Administrative Powers Take A Little -TOO- Seriously

[seanthebond]

I added the CLR TF2 server to my favorite's list a month or so back and have since been playing on-and-off as I generally enjoy the server's latency, map rotation, and community. Alas, tonight whilst playing I was -muted- with a lack of explanation and was honestly quite insulted by the incident

After playing a few rounds on Goldrush and Egypt with CLR member Dead_and_Gone, the map switched to Dustbowl. Except for the occasional slip-of the tongue, I'm not a obsessive curser, and I felt he was reasonable and understanding of that. It was my understanding that the server wants to protect against those who repeatedly use explicit language in an offensive manner.

After switching to Dustbowl I ran into a rather anal admin. One of the other guys dropped some sort of phrase which supposedly was disagreeable with the admin, and he started pulling the "Don't say that" card at the first syllable of a taboo phrase, which was a little extreme in my mind considering it was likely just a slip of the tongue.

I'm a rather talkative player, as I feel that in a team-based game one should communicate with others on the team. After playing for a round or two, the admin decided to mute me and a friend of mine who I was talking with. Being a medic, its rather important to -talk- and try to orchestrate people.

One of the main reasons I'm posting this wonderful story is because I'm not overly fond of being punished by some one younger than me, and with no listed reason or even warning beforehand. Considering the quote, "You'll come for the games but you'll stay for the people", I would have thought the community would encourage good teamwork and communication. I won't call out the administrator, but I will say that if I hadn't played with other CLR members like Dead_and_Gone before, the community would have left a rather sour taste in my mouth.

Anyways -cheers! This isn't really what I would have expected my first post on the forums to be, but hey~ this got me to sign up for the forums sooner.

-Sean

[Ashtray]

I was the friend that was playing with Sean when it happened. I was also the other player muted, and unlike Sean I'll admit, I tend to have a potty mouth. I can understand why I was muted to the fullest extent and I tend to let words slip through the filter before even thinking about them. My one complaint is the rule. No cursing. A few things come to mind.

1) This means no words of "curse" from A** to F*** yet you yourselves use the word Asshattery when explaining the rules of the server...so obviously this can not be what you mean.

2) Use your judgement. Obviously this one seems to be the right course of action when it comes to cursing on your server, but doesn't it seem that this would then become a little subjective and at the discretion of the admin on at the time? I mean one admin might find A** offensive while another might not, same goes for Bitch or Bastard (not censored by myself because they are a female dog and fatherless child respectively). I mean its seems unfair to have to go into a server and watch what you say because one admin is on and not another.

Now another point I would like to make. I honestly mean no disrespect but, this is a Mature game. It is rated M, and I am blowing all forms of life into oblivion when I play, so why a no cursing rule? It would seem that seeing as this is a Mature game the players of the server would not be upset by a random F*** or S*** slipping through.

This action taken against us today will most likely not make us find another server, and we will more then likely be back to play again, I will try to watch my mouth, but honestly these words are used by grownups to show emotion, to convey a message, they are words just like any other and if anything, we should keep it to the 7 words you can't say on TV, nothing else.

[DonnyDono]

I too was with these two guys playing, and although I was not muted or banned or any of that, I feel that the action was a little harsh. Neither sean nor ash were intentionally swearing or cussing anyone else, but they were quickly muted. Although its understandable why according to the rule, I agree with ash about his reasons against the rules. It is very hard for those accustomed to letting their words fly to quickly adjust, but I respect the wishes of the community.

Like they have said; your servers are very fun to play on and I will likely be back soon. However, I just thought I would explain my feelings towards what I feel is unnecessary censorship.

Thanks

[Cain]

I appreciate the feedback and I expect the Admin involved will hop in here shortly and explain his actions, but is being muted really that big of a deal ? Most players rarely speak or type anything and seem to have a lot of fun.

If you guys had been banned without any warning, I might understand why you seem annoyed, but in my opinion simply being muted (after being asked to stop) is really not much punishment at all, but it does reinforce our server's rules which forbid profanity,

We have alot of adults playing and kids here too that would prefer to play without being cursed, or having to listen to profanity, and that makes sense to me.

My Admins are not heavy handed, and the fact that you were simply muted when the repeating server message says cursing will get you banned, proves that.

Again, Welcome and thank you for the posts, I hope you stick around and have fun playing with us.



-- Cain

[Cain]

Ash, thank you for the post.

I have detailed, LOOONG discussions with all my Admins on a regular basis, and the topic of profanity is discussed quite often.

The 7 words are the ones we look for and any type of racism, or harassment of our lady players or kids, or religious insults are not tolerated at all.

