Declined Rule Change: Racism To Discrimination

[TheMiningAlex]

This is a big issue on a JailBreak server i play on. People getting away with discriminating against people who have autism or cancer or are ___ years old and getting away with it cause its not "Racism". A few months ago someone made fun of a players sister because she had autism and he took EXTREME offense to it. He had to leave the game and the very next day he was still upset. During a round when i was warden i gave the last 4 people 2 min 30 sec, which is longer than most people give, to finish death run and they all died for not finishing in time. 1 of them complained "This is what happens when you have an autistic, cancerous bastard as the warden." He has been rude to me before and is basically saying that people with autism or cancer should not be able to be warden. They have the same right to be warden as everyone else does. I have a form of autism and i have had family members and friends who had cancer, one of which died, and a lot of people in game, especially me, took offense to this statement but he couldn't be banned because it wasn't "Racism". There should be a change to the votemenu under Mute and Ban from "reason being Racism" to "Discrimination" because it has the same principles and people are daily being offended by statements like those above. It is even against the law to discriminate in real world situations but it is not in here. It is wrong that these people get away with this every day on Skial's servers.

 

[Roboute Guilliman]

The thing is, Racism, Sexism and Homophobia are more apparent and more offensive than someone calling someone else autistic. Race, Gender, Sexual Orientation are inherently sensitive topics that get people riled up very easily. Calling someone "retarded" is not something that would upset a great deal of people. Yeah, people do get offended by it, but keep in mind that it's not like we are targeting a demographic by using the word retarded. By using the racial, sexist or homophobic slurs people do, target a demographic, which draws the line between trash-talking and offensive.

 

[Sheev_Palpatine]

Personally, I would love to do this. I hate it when people make fun of illnesses and the like. It's stupid and childish for people to resort to saying that bullshit. But realistically, this is something I could not support doing. It would be difficult for admins to enforce those things alongside everything else. Since these kinds of slurs are more common than others, reports would be like a backed up toilet. My best advice is to try your best to ignore these things, even if they're hurtful, and don't let it ruin your fun on TF2.

The thing is, Racism, Sexism and Homophobia are more apparent and more offensive than someone calling someone else autistic. Race, Gender, Sexual Orientation are inherently sensitive topics that get people riled up very easily. Calling someone "retarded" is not something that would upset a great deal of people. Yeah, people do get offended by it, but keep in mind that it's not like we are targeting a demographic by using the word retarded. By using the racial, sexist or homophobic slurs people do, target a demographic, which draws the line between trash-talking and offensive.

Mental illness is something many people I know deal with everyday and it pisses me off when people resort to trash talking something they have little control over. Saying what you said seems to make people who get offended by this somehow less important than a gay person getting offended. Yet in reports of people calling other people faggots we tend to downplay it and tell them to ignore it because that word is thrown around so much. See where things become problematic?

I'm all for the idea, but realistically it just can't happen. The world is a shitty place, but that doesn't mean we can't do things to make it a little more brighter and less bleak. Remember the people who made Jailbreak enjoyable? Ignore the immature pricks and have fun with each other. It's the people that make things enjoyable that make the server, not them.

 

[185db]

If you do take deep offense to it, you always have the option to client mute. This is definitely a topic that deserves some thought though, and I personally believe that all the admins need to get together and discuss a proper way to address it. I personally am strongly against words like retarded and faggot, but I just have to ignore it. If someone says it once, fine, they could have been joking or just a spout of anger. When someone says these things to everyone without it becoming a constant pattern, it should be fine. The person saying it will still be a jerk, but it should not be against the rules. It becomes a true problem once someone starts to target a certain person repeatedly, just for the sake of making them feel bad. This is cyber-bullying, and should not be taken lightly.

 

[Meowcenary]

If I can be unpopular opinion guy here, I feel people are better off learning to deal with internet shit talkers and trolls than we are trying to censor them. If we silenced everyone who hurt someone's feelings Skial wouldn't have much of a player base left in the first place.

