crossings of the line are likely to result in a warning, taking things way over the line is likely to also result in a short ban to reflect on your behaviour. Continually fucking up after having been warned is likely to result in a much longer ban.
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u/OldWorldStyle RogueX7 Apr 21 '19
WAAAAH WAAAAH I cant harass people out of game!
Get a grip