Yep it is a "M" rated game, but the profane insults are real and can insult or hurt people's feelings for real, the violence is all pretend.

I hope this makes this a little clearer.

Take care,

-- Cain

[Pumpkin_Jack]

I'm posting this wonderful story is because I'm not overly fond of being punished by some one younger than me, and with no listed reason or even warning beforehand. Considering the quote, "You'll come for the games but you'll stay for the people", I would have thought the community would encourage good teamwork and communication. I won't call out the administrator, but I will say that if I hadn't played with other CLR members like Dead_and_Gone before, the community would have left a rather sour taste in my mouth.

Although our admins usually warn for the best of my knowledge in a situation like this i would like to point out that you have to push a button to talk and in turn make a noise over chat(vulgar or not). Also the mute is not permanent to the best of my knowledge. And i would like to add one more thing admins are people too they have those days where they do not feel like dealing with some smartalic

1) This means no words of "curse" from A** to F*** yet you yourselves use the word Asshattery when explaining the rules of the server...so obviously this can not be what you mean.

2) Use your judgement. Obviously this one seems to be the right course of action when it comes to cursing on your server, but doesn't it seem that this would then become a little subjective and at the discretion of the admin on at the time? I mean one admin might find A** offensive while another might not, same goes for Bitch or Bastard (not censored by myself because they are a female dog and fatherless child respectively). I mean its seems unfair to have to go into a server and watch what you say because one admin is on and not another.

Ashtray a lot of it is content of the word. Example being an asshat is being a jerk but calling someone an a-hole is just rude and unnecessary.

This action taken against us today will most likely not make us find another server, and we will more then likely be back to play again, I will try to watch my mouth, but honestly these words are used by grownups to show emotion, to convey a message, they are words just like any other and if anything, we should keep it to the 7 words you can't say on TV, nothing else.

First I would like to say thank you for your understanding and maturity about the situation. Second many words are socially considered swear words than just the ones you cant say on tv.(lol george carlin stand-up).

My Admins are not heavy handed, and the fact that you were simply muted when the repeating server message says cursing will get you banned, proves that.

In all honesty Cain is telling the truth most admins wont even mute people without complete ignorance on their part or without complaints by the other players.

[DonnyDono]

I appreciate the feedback and I expect the Admin involved will hop in here shortly and explain his actions, but is being muted really that big of a deal ? Most players rarely speak or type anything and seem to have a lot of fun.

If you guys had been banned without any warning, I might understand why you seem annoyed, but in my opinion simply being muted (after being asked to stop) is really not much punishment at all, but it does reinforce our server's rules which forbid profanity,

We have alot of adults playing and kids here too that would prefer to play without being cursed, or having to listen to profanity, and that makes sense to me.

My Admins are not heavy handed, and the fact that you were simply muted when the repeating server message says cursing will get you banned, proves that.

Again, Welcome and thank you for the posts, I hope you stick around and have fun playing with us.



-- Cain

I personally find talking and communication to be a main reason why I play this game, and might I add there was a lot of communication on the team I played on, so I enjoyed it much more, but once they were muted the atmosphere was kind of... less enthusiastic.

As for the real versus fake with games versus swear words, I understand that. And it makes sense that people should know that the game is clearly not real life, but people should also know that some swears are not very bad--in my opinion saying a swear when killed or saying that blank-ing spy got me is not that bad-- and some are. However, in the interest of preventing people from screaming obscenities at each other--something I DO agree with you on; its certainly not that good to have going on-- this rule isn't really that bad. I appreciate the mods who were on not being overly strict as they certainly could have muted or banned me but didnt.

[Cain]

Thx for the post Mental, excellent and fair question...

I'm looking for the 7 words you can't say on TV and beyond that the context of the words and their intent.

If one of my Admins asked you to watch your language for saying "Ass" I'd be very, very surprised.

Remember, not all CLRs are Admins, and some of our members may get a little overly aggressive with trying to enforce what they believe to be our server rules, but they all mean well, and would not say anything if they did not care about the server or the Community.

That having been said, our rules for CLRs ask them to not try to enforce any rules but to let our Admins handle that and simply have fun.

Can you tell me who told you to watch your language when you said "ass" ??

[Cain]

I personally find talking and communication to be a main reason why I play this game, and might I add there was a lot of communication on the team I played on, so I enjoyed it much more, but once they were muted the atmosphere was kind of... less enthusiastic.

