Is no one else worried by the dangerous precedent being set by the moderation team?

[Lynn]

Hello all,

 

Lurker here. I don't post much but what I've witnessed in the Ascension thread really make me wonder what the hell is going on around here.

 

This is the thread I'm talking about: 

 

There are a couple of things I find absolutely crazy about this whole thing:

 

• The thread was purged of several discussion posts written after Not Jabba's initial callout. Yet other posts that agree with Not Jabba's views have remained. There are even quotes of purged posts, like EvelisH's post here:

 

 

• The thread was closed without any sort of moderation notice explaining why it is closed and for how long. This is common place on any message board and I have seen it done here before. So why has it not been done here?
   
• No other staff member has made any sort of staff statement in this thread, which seriously make me wonder if there is anyone else but Not Jabba looking at this issue from a moderation perspective. It is common place for any serious message board to ask its staff members to not take moderation actions in issues they are involved in, specifically to rule out any accusation of power abuse. I would be really surprised if that rule isn't applied here.

 

• Now here's the one I find completely insane:

 

Quote

Hi all,

 

[...]

 

The only person I'm really interested in talking to here is @BigMemka, not Shadowman and not the local population of Doomerboards apologists. Big Memka, to answer your question, I'm asking that you please remove/replace both the 3D model and the text. I don't think that's a lot of work -- you could keep the same scene with the same treasures lying around, and just remove the model or put something else in its place (even one of the hanging corpse models that is used elsewhere in Ascension, if you want to keep the same tone) and change the text. There are plenty of cool story texts in Ascension. Like I said, I think it's a good game. If you decide to address this, you can PM me.

 

Again, the only thing that's currently at stake here is this thread and the download link on Doomworld. I can't decide what anyone posts on ZDF or ModDB or anywhere else -- as someone has already pointed out, probably not even /idgames. But I can say "not in this house."

(I've highlighted in bold the sentences that matter)

 

I would -really- like to know at what point anyone consider normal for a Doomworld staff member to demand as a staff member, and not as a user, for a mod to be altered because said staff member didn't like something in it and I wonder if I'm the only one worried about the awful precedent this is about to set. I don't want to see doom mods censored because they don't align with a staff member's personal, moral or political views. I don't want mod authors to start feeling worried about posting their mods on Doomworld because something in the mod may potentially be misinterpreted.

 

Please don't do this. There is no shortage of mods that have done much worse than an obscure secret 99% of the players would have completely ignored, regardless of Shadowman's intentions stated in the initial callout post. Remove the mod if it breaks the forum rules, but please don't start enforcing subjective opinions on mods with staff powers. 

 

Thanks for reading.

[Edward850]

I'm not sure how you aren't able to see the massive problems with a user repeatedly making very absurd torture porn content of women and hiding it in maps over and over again. That's why the wad was moderated. No more, no less.

[Lynn]

3 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

I'm not sure how you aren't able to see the massive problems with a user repeatedly making very absurd torture porn content of women and hiding it in maps over and over again. That's why the wad was moderated. No more, no less.

 

Please read my post. It has nothing to do with the issue that has been brought up by Not Jabba. I fully agree the content is wrong, but that is not the point I'm looking to highlight.

[Woolie Wool]

3 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

I'm not sure how you aren't able to see the massive problems with a user repeatedly making very absurd torture porn content of women and hiding it in maps over and over again. That's why the wad was moderated. No more, no less.

 

but but but muh  f r e e z e  p e a c h

[Edward850]

4 minutes ago, Lynn said:

Please read my post. It has nothing to do with the issue that has been brought up by Not Jabba. I fully agree the content is wrong, but that is not the point I'm looking to highlight.

I read your post, that's why I responded to it. If "moderators are moderating the wads I like" is not the thing you are complaining about, then what are you complaining about? Because you haven't made that clear in your post. A wad doesn't get a free pass just because you like it, that's not how moderation should ever work.

