Player Complaint: Kaed

[Faris]

BYOND Key: Aboshehab

Game ID: Not applicable. 

Player Byond Key: @Kaed 

Staff involved: This has involved me when I was an administrator and numerous other staff members. Names can be found upon checking forum entries and WI entries.  

Reason for complaint: This is probably a novel complaint. It's novel since I cited myself as staff involved, which I'll explain further. I'll also keep this complaint short and state that I have no interest in debating good manners. 

First, I'm going to list the issues:

1- Insulting, belittling, passive aggressive and condescending. 

Spoiler

I could probably add every synonym and derivative of these words to the above. The tendency with Kaed is that I found that they do not generally directly insult a person, they found roundabout ways to do so. My belief is that this is a way for them to display their displeasure towards a notion or dislike towards a decision. There are times they are punished for this, others they are called out on it so they edit it out their post or at times simply ignored. It's a habit of theirs I've witnessed over my tenure as staff and even now. 

 

This isn't healthy for Aurora. 

It drives people away. It demoralizes staff that work hard to maintain this community. Being abrasive and insulting others is not a requirement to being both constructive and productive to the community. 

You may have your reasons for acting this way, but it is still not right and against the rules. You want harsher and stricter rules yet break them at the same time. 

 

2- Doing things out of spite.

Spoiler

Not a big issue as the former and perhaps not as much a habit, perhaps a one time thing but it all adds up. 

 

You openly stated how your Captain character is made in a way out of spite, due to your displeasure to an adminhelp you made. Maybe that's the extent of your intent, or maybe you wanted to goad staff into saying something about it, I'm unsure. What I do know this is not healthy towards the community. Spiteful actions spread negativity and toxicity. 

I named myself as staff involved is because I've had interactions with Kaed from a staff point of view, without citing any specifics, my last action towards them from memory was a forum ban. I could be wrong since I avoided using any privileged information making this complaint. 

To sum it up, I find that there is malice involved when Kaed voices themselves and at times how they act. It takes more effort to be abrasive than not saying anything. His attitude is not healthy to the community and demoralizes volunteer staff. If up to this point if they can't help but act this way to others, then maybe they should not be here. 

Did you attempt to adminhelp the issue at the time? If so, what was the known action taken by administration/moderation? No. It's a long term issue. I was going to report the post I posted but they modified it after Jackboot informed them they won't be part of the topic if he kept his attitude up. 

Approximate Date/Time: All if any relevant time stamps are present on forum and WI entries. 

[Kaed]

I'm not sure I'd constitute my rudeness as malice.  It's certainly a problem I've been repeatedly grumped at about, though I have to disagree strongly with your assertion that it takes a lot more effort to be abrasive than saying nothing.  When I see someone saying something I think is... less than correct, or inappropriate, it's actually a lot harder for me not to say anything than to 'be abrasive'. 

Personally, I think my tendency to restrain myself to being passive aggressive and sarcastic has been a definite improvement over my previous open insults, but yes, when someone tells me I'm being a prick, I usually edit it out.  It's nice that we can remove ill-considered statements from our posts, but I suppose in the end we still said them.  I'll address the specific examples here, since they're all I have to work with here.

My anger in that thread was not at being told no so much as that the IPC loremaster appeared to not wish to be bothered with actually doing anything. This seemed, to me, to be a poor mindset for someone who was volunteering to be the IPC lore dev.  If he had said "no, I think it's fine that we have IPC heads, I don't think we should do anything', that would be a decision on his part to make that part of the lore. But what I am instead seeing is that he isn't sure he likes it, but he doesn't want to actually shake the boat and hurt the feelings of the current IPC heads.

As someone who has, by your own testimony, 'frequently asked for stricter rules', this made me angry. I had figured, by pointing out the problem with this 'can't be bothered' argument (namely, that they were a lore dev and opting not to deal with a stated issue), and offering solutions, something of a compromise might be reached. When Jackboot posted that I was being a jerk, I removed the ruder parts and kept the actually valuable suggestion.

I should also point out that you are using somewhat of a blanket statement as a logical fallacy when you point out that 'I break rules even while I ask for them.'  Most of my demands for stricter rules have been in regards to lore or roleplay, not in regards to forum or OOC policy.  I have never advocated for rules about being nicer to each other on the forums or anywhere elsle, and while I report open insults and have had my own reported in return, I don't think being a bit sarcastic is necessarily ban-worthy. I'm sorry if it demoralized kres (I don't know if it did, or this is just conjecture on Aboshedab's side), but when I was lore staff, I had certain players telling me my color scheme for the akhandi was absolutely atrocious and demanding that I accept their proposals for alternatives, but I managed to keep myself together. Feedback on your behavior as a lore dev is something you should expect, even if it is negative, passive aggressive, sarcastic.

