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Dogberry · **03-17-2010, 08:42 PM**

Thanks for clearing that up, Castiel. I see what you're saying now.

I agree that exclusion is basically the only thing we can do should we have to take action. It certainly won't be a very tough sanction, and it shouldn't be.

River · **03-17-2010, 08:43 PM**

I think your post hits upon a lot of my concerns, Castiel. Thank you.

I know I have been rather quiet up until now, and I didn't wish to cause an uproar, but Leviathan is one of those servers who has had a dominant role-play linkshell for the past six years. While a few other small linkshells popped up here and there, Lost Boys, to the best of my knowledge, was the main role-play venue for those on Leviathan, and because of this, we have been somewhat isolated from dealing with other guilds.

I know that I myself, and at least a few other of the Lost Boys members have been wary of sticking our feet too far into this pool. We're a sheltered bunch, I'll admit it myself, and I just wanted to make sure, that like Dogberry mentioned, that the RPC wouldn't attempt to act as a police force over the guilds.

My main concern is in the creation of rules when overseeing inter-guild events, and, indeed, in the events themselves. We all have our own ways, and that's what makes us all special and intriguing. Some of the guilds will be champions of justice, while others may follow a more shady and mysterious storyline. When you attempt to draw lines between them, or even try to get them together for an event, things are likely to go awry, especially In Character, if not Out of Character.

I'm very wary of the idea of these inter-guild events, but I'm open to hearing more about how they could be managed or put together in a way that would allow for all walks of characters to come together in the same setting.

Eva · **03-17-2010, 08:44 PM**

I can see a lot of potential for this coalition, if it's handled delicately. Castiel (or any other liaison for the RPC) could serve as a loudspeaker on all applicable guild forums, helping keep them up to date with what is going on elsewhere in the RP community. On Sylph I know Zarik often had his finger on the pulse of the RP populations from other servers and while such a thing may not have been directly helpful to our linkshell, it was reassuring at times to know where we stood on some issues. Obviously this would be different if we were all on the same server, and I can see the value of knowing what the other communities are up to - cross-guild events for instance. The following notion is premature probably (most of this is since there's really no infrastructure set up yet), but perhaps some of the guilds might grant Castiel forum rights to be able to post RPC-wide announcements - or perhaps repost a PM if uncomfortable giving a non-member posting priviliges. Others may prefer to defer to the leadership and decide if their guild wishes to participate in a cross-guild event. This may differ from guild to guild depending on how much involvement that particular guild wishes to have with the others. Obviously this will vary depending on the type of guild it is.

Like the United Nations analogy that keeps cropping up, a guild should probably go through some process in order to be recognized and represented as a part of the RPC. Maybe not necessarily a formal application, but the leaders of a guild should probably make some sort of an announcement to the RPC in order to be recognized.

As others have stated, I too don't want to see the RPC overpowering any one guild or becoming involved with its internal affairs. I don't want to see a laundry list of rules that must be followed in order to be a part of the coalition. I think it would be really poor form for the RPC to come down on a guild and "tell it how to do its job" if a member of that guild has a particular complaint, for instance.

Also Castiel, have you given any thought to your own role in this? Will you be an errant, splitting your time evently between all of the guilds? There may be some concerns if you belong to one guild and others do not feel adequately represented. Or do you envision the RPC consisting of multiple administrators?

Not trying to ruffle any feathers or upset anyone. Just trying to address problems before they become problems.

Smiling River · **03-17-2010, 08:45 PM**

That's a compelling argument Castiel, BUT... a group that had problems with other Guilds to that point probably dislikes most/all of the RPC community already. For example if we had something like this back on Sylph, that LS wouldn't care about being isolated because it would already be on bad terms with every other LS listed... so just isolating them wouldn't really effect them as they probably wouldn't care to have anything to do with other shells anyway.

Plus that group, in their minds, already had a reason for saying that. There wont be many instances where one group is clearly wrong. To them, they are right in saying that and perhaps that's how they felt. I fear voting on such things will partially be a popularity contest.

Dogberry · **03-17-2010, 08:45 PM**

OK, so who is going to be the first to .dat mod blue helmets for us?

Nanapariri · **03-17-2010, 08:46 PM**

This is Starsider Communities current policy:

Quote:With every community there will be people who disagree with each other. In this community I like to encourage differing opinions, and I like open and honest discussion. Although, one thing that is not tolerated here is harassment. Unfortunately, there seems to be a bit of an outbreak of harassment in this community. I am not singling anyone out at this time, and I understand there are those here who speak plainly and bluntly. I don't want to discourage that. So what I'd like to talk about here is first what harassment is, how it is dealt with in game, and then how it relates to SSG.

