Scheveningen

Your following attempts at feedback was followed with personal attacks and unfounded accusations of Fowl making a PR simply to troll everyone. Which was very clearly not the intent, considering the amount of arguments posed by Fowl and others in support of it. You went off-topic to insist Fowl made the PR in bad faith only rather than addressing why the PR was bad. If you don't think directly attacking other people isn't a foundation to create a flame war out of, especially considering the history between you and Fowl, then I don't know what to tell you.

Then we should all be punished, for all of us have our fair share of instigating a reaction out of the other. It doesn't matter who started it, yes, but being a part of that engagement makes anyone just as at fault as others who do virtually the same thing. There's a lot of disparagement that goes on behind the open nature of the Aurora discord as well. There is surely unlimited amounts of ammunition for either side to launch at the others. This is not as simple as Fowl being "bad guy who uses mean words and constantly harasses" and Jackboot who is "a good person who never mocks others and never makes a mountain out of a molehill." If Fowl's to be held accountable for alleged mean-spirited douchebaggery I expect the same amount of punishment to go around for anyone who dares do the same. I guarantee you that no one who posts regularly on the discord or the forums hasn't made a point out of doing this before. I don't think Fowl solely has the blame here. But if the community is absolutely insistent upon silencing and removing others from their position because they cannot get along with one another, then it will be difficult to oppose such an effort, wouldn't it?

