I hope Keeva’s post has got you thinking a little more about what you say, and what you allow. Trying to stand up is hard. I don’t want to be the bad guy. The one that makes more fuss out of something because I am personally offended, and that’s when I say nothing.
It goes beyond personal offense for me, I don’t want bigotry to be allowed because it becomes an attitude, and an accepted behavior.
I don’t think it’s just being the trade police, Or the morality police. If people are allowed to laugh at a Un-PC joke, or an offensive joke, why can’t people say it isn’t funny, or it is offensive. I bite my tongue so many times because I know that often I know trade trolls are just attention seeking, wanting you to react. But the acceptance of things like this has ongoing consequences.
I’ll never be an angel. I hope when I do cross lines, and I don’t know I’m crossing them someone tells me.
I’ll stay in a vent, and a raid where its ok to call women f’ken w*ores, I”ll say nothing when people use the R word in a raid. Even mature Women I respect, and regardless of how I measure it. I feel that it is so much more disappointing. I will say nothing when guild chat is more offensive words then the ‘queens’ english
I tried being principled in trade above.
I’ll try little things but it isn’t making me feel better, or enjoy the game more. It isn’t about changing the world, I don’t think you can, but being aware has to be the first step. So I can’t promise to stick up for what I think is right all the time, It is hard. But I try and do things when I think they are important, and I think thats what it’s all about.
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You it is terrible that people feel the need to use suck vulgar langauge. Ya most are trying to get a rise out people. Ie the trade trolls. That I don’t understand why people wish to make their claim to fame by being a troll in trade is beyond me.
Personally I won’t stick with a guild that allows such chat. As an officer in my guild I privately warn once, then you get kicked.
I play the game to be social and have fun. Ya I joke around, but not at a personal level and expect those in my raid group to be of similar mind.
Unfortunately I have had to leave raid groups I liked due to such people, but when I find I am not having fun, then it is time to go. When I log off I expect to be in a good mood and hope that while I was on contributed to others having fun too. 🙂
Was that first sentence an accident? I sure hope so.
As to the topic, whenever I feel like I need to get involved with Trade chat crap, I ask myself a question: Will this make things better or worse? If the answer is ‘worse’ (and it almost always is), I sit on my hands and find something else to do.
I don’t normally, maybe I was fired up with righteous indignation.
I think there’s a difference between what Keeva is doing (enforcing a new guild policy as a guild leader aka someone with authority) and a lone person trying to revolutionize trade chat overnight.
If you want to make the world a better place, you have to take one step at a time.
As for trade trolls, the message I get from them isn’t really one of hate, but rather this:
OMG OMG LOOK LOOK I SAID A BAD WORD! HAHAHA OMG OMG I’M SO BADASS AREN’T I HILARIOUS?
1) They’re NOT worth your time and energy.
2) They want to “stir up the hippies”, the more you react to it, the more they’ll do it.
Guilds and raid groups are a more controlled environment, so it is possible to speak up, but some ways of communicating are more effective than others. And with the number of guilds out there that enforce respectful behaviour, it’s not that hard to find a half decent group of people to play with.
Maybe it’s not that hard on US servers, but on Oceanic servers where we just don’t have the same order of magnitude in the player base, finding a ‘half-decent group of people to play with’ can be very, very hard. It’s easy if you’re happy with a social guild, but if you want to progression raid — respectful behaviour is pretty elusive.
>>OMG OMG LOOK LOOK I SAID A BAD WORD! HAHAHA OMG OMG I’M SO
>>BADASS AREN’T I HILARIOUS?
Trade trolls and idiots REQUIRE an audience. Their trick only works when they have an audience to USE. That’s how you tell the difference between people who maybe just “crossed the line” (as you’re worried you might do) – they aren’t joking with you, you’re getting USED. And that’s the one thing you have control over.
Put them on ignore and let them know it. Tell trade. The other trolls are listening, they also need to know what they are risking: their audience.
The one thing we need is an ignore that covers an entire account – all the alts. Right now the trolls are keeping their main characters well behaved, they login to their low level disposable alts.
Please report some of the worst stuff/people in trade. The more people report, the more likely Blizzard are to do something, and the more likely it is that people will slowly start to behave better. The bad behaviour from trade overflows into the pugs, and I don’t want to have to put up with ‘jokes’ that denigrate me just so I can see the lich king.
I really wish Blizzard would put in a quick “report offensive” option in chat similar to the “report spam” option, so that they know exactly what comment to look up in their logs, and so that I don’t have to fill in an entire report with time, name, channel etc.
I genuinely believe that one of the biggest hurdles to reporting people is how strongly the offended person wants to report them vs the effort required to open a ticket.
It’s the same with the forums. Opening a ticket is annoying. It might not seem like mammoth effort, but at the same time, I’m certain that many people can’t be bothered typing out the details of what they want to report.
Even if there was a “report offensive” button that brought up a 150 character line that allowed you a super quick explanation, like “has offensive name” or “flooding trade with racist jokes” – and then you could be done with it.
I really think that a lot of people get away with this stuff because it’s far easier to put someone on ignore than it is to actually report them.
Reports do happe, probably a lot more than we think. A couple of guildies of mine were comparing their warning letters and suspensions the other day. I suspect they were exaggerating (apparently getting in trouble on the internet is epeen inflating), but I don’t think they were outright lying.
So blizzards methods of punishment are not deterrents. no prizes are given for never receiving a ban
It’s difficult to play and report someone and often the space they give is not enough for a he said/ did here at this place and time – maybe because I wasn’t screaming frags or my upbringing or I work in a job where I deal with people or I think I have more respect there are some things that are just not in my vocab – or I see a bigger picture as to the consequences in language about making some things normal. I guess even if you didn’t set out to change the world you have at least bought more awareness about the language and the meanings behind what gets said. Maybe it’s also about gamers being taken seriously in the real world bigamy can have legal consequences – it’s not appropriate for most work environments – they are not the attitudes schools teach nor I am sure would they want their 4 year old daughter asking or using that language. Just awareness and getting people to think about why they say what they do when in most social / political / sporting / economic circumstances it would be considered inapproriate
the time it takes for a ticket to be answered already shows just how low some of the priorities are. My theory is that its the trouble makers that make them the most money – as they are more likely to be needed name changes and server transfers so I can’t see there ever being a more serious solution ever put in place. Social policing/social norms have always been just as affective in moderating behaviour in most real life settings. Gaming seems to be different
They’ll never do it though, because it would mean more reports to process.
Ironic thing about this is, concerning the R word at least, someone used it on a public forum with a WoW thread, and yeah they got slammed for it and the thread derailed for a while to discuss why you don’t use words like that.
TBH, thankfully the language within my guild isn’t so bad. And when the only woman in your guild drops the C-bomb regularly it is a lot more difficult to not be one of the guys around her and sometimes, shamefully, use foul language. I don’t think we use the R word in the guild, but everything else is pretty fair game…