SOE's "Reporting Inappropriate Language / Harassment" defines Harassment as a relatively broad term, and that comes in different forms. Several examples are included here:

Ã¢Â€Â¢Abusive/inappropriate language/threats directed at an individual or group of players
Ã¢Â€Â¢Abusive/inappropriate in-game email
Ã¢Â€Â¢Use of house signs or city names to defame or ridicule another individual or group of players
Ã¢Â€Â¢Using a vehicle or pet to disrupt a player's targeting, or prevent a player from providing service for others
Ã¢Â€Â¢Following a player around and interfering with their hunting/questing
Ã¢Â€Â¢Spamming / sending repeated tips/invites to a player.

Each incident is looked at on a case by case basis, and any action taken will be commensurate with the type of harassment found or witnessed.

In game if you are a victim of harassing behavior (Paraphrasing Amu'lette and Lona here) the best way to deal with it is to /report and send a Community Standards ticket. The syntax is "/report <name>" for example "/report Tziena". This captures the last few minutes of chat, group chat, guild chat and instant messages and sends it to the CS's log database. This does not actually file a report against the offender. Although, to preserve the chat information you must /report anytime you wish to report anyone for harassment. The next thing to do is to file a customer service ticket ("H" by default). Please, cite the name of the harasser and the approximate time the incident took place.

There are a couple of things to note regarding SOE's definition of harassment and sexual harassment:

Quote
7. You may not abuse other players, customer service representatives, or the tools provided to request support.

The following is a short list of things that would be considered "abuse" in game:

Hate Mongering - participation in or propagation of Hate literature, behavior, or propaganda related to real -world characteristics.

Sexual Abuse or Harassment - untoward and unwelcome advances of a graphic and sexual nature. This includes virtual rape, overt sexual overtures, and stalking of a sexual nature.

Attempting to Defraud a CS Representative - Petitioning with untrue information with the intention of receiving benefits as a result. This includes reporting bug deaths, item loss, or fraudulently accusing other players of wrongdoing.

Impersonating a Customer Service Representative - falsely representing yourself to another player as a SOE GM or other SOE, LucasArts, or Lucasfilm employee.

CS Personnel Abuse -- sending excessive unsolicited tells to a CS Representative, excessively using say or other channels to communicate to a CS Representative, making physical threats, using abusive language against a CS Representative

Submitting inappropriate or spamming CS tickets Submitting tickets with abusive language and/or profanity or continual submission of CS tickets regarding any issue which Customer Service has already determined is closed.

Using Threats of Retribution by GM Friends - attempting to convince another player that they have no recourse in a disagreement because favoritism is shown to one of the parties by the SOE or LucasArts staff.

Please note that this list is not all inclusive and a GM and/or a Lead GM may determine that other actions are considered abuse. This will be done on a case by case review.

Abuse of others will result in disciplinary action being taken against the account that may include official warnings, account suspensions, or account terminations depending on the severity of the incident which will be determined by a GM and a Lead GM. Multiple suspensions or account termination will result in the termination of all SOE game accounts.

8. "Roleplaying" does not grant license to violate these rules.

Though Star Wars Galaxies is a roleplaying game set in the Star Wars universe, the claim of "roleplay" will not be accepted in defense of any of the anti-social behaviors mentioned above. As an example, you are in no case (PvP or otherwise) allowed to "train" a guard onto an enemy in protection of your homeland.

By all means we want to encourage you to play your role, we just cannot allow that role-play to be done at another customer's expense.

For more information please see the following links:

[SWG] Rules and Policies: Rules of Conduct

[SWG] Community Standards: Reporting Inappropriate Language / Harassment

[SWG] Customer Service: Using the /report command

What does this mean for SSG? There are two things I would like to say regarding harassment and SSG.

First, we do not in anyway condone harassment on these forums. If you believe you have been harassed either in a thread or a private message, send a report to the admin. This will point the admins to the thread in question or send a copy of the PM to the Admin. (There is no way for admins to go to your private message box directly.) At that point the Admin will take action accordingly.

Secondly, unfortunately, in game harassment does not affect a person's rights on SSG. SSG is not tied to SOE's customer service team. So, unfortunately, unless someone causes issues on this forum, there is no way we can perform any disciplinary action against the player's account on this site. But if the actions spread to this site, please, report it to us and citing screenshots from in game to support a chronic behavior issues is acceptable. We do -not- want anyone to feel uncomfortable about posting on this site because of a harassing stalker.

