Council of Setons EXPOSED - Part 1

@raider said in Council of Setons EXPOSED - Part 1:

So when is part two coming out? Can I preorder it?

Preordering might reduce the quality of the final product, I don't think you should

@salty You're right thanks for the insight. Because of your intellectual foresight I should wait on my purchase!

@salty Don't forget there is also a third part that is supposed to come out

Alright. Lets get some things sorted out here.

I'm acutely aware that the community at whole is over the drama. After over 300 posts in the last thread, you'll come so far as to tell us directly. That's fine.

This election is mostly spawned from said drama. It's being spawned from the ongoing debate about the FAF Association and it's relationship to the council. FtXCommando and Sheeo have been personally at ends over this for the past few months. It is the dominating discussion in the Council chat and the root of all the "toxicity".

I cannot possibly summarise the discussion to the community and I personally had different issues with the topic than FtX does. I'll just quickly go over my opinions on the matter:

  1. Anyone could have joined the Association and fast-tracked their way to absolute power on FAF by attending the meeting. The Association was formed by the people that showed up, and the Board was formed out of everybody who volunteered to be in it with no upper limit. The only thing that stopped said Board from being overrun with bad actors was that they didnt show up. If you consider me a toxic entitiy that damages FAF, the only reason i'm not on the board right now is because I had to work that day and I didnt make it. I asked for there to be a Code of Conduct in the Association to prevent this, it was agreed upon but not made.

  2. You're not allowed to know who the list of people are who now hold this power. It's been admitted to in this chat and mentioning it implies severe consequences.

On May 12th - during the election period, a user quietly forwarded a number of screenshots of FtX talking about this topic and it was brought up in the council chat by Sheeo - while FtX had been kicked over prior disagreements - in an attempt to remove him out of the election entirely.

Here is that attempt: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/519425924874371094/848396700841672714/Capture.PNG

Here are the screenshots:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/519425924874371094/848396854105210910/Screenshot-2021-05-11-at-16.25.38.png

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/519425924874371094/848396866861531166/Screenshot-2021-05-11-at-16.24.52.png

Do you know who the board members are who now operate FAF? Would you like to know? You're not allowed. Do you know the rules of the Association or the "statutes" they're bound by?

Do you think a councilor should be removed for trying to make FAF more transparent?

  1. The Council pledge that states: "I will collaborate with the FAF Board to work towards our objectives." Was created after the disagreement about how the council and board should work together. It's fundamentally binding FtX, and any other new PC to obey the new Board (who you don't know about) instead of continuing the current discussion.

I advocated for a number of changes to the pledges that ensure the Association are bound to actually work with contributors, here: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/519425924874371094/848399989607628810/Capture.PNG

These were deemed "superflous" or not needed. I if want to add this change I need to forward this idea to sheeo - who left the council chat, or an association member - who i'm not technically supposed to know about. This is so they can "discuss it at a meeting" which I have not been told the date.

This is why you'll notice FtXCommando made a fuss in his original application. Sheeo deemed this to be fine here:
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/519425924874371094/848401440501530665/Capture.PNG

But you'll notice nine2 attempted to remove FtX from this election over the pledges here anyway:
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/519425924874371094/848402063486615552/Capture.PNG

You'll also notice that suzuji (and feather) got a vote. There is no vote here for FtX.

To give you a TL:DR, the Association is a currently a group of people who "managed to be there for the meeting", and operate FAF's functions in complete confidentiality.

Despite claiming to wanting to make FAF more transparent, Emperor_Penguin has asked to join this association as of this morning. You can choose what to make of this information.


Now how does this link back to the election, and to this post exactly?

It's essentially public knowledge that Morax called this election. That's fine and he is allowed to do so.

At some point during this timeline sheeo has gone to Morax and explicitly asked him to run against FtX. I know this by admission, you'll also notice Emperor_Penguin also admitting to being in discussion with "the president of the board" (sheeo) throughout the election thread. You can also choose what to make of this information but I don't think it's particularly acceptable for people to go into private conversations and ask people to call elections in order to vote out someone you have a disagreement with.

Now, the post. You'll notice that the discussion period ends today. After this period is supposed to be a "review period" where the council (and the board?) go over the canidates and discuss their legitimacy to run. Nine2 planned this review period as he is the orginal creator of the election process this time around.