As for the real versus fake with games versus swear words, I understand that. And it makes sense that people should know that the game is clearly not real life, but people should also know that some swears are not very bad--in my opinion saying a swear when killed or saying that blank-ing spy got me is not that bad-- and some are. However, in the interest of preventing people from screaming obscenities at each other--something I DO agree with you on; its certainly not that good to have going on-- this rule isn't really that bad. I appreciate the mods who were on not being overly strict as they certainly could have muted or banned me but didnt.

Thanks for the reply Donny, yep I agree about the talking it makes it more fun for me as well!!

FYI, mutes only last for the existing map, so they are by no means permanent.

And you make a good point, but Admins are often like referees and they have to make judgment calls, but in this case the judgment while it may have been annoying to you folks, only lasted less than 30 mins.

Take care,

-- Cain

[DonnyDono]

Fair enough. I see that it is a judgement call. Its up to them if they think its detracting from the game play, and they ought to do something if it is.

That being said, this won't stop me from coming to the server, so no issues here.

[Cain]

Fair enough. I see that it is a judgement call. Its up to them if they think its detracting from the game play, and they ought to do something if it is.

That being said, this won't stop me from coming to the server, so no issues here.

Glad to hear it Donny, and once again:

Welcome to Cain's Lair !!

Be sure to check your player stats on the Stats website.

[Rand{CLR}]

I'm the admin in question. Thanks for coming to the forums guys; I'm glad to see at least some of what I was trying to say got through.

As an aside, I find it curious you may be questioning the age of any admins without knowing us, but that's beside the point.

I took action to mute both Sean and Building Pyramids because both of you not only violated our guidelines, but you both seemed to take special effort to do so. During that round, I just sat back and listened to the chat for some time as the teams has just shuffled on the map switch. Pretty shortly after the round started, you both slipped into cursing.

As Cain has explained, there are guidelines for admins to take action. I let the first several minutes slip by without any words, essentially recognizing what you both posted about people sometimes slipping up. When it went a bit beyond that in frequency and crudeness, I issued the first of what became a number of warnings. This was on Goldrush, about 6:15 EST.

Around the same time, I started typing some chat warnings to the server as a whole because there was other typed instances of language going on, and some homophobic insults (something else not tolerated on Cain's Lair).

You guys then started your questioning on what the limits of language here was, including numerous examples. Give you credit, some of them were interesting. After about 20 minutes or so of that, I let you both know on voice that enough was enough, and backed off a bit.

We got through a fast round of Egypt, and then you were back at it on the next map, so I muted both of you and came pretty close to muting Donny for the same reasons. You had plenty of warning before I took action--almost 50 minutes according to my chat log.

There was a good point made above about how you have to take conscious action to chat in-game by hitting the voice key, which provides an extra split second of consideration before words come out. Unfortunately, that time and numerous warnings and a brief discussion of our language policy didn't make much difference, so I decided it was time for a verbal time out for the both of you.

In this case, it wasn't quite so much the words themselves, though there was some of the "7 words" to it, as the frequency of the words and what appeared to be no effort to reign in the sailor talk.

That said, I hold no grudges and no recall of actions taken, so I have no hard feelings. I hope you guys feel the same and we'll see you back.

-Rand

[Rand{CLR}]

Actually, if you happen to have just said "ass" when I'm issuing a warning, I'm probably warning someone else for something else. As Cain said, we let that one go, and I rarely call out an individual until they start getting serious with their language.

-Rand

[juneau]

While i can't really add anything to the topic at hand as i haven't frequented the server tonight, i still wanted to just pop by and say hello to the new people who just joined the forums.

Hope to see you on the server sometime soon.

[Tuqui-tuqui]

I'm going to answer that Mental, and I hope this clears a bit as to how some of the admins, or rather I, take cursing into account.

Curse words tend to happen for two reasons: Players are getting dominated, or they are having so much fun they sometimes don't think before acting. In these instances I will let phrases go by because I understand there is the occasional slip and people will blur out whatever they have in mind. It is when you insult other people that I warn people about language, and if it continues, we go to drastic measures (like muting, kicking or banning). It is all about keeping a sense of family community that moves us to do what we do. The average age of a regular is not teens, or 20-somethings, I believe the average age of the Cain Regular is 35 and the majority have families with children that play with them.

Cain has been running servers for more than 10 years and the rules have hardly changed. Unlike other clan or communities that dissolve after a few months, or after a game has run its course, Cain has dedicated a lot of time, effort, and his own money to maintain this community. Administrators are here, not to enforce, but to lead by example. This is why you don't see Admins cursing, and then banning those that do, or any other type of heavy-handed admin'ing that you will find in other servers.

If you feel this does not justify my actions, feel free to contact Cain. This goes for any admin action, whether it be mine or another.