Linus ex-jerk to learn Empathy

[Vas]

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/09 ... n-empathy/

I found this interesting. Many people seem to emulate this guy here, especially in the discord where they enjoy being a troll and harassing people. Maybe those people should also take time off to learn how not to bully and harass people. Its the original reason I quit Factorio and tell everyone I meet that the game has a disgraceful set of moderators and admins running the community. I don't know about the devs, but I know the discord mods and admins are disgraceful because they too, harassed me for the lulz, and then spread lies to other communities about me having me banned from those as well. Hell, I even tried to ignore some of the trolls by blocking, they kept making new accounts or getting other accounts there to harass me too and the admins allowed it. Thought it was funny so the let it happen.

I understand that I have no empathy myself, but I don't go around trolling and harassing people for shits and giggles. You respect me, I respect you.

I fully expect this topic to be deleted and I'm betting I'll even be harassed further or banned. It'll just show how toxic the Factorio community really is and how you all like to emulate being toxic and destructive to anyone who's slightly different from you.

But who knows, I hear there's a few good devs here that are actually nice, maybe things can change, maybe Factorio can improve and have a more positive reputation. Perhaps there's a lesson to be learnt here, but I doubt anyone will have the chance to see this. I'll simply have to back this page up with a screenshot just in case.

[Koub]

Moderator-me speaking hereunder.

I don't deny you the right to express yourself, but this looks very much like a trollbomb, specifically designed to set the community on fire. We are 2 active moderators (in addition to the devs) on this forum, and I haven't seen any bullying, harassing or anything. I double checked in the topics where you have posted, and the moderation logs and failed to find any evidence of moderators making bad use of their privileges against you, especially knowing that you've been very little active during the last year on the forum.

Of course, I can't tell about the Discord, because I've never set a foot into it. But if you do trust the devs while you have issues with the moderators, you should definitely get in touch with the devs and request an arbitration.
Note that I see extremely few complaints about the moderators and their job, so I'm not inclined into believing that by lack of chance all the moderators from the Discord just happened to have chosen you as a punching ball.

I will not lock this topic outright (even if it was my first intention), in order not to give you the impression I'm trying to muffle you, but I'll keep a very close eye to this thread, and will lock it as soon as I feel it's derailing.

I'm available via PM if you have real desire in settling things down and addressing the subject, but if you only want to set trouble, I won't be very patient.

[Vas]

Well, I don't think any of the mods are forum mods, its mostly the discord moderatos that seem to be the trolls and allowed people to harass me. I did specifically mention the discord server after all. Its a big part of how I participate in communities.

I've been inactive in the last year because I was banned from the discord after everyone was allowed to harass me. I don't know anything about the devs, I've heard mixed things about them. I lost faith in Factorio because the devs were present in the discord, and marked as online, while I was constantly being harassed and picked on. I know now that the devs never actually paid attention to the discord but it still makes me feel like they don't know -anything- about the discord they are in.

You can believe me or not, it won't help either way with who owns the discord server. I have Aspergers, which makes me easily trollable as I have several problems like dropping things and the compulsion to explain myself even when its not needed which makes it fun for the trolls there to harass me more. In fact, I can recall a time where I said that I didn't like most rap music because most of what I've heard tends to be the racist stuff or about killing some person and the admins there started making holocaust jokes for an hour after that.

I feel that with those people in charge of the big portion of the community, it set the entire community as bad. I stopped modding because I can't get help anymore, now that I can't participate in the discord. Worse, the admins of the discord went and told other discord server owners to ban me and one listened, banning me from all the Rimworld communities as well, and yet I'm a tester in Rimworld with my name in the credits but still banned because he admin there was friends with the guy who banned me from Factorio's discord.

Its been a long time, I -might- still have some old screens of things that happened in the discord, but I don't know at this point. Those would only be things I share with in private if I had to. I just posted that link earlier to point out how people who emulate their linux dev as if he's a god should see that he's finally making changes to be a better person, and perhaps the people here should as well.

edit; I thank you for letting me speak, its hard to find good moderators that don't block, ban, lock, delete at the first sign of a disagreement

[BlueTemplar]

1.) Empathy is a somewhat vague concept.

2.) As you point out, there's not having empathy, there's being somewhat abrasive while still giving constructive criticism, and there's just being an asshole by copiously insulting people...