This is only a prediction, but this post is supposed to assist in another assassination attempt to remove FtX from the vote before he has a chance to be voted upon. The post was brought up to the council as soon as it was made, but turned into begging for help after you guys didn't show support. It's safe to say you've derailed this post.

My further prediction is this: if FtX does get voted back in, Sheeo will most likely use the board and the support he has been asking for in private to just remove or alter the PC position entirely as the nuclear option.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/519425924874371094/848406466956492847/Capture.PNG

Watch out for language like this when you read posts.

(more coming)

Regarding the toxicity claims and the claims made in the OP.

It's not a secret that within the council itself. Nine2 in particular has had his head on the metpahorical chopping block for a while. The second biggest conversation in the council after the Association, is the handling of the conflicts of interest between being a FAF councilor and managing a game project that directly seeks to canibalise FAF's audience - for personal profit.

For weeks now have I been in discussion over the following points:

  • Being a councilor while doing this, as I said
  • Not disclosing that the conflict exists, which would be illegal if we were paid employees
  • Using FAF's services to advertise the game you profit from, which has always been banned

And the point that dragged me into this:

  • Using the FAF vaults in order to gain playtesting for maps, and then planning to remove the maps later to sell exclusively as a part of said game.

The council has mostly agreed to bring our discussions about this topic into the public, so we can go into more detail about this later.

When I first saw this post I viewed it as some kind of final lashing out, or an attempt to remove dissidents from the council in order to retain the position. Indeed I make no denials about my willingness to say yes in a vote of no confidence when you couple this along with the lack of progress in the area and how some actions (or lack thereof) have slowed other aspects of FAF.

I'll now go down the OP in order as long as I can before I run out of time. I have to go to work.

The mirrdes thing:

You can read the post here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/supremecommander/comments/jgdlxc/sctarebalanced_is_a_broken_mess_with_no_sense_of/

Here is the post in question that shouldn't even be visible:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/519425924874371094/848413888600342608/Capture.PNG

You'll notice the upvotes were cut from nine2's original post.

Here are some other comments that were removed:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/519425924874371094/848414181337989170/Capture.PNG

You can choose how you wish to interperet what I say.

doc

I'm not going to even bother replying to the document. It's incredibly weak. I will however mention this little part about the "code of conduct" sheeo made.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/519425924874371094/848415139538927636/Capture.PNG

Do you think is is acceptable to see some rules have been put in place and then immediately attempt to oust someone using them? And then cut that part from the public like you've done for every other snip in the document? I'm personally happy if everything i've ever said in the council chamber was shown to the public.

Many people share my views on toxicity. You won't see them speaking out too much around the place, but they know I am receptive and they message me.

If i say:

Many people think I am a good mapper. You won't see them speaking out too much around the place, but they know I am good and they message me.

People would think it's ancedotal and has no real weight in any discsussion. So does your comment.

I'm out of time and want to go into the retention stuff and the list of strawmen in the OP. I'll do it in a few hours.

One last thing for you though:

nine2 said in Council of Setons EXPOSED - Part 1:

Why do you think it's ok to call people derogatory names like petulant in council chat biass? It's meant to be a workplace for serious conversations about FAF.

Here is the ENTIRE log of council chat discussion were the word "petulant" was used. The community can decide how they feel about how I composed myself.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/519425924874371094/848416858864222258/Capture.PNG
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/519425924874371094/848416980444512266/Capture.PNG

That screencap:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/519425924874371094/848417079593795594/Capture.PNG

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/519425924874371094/848417221922521104/Capture.PNG
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/519425924874371094/848417337199820808/Capture.PNG
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/519425924874371094/848417450885644325/Capture.PNG
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/519425924874371094/848417682603900948/Capture.PNG

How do you feel about this discussion? you have the right to know.

Lets talk more later.

Excellent post Biass, thanks for this information

Long way back to opening post. Glad to see you are championing FAF in a positive way. It is good to see someone address the toxicity issue as it has gotten rather bad because of some bad apples (I won't name names).
One of my FAF friends got traumatized from 1v1 toxicity so I had to make a mod to destroy chat so he could feel comfortable playing again. This is just in game and not on the message boards.
This forum post left a bad taste in my mouth yet I hope for a positive outcome.
Disclaimers: 1. I just want my friend to feel comfortable playing socially again. 2. I don't care about politics.