If you've ever viewed an internet forum before, you've likely have been witness to many, many (many many) ineffectual discussions, reasonings, arguments, fights, and debates about all kinds of subject matter. You may have also noticed that many (many many) problems go unsolved due to the lack of general consensus. This thread will exist as a resource for others to utilize in order to come to better conclusions, seek resolutions to their discussions, and most importantly find the truth of any matter they may be discussing. Let me clear something up first: Arguments are not a bad thing, and are not to be confused with online fights. Arguments are discussions in which each side provides opposing reason and justification for their position, while fights are simply arguments gone wrong. Fights can be normally identified by the following attributes: 1.) One or more of the people involved are trying to prove themselves correct 2.) One or more of the people involved are trying to prove their opponents wrong 3.) One or more of the people involved are trying to avoid admitting fallibility to one or more of their claims 4.) One or more of the people involved are trying to attack the opposing person or opinion rather than the reasoning supporting it So, what is the point of an argument? This is asked often. But let me put it out there that it is often asked in varying contexts. While some people may be bringing large egos to the table, the purpose of having an argumentative discussion is not to prove themselves right and others wrong, nor is it to dance around the point and outright not making an effort to create a solution to a problem. The point of each discussion is to resolve an issue (or plural, issues) raised by a participant in a discussion. This is expected to be done in a manner that is either the best possible outcome for everyone or the next best alternative. Disagreement is to be expected, and there are points in discussion where they become polemic, and are no longer seeking to find the true ideal outcome of a situation, as often the participants in the argument may no longer be focused on discussing which position is better or has more support, and often it devolves into a fight amongst themselves on who has the better idea. An ideal position shouldn't attempt to disguise its weaknesses. By exposing your viewpoints to the public eye, you allow others to be invited into the discussion in order to discuss the merits and vulnerabilities of your arguments. You must be able to accept you will not have the objective truth in all cases nor the best resolution to an issue, if any at all, and by openly and honestly revealing the flaws of your own reasoning to others you allow others the opportunity to discuss such weaknesses and give yourself the benefit of third-party input to assist you gain better perspective on a subject matter. One of the most admirable and honest things you can do in an argument is to present a reasonable counter-argument against a position you agree with. This is not easy, understandably, as it requires specific amounts of awareness regarding the subject matter to be able to visualize for others effectively. This, however, allows proponents for/against the idea to gather more evidence/testimony/information for their position, or it gives them the opportunity to alter their position to make it closer to the ideal. This is a way to visualize for someone else on how to compromise, but may not be easy visualization for those who are generally inexperienced in a subject matter they are invested in, yet hold a specific position on the matter anyway. I present the basic ideas and concepts of the Code of Intellectual Conduct as taken from T. Edward Damer's Attacking Faulty Reasoning, which should (hopefully) be the base from which you build your arguments. __ Standards for the Code itself:Procedural: The rules that, when followed, most often lead to 1) the successful resolution of issues, 2) the most rationally endorsed beliefs and, we hope, 3) truth. In all arguments, the most pressing reason to continue any debate is to find the truth of the matter. Failing that, the aim of the debate should be to find an the best answer to the solution, which is by most standards, the position with the most relevant, important, and powerful reasoning. In cases where there each position is equally flawed, supported, or intrinsically correct, the argument should at least bring forth an acceptable and successful resolution of issues. Ethical: The rules that, when followed, constrain our behavior within contexts of disagreement in light of what we owe to others and to ourselves (i.e. these rules describe the best way to be and behave in a certain sphere of human life) While it is important to seek the truth in all arguments, you must remain conscious of your opponent; you are not arguing against them AT ALL, you are presenting reasoning and rebuttals against 1) their position, 2) their reasoning, or 3) their opinion or idea. The Fallibility Principle Each participant in a discussion of a disputed issue should be willing to accept the fact that he or she is fallible, which means that one must acknowledge that one’s own initial view may not be the most defensible position on the question. The TL;DR of this principle is that 'if you're wrong, admit it, and move on.' Don't spend all of your time defending an idea that you cannot honestly believe is the best solution just because your ego prevents you from admitting you're incorrect. Don't let yourself waste your time and that of others just because you don't wish for your opponent to be right. The Truth-Seeking Principle Each participant should be committed to the task of earnestly searching for the truth or at least the most defensible position on the issue at stake. Therefore, one should be willing to examine alternative positions seriously, look for insights in the positions of others, and allow other participants to present arguments of or raise objections to any position held on an issue. As I mentioned before, the sole purpose of an argument should be to find the most reasonable truth possible. If someone presents a solution that is different from your idea (even if it has similarities) you should be willing to consider it, because, as the Fallibility Principle states, you do have the ability to be incorrect in your opinions. The Clarity Principle The formulations of all positions, defenses, and attacks should be free of any kind of linguistic confusion and clearly separated from other positions or issues. Don't be a Politician. Adding overly colorful vocabulary in an effort to bullshit your way into a position of authority on the topic is a disgusting tactic, and against the nature of truth-seeking in the first place. If you are intentionally trying to confuse an opponent in a discussion, then you are not actually trying to find the best resolution or truth, you are trying to prove them wrong or prove yourself right. The Burden-of-Proof Principle The burden of proof for any position usually rests on the participant who sets forth the position. If and when an opponent asks, the proponent should provide an argument for that position. If I say that 2 + 2 = 4, and someone disagrees with me, I should provide my reasoning for this idea. Just because something is "simple logic" to you, doesn't mean that it is inherently flawless to everyone else. Again, make sure you follow the Fallibility Principle, and don't be afraid to concede the point if you don't have relevant, factual, truthful, or strong enough evidence to support your position, and your opponent does. It should be kept in mind that the Burden of Proof changes quite rapidly in a conversation. If I say "Religion is full of lies," and someone responds with "What is your reasoning, because I disagree," then I would have to respond with an acceptable reason, but would immediately be able to ask THEM for THEIR reason. In that situation, I might respond with "Because miracles aren't physically possible, there's no way Adam, Eve, and the following generations could live to be 900 years old, and because religious texts are more often than not written by a follower of the religion, not the deity the religion is based upon. What are your reasonings for disagreeing with me?" at which point the Burden of Proof becomes switched. The Principle of Charity If a participant’s argument is reformulated by an opponent, it should be carefully expressed in its strongest possible version that is consistent with what is believed to be the original intention of the arguer. If there is any question about that intention or about any implicit part of the argument, the arguer should be given the benefit of the doubt in the reformulation and/or, when possible, given the opportunity to amend it. Give your opponent the benefit of the doubt when quoting them. Don't intentionally misquote them in order to make your own argument stronger. If they say "I had a dream where I wished everyone was dead, and it terrified me. I would never want something like that," and you quote them to say "I [wish] everyone was dead... want something like that," then you're not only being an asshole, but you're also violating your argumentative integrity, and ought to be ashamed of yourself for twisting their words. The Structural Principle One who argues for or against a position should use an argument that meets the fundamental structural requirements of a well-formed argument. Such an argument does not use reasons that contradict each other, that contradict the conclusion, or that explicitly or implicitly assume the truth of the conclusion. Neither does it draw any invalid deductive inferences. Examples of this would be "Jesus Christ is the son of God because he said so," (The reason assumes the truth of the argument), "Beethoven's music is bad because he was deaf," (That is unfounded, and is an invalid deductive inference), or "Gravity is fake because when I spit into the air, it comes back down," (The evidence and reasoning contradicts the conclusion). The Relevance Principle One who presents an argument for or against a position should set forth only reasons whose truth provides some evidence for the truth of the conclusion. "Oranges are better than cats because aliens are allergic to cowboy hats." While there's a chance (however small) that all of these statements are true, they are unrelated and thus cannot provide evidence for the truth of each other. The Acceptability Principle One who presents an argument for or against a position should provide reasons that are likely to be accepted by a mature, rational person and that meet standard criteria of acceptability. A claim that is a matter of undisputed common knowledge A claim that is confirmed by one’s personal experience or observation A claim that is adequately defended in the context of the argument or at least is capable of being adequately defended by some other accessible source An uncontroverted eyewitness testimony An uncontroverted claim from a relevant authority The conclusion of another good argument A relatively minor claim that seems to be a reasonable assumption in the context of the argument A claim that contradicts credible evidence, a well-established claim, or a legitimate authority A claim that is inconsistent with one’s own experience or observations A questionable claim that is not adequately defended in the context of the argument or not capable of being adequately defended by evidence in some other accessible source A claim that is self-contradictory or linguistically confusing A claim that is based on another unstated but highly questionable assumption This speaks for itself, so I won't go over it at all. The Sufficiency Principle One who presents an argument for or against a position should attempt to provide relevant and acceptable reasons of the right kind, that together are sufficient in number and weight to justify the acceptance of the conclusion. This simply means that you can't say 2 + 2 = 5, because 2.49999 can be rounded down to 2 and can thus be considered 2, and when 2.499999 is added to 2.499999, the answer is 4.99999998, which can be rounded up to 5. The Rebuttal Principle One who presents an argument for or against a position should include in the argument an effective rebuttal to all anticipated serious criticisms of the argument that may be brought against it or against the position it supports. This one is obvious, but it pretty much means that you can't present an argument like "2 + 2 =/= 4", because the obvious rebuttal is "Yes it is, you dipshit. Please don't ever reproduce," and you should have anticipated that. The Suspension-of-Judgment Principle If no position is defended by a good argument, or if two or more positions seem to be defended with equal strength, one should, in most cases, suspend judgment about the issue. If practical considerations seem to require a more immediate decision, one should weight the relative benefits or harm connected with the consequences of suspending judgment and decide the issue on those grounds. One of the best examples is the Apples vs Oranges argument. You can present arguments saying that Apples are much better because blah, blah, blah, and blah, and you can also present arguments saying that Oranges are much better because bleh, bleh, bleh, and bleh, but because the arguments for each side are equally strong, you can make no unbiased decision. The Resolution Principle As issue should be considered resolved if the argument for one of the alternative positions is a structurally sound one that uses relevant and acceptable reasons that together provide sufficient grounds to justify the conclusion and that also includes an effective rebuttal to all serious criticisms of the argument and/or the position it supports. Unless one can demonstrate that the argument has not met these conditions more successfully than any argument presented for alternative positions, one is obligated to accept its conclusion and consider the issue to be settled. If the argument is subsequently found by any participant to be flawed in a way that raises new doubts about the merit of the position it supports, one is obligated to reopen the issue for further consideration and resolution. If one side of the argument is obviously better defended, and the other side has no other possible terms for contention, and all other possibilities for alternatives to the more accepted position have been dismissed with effective rebuttals, then you shouldn't continue arguing, as the matter has been successfully solved.