[Linguica]

As the admin I guess I better respond. I gave Not Jabba permission to mod the thread at his discretion and I have left it alone. I can't offer my opinion on the content at issue directly, because I haven't played any of the WADs in question or seen the easter eggs, but I was convinced that the primary concern is with the pattern of behavior across multiple WADs and not with the specific, particular content in this latest WAD. It's a difficult question to ask what to do about a pattern of behavior that is not in forum posts directly but is exhibited in a series of WADs promoted in forum posts. Not Jabba made a convincing argument to me that it was worth addressing in this instance because to do otherwise would be to effectively vindicate an ongoing trend.

 

I assure you I have no desire to act as a censoring authority over Doom WADs. That said this is still an online social media community where I don't want to tolerate antisocial behavior, and it's not appropriate to ignore behavior just because it's being hidden inside WADs.

[MTrop]

The callout post was due to Shadowman being a creeper who shoves his creeper nonsense into every dumb WAD he touches, and it looks like that's what happened there, as well.

 

Hell, I can recall one time where this very forum straight-up rejected contributions to Freedoom because a member couldn't keep their contributions from being a bunch of references to school shooters.

 

So no, I'm not worried. 

 

[Smite of Disrespect]

reminder that duke3d had captured, violated women begging for death and nobody gave a shit

[Edward850]

6 minutes ago, RonnieColeman said:

reminder that duke3d had captured, violated women begging for death and nobody gave a shit

Context is important. It's the aliens that capture women, of which killing said captured women directly negatively affects the player. The N64 version took it further and gave you a direct means of saving them. 

 

In addition it was the late 90s, the issue is you should be better than that now. 

[Not Jabba]

Moderating projects posted on a forum is more complex than dealing with problematic posts. If a user made a post that wasn't allowed on the forum, it would simply be removed, and the user would be warned or banned. In this case, particularly because the offender was not the primary developer, I asked for content to be removed instead of simply deleting the thread and warning the user, because A) this is a type of behavior we haven't really had to deal with before and a precedent is being set that people need to be aware of, and B) I believe the project lead deserves a chance to address the issue. 

The thread was locked because it was devolving into a flame war, which is almost always why threads get locked. I invited Memka to PM me to seek resolution because, obviously, his thread was locked. The issue didn't need to be discussed any further, and it really doesn't need to be discussed here either.

 

 

Just now, RonnieColeman said:

reminder that duke3d had captured, violated women begging for death and nobody gave a shit

 

Unsurprisingly, DN3D and Shadow Warrior keep getting brought up. The fact is, DN3D and Shadow Warrior are extraordinarily fucked up, and DN3D is full of misogynistic torture porn, but they were also created over 20 years ago and are outside of Doomworld's jurisdiction. You could release Doom in the modern indie gaming scene as a retro shooter, and I don't think there's anything in it that people would really have serious issues with. No publisher would touch DN3D or Shadow Warrior anymore. The people who gave a shit just weren't gamers in 1996. The reason they weren't gamers is because of shit like DN3D.

 

Anyway, just to offer a friendly reminder: if you are wondering exactly where the line is drawn as to what is unacceptable vs. acceptable depictions of torture so that you can stay precisely on the accepted side of that line, then you're probably asking yourself the wrong questions.

[Smite of Disrespect]

You may want to reread my post, I never said douk was the one doing those things.

Doom has always involved people being horrifically mutilated and tortured in Hell. How do you crybabies get through life on a daily basis?

[Edward850]

10 minutes ago, RonnieColeman said:

Doom has always involved people being horrifically mutilated and tortured in Hell. How do you crybabies get through life on a daily basis?

People of indeterminate race or gender. That's a far cry from one mod author finding ways to depict women specifically over and over again as "secret jokes". 

[dew]

4 minutes ago, RonnieColeman said:

Doom has always involved people being horrifically mutilated and tortured in Hell. How do you crybabies get through life on a daily basis?

Are you this stupid for real, or are you chasing clout with your doomer boards friends? Are you gonna get an extra special medal when you get banned from here?

[Chip]

@RonnieColeman as a suggestion, and only that, I say as new users here, we shouldn't post in the topics with radical opinions as it could lead to a ban. sorry if this offends you, so I only leave it as a suggestion. I will try to no longer communicate my opinion on the thread to not offend anybody or anything. 

[Morpheus666]

Doom-world has a strict policy on pornographic/ graphic content and this person seems to disregard the Forums Rules. Anyone who thinks the forum rules don't matter imo isn't welcome here.