10

Well first of all let me get this straight : This thread stems up from a scission in the council (saying that won't surprise anyone I guess). One group is made of sheeo-nine, while the other group is made up of biass-ftx. The discussion between those 2 party have been so bad, that they can't get in agreement about completely irrelevant topic, like the use of a word in an official thread (thousands of word of debate over such petty thing).

I won't be talking about the different subject that are opposing that 2 groups, like conflict of interest (sanctuary), news management, accusation of being afk, etc... and I will only focus on the topic of this thread that is toxicity, and especially in the council.

If you are lazy to read the following, it can be sum up at : it's not black and white, and you can't accuse specific persons (imo).

Before hand I will only talk about toxicity and contribution, not toxicity in the game. Other people have well separated those 2 different issues, and we can't say that toxicity in council lead to lower retention (or at least by a direct link).

first of all, you can find dirt on everyone. I'll expose private conversation here, not to condemn the person, but to showcase the issue.
6a0e21ba-1525-48ea-9963-b9220df7aba8-image.png
Tbh this example was especially problematic to me, not because it can be said toxic, but because it meant, at that time that we couldn't collaborate to improve faf.
Note that I brought that up for the election of nine in the council (to warn other councillors when taking our decision), while i was validating that candidature (and at the same time setting my feeling aside).
What i want to say, is that you can find dirt on everyone. You can find dirt on me too, we all have our bad mood, we interpret badly what other people meant, etc...

Here another example showcasing that issue even from a councillor at the time. It's not straight forward toxicity like insults, but the result was a moderator stopping contributing because of it.
b7033786-e0b2-4888-b5de-7fb6cd994ee7-image.png
644f5a43-384d-4162-8346-6d1820413b0d-image.png
ab8a5be7-add2-41af-baae-c31e0c831d8d-image.png
So that was when we discovered that we were able to manipulate the lobby for malicious intent. I've the full log (and can provide it), but i'm only posting relevant parts of it to showcase the issue.
The issue is a big ego and poor communication skill, leading to someone talking other people down.
The message i want to convey here is that people define toxicity as insult in general, but it can be way broader than that. Especially people doing passive aggressive. It's very hard to work with such people (more on that later).

Now note that I've been working with Icedreamer for a long period of time, despite knowing his behaviour. I didn't stop contributing because some people have been toxic. In the case of Icedreamer, he was also very competent for its job, thus why we can't just remove someone because he is "toxic".
I think people that contribute to a community like this one, need to grow a thick skin. Some people will quit the boat for little, and you can't save everyone. For example, thinking of the balance team, we can tell one another that our ideas are dumb, or that we are stupid etc.. But that doesn't stop us from moving forward altogether to improve the balance and keep confronting our ideas. Some people weren't able to handle that, even if in the end the light mood in the team prevent it from being a toxic place (imo).

I also wanted to point out that some people in that thread played as if they were only victim of toxicity. But as I said already it's not black and white. And I find it way easier to contribute to this project with a ftx or a biass having a direct communication and possibly calling names on me, than with a Exotic-Retard always doing passive-aggressive with me.

So yeah TLDR :
It's all black and white, we can find dirt on everyone, and miscommunication in the council is due to the conflict of 2 groups.
Also you should grow a thick skin if you want to contribute in a community in general.

@biass said in Council of Setons EXPOSED - Part 1:

This election is mostly spawned from said drama. It's being spawned from the ongoing debate about the FAF Association and it's relationship to the council. FtXCommando and Sheeo have been personally at ends over this for the past few months. It is the dominating discussion in the Council chat and the root of all the "toxicity".

This election spawned from being overdue, not drama or anything regarding the association.

It was supposed to be yearly but the council failed to make that happen.

You know this very well so why are you attempting to misrepresent it?

I cannot possibly summarise the discussion to the community and I personally had different issues with the topic than FtX does. I'll just quickly go over my opinions on the matter:

  1. Anyone could have joined the Association and fast-tracked their way to absolute power on FAF by attending the meeting.

This is wrong.

Not just "anyone" can join; they need to be proven sympathetic to the objectives defined in the statutes.

Joining does not give you "absolute power" in any sense of the word as you also need to be elected onto the board by the rest of the association, and the board consists of at minimum 6 members.

The Association was formed by the people that showed up, and the Board was formed out of everybody who volunteered to be in it with no upper limit.

The meeting date and time was announced by FtX and FtX attended.