As for the captain character, the era where they were a 'spite' character has long since passed. They have been renamed to a more acceptable name and basically just function as a normal captain now. None of the behavior of the captain itself has ever been deliberately unconductive to the server or 'trolly', even when her name was 'Kawerii".  The fact that they have pink hair still is the only real legacy of that period.  The problem has already been addressed by admin staff and I'm not sure dredging up an issue that over a half year old by now is precisely relevant anymore.

Edited May 5, 2019 by Kaed

[Resilynn]

A week ago Kaed made a ‘suggestion’ thread that basically amounted to a player complaint with no oversight, alluding to things he perceived I had done with the phrase ‘some CMOs’.  It was passive aggressive and a pretty good example of kaed’s conduct in the community.  About half of the thread was deleted by admins once skull noticed and pinged them in. 

I’m not sure his general attitude is worth administrative action, it seems to stem from a place of general immaturity and an inability to see other perspectives. But it is worth improving on. 

[Kaed]

Just now, Resilynn said:

A week ago Kaed made a ‘suggestion’ thread that basically amounted to a player complaint with no oversight, alluding to things he perceived I had done with the phrase ‘some CMOs’.  It was passive aggressive and a pretty good example of kaed’s conduct in the community.  About half of the thread was deleted by admins once skull noticed and pinged them in. 

I’m not sure his general attitude is worth administrative action, it seems to stem from a place of general immaturity and an inability to see other perspectives. But it is worth improving on. 

That thread was intended as a question on what to do about player behavior in-round, I did not turn it into a screaming match.  I specifically named no one because it WASN'T a player complaint. I'm also not going to name who started turning it into a finger pointing match, because it's not relevant here.

The word you are looking for is 'unempathic', though, since we're literally in a thread about saying rude things about each other.  Words like 'immaturity' are negatively charged, and you should probably avoid them. 

[VTCobaltblood]

Hastily scrubbing away rude words when you're told you're being a dick is barely, if any, improvement. Words have impact, and just removing them from a post does not undo it.

On 05/05/2019 at 19:42, Kaed said:

I don't think being a bit sarcastic is necessarily ban-worthy.

"a bit sarcastic"
There is one post being put as an example in the thread, but your patterns of behavior are showing constantly. Here are some more examples of you being extremely condescending and aggressive.


Wow, thank you for indulging us.


I guess suggestions are garbage because people making them made them over a particular situation.


Not even sure how to comment on this.


"nobody cares about the lore you people make just let me play a shitbird"


whoo-weee

Edited May 6, 2019 by VTCobaltblood

[Kaed]

It's fairly easy to make things look worse than they actually are when you cherry pick pieces of a conversation and then provide your own context to make things seem as rude as possible.  For instance, that bit about 'indulging you' does not include the multiple post exchange I had with Conspiir where he continually insisted that I make up a plot and lore on the spot for the subject of the suggestion thread, was unsatisfied with my 'idk bluespace?' answer, despite multiple people including myself basically going 'dude it's not that important' until he flat out demanded I give him what he wanted and I snapped at him in that fashion.  After that, he seemed to realize he was being kind of pushy and explain that there had been a misunderstanding about what he was trying to communicate with me, and we had a much more amicable conversation in the rest of the thread.  You can't just fixate on a single part of a long post and try to blow up it's context to make it sound like I'm being snobby towards the community at large.

And I don't even remember some of these posts or the contexts of where they came from.  How far back are you digging, exactly?  Some of these sound like they are coming from my moody 'the server is doomed no one cares about the lore or anymore why should I even try' phase which was some time ago last year.  And one of them was even directly referring to a screenshot someone posted of an item they wanted in the game, I think? And I'm pretty sure 'Thanks, I hate it" is literally an internet meme that is used comedically when you see something you don't like, but I'm no... memeologist.. or anything.

In fact, I'm pretty sure aside from the one about the Molecular Destabilizer thread, none of these are even from this year.  If these posts were actionable at the time, and upset someone, they should have been reported?  If I have been such a consistantly toxic influence on the community, there would be a lot more examples of my toxicity, and they would be more recent.  As someone who has well over a thousand posts on this form, there is a plethora of things I have posted at other people.

Edited May 6, 2019 by Kaed

[Kaed]

I think that being drawn into an argument over an extremely subjective matter such as that ("Are you denying that you are toxic despite the evidence" is already and extremely loaded and leading question.  Whether this constitutes actual actionable evidence is not up to people outside of the staff team) is not something I need to be doing right now.  You and I in particular already have a history of being at odds with each other on multiple occasions, Scheveningen, so your input is far from impartial on this matter.

If there is a staff member or someone that actually is a decider in this issue that would like to address these stated issues or ask me questions, I'd be happy to answer them.  There has already been one flat out insult directed at me that a mod deleted, and there is no reason for this to turn into a kangaroo court. 

