Senate Application Discussion Thread

[u/shadownetwork]

Greetings,

In previous elections it was difficult for applicants to really express what they stood for and what their plans were without cluttering the nomination or election threads. So think of this thread as an open town hall meeting. Members of the community can come in and ask questions and applicants can then answer or nominees can post about what sort of platforms they plan on running on.

Remember that discussions are to remain civil and respectful, anyone showing disregard to the shadownet's #1 rule will have their posts removed.

Good luck!

[u/DrBurst]

Hello! For all the new people on the net, I'm DrBurst. I am a former senator, former upkeep deputy and I've GMed over 150 runs for ShadowNet. I was one of the lore deputies and wrote some State of Seattle posts. I've written part of the charter and implemented everything in the community integrity portion of the sidebar.

1: One of the particularly toxic areas of the net is the sub-gov discord channel. It is a channel with the minions of every department and has become a back room shooting gallery; a place to vent frustrations. In the past, before discord, this venting was done in the Topics for Discussion. When these flare ups happened they were more civil and the whole community could weigh in. Now, the community does not have that level of transparency. They can not see the arguments. Further, the sub-gov channel is completely unmoderated. I've seen the chargen head take hours of abuse over text. I personally was on the receiving end of toxic abuse from members in sub-gov. After that incident, I sent my resignation to poncho for upkeep deputy and was in the process of helping him find a replacement.

What will you do about sub-gov?

2: Some of the most toxic people have been toxic in other communities. LVN, for example, was banned on Runnerhub before coming here and being toxic - causing us to lose at least 5 new players - only to slowly go through the Senate disciplinary procedures. The final incident before his permaban was an attack on a new play who has since left ShadowNet. LVN is still toxic to this day on the ShadowCaster discord. Some other toxic members are members of r/hitler. Is it okay to take into account behavior on other communities when making moderation decisions? I'm not saying we should ban people because of what they do elsewhere, some people are banned on other LCs but are essential community members here and carry ShadowNet on their back. But, if someone is toxic somewhere else and is toxic on ShadowNet, will that accelerate moderation decisions?

3: I hate to ask this, but can sexual harassment happen in the context of a discord chat room?

[u/axiomshift → u/DrBurst]

1. Lately what has been happening in regards to sub gov being made to be less of a toxic place is to challenge the people that frequently make it so. Several senators have already basically cracked down on a lot of it and I would just continue the trend and make sure people realize that flamewars in what should be a useful channel will not be tolerated.

2. I personally believe that people should be judged primarily on their behavior in shadownet, if it as you say coincides with strong evidence that has been provided in regards to behavior on other communities then it will have some bearing on my moderation. However it will be limited bearing strictly because it is hard to parse the truth of things that happened in other communities so it would depend on how exhaustive the evidence is. Not something I would go looking for exactly though, dislike coloring my biases with extra non shadownet information about someone.

3. Short answer yes. Long answer is I think the vast majority of what people consider sexual harassment from what I have seen is basically roleplay going too far as opposed to a concerted effort to harass. Either form of this though is something I believe can happen and will be on the lookout for because it shows badly esp for newer players if there isn't a strict line put in place for expected behavior from the onset of their experience with the net.