The only thing that stopped said Board from being overrun with bad actors was that they didnt show up.

That and the rest of the people present who don't want to engage with bad actors, as well as what's written into the statutes.

What further are you suggesting? Every other voluntary association that I know of in the world operates like this, without issue.

You have complained about this but never presented any kind of solution except "keep sheeo in power because he is permanently AFK".

I asked for there to be a Code of Conduct in the Association to prevent this, it was agreed upon but not made.

As you very well know but are again misrepresenting; I said that was not my priority. I have delegated it to the rest of the board but so far, no takers.

You were asked to explicitly provide your own input and suggestion as to this code of conduct: That hasn't happened.

  1. You're not allowed to know who the list of people are who now hold this power. It's been admitted to in this chat and mentioning it implies severe consequences.

I answered this earlier and you're not responding to the problem.

On May 12th - during the election period, a user quietly forwarded a number of screenshots of FtX talking about this topic and it was brought up in the council chat by Sheeo - while FtX had been kicked over prior disagreements - in an attempt to remove him out of the election entirely.

Outside of filling in your pre-made narrative what is your point here? It's awfully convenient than you can pluck sections of chat to suit your conclusions.

On a side note; please refrain from sharing the private council chat without the permission of the other councillors. Just because you have no respect for confidentiality does not mean you have the right to impose that onto the rest of the councillors.

Do you know who the board members are who now operate FAF? Would you like to know? You're not allowed. Do you know the rules of the Association or the "statutes" they're bound by?

The statutes are public and you know it. They were, in their final version announced on the 21st of March.

You are not responding to any of the problems mentioned earlier.

Do you think a councilor should be removed for trying to make FAF more transparent?

That is not what happened, unless trying to make FAF more transparent involves power-grabbing and subsequently rage-quitting from the process when that fails.

  1. The Council pledge that states: "I will collaborate with the FAF Board to work towards our objectives." Was created after the disagreement about how the council and board should work together. It's fundamentally binding FtX, and any other new PC to obey the new Board (who you don't know about) instead of continuing the current discussion.

It's fundamentally about binding everyone on the council to work together with the board and not impose their own authority and refuse to accept the new ownership.

If they don't want to accept that then yes, they're out.

I advocated for a number of changes to the pledges that ensure the Association are bound to actually work with contributors, here: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/519425924874371094/848399989607628810/Capture.PNG

Your suggested changes are to the statutes, not any "pledges". The statutes were accepted and cannot be changed unless you invoke the processes mentioned in those same statutes. You're welcome to go ahead and do that.

That's what was said to you as well but you refrain from showing that obviously.

Even if you suggested changes to some pledge and wanted the board to sign it: I've answered this to you in private many times and again above to FtX. But no, you cannot make the board sign some pledge to have to collaborate "on mutual terms" with the council. It is not bound to have to work with the council structure and doing so could be legally problematic.

Stop trying to grab onto your personal power in an elected position.

These were deemed "superflous" or not needed. I if want to add this change I need to forward this idea to sheeo - who left the council chat, or an association member - who i'm not technically supposed to know about. This is so they can "discuss it at a meeting" which I have not been told the date.

I left the chat after this date. Your post is from may 6th.

To give you a TL:DR, the Association is a currently a group of people who "managed to be there for the meeting", and operate FAF's functions in complete confidentiality.

Some amount of confidentiality quite simply has to exist, and it's now quite abundantly clear that a person like yourself will simply not respect that.

Despite claiming to wanting to make FAF more transparent, Emperor_Penguin has asked to join this association as of this morning. You can choose what to make of this information.

Maybe he wants to help improve FAF; per what the statutes say?

At some point during this timeline sheeo has gone to Morax and explicitly asked him to run against FtX. I know this by admission

What? No I have not. I have encouraged anybody to run for the election.

You somehow feel fine presenting all this other chat from confidential sources; so why not back this up?

you'll also notice Emperor_Penguin also admitting to being in discussion with "the president of the board" (sheeo) throughout the election thread. You can also choose what to make of this information but I don't think it's particularly acceptable for people to go into private conversations and ask people to call elections in order to vote out someone you have a disagreement with.

That's not what's happened and you are utterly misrepresenting and lying to suit your narrative here.

This is completely unacceptable.

I'm done responding to toxic hypotheticals that fit your pre-made conclusions and the narrative you are trying to feed the community.