Sorry, I don't think that's really accurate, due to the lack of physical contact. This is more equivalent of talking trash/banter about someone else at the same lunch table as you but that person takes offense to the trash-talking.

Defeatist responses aside here, I don't see anything that could've broken a rule here, I think the only thing that matters is the matter of breaking rules. If you can't distinguish when Fowl is bantering or not, I'm gonna have to be blunt in saying that's your problem, no one else's. It's a lot more clear to me and everyone else when he's not being serious (i.e., being humorously brazen and saying stupid things just to get a chuckle).

The problem was, with that specific case, people were actively breaking the subforum rules by changing the subject matter of justifying the changes into it being an all-out character assassination attempt on Fowl to undermine the validity of the PR. If I might break the tone of this being a wholesome Christian server for a moment, but the transition of a 'debate the relevant topic matter' into a 'character-assassinate Fowl as fast and hard as possible' is a hecking silly thing. Perhaps fowl should've deferred to someone else in that case to moderate the forum, but Fowl is perfectly within his rights to semi-moderate the board by removing offensive posts from public view and asking an administrator/mod to deal with it. Such as JB is perfectly within his rights to moderate lore applications or etc. The closest indicator to the truth is that everyone is at fault for behaving the way they have. If you are caught up about someone moderating a thread in a subforum they have access to, perhaps consider not shitposting the thread to death if you care enough about the issue. It's a very funny way to show how much you care about development if you choose to insult the developer and make grandiose accusations about them as a substitute for actually discussing the merit of the changes.