In closing I'd like to mention that this admin team is here to help facilitate roleplay on Starsider. Harassment and similar behavior does not promote or in anyway perpetuate our goals with this site. If you need someone to talk to about these types of issues, please, do not hesitate to send one of us a PM. Anything you say will be held in the strictest confidence. Reporting issue like this not only helps you personally, but helps better the community over all.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Quote:An event template for all characters that wish to participate in cross guild events. For example we can have people grouped up by what RP they are willing to partake in rather than what Guild they're in (since that wont matter for server-wide events). That way if people want to invite only a certain bunch that will tolerate their story, they can just go to that list and contact them. Or if people don't want the aforementioned winged/blue skinned characters at their event, they can invite only those that are against that.

The "Citizen" posts were different than the guild organization in starsider. I'll explain how they handle it with links for reference.

There was a forum titled "Galactic Events". Anyone and everyone could plan and event but there were guidelines on how it would be posted like so:

After a run at separating the event commentary by others from the event threads/information, we have decided to return to allowing people to add their comments to the threads in this section. This post will address the guide lines for posting in this section, and any relevant rules.

When posting an event, please post all relevant information in the first post as this helps to keep all the information in one place for people to read. If any changes to the event information occurs, it is recommended to just edit the first post, and keep all details current there. The initial post should contain details such as time, place, any rules, and other related information as needed.

Threads should be locked a week after the event is completed, if applicable, to help keep the section from being bloated by threads going on from events that have already ended.

Please keep all comments and posts relevant to the event thread itself.

Lately, there has been a trend to bump up a thread by just posting '/bump' or something to that effect. We ask that people please desist from doing that. If you want to post a reminder in the thread on the day of the event or close to it, then that is understandable.

Suggested event template for posting events --

Name of Event:
In-game Contact:
Server:
Location:
Waypoint:
Date:
Description:

People would post their events using the template in the forum and could put it on the site calendar also if they wanted.

Also, my baby that I started is still being run by another person now, was a thread specifically for regularlly reoccuring events with an open invitation for the entire RP Community. For Incstance I was in a guild of hostess Twileks, sort of like Geisha concept, and we has a weekly social and it was on this thread.

This is the formatt for this thread.:

Quote:In an effort to make finding your events a little easier I am asking that you post them in this thread along with the Galactic Events forum. I will update this page based off the information found in this thread. Updates will occur every Friday.

Name of Event:

Host: Tell us who is throwing the event.

Location: Where is the event going to be held? Include planet and waypiont.

Time: When is the scheduled time the event will be taking place? Is this going to be a weekly, bi-monthy, monthy, yearly event? Indicate the time zone as well.

Faction friendly: Is this event open to certain factions?

Description: Give a brief description of what this event is about, what people can expect to do if they attend and rules if there are any.

Link: To your original Reoccurring RP Event thread.

Nanapariri · **03-17-2010, 08:47 PM**

The citizen introduction thread can be seen here:

Starsider Citizen thread

As you can see its a citizen directory then we had a wiki:

Wiki

In this people generally put allowances in it so others that wanted to RP with someone could check and send a PM or something. Here, for example, was mine from one of my characters:

Quote:RP Preferences
'Play Along With Issued Bounty On You:'

Yes, just PM me about it first

RP Capture:

Yes.

RP Capture Maximum Time:

Negociable.

Assumed RP Torture (fade to black scenario):

Yes

RPed Out Torture:

Yes only with permission via tell first.

Limb Loss:

On a case by case basis.

Permadeath:

Not unless I plan to retire the character.

Preferred Combat Method:

Emote primarily. Will do PVP on a case by case basis.

Romantic RP:

Yes, but I do not cyber.

This was done in an effort so RPers could find eachother and RP across guilds and find people with a similiar RP style.

SolanaVernon · **03-17-2010, 08:48 PM**

I like this Tsumi guy. Making lots of sense to me. Dohoho.

It's more like this. This is what I'm worried about. I'll try to be clear about what I'm explaining. I'll use fake-examples. Not saying it ever happened at any point.

Say LeaderA and I butted heads. Say he "banned" me from the guild, for whatever reason. Couldn't get over the argument, etc. etc. Again, for whatever reason. Cue smear campaign within his own guild. Now there's bitterness between myself, his members, and what have you. Say there was a cross-guild event. By this time, I'm with another group who is involved with this event.