Please read and understand the statute, get yourself a basic understanding of how voluntary associations work and then come back and make arguments with a basis in reality.

What do people define as toxic? I've seen this word so often that it is losing its meaning. In many cases people seem to see it as simply saying swear words. If this is the metric then I am as toxic as the next.

@jaggedappliance said in Council of Setons EXPOSED - Part 1:

What do people define as toxic? I've seen this word so often that it is losing its meaning. In many cases people seem to see it as simply saying swear words. If this is the metric then I am as toxic as the next.

Trolling, lying, derogative behavior, being argumentative just for the sake of it. I don't think this is so hard to come to an agreement about.

Just using swear-words is clearly too low of a bar, though.

But now, how do you define trolling. How do you ascertain that the other party is trolling you, so far to me it seems like by your definition of trolling you and nine2 are also doing it.

Lying? That's also something that we can't be sure of and is something that can't ascertained. Even more when you are clearly unwilling to prove your point by showing substantial evidence in form of proper logs/screenshots.

Derogative behaviour? Again, what does it consist of. What makes it derogative and not just being abrassive manner of speech which is not derogative by any means. How do you define that when we all come from different cultures, classes and ethnicities?
If anything I can assure you that you and nine2 came of as derogatory more than once clearly being unwilling to talk with others and saying that speaking to them is unproductive which I find way more derogatory than just being abrasive in speech but still willing to talk it out, even if in harsh words.
It also seems like the the derogatory ones are you and nine2 in your unwillingness to understand that we aren't all made from one mold and as such you can't expect us to conform to your views on that matter. Often resorting to outright banning people and kicking them from different servers without trying to understand their point of view and what makes them behave in certain ways.

Again, being argumentative. How is that bad? And if it's that bad then you and nine2 also are guilty of it again and again. Even more as you both are tending to hide from any talks in public deeming it unproductive and then go off to do it yourself in the chambers.

Sorry I can't trust you at all, and especially your definitions. The only thing I see is people trying to make others conform to their world view with no regard to the other parties.

I'm back, lets discuss some more items.

The OP has a number of strawmen arguements made in some attempt to stop some form of dissidence. I assume the "abuse one" relates to any comments made about nine2's personal game. But it's clear this didn't stop much. You'll note the last time I ever saw something like this in particular was when Poch made a post about the use of the french "message.es" as some form of gender neutral language.

The first two points are assurance that removing FtX (and myself?) will not end up in a net loss for the community. This is based on nothing and i'm not going to bother. Calling someone a "poison" isn't really kocher though.

"But Nine, you are totally abusing your position of news editor"

I find the use of the term "news editor" very interesting because during the ongoing discussions on the potential abuse related to the personal game, I mentioned numerious times that a Councilor has a responsibility to fulfill to FAF. A rank and file contributor after all, does not have an obligation to follow FAF's interests and can work on other projects as they please. I said this here for an example:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/519425924874371094/848531791920889866/Capture.PNG

Saying "I'm the news editor" makes a user look like they're that said rank and file user.
It's like saying i'm just the "vault janitor" when as a Councilor, i'm responsible for the great majority if not all of the FAF Content pipeline and how users / authors interact with it.

You can take away what you please from this comment. I just don't enjoy the language used.

There is nothing in my job description to say that I can't post news items for myself

Refers to the game from which nine2 has a financial incentive. I would assume any readers would be aware of this by now.

You mean like the dossier biass published on morax to take him down and assume his position? I have no doubt there some takedown document about me somewhere.

This refers to the public document wherein I made my case for Morax's relection. I am happy to share it with anyone who is curious, but this would damage Morax's run for PC which is the point of the OP (to get support for Penguin) so be warned. No dossier exists for nine2 and paranoia is not healthy.

FtX prevents or otherwise blocks retention screenshot

I searched for "yt channel" in zulip and couldn't find the relevant post. I'm assuming this is before I became a councilor. Why has there been no attempts to solve retention after that?


I want to go through the rest of the posts and also talk about retention (I tallied the responses from the "why would you leave FAF" thread) But i'm honestly fried. I stayed up to 7am following this stuff. It can be done later.

Just quickly though for sheeo:

The election was supposed to be yearly and you know this well

No? I had to call for an election for MnM after a ~2 year office. No yearly election was done for player councilor before FtX. Nine2 was elected to promotions now a little over a year ago, shall we call an election?