If someone has more items (such as posts where I was rude to someone, not accusatory questions or speculatory insights into my character)  they would like to present as evidence, feel free to do so. 

Edited May 7, 2019 by Kaed

[Kaed]

We have had this argument on multiple occasions, generally on discord, and in every situation you have failed to accept the answers I give you as to your satisfaction.  It's not that I don't want to dignify you with a response, it's that I just don't have an interest in recycling an old disagreement where you tell me I'm a horrible human being multiple times and demand I acknowledge your accusations.  It goes nowhere, and eventually I tell you that I have stopped caring about what you think about me and you get angry and storm off. 

No, I don't think I'm toxic, but you already know this, because you've asked me similar questions to this before.  It's also a meaningless statement, because generally people do not take actions they think are irrational or unjustified unless they are actively malicious. You have also accused me of this before, alongside statements like 'you are a troll'. I don't recall ever coming onto this forum thinking 'how can I upset a person today?', but the question of whether I think I am 'toxic' is irrelevant, because I'm not the one who is going to determine that. Neither are you.

I don't think it's any doubt that I have some anger issues and problems dealing with them, but generally speaking, I don't think that they're worthy of 'being removed from the community'.  I have cut down on/ceased directly insulting people, and while I have a tendency to be sarcastic and snark, I have yet to, say, quit the staff team in a rage and make a post where I insult the entire community at large in a vitriolic post. There's people still on this forum who have done that, in fact, and are welcome still here.

Edited May 7, 2019 by Kaed

[Faris]

On phone so excuse the formatting. I’m also going to say that people that post here shouldn’t be part of the problem I’m trying to have address here by being rude and insulting others themselves. Furthermore, I don’t really think Kaed and I need to have this turn to a kangaroo court, so I agree with him and say that this is my second and most likely last post unless something new occurs that matters or a member of staff tasked with this complaint posts.

 

So in regards to the post I posted which you scrubbed. I already explained why you scrubbed but I feel that scrubbing the post after leaving it for a while really does nothing as it is very likely the intended or referred to individual has already read it. You didn’t post it and change it a few moments later. 

 

Secondly, I can’t say for sure if you’re a toxic individual but the behavior I’ve seen does lend itself to be toxic behavior. I won’t act like an arm chair psychologist here and debate on the whys. I just think that this behavior is not acceptable and when you sum it up with other people’s behavior is adds to an undesired environment. I don’t even think the deleted comment was acceptable either. I also do not think being in a phase is an excuse, I’m uncertain if you meant it in that way.

 

Thirdly, I’m not judging you for a singular act. This post was sparked by the comment I posted but it encompasses the sum of it all. Though I avoided posting anything ancient and not handled as I feel that time can skew perspectives and weakens our understanding of context. You may have improved but I feel it doesn’t cut it, it still happens and it’s a negative behavior that I feel is not welcome here. I didn’t want to post this before as I don’t like to post anything with little visual proof so take this with a grain of salt. You’ve established yourself as an adverse individual in this community by numerous people to the point it has shied people away from interacting with you.

 

I’m not asking for the community to be thrown in a padded room to avoid people from getting hurt. I just think we can avoid driving people away since this behavior does, and when that stops, I think the rest follows.

Edited May 7, 2019 by Aboshedab

[Pratepresidenten]

Me and @ParadoxSpace will be taking this.

[Snakebittenn]

In our review, we have found that while Kaed's attitude (on the forums, atleast) is subpar, he has not done anything worthy of severe administrative punishment. We will be giving Kaed a shot at improving his etiquette, and users are encouraged to report any further breaches of conduct from him.

[Faris]

5 hours ago, ParadoxSpace said:

In our review, we have found that while Kaed's attitude (on the forums, atleast) is subpar, he has not done anything worthy of severe administrative punishment. We will be giving Kaed a shot at improving his etiquette, and users are encouraged to report any further breaches of conduct from him.

If no measure to is done to show that this behavior is unacceptable, then it'll keep happening. 

And when you say this, are you also saying that not even the lighter administrative punishments are even considered?

[Pratepresidenten]

I talked to him over DMs and Ive made it clear that this stops today. Any post or feedback negatively charged towards a topic or a poster will be met with harsh punishment, and they agreed that this was fine.

We didnt feel there was any need to punish what has already been said that hasnt already been punished by the forum administrative system, but instead look towards a better future of valid critique and a friendly atmosphere.

[Faris]

2 hours ago, Pratepresidenten said:

I talked to him over DMs and Ive made it clear that this stops today. Any post or feedback negatively charged towards a topic or a poster will be met with harsh punishment, and they agreed that this was fine.

 

I'm fine with this, you can lock the thread.

[Pratepresidenten]

Wonderful!

Locking and archiving.