The absolute lack of awareness as to why this is a problem.

The intent of what I was posting was to drive the point home that it would be incredibly unlikely that 400 years could pass and it'd solve sexism entirely. Not only is it boring from a narrative point of view (because there's very few conflicts in terms of being a human if you take all that conflict away from them and throw it elsewhere), but it doesn't seem rather fathomable that discrimination would be instantly phased out in 400 or so years, yet other races are systemically plagued with the same systemic issues. It just does not make consistent sense. Intersectionality is something of an interesting thing I'd love to see tackled ICly and despite all the inevitable drama we'd see from female characters about this, we'd also see a lot of intersectional bonding over this dilemma. Which would lead to a lot of really interesting interactions. Discrimination is surely a sour subject to discuss IRL and sometimes people play video games to escape it... but I feel like if you're playing a roleplay server of all places to escape, rather than get immersed, then you may be in for a rough ride when the immersive elements get a little too real, as they often do.

I was going to expand even further, but you ended on this low note, making it pointless to reply with anything else but the following; Then don't post. Only you are responsible for what you're comfortable to discuss about. Don't say something like "I recommend closing this thread because this is something I personally am not comfortable talking about it", because the rest of us still want to have this discussion. With or without you, it doesn't matter. You can choose not to participate.

It would be nice if assistants had an outlined purpose. I've never seen anyone 'need' an assistant, ever. I often see assistants ask if someone needs an assistant and nobody responds.

Literally everything burger said couldn't have been said by me better. Gosh, talking about social issues is just crazy.

Sure let's talk about the whole world too. Did you know that while the average woman will earn 78 cents to the average man's dollar in the United States, globally this extends to women only earning on average 50 cents to the man's dollar. Assuming we make progress at all, at the current rate, closing the pay gap will take another 170 years. http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2016/ Abortion rights are terrible globally. 8-18% of maternal deaths are due to unsafe abortion: https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/induced-abortion-worldwide And roughly 22,500 to 44,000 women died in 2014 due to abortion-related deaths. There are still six countries in the world that do not permit abortion under any circumstances. There is no nation in the world that has a gender parity score of 100%. http://projects.two-n.com/world-gender/ Globally, 214 million women still can't get hold of modern contraception. https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2017/greater-investments-needed-meet-womens-sexual-and-reproductive-health-needs Satisfying the current unmet need for contraception this year could prevent 67 million unintended pregnancies per year. Women also don't have work-life balance. At all. http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/work-life-balance/ If women and men were to share unpaid tasks equally, women would gain 5 hours of free time per week. This is hardly an exhaustive list either. Women's rights across the world are not as good as people say it is. It's really bad right now. Deny the data and facts all you like. Trends sweep up and down, and the current era points to a stall right now. Empowerment of women isn't doing enough for them because they still are not getting the same advantages men on average would benefit from. You can literally draw comparisons from this to what the in-game species currently experience in lore. You think there won't be women below the poverty line in 2461? Is it suddenly sexist to recognize that women are facing the worst kind of oppressiveness in terms of reality and implement it as still an existing problem within the game universe? Is it too 'immersion-breaking' to try and incorporate that an entire group of people can suffer from a load of disparate tragedies thanks to societal conditions allowing them to disaffect people, women most of all? I say we implement this, because it is very surprising how some of you outright gloss over the existing problems in real life thinking you can escape the facts of reality forever. It is time to get woke.

That is not true, and this is a pressing issue in the states right now because gender equality has stalled in the US recently. https://news.stanford.edu/2018/03/16/gender-equality-stalls-u-s-stanford-report-finds/

Point to the exact moment in lore that humanity instantly destroys gender discrimination.

It's a bit questionable that someone would doctor an image's context to push a point separate from the actual intent of someone else's statement, I will say that much.

I would think there's a lot of economic incentive to withhold a percentage of someone's pay. Such as taxes. Taking money out of a paycheck for any damages they incurred on the job. A lack of seniority. So on. If you with-hold 50 cents from someone's paycheck every week, by the end of the month the company will have saved $2.00 in not paying that person (assuming a month has 4 weeks perfectly). Multiply this by 12, you save $24 a year for one person who works at the company by not paying them 50 cents more a week. Corporations get away with this shit all the time.

Uh, are you sure?