Not just "anyone" can join; they need to be proven sympathetic to the objectives defined in the statutes

Would you like to explain how you audited the first wave of members in order to prove them as sympathtic? Did you ask them to which they just said yes? Saying they need to agree to some vague pledge means nothing of any actual value.

What further are you suggesting?

I'm suggesting you implement the revision I posted.

You were asked to explicitly provide your own input and suggestion as to this code of conduct: That hasn't happened.

"if you want to speed it up, why don't you to come up with a proposal for the code of conduct yourself?" is the exact quote. I don't think these two are the same. You're asking me to make it for you.

I don't know where you answered "this" earlier.

Outside of filling in your pre-made narrative what is your point here? It's awfully convenient than you can pluck sections of chat to suit your conclusions.
On a side note; please refrain from sharing the private council chat without the permission of the other councillors. Just because you have no respect for confidentiality does not mean you have the right to impose that onto the rest of the councillors.

Damn dude, did you read the original post? Or open the document?

The statutes are public and you know it.

I'm asking people if they know what they are.

I'm not even going to bother replying to this backwards attempt to gaslight me into thinking i'm doing this for my own "power". So I can continue to moderate the vaults or something? What a joke it is that this baseless phrase was even mentioned.

Your suggested changes are to the statutes, not any "pledges". The statutes were accepted and cannot be changed unless you invoke the processes mentioned in those same statutes. You're welcome to go ahead and do that.

alt text

Discussing anything with you is literally not possible. I can't even get you to properly read what's been said and i'm constantly being gaslit into some absolutely insane story of me trying to "power grab". You even went so far as to claim that because I didn't get mad at an advertisement made in 2017, that my claims against nine2's game project were based entirely on some personal vendetta. I can't be bothered. goodnight. Oh, and release the patreon data.

If this is about Biass being toxic (which seems to be what your examples are trying to show), why are you making this about Ftx's election? Aren't those two different people?

When was this code of conduct posted in the forums publicly for everybody to have a look at it, so we actually know WTF this is all about?

If you want to change FAF, and a big part of FAF would definitely want to make it more welcoming by reducing toxicity, why is all of this stuff going down behing closed doors until several days before an election takes place, to be used to paint people in bad light? Dont get me wrong, i can sympathise with your general goal here. But this thread would appear more than a little bit shady to anybody not involved deeply in FAF, and for good reasons.

You cannot change FAF without involving the FAF community from the beginning through the middle until the end. This whole Council of Setons thing could die and i woundn't shed a tear. Doesnt seem to work very well anyway.

Edit:
Here is and idea fro you: Convince anybody who is with you to leave the Council of Setons and create a less toxic alternative. Toxic environments destroy themselves over time, since they cannot attract new people. You can help that along instead of opening up a drama thread that nobody can relate to.

@sheeo said in Council of Setons EXPOSED - Part 1:

@jaggedappliance said in Council of Setons EXPOSED - Part 1:

What do people define as toxic? I've seen this word so often that it is losing its meaning. In many cases people seem to see it as simply saying swear words. If this is the metric then I am as toxic as the next.

Trolling, lying, derogative behavior, being argumentative just for the sake of it. I don't think this is so hard to come to an agreement about.

Just using swear-words is clearly too low of a bar, though.

Trolling is not an easily agreed upon judgement, nor is arguing just for the sake of it in many cases. Lying is of course extremely negative behaviour. Derogative behaviour I assume means insults which is not always toxic in my opinion, it depends on the insults and where they are directed e.g. are they personal or aimed towards an idea or towards some very negative behaviour.

In reality all this thread has done has put out the serious disagreements from within the council into the public. It doesn't look good and I don't see where this is heading at the moment.

@BRNKoINSANITY We made a report from long ago. I think of you fill it out with info about players that have inappropriate names. I am 100% they get banned or warned.

Soon™️

@jaggedappliance said in Council of Setons EXPOSED - Part 1:

What do people define as toxic? I've seen this word so often that it is losing its meaning. In many cases people seem to see it as simply saying swear words. If this is the metric then I am as toxic as the next.

Disclaimer: I know this may come across as preachy so I just want to say that I am aware that I'm not exactly an angel either.