[Test Tickle]

21 minutes ago, RonnieColeman said:

Doom has always involved people being horrifically mutilated and tortured in Hell. How do you crybabies get through life on a daily basis?

That's only a fraction of the problem. The bigger part of the problem is that he sneaks that kind of stuff into the things he's worked on to a fetishistic degree

[xvertigox]

You're either an idiot or being purposefully obtuse @RonnieColeman

 

53 minutes ago, MTrop said:

The callout post was due to Shadowman being a creeper who shoves his creeper nonsense into every dumb WAD he touches, and it looks like that's what happened there, as well.

 

This sums it up.

 

33 minutes ago, dew said:

Are you this stupid for real, or are you chasing clout with your doomer boards friends? Are you gonna get an extra special medal when you get banned from here?

 

Don't lump me in with RonnieFuckwit plz

[Gokuma]

I prefer to keep my sex and violence separate.   Naked women are cute when they're happy and alive.

[Morpheus666]

@xvertigox and you are being incredibly rude, i don't understand why people fight so fucking much over dumb shit like this, what Shadowman did was Wrong and if you think otherwise you are seriously fucked in the head.

 

Doomworld is suppose to be all inclusive and putting women in distressing situations is not my idea of inclusion, Same thing why threads which are Racists, Edgy, or otherwise obscene are removed quickly by moderators because they break the idea that everyone is welcomed to use Doomworld without fear of Prejudice. 

[xvertigox]

5 minutes ago, Morpheus666 said:

@xvertigox and you are being incredibly rude

 

It gets tiring being pleasant to people who act like dicks.

In case my post wasn't clear, I was agreeing with MTrop and other's sentiments in that the wad should have been removed given the author's history of putting this shit in all his wads.

[Endless]

If I could use an example to give a description of the gore dilemma in this case, it would be this one:

There's a big difference between The Evil Dead
and A Serbian Film.

 

Imagine a WAD like The Evil Dead or Ash vs Evil Dead... now do it for A Serbian film and you'll see a big jump in the context. It starts giving you ideas about the mind of the creator.

[Ichor]

I just hid nearly the whole thread except for the first few posts before this began.

 

One thing I've tried to do (just me personally here) for many years is avoid getting involved in political or otherwise controversial topics on this forum. If I take a position and hide (or split off into Post Hell before the upgrade) the opposing posts that don't really break any rules, even if I am totally right about the subject, I might come across as not being impartial and we get threads like this (also a report that alerted me to that thread in the first place).

[Vic Vos]

...and that's how you provide even more exposure to Ascension ("oh wow, so much controversy, gotta go look what's the fuss about", case in point being me) and essentially create an another SgtMarkIV. Good job, kids.

From what I gathered during the last hour - let's just say that a little birdie told me - Shadowman confirmed that he will not alter anything and, for a moment, has even considered outright provocations towards Doomworld for that move. Again, good job.

[Lila Feuer]

1 hour ago, Gokuma said:

I prefer to keep my sex and violence separate.   Naked women are cute when they're happy and alive.

Ero guro is a thing, so there will be a minority who disagree with you. Nevertheless, having been said it's probably not a very bright idea to be inserting your niche, personal interests (i.e fetishes) into your public works.

[Scuba Steve]

If it were me, I'd replace the Easter egg by having Lara Croft chained to a school desk, surrounded by books, and being tutored for eternity.

[Khorus]

I remember asking Shadowman what was behind naming the world "Khorus" when one of the Inquisitor projects came out and the paraphrased response being "More than one thing can have a name."

 

Seems like a nice bloke...

 

37 minutes ago, Vic Vos said:

From what I gathered during the last hour - let's just say that a little birdie told me - Shadowman confirmed that he will not alter anything and, for a moment, has even considered outright provocations towards Doomworld for that move. Again, good job.

 

heh

[SuperCupcakeTactics]

Like this post if you have the ability to separate fiction from reality (the world you see when you turn your head 180 degrees from this post).

46 minutes ago, Vic Vos said:

...and that's how you provide even more exposure to Ascension ("oh wow, so much controversy, gotta go look what's the fuss about", case in point being me) and essentially create an another SgtMarkIV. Good job, kids.