People hold grudges. Let's not sugar coat any of this. Pretty sure that LeaderA's group would exclude any and all interactions that had to do with me. A reminder, this is just a hypothetical situation that does occur, has occurred, and might occur again, despite being in a group multi-guild setting. Even with an overseer, if LeaderA's group is overseeing this, they pretty much have the ball in their court and can blind-eye any problems that occur, placing blame on say--myself--who was attending the event.

I love the evidence-only thing. That's awesome.

This kind of thing happens in real life, too. It's stupid high school mannerisms. And on that note, don't join the Marines. It's high school all over again. With adults. LOL

I'm not stating to oversee problems with individual groups, rather, how guilds as a whole handle "problem" members and how that will be handled during events where many people will be showing up.

Nanapariri · **03-17-2010, 08:51 PM**

I'm a girl actually lol.

Anyway all I can tell you is that Starsider has managed to run 5 + years without and major incident the caused the community to self destruct.

Short Answer to the hypothetical situation: The person handling an event has the absolute right to ask anyone to leave for any reason since they are hosting an event. If people see someone excluding a person or group and it was unreasonable generally other people left the event and they stopped Rping or attending any events hosted by that guild. If you read Tziana's post (who is an awesome admin) you'll see if a fight broke out and you asked them to leave and they don't or feel harassed you call a GM and let the game people handle the jerk like you would in any game. This leaves the people with the power to deal with the person disrupting the game to decide the issue. I personally only had to threaten "I'm asking you just one more time to leave peacefully or I'll be forced to report you to the GM" and they left. If people started fighting I kicked both people involved from the event no exceptions.

The only way it became a colaition issue is if that guild had posted "Anyone from X guild isn't allowed" in the post advertising it then the Admin would step in and lock the thread. If someone did that usually they slit their throat with the over-all community and only rped with their clique. If they persisted Tziana would ban the individual from the forum. If their buddies took it up on the forum they were banned. This made sure people behaved.

The difference with what's being purposed here is that if behavior was so bad an entire guild, as defined by rules, could be kicked from the RPC.

You can't control grudges but you can control behavior. I Rped in Starsider with people who had grudges and they just avoided one another and Rped with other people at the event. It can and has been done. Those people behaved because they didn't want to be kicked from the board or events where some of thier friends were there.

SolanaVernon · **03-17-2010, 08:53 PM**

Sorry, I meant "guy" in a general neutral-gender way. Like "dude". Sorry. XD Lady.

Alright. Makes complete sense. It's good to have someone who has had experience in something like this. It helps so much. :]

Eva · **03-17-2010, 08:54 PM**

This may be getting a bit off track, but it sounds like you're talking about OOC disputes more than guild conflicts Solana. Granted, depending on the level of persuasion I can see how this could become a larger issue, particularly if one individual is being ostracized unnecessarily. Tsumi has made some excellent points and many of the principles that Starsider seems to have followed are similar to many of the underlying policies I had strived to follow in managing Crystalline - which I like to think of as a success. I say if it works, go with it. The organizer of the event should be able to choose whether it is a guild-exclusive event or whether people from the other guilds may be invited as well. While it may seem petty, it would seem to me that there may be some instances where such an exclusion could be warranted, depending on the excluded group's policies and how the event should turn out.

For example, a member of the fictious guild TheShiningKnighthood might send a public invitation for a fun group fishing trip to all guilds except ThievesAnonymous. I think most can probably extrapolate the result of such a thing, however there may be some fun to be had if a member of ThievesAnonymous also happened to belong to NeutralThird and went and informed the other Thieves. The in-character implications of this are interesting and could be a lot of fun, so long as the organizer of the event is clear that the exclusion is intended to be strictly IC and realizes his party will be crashed and is okay with just "rolling with it". Then again, if it's meant to be a peaceful gathering to just talk and do some fishing, this should probably be communicated accordingly along some out-of-character manner so as not to leave anyone with hurt feelings (thieves have feelings too y'know). This hypothetical scenario would be another opportunity for involvement on the part of the RPC, probably.

SolanaVernon · **03-17-2010, 08:54 PM**

Your example, Kes, is an expansion of my example used in how it could be used as a problem.

I don't tend to lightly put things. I won't for this case. People go out of character, people take issues out of character. The reason LeaderA and myself could have butted heads could have been over something like, "I don't like how your character talks. It's really annoying". There's no avoiding OoC confrontations, and using one's character to convey how they're feeling against another player OoC is a bit OoC in itself. Dohoho.

Wasn't really talking about how guilds could be excluded, but I guess that can be used too.