Toxicity is down to individual perspective, things are toxic when people claim them to be toxic. People claim things to be toxic when they are offended. Despite the subjectiveness of the matter we can still infer some general rules to how we should interact with other human beings without offending them.

First I want to convince you that even if you are sociopathic and ignore all ethics it is still in your best interests to not offend people.

  • Offending people creates an emotionally charged state. Emotions hinder efficient communication. You should hope for efficient communication, because that is the primary way of learning new things. You probably aren't running a particle collider in your backyard, yet you may still learn about the standard model from the comfort of your home.
  • It is difficult to be productive when you are in an emotionally charged state. Especially in an open source community working toward a common goal, such as FAF, you should wish to maximize other people's productiveness. The more productive other people are the less you have to work yourself, right? Or perhaps these people are capable of doing things you can't do yourself, why would you throw away their abilities?
  • People you have offended may not wish to work with you again, hindering your future prospects.
  • Toxicity is reflective, once you have offended someone the chance that they will offend you in return goes way up. If this happens you have not only affected the other parties, but indirectly your own ability to think straight. Even if you think yourself thick skinned, there's a chance that the other party in their anger find a way to penetrate that layer of protection. Why take that chance?

I've only scratched the surface with this list. I would also list the pros of offending people, but I genuinely can't think of any.

I hope you see that it is strategically of vital importance that you do your best to avoid offending people. Now comes the hard part. Anyone may be offended by anything you say! But if you were to always stay quiet in order to not offend anybody, that would kinda defeat the point of communication in the first place wouldn't it?

This is where social skills come in. You have to balance the likelihood of someone being offended with the honesty of your communication. If you can say your piece without offending anybody, you should seek to do so, but if that is impossible you should at least dampen the blow as much as possible to minimize the amount of offense taken. Socially adept people are able to talk about offensive topics without offending anybody.

The social machinery is extremely complex. I have good news for you though: your brain is designed to deal with problems like this. Better than any machine learning algorithm we have come up with. So use it.

TLDR; There is no hard definition for toxicity since any behavior can be construed as toxic as long as someone was offended by it. It is in your best interests to minimize the amount of offense you dish out. Your brain was designed to solve social problems like this. Use it.

@jaggedappliance said in Council of Setons EXPOSED - Part 1:

@sheeo said in Council of Setons EXPOSED - Part 1:

@jaggedappliance said in Council of Setons EXPOSED - Part 1:

What do people define as toxic? I've seen this word so often that it is losing its meaning. In many cases people seem to see it as simply saying swear words. If this is the metric then I am as toxic as the next.

Trolling, lying, derogative behavior, being argumentative just for the sake of it. I don't think this is so hard to come to an agreement about.

Just using swear-words is clearly too low of a bar, though.

Trolling is not an easily agreed upon judgement, nor is arguing just for the sake of it in many cases.

No; I didn't mean say it was easily agreed upon. Just that it isn't "that hard"-- the scale is wide.

At some point it becomes abundantly clear that a person has no interest in productive conversation and has other motives for continuing discussion.

Lying is of course extremely negative behaviour. Derogative behaviour I assume means insults which is not always toxic in my opinion, it depends on the insults and where they are directed e.g. are they personal or aimed towards an idea or towards some very negative behaviour.

Agreed. These things go hand in hand, though.

In reality all this thread has done has put out the serious disagreements from within the council into the public. It doesn't look good and I don't see where this is heading at the moment.

I agree. These problems should've been dealt with internally in the council a long time ago.

If I'd stepped up and kicked the offending councilors there would've likely been a lot of this anyway, however.

With people complaining about the lack of transparency I think they now have it, at least. The council has devolved entirely into dysfunction due to these issues, so I think that's important to shed some light on and make it clear to those who are interested.

The board and the association decides where this goes and I hope sensible people are able to make their own judgements. It has been possible to reach consensus amongst people with disagreements in the past.

Good details in the post. Thanks. While reading, I saw that someone wrote, "deeds are better than words": D I support, I already understood, it is better to be a silent person doing work than a "grandmother in the entrance".

@biass said in Council of Setons EXPOSED - Part 1:

Just quickly though for sheeo:

The election was supposed to be yearly and you know this well

No? I had to call for an election for MnM after a ~2 year office. No yearly election was done for player councilor before FtX. Nine2 was elected to promotions now a little over a year ago, shall we call an election?

Yes; I think we should. But it's a bit much to do more of them at the same time. Let's get over the PC election first, shall we?

