Hypothetical Admin Transcripts - be the judge!

daal · #1

Following BigDoug's suggestion, here is the first hypothetical transcript in which you are asked to judge ; what should the admin do? Please feel free to create further transcripts as well as comment.

Transcript 1

Person A: Prayer will help your go
Person B: In my last game, I didn't have a prayer

Person C: Assuming of course that god exists
Person B: The hand of god was scratching his nose
Admin: Please take this conversation elsewhere
Person A: But seriously, when I pray before a game, my concentration is significantly better.
Person B: I've tried meditating
Person C: Yeah, when praying go, pray as the asians do.
? Admin:

tchan001 · #2

All of them should be banned for continuing a topic after being requested by the admin to move the conversation elsewhere. They ignore an admin's request at their own risk.

KGS TOS

Quote:

When an admin makes a request, please comply even if you disagree with the admin. Ignoring the admin or arguing in public about it is likely to get you temporarily blocked from the server. If you disagree with the request the admin made, you can talk about it in private with the admin, or complain to admin@gokgs.com.

topazg · #3

In the admin's shoes, I would post again to say "I've asked you to take this conversation elsewhere. Any continued discussion will result in temporary bans" and then start the bans from that point onwards. I think a secondary warning that banning is imminent is probably fair.

Of course, there's a secondary question which is "Should the admin have asked them to take it elsewhere in the first place?", which is more controversial:

Transcript 1.1

Person A: Prayer will help your go
Person B: In my last game, I didn't have a prayer

Person C: Assuming of course that god exists
Person B: The hand of god was scratching his nose

...

In this situation, what should the admin do, if anything? There are a number of issues:

Are discussions mentioning anything related to religious material forbidden? Does satire count? Is the spirit of any restrictions regarding religious discussion aimed towards preventing inflammatory arguments and possible religionism type comments and offence, or discussion of any form of God/belief system in its entirety? Should the admin turn a blind eye if it remains harmless and well-natured? Should the admin exercise his or her discretion regardless of the state of the conversation? Should the admin use historical similarities to other similar conversations to make his judgement? Should the admin use historical knowledge of the people involved to make his judgement?

None of these are clear cut questions with clear cut answers, and a difference in opinion of how each should be handled is, I suspect, a large part of the issues surrounding the KGS administration.

uPWarrior · #4

Why don't you simply disable chat on KGS?
If simple conversations as the one in this topic are discouraged, it would make your position a lot clearer.

I'm sorry, I find all these "please take the conversation elsewhere" replies nonsense we should fight, not follow just because it's in the TOS. It's about time chat on the EGR is accepted. Most of the banning issues would automatically be solved.

speedchase · #5

the admin shouldn't have said anything in the first place, but if he does, everyone should just shut up.

topazg · #6

speedchase wrote:

the admin shouldn't have said anything in the first place, but if he does, everyone should just shut up.

Shouldn't he? I'm not saying he should either, but the whole point is that whilst the admin didn't write the TOS, he _is_ responsible for enforcing it. If he feels the spirit of the TOS is being broken in conversation, then it's his job to say something, not to say "Meh, stupid rule anyway, I won't apply it here".

It's a really grey area. I wouldn't have intervened in this particular transcript, at least not until someone was being blatantly abusive about God or strongly evangelical towards others in the room, but my interpretation, your interpretation, and the admin's interpretation may well all be different. I prefer non-interference wherever the situation won't escalate out of hand, but the admin's one is the only one that actually matters.

RBerenguel · #7

If I was one of A, B or C people I'd wonder what "this" refers to:

Does it refer to...

More exactly, after the admin request, player A and C keeps one of these alive (praying,) while the other (B) suggests meditating (which has nothing to do with praying). Of course he has kept the "praying" topic alive, but maybe the itch in the admin was god's existence? Or god's nose? If this was the case nothing would happen, if it was the latter all three would get booted... Just because the praying subject is considered unacceptable... Which I find funny coming from the US

mw42 · #8

Of course a conversation about the existence of god(s) should be avoided as it can be offensive to some people. Seeing that that conversation was not continued in the example transcript, the admin should not followup with any punishment as his request was obeyed.