I'm saying if I were to leave LeaderA's group and joined LeaderB's group, and LeaderB was invited to a cross-guild event set up by LeaderA, it would be kind of unfair to have myself excluded from RPing. Say I was granted permission to go to the event, but even then, members from LeaderA's side still avoided inclusion of RP. It could be simple as refusing to respond to a response given by me. Example:

LeaderA Member: Who are you people?
Solana: Solana van Vernon. What's it to you?
LeaderB Member: Baconmage, warrior of bacon!
LeaderA Member: Baconmage! Leave this place at once! You're not welcomed here.

And then it continues from there, where any input from the character Solana is sidestepped intentionally.

This is more along the lines of what's going to happen with individuals and how cross-guild events will be handled with people they don't like associating with. It's one thing to ask them to leave--as they're not wanted--but to just be buttheads about it by being passive-aggressive in a sense it's a bit dumb. Like a fake all-smiles done horribly wrong.

Just curious how that'll be handled cross-guildly..ish.ness. I don't know if I'm going off subject or not. LOL! It's something that concerns me is all. WhoOOoo.

Kylin · **03-17-2010, 08:55 PM**

Quote:Also Castiel, have you given any thought to your own role in this? Will you be an errant, splitting your time evently between all of the guilds? There may be some concerns if you belong to one guild and others do not feel adequately represented. Or do you envision the RPC consisting of multiple administrators?

Haven't really worked this out yet. I was thinking of perhaps having each individual guild choose 1-2 RPC representatives and forming a "high council" of sorts from that. These individuals could maybe provide updates on their guild every few months or so just to keep everyone up to speed on the community as a whole. They would collectively be the face of the RPC I guess. Again, nothing is really worked out yet though.

I really like the idea of a RPer profile kind of thing used by that Starsider coalition. If there's enough interest, I'll get around to adding a section for that so people know how far each Rper is willing to go on specific RP content.

Regarding grudges, I'm not sure there's much the RPC could do to intervene in that kind of stuff unless it affected the community as a whole somehow. So far, it seems most people want the RPC to remain as "neutral" as possible in those regards. And seeing how grudges are a very personal matter, it would probably only get uglier if the whole community got dragged into it. As for the exclusion from events, I think we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves for now on that. But I would expect that if a guild was invited to an event, then all its members are invited as well. If issues arise for a particular individual, people can take it up with that person's guild leaders. I can't see someone publicly telling someone that they're not invited even if that person's guild was invited. I think what your concerned about (correct me if I'm wrong) would be people talking privately in party chat telling each other to ignore a certain person at an event. I would imagine most people would frown on that unless said individual was griefing people at the event. And if someone is griefing, then that falls more into the category of calling a GM. I don't know if anything I'm saying is making sense at all. As was already stated, there's not a lot anyone can do about personal grudges. They're personal and would need to be worked out by the individuals, not the RPC.

SolanaVernon · **03-17-2010, 08:56 PM**

You cleared it up Cast.

We'll see what happens. 0: Let's hope it doesn't effect the RPC and that people know how to communicate with one another.

Verence · **03-17-2010, 08:57 PM**

Lots going on here and I'm sure I'll have more and more articulate opinions once I have a change to mull things over, but for now let me just say this: In my experience, it is never the job of the leadership to get involved in interpersonal disputes. Trying to mother members of a linkshell only encourages them to behave like children. The only time interpersonal disputes should be stepped into is when they grow to the point of disrupting the smooth functioning of the larger community. Otherwise, the best policy tends to be to tell them "Have fun, kids."

I saw this in an OOC HNMLS I used to be head of, Ancients Awakened. Our previous shell-holder wanted to encourage a "family" atmosphere, so I was sacked on the basis of my attempts at conflict resolution and reconciliation among the members. When she took off unexpectedly, after the dust settled I found myself head of the whole shebang. I tried to continue in my capacity as conflict resolution guy, but after a while I began to realize... If you give people a target for their frustrations, they will aim for it. Members began to behave like spoiled children, bawling long and loud to whatever sack was in range over the most ridiculous and simple petty slights instead of trying to fix it themselves. Things improved dramatically after I switched policy to "Keep your personal issues out of /l and don't bother me about them. If it's that much of an issue, talk to THEM about it and try to work things out. Think of them as a coworker you have to get along with if you must."

People are different. Due to this, some people don't get along. To my mind, the job of the RPC is not to make sure everyone gets along. It's to ensure the success of RP in the community. These are two different, albeit related, goals. One we can tackle with gusto. The other is a hornet's nest you don't want to poke.

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