That being said; I want to reconsider the whole council structure as well-- before you interject and insert your narrative that I want to do this to get rid of FtX let me just preempt you there and say no. The council has been dysfunctional overall for a long time and it's time to look at how to improve it generally. I trust the board to be able to come up with a solution; which most likely involves going out and asking the community openly again. Some players have, completely on their own, come up with suggestions for how to restructure the leadership.

Not just "anyone" can join; they need to be proven sympathetic to the objectives defined in the statutes

Would you like to explain how you audited the first wave of members in order to prove them as sympathtic? Did you ask them to which they just said yes? Saying they need to agree to some vague pledge means nothing of any actual value.

Okay, that's your opinion and I respect that. How do you suggest we change that?

I don't know of any other association where you have to do anything further than pass a simple acceptance test of peers from the association as well as commit yourself sympathetic to the statutes.

What would be necessary in such a more thorough audit?

We are all ears on positive, sensible and well founded suggestions on this. There was a 3 week period where you could suggest changes to the statutes and you have been among the closest people to the inception of the association.

What further are you suggesting?

I'm suggesting you implement the revision I posted.

In the statutes? You're welcome to suggest this formally to the board; as I have told you before.

The issue is this takes a General Assembly to adopt into the statutes; this can at the earliest happen with 3 weeks notice and another extraordinary GA or next year. If you want it that bad go right ahead.

As for the pledge; I explained why the board should not and cannot make any such dedicated pledge to mutually work with the council in my earlier responses to FtX. I have also explained it in private to you before.

You were asked to explicitly provide your own input and suggestion as to this code of conduct: That hasn't happened.

"if you want to speed it up, why don't you to come up with a proposal for the code of conduct yourself?" is the exact quote. I don't think these two are the same. You're asking me to make it for you.

Yes. I don't think it's a priority and you seem to think it is. So please go ahead and make it.

24 days I asked the other board members for input as well, after you mentioned it.

Outside of filling in your pre-made narrative what is your point here? It's awfully convenient than you can pluck sections of chat to suit your conclusions.
On a side note; please refrain from sharing the private council chat without the permission of the other councillors. Just because you have no respect for confidentiality does not mean you have the right to impose that onto the rest of the councillors.

Damn dude, did you read the original post? Or open the document?

Yes, I did.

The statutes are public and you know it.

I'm asking people if they know what they are.

It was announced in the forum post I linked.

I'm not even going to bother replying to this backwards attempt to gaslight me into thinking i'm doing this for my own "power". So I can continue to moderate the vaults or something? What a joke it is that this baseless phrase was even mentioned.

Your suggested changes are to the statutes, not any "pledges". The statutes were accepted and cannot be changed unless you invoke the processes mentioned in those same statutes. You're welcome to go ahead and do that.

alt text

Fine; you're suggesting changes to both. It's really hard to argue with a wall of text when you can just pick and chose which part of it you're currently talking about.

Regarding the statutes I explained those cannot just be changed without the due process.

Regarding the pledge you have a problem with asking the board to even make such a pledge when it involves them assigning responsibility and powers to some non-association members.

I have yet to see any solution to this problem and I cannot do anything but conclude that this is really about you being unwilling to assign responsibility to the board and the association.

Hence the "accusations" of "power grabbing". If you think I'm wrong and you're willing to accept that the buck stops with the Board and the association then I'm happy to retract that.

Discussing anything with you is literally not possible. I can't even get you to properly read what's been said and i'm constantly being gaslit into some absolutely insane story of me trying to "power grab".

I don't intend to gaslight you. I've brought up the same reasons -- on many occasions and in different formulations at this point -- about why you cannot have the board pledge to only work on objectives agreed "mutually" on by non-board members.

I've yet to hear any good response to this.

You even went so far as to claim that because I didn't get mad at an advertisement made in 2017, that my claims against nine2's game project were based entirely on some personal vendetta. I can't be bothered. goodnight.

That's not the only reason I have to think you have a personal issue with Nine. That being said; I don't want to meddle with that and I'm trying not to take sides in this argument.

I've stated my opinions on the general topic of external advertisement and how specifically Nine has conducted himself relating to the Sanctuary project.

Oh, and release the patreon data.

The accounts and financial overview for the 2021 year will be public.

What exactly do you mean by "the patreon data"?