 

[Cowboy Crow]

As much as I hate bullying (outside unmod) and me being some one who made a thread all about it. Theres nothing admins can do about it. I don't like people like this but there would be banning left and right. People think Skial is a police community as it is. I feel like enforcing this would drive more people away, as sad as that sounds and is possibly true. I would love everyone to get along on servers and have fun, but it cant work out that way. And considering a place like JailBreak is known to house 4 year olds who understand their actions hurt others.

I'm sorry if you or anyone else has been offended by people acting this way, but skial banning it wont solve the problem. It just leads for harder work for the admins and more bans racking up. People will always act this way on the internet and for Skial, try to find loopholes, like they constantly do for the racism argument. I would be all for this suggestion if it was realistic.

 

[ozzeh / dave]

Changing racism to discrimination? nope. I wouldn't mind seeing a new rule added for discrimination though. I mean if someone is offended by something then I think they should be able to report it as long as it was directed at them and not another player, that way people can't just drop reports every time someone says 'retard' or something.

There's my 2¢, like it or not.

Spoiler: Disclaimer

btw I'm an aspie therefore I'm somewhat biased

 

[Munch]

Changing racism to discrimination? nope. I wouldn't mind seeing a new rule added for discrimination though. I mean if someone is offended by something then I think they should be able to report it as long as it was directed at them and not another player, that way people can't just drop reports every time someone says 'retard' or something.

There's my 2¢, like it or not.

[/spoiler]

I somewhat agree with this. As with our current rule on homophobia, I think if the discrimination is specifically aimed at another player then that could be something to legitimately enforce and it wouldn't result in us banning people left and right. But as much as I dislike the many slurs and what-not that are out there: we would be overwhelmed with reports and would probably drive many people away if we started banning or muting just for saying faggot/retard/autistic/whatever.

 

[TheMiningAlex]

If you do take deep offense to it, you always have the option to client mute. This is definitely a topic that deserves some thought though, and I personally believe that all the admins need to get together and discuss a proper way to address it. I personally am strongly against words like retarded and faggot, but I just have to ignore it. If someone says it once, fine, they could have been joking or just a spout of anger. When someone says these things to everyone without it becoming a constant pattern, it should be fine. The person saying it will still be a jerk, but it should not be against the rules. It becomes a true problem once someone starts to target a certain person repeatedly, just for the sake of making them feel bad. This is cyber-bullying, and should not be taken lightly.

Changing racism to discrimination? nope. I wouldn't mind seeing a new rule added for discrimination though. I mean if someone is offended by something then I think they should be able to report it as long as it was directed at them and not another player, that way people can't just drop reports every time someone says 'retard' or something.

There's my 2¢, like it or not.

Spoiler: Disclaimer

btw I'm an aspie therefore I'm somewhat biased

Like you 2 said if it is directed at a specific person and the example i gave of when i was warden, it was directed specifically at me and this person has doe it on more than one ocasion to me. if i can get multiple short demos of this person aiming this at me over time could i make a report. btw is there a way to edit out or cut sections of a demo? that could help so i could just record one long demo each time he is on with me and cut it to the important parts.

 

[Meowcenary]

Like you 2 said if it is directed at a specific person and the example i gave of when i was warden, it was directed specifically at me and this person has doe it on more than one ocasion to me. if i can get multiple short demos of this person aiming this at me over time could i make a report. btw is there a way to edit out or cut sections of a demo? that could help so i could just record one long demo each time he is on with me and cut it to the important parts.

There's no way to edit the demo files themselves. You would have to make the demo file into a video file and edit it like you would any regular video file.

But even if you reported someone for calling you autistic/cancer/etc. we wouldn't be able to take action on it since its not against the rules. Unless its something seriously sexist or something racist there's nothing we can do about it

 

[ozzeh / dave]

as of right now it's not against the rules unless this suggestion gets approved, as unlikely as that seems to be at the moment

 

[KillerZebra]

We cannot ban everyone who says something mean to someone else. I don't think it would be smart to ban people for being a jerk to someone else. It would just be impossible to properly enforce.

If you can get enough people to support this rule we could look into it I guess, but I doubt you will find enough support to change our minds.