From what I gathered during the last hour - let's just say that a little birdie told me, Shadowman confirmed that he will not alter anything and has even considered outright provocations towards Doomworld for that move. Again, good job.

Yeah I wasn't aware it was released until I saw this curious thread. This is good though because I've been looking forward to it and now I know it's released and have just downloaded it from the ZDoom forums thread! I liked The Inquisitor III a lot and I'll try to keep an eye out for this super duper (and assuredly not worthy of such fuss) controversial secret too. Respect to Shadowman for not budging.

[fraggle]

3 hours ago, MTrop said:

Hell, I can recall one time where this very forum straight-up rejected contributions to Freedoom because a member couldn't keep their contributions from being a bunch of references to school shooters.

I remember that, and it wasn't just that their submissions to Freedoom were rejected - they were banned from Doomworld with extreme prejudice, which is what we have always done with edgelords who like to glorify school shootings.

 

2 hours ago, xvertigox said:

Don't lump me in with RonnieFuckwit plz

Then you should get better friends.

[Doomkid]

Wait til these guys find out there's already been like a million fucking wads that were banned from various places for offensive content. Wads with racist shit, wads with gore that's "too far" even for a Doom mod (sometimes real photos of people who have been shot), wads created by murderers or school shooters, etc etc. This isn't some "new precedent", it's been known forever. Some Doom sites don't host certain content. You can almost certainly find places that will, and no one is going to raid your DropBox or MediaFire account, so host your stuff wherever and however you can, but don't get pissy when certain sites say "Nah, we're not gonna have that". The whole angle that this is some new phenomenon is hilarious.

 

FWIW, personally, I don't give one single fuck, people can create whatever they want and enjoy whatever they want. Hell, I've played and enjoyed some of the banned "racy" content. The fact that I couldn't then share those mods on Doomworld didn't cause me to unload in my diaper.

 

Also, I know vertigo and he's a top bloke. I spent years over at DoomerBoards - most of it spent arguing with idiotic takes, sure - but the point is that someone shouldn't be auto-blacklisted for merely visiting a site, it should be completely and wholly determined by their posting, their attitudes and the content of their character, and it's on those bases that I call vertigo a friend.

[plums]

3 hours ago, Vic Vos said:

...and that's how you provide even more exposure to Ascension ("oh wow, so much controversy, gotta go look what's the fuss about", case in point being me) and essentially create an another SgtMarkIV. Good job, kids.

Yes, clearly the right thing to do with any kind of offensive content or activity is to ignore it, and hope no one notices it before it goes away. Especially with an obvious pattern of repeated behaviour. But hey, at least when people stand up to it, you get the chance to be condescending to them, while also getting some nice juicy drama to revel in!

 

(edit: this was kind of snarkier than I meant it to be, so in the interest of promoting civil discussion, I apologize. Saying things like "good job, kids" is really not a great way to validate your argument, though. )

 

Quote

Shadowman confirmed that he will not alter anything and, for a moment, has even considered outright provocations towards Doomworld for that move.

oh no

 

whatever will we do

 

2 hours ago, SuperCupcakeTactics said:

Like this post if you have the ability to separate fiction from reality (the world you see when you turn your head 180 degrees from this post).

"I don't have a problem with the content being discussed, so obviously everyone else that does is overly sensitive or just delusional."

 

Come on man. It's not some stupid bit with Lara Croft in a map that's the problem, it's that the guy who did it has done a similar thing several times, and will probably keep doing it, in a way that seems to advocate violence against women. Maybe he's just doing that to be "funny"/edgy, maybe he's just frustrated that he sucks at Tomb Raider, I don't know. But whatever his reasons, making repeated posts with that kind of content wouldn't and shouldn't be tolerated on these forums, and so posting about wads with that content shouldn't be either.

 

6 hours ago, Lynn said:

The thread was purged of several discussion posts written after Not Jabba's initial callout. Yet other posts that agree with Not Jabba's views have remained.

I do agree that this was a bad decision. It appears that the thread has now been purged of Not Jabba's first post everything that has followed.

Edited June 29, 2020 by plums