Females will earn 20% less paycheck-to-paycheck, as already stated in the PR. This is an extremely dystopic universe. The entire humanity timeline is about various economic depressions, war, a bureaucracy of the Alliance stretched too thin that it broke off and splintered into various other nations that met other factions and species with their own problems of equality. Tau Ceti may be a 'liberal stronghold' but it is far from being a utopia. It is an independent nation with constant amounts of pressure being levied against it by the adjacent Alliance politics and the only thing supporting it is the NanoTrasen corporation choosing it as its main headquarters. Sexism and inequality are eternal issues that humanity will fight throughout the ages. There's no established background for any civil rights groups within human history lore to explain why people have this concept that men are socially equal to women. I highly doubt the stigma about women will suddenly go away in 400 years. "We've made so much progress in 100 years" is a result of post-World War ideology pushing for human rights but doesn't reasonably indicate that it would SMASH SEXISM 400 years later, especially considering the swathe of economic and social depressive conditions listed in the Timeline of Humanity. The tremendous progress we've had the past 100 years doesn't mean all of humanity destroys sexist establishment in the next 400. Lots of things can happen to stop progress.

And yet every professional I know on the subject of women's rights says it is still not enough. Pink tax, gender pay disparity, sexual harassment, sexual objectification by the media, inter-sectional issues of race and sex, under-representation in government, under-representation in the executive suite, under-representation in the news media, under-representation in the tech sector. Women are far more likely to shoulder household burden as a working mother than a working father would. Of the 800,000 people trafficked across international borders every year, 80% of those are women. Female soldiers face sexual harassment and threats of sexual assault every day. Women in general face greater risk of domestic violence and sexual assault, young women face inequality in high school sports. Retired women are twice as likely to face poverty than retired men. Women of all ages are also more likely than men to live below the poverty line. There's no such thing as coincidence. If something is the way it is, something happened to make it that way. Sources: https://www.marieclaire.com/culture/a13816/things-that-cost-more-for-women/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/09/gender-pay-gap-facts/ https://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/news/a29539/black-women-equal-pay-day/ http://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/leadership-and-political-participation/facts-and-figures https://www.businessinsider.com/why-women-arent-getting-more-c-suite-jobs-2014-9#ixzz3jqzI7m2k https://www.cnet.com/g00/news/women-in-tech-the-numbers-dont-add-up/?i10c.ua=1&i10c.encReferrer=&i10c.dv=19 http://business.time.com/2012/06/28/more-women-are-in-the-workforce-so-why-are-we-still-doing-so-many-chores/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3651545/ https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/07/us/reports-of-military-sexual-assault-rise-sharply.html?_r=0 https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/06/girls-high-school-sports-inequality/396782/ https://money.cnn.com/2014/05/13/retirement/retirement-women/ http://www.un.org/womenwatch/directory/women_and_poverty_3001.htm

Why wouldn't it? Women get paid time off on maternity leave. Companies nowadays can choose to not hire a woman on the basis of being concerned of whether or not the individual will be able to make it into work if she gets pregnant (i.e., if she is married). Maternity leave is one of the largest reasons why there's such a pay disparity IRL for women compared to that of men.

Works for me.

>Lii'dra have abducted colonists from the Frontier worlds and openly skirmished Elyran territory, committing mass bio-terrorism >Admiral Frost by himself goes out of his way to rescue Frontier refugees disaffected by the impoverished lifestyle of living independent from government, all the while exposing the previous Sol Alliance government for not being as humanitarian as Frost >Homosexuals are persecuted and classified as sex offenders day-by-day on Adhomai, forced to work in concentration camps to 'indoctrinate the gay' out of them >Concepts of gender equality, synthetic rights and religious freedoms are non-existent in the Hegemony >NanoTrasen literally pays humans and Skrell more than the other species (including 'free' IPCs), and outright bars non-human or non-skrell Captains, and restricts other head of staff types And yet introducing a gender-based pay disparity is 'too political.' Amusing.

It will be discounted either way. It's not how dismissals work. Anyway, to put it out there, I support this pr for the following reason as stated already by Skull: This is not a RP universe where equality and fairness is the central virtue. Real life today has systemic sexism problems in practically every country in the world, and no amount of laws or affirmative action attempts have healed the divide between the sexes. If it's been roughly several thousand years humanity's been on this earth, what makes anyone think that 450 more years into the future that sexism will be far less existent? Literally look at the entire Unathi lore. It massively characterizes Unathi males as extremely patriarchal and oppressive towards those of the female disposition, to the point where Unathi females literally need a caretaker by law to be able to go outside. We're already hitting the major stops of themes of sexism. It doesn't matter that a woman is the figurehead of NanoTrasen either. A TV show character puts this best: https://youtu.be/xTd3Bry-ZT4

That's not something within the player's control to be able to turn out positively in their own favor ICly, which is why I didn't cover it. The only way to deal with that is to adminhelp it, because that's a rare case of advanced shittiness.