EDIT: Following up Rberenguel's post, I agree the admin's warning should have been "please, do not discuss religion" to make it clear the discussion about god is not to be continued, not prayer.

Mef · #9

I think a couple things that might be relevant would be - Was the admin warning in bold or plaintext? What was the timing on the follow-up comments with regard to the warning (it's quite frequent to have messages fully typed and sent after the warning, but before you had a chance to read it).

Though what I would really be curious to know is how does everyone's opinion change if you add the following factors:

Scenario 1.1

Scenario 1.2

topazg · **#10**

mw42 wrote:

Of course a conversation about the existence of god(s) should be avoided as it can be offensive to some people. Seeing that that conversation was not continued in the example transcript, the admin should not followup with any punishment as his request was obeyed.

EDIT: Following up Rberenguel's post, I agree the admin's warning should have been "please, do not discuss religion" to make it clear the discussion about god is not to be continued, not prayer.

I don't really agree here. Aside from the fact I don't think you can assume God was the object of the warning as opposed to prayer (AFAICS, RB was highlighting the ambiguity, rather than pointing out that the subject material was the existence of God), I think freedom of speech is a pretty good thing, and there's a difference between discussing subject material and offending people with provocation or personal attacks. I suspect there is very few objects of conversation that aren't offensive to _some_ people, as people seem to have the ability to be offended about almost anything. If we weren't allowed to discuss any subject that someone might find offensive, we probably wouldn't open our mouths. To use a simple contextual example here, if a religious zealot found discussion about evolution offensive (not as in evolution vs creation, but as in a basic discussion of how animal X had evolved from animal Y based on Z), should any conversation about natural evolution and adaption be banned? A less similar example may be if a particularly environmentally conscientious individual or an economically conscientious individual objected to someone saying how pleased they were with their new Ferrari - should discussion about polluting items or particularly expensive items be banned? Where do you draw the line? I prefer to allow pretty much any content material provided the nature of the discussion itself remains non-inflammatory.

mw42 · **#11**

Mef wrote:

Player C has a history of making racial slurs about asian people both in games and in private chats.

That's an interesting point you bring up. I see nothing at all offensive about Player C's comment. Perhaps he is guilty of a stereotype (i.e. asians don't pray, they meditate) but not an offensive one. So, in this situation, you, as an admin, would give me a warning or even a ban, and I, as the user, would be befuddled and inclined to make a post on L19x19 ranting about injustice on KGS.

topazg · **#12**

mw42 wrote:

Mef wrote:

Player C has a history of making racial slurs about asian people both in games and in private chats.

That's an interesting point you bring up. I see nothing at all offensive about Player C's comment. Perhaps he is guilty of a stereotype (i.e. asians don't pray, they meditate) but not an offensive one. So, in this situation, you, as an admin, would give me a warning or even a ban, and I, as the user, would be befuddled and inclined to make a post on L19x19 ranting about injustice on KGS.

I think you missed the semantics about Player C's last contribution:

"Person C: Yeah, when praying go, pray as the asians do."

That seems to be a pretty clear slur on certain Asian groups' pronunciation of English words to me...

mw42 · **#13**

topazg wrote:

mw42 wrote:

Mef wrote:

Player C has a history of making racial slurs about asian people both in games and in private chats.

That's an interesting point you bring up. I see nothing at all offensive about Player C's comment. Perhaps he is guilty of a stereotype (i.e. asians don't pray, they meditate) but not an offensive one. So, in this situation, you, as an admin, would give me a warning or even a ban, and I, as the user, would be befuddled and inclined to make a post on L19x19 ranting about injustice on KGS.

I think you missed the semantics about Player C's last contribution:

"Person C: Yeah, when praying go, pray as the asians do."

That seems to be a pretty clear slur on certain Asian groups' pronunciation of English words to me...

(My eyes are following the trajectory of the meaning of that comment.)

EDIT: But, still, my comment has some relevance; as an observer to these exchanges I would be inclined to leave the chat feeling that the administrator who issued a harsh warning or perhaps a ban to Player C was abusing his authority. Now if Player C was banned, and admins were forced to log an explanation publicly, there would be no misunderstanding.

EDIT #2: Regardless of how you or I feel about discussions of religion, wms has the right to impose restrictions on topics on KGS. It is my understanding that religious discussions on KGS are not permitted; presumably because more often than not they result or perhaps I should say degrade into offensive diatribes.

topazg · **#14**

mw42 wrote:

... and admins were forced to log an explanation publicly, there would be no misunderstanding.

This I 100% agree with. I think, regardless of the risk of embarrassing the user in question, all bans should have a noted explanation for what they did wrong, that should live about as long as the past games list does. BigDoug, would there be any particular objection to something like this existing from the administrator's point of view that you can think of?

Uberdude · **#15**

@topazg: Admins get lazy and just give a generic, potentially inaccurate, reason such as "trolling".

topazg · **#16**

Uberdude wrote:

@topazg: Admins get lazy and just give a generic, potentially inaccurate, reason such as "trolling".

As part of the purpose of these discussions was to get a better idea of the performance of admins, this would itself be rather telling, no?

RBerenguel · **#17**

topazg wrote:

mw42 wrote:

Mef wrote:

Player C has a history of making racial slurs about asian people both in games and in private chats.

That's an interesting point you bring up. I see nothing at all offensive about Player C's comment. Perhaps he is guilty of a stereotype (i.e. asians don't pray, they meditate) but not an offensive one. So, in this situation, you, as an admin, would give me a warning or even a ban, and I, as the user, would be befuddled and inclined to make a post on L19x19 ranting about injustice on KGS.

I think you missed the semantics about Player C's last contribution:

"Person C: Yeah, when praying go, pray as the asians do."

That seems to be a pretty clear slur on certain Asian groups' pronunciation of English words to me...

Maybe it's because I'm not Asian, but I'd find that comment amusing more than insulting, I guess even if applied to me in some broad sense (i.e. if you made a pun like this with how Spanish people are supposedly lazy I'd probably laugh at it more than be angry) I'd laugh at it.

And as you say: any conversation topic can make people angry for some reason or another...

jts · **#18**

Thoughts on the hypothesis.

1. In context, "Please take this conversation elsewhere" is unsuitably vague, although the "no religion rule" is sufficiently well-ingrained on the internet that I think most people would understand what was going on. Unsuitable vagueness gives the impression that admins are being arbitrary, and it is hard to say "arbitrary" without adding "unfair" or "spiteful".

2. If any of them were banned, with no further explanation, I would be displeased. B is clearly discussing meditation as a concentration technique; A's second comment has this flavor as well. C was clearly moving in a theological direction before the warning, but his second comment was just a pun.

3. I've been in positions of petty authority before (and have plenty of them to look forward to in the future), so I understand how hard it can be to give a warning or lay down a rule, and then immediately have people trample on it in harmless ways. But that merely shows that it was a mistake for the admin to pounce immediately. It was an even bigger mistake for him to phrase his command in such a vague way that anything other than complete silence from A, B, and C could be construed as defiance.

4. If there was a history on the part of A or C of discussing religion in the EGR and they had been warned not to do it again in the future, banning them without further warning would be better than issuing a vague warning and then banning them for continuing the discussion in a more secular direction.

5. And in that case, "Please do not discuss religion in the EGR. A, you have been warned multiple times for breaking this rule." would be more appropriate. Admins have stated multiple times that they like to handle things privately, with the implication that they are actually sparing A from public humiliation, but (stop reading, hyperpape) if the police carried away one of my acquaintances but declined to announce the charges against him to protect his reputation... well, I'm sure you can imagine how I would feel.

6. I agree that ethnic jokes are much less family friendly than naughty words, but making a big deal about C's first comment makes it harder to then chide him for the second without creating the impression that the admin is acting on a grudge against C.

Javaness2 · **#19**

I'd go for 1."Persons A,B & C: Stand in the corner"
or 2. a series of kicks

Responses may vary. Terms and conditions may apply. Corners may die.

topazg · **#20**

Javaness2 wrote:

I'd go for 1."Persons A,B & C: Stand in the corner"
or 2. a series of kicks

I have always appreciated the way you've used your administrative weight in KGS

Hypothetical Admin Transcripts - be the judge!

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