(3.) As an aside, care workers have to learn to keep their empathy in check, so as to still to be able keep functioning properly in hard situation. Empathy is normal, but if one really wants to be helpful rather than just act upon one's selfish desire to minimize the bad feelings that arise from empathizing with other people, one would better dedicate himself to learn compassion instead.)

4.) The unofficial Discord isn't the alpha and omega of the Factorio community.
There's also this official forum (where most of the developer communication seems to happen), Reddit (yeah, I know, lots of overlap with Discord moderators), irc.esper.net and irc.freenode.net ...
Developer online status is just more "in your face" on Discord.
And I don't see why you wouldn't be able to get modding help outside of Discord ?
(EDIT : There are also other Factorio Discords, some with heavy emphasis on mods, with potentially even more modding-competent people on average - as the competent official developer might not be always available at that specific moment.)
As someone who has been boycotting Discord since 2019 for completely different reasons*, I don't miss it that much.

reasons

I'm generally boycotting closed source software since 2019, and this goes quintuple for communication software like Discord that is centralized, doesn't use an open communication standard, is built using an inefficient Electron WebApp model, uses JavaScript, uses Google-backed technologies, opened their own Windows-only DRM-not-forbidden monthly-subscription-available game store.

5.) Instead of screenshots, there's this wonderful "select-copy-paste text/HTML" feature -
(see how I can give constructive advice while still being somewhat abrasive ?)
- which can often be easier to use afterward, because it allows (for easier) searching.
Also the Wayback Machine, though you cannot always count on it.
But yeah, this probably won't help with closed Discord communities, where no access means no access to chat history ?
And I doubt that they are allowing search engine bots ?
BTW, Discord has (after years!) finally introduced a way to link to specific posts... (though it was broken on mobile, last time I checked.)
(Though it seems like that not being part of the World Wide Web is kind of a feature of Discord, despite their use of Web-based technologies...)

[bobingabout]

4.) The unofficial Discord isn't the alpha and omega of the Factorio community.
There's also this official forum (where most of the developer communication seems to happen), Reddit (yeah, I know, lots of overlap with Discord moderators), irc.esper.net and irc.freenode.net ...
Developer online status is just more "in your face" on Discord.
And I don't see why you wouldn't be able to get modding help outside of Discord ?
(EDIT : There are also other Factorio Discords, some with heavy emphasis on mods, with potentially even more modding-competent people on average - as the competent official developer might not be always available at that specific moment.)
As someone who has been boycotting Discord since 2019 for completely different reasons*, I don't miss it that much.

reasons

I'm generally boycotting closed source software since 2019, and this goes quintuple for communication software like Discord that is centralized, doesn't use an open communication standard, is built using an inefficient Electron WebApp model, uses JavaScript, uses Google-backed technologies, opened their own Windows-only DRM-not-forbidden monthly-subscription-available game store.

Ironically, your reasons for why you dislike discord is why a lot of people moved from Skype to discord.

[Vas]

2.) As you point out, there's not having empathy, there's being somewhat abrasive while still giving constructive criticism, and there's just being an asshole by copiously insulting people...

4.) The unofficial Discord isn't the alpha and omega of the Factorio community.
And I don't see why you wouldn't be able to get modding help outside of Discord ?
(There are also other Factorio Discords, some with heavy emphasis on mods.)

5.) Instead of screenshots, url=https://web.archive.org/]Wayback Machine[/url]

2)
Welp, the moderators/admins of that discord community which is basically acting as if the official community with -everyone- in it already, chose to be assholes and allowed other people to be assholes. It happens a lot in discord, even the Space Engineers discord where the moderators there sided with the other guys cause one was an ex-dev and another guy who's a great coder apparently. Seems like people who do good work are allowed to be assholes or even just community managers of communities with over 2k users.
(I actually got banned from Starbound discord, because I disagreed with the owner of it for starting a porn channel that kids could access simply by typing ?18 and had no moderation to it.)

I get banned a lot for opinions because I tend to be abrasive and people can't handle that, however I've never once trolled or attacked someone as I have been in multiple communities. I tend to only be banned, after the community attacks me and the admins are tired of stopping the trolls. They get tired of banning the people doing the wrong things so they ban the person who everyone seems to be attacking. I'm thankful that I have found a few communities that actually put a stop to the trolling and don't care that I have an abrasive tone at times. Intelligent conversation can often happen because people look past the tone and read the facts.

I know that, there are times when a situation is my fault, but it most certainly wasn't in Factorio, and what the admin did was unacceptable after my ban, telling other admins of other servers to ban me as well. I've been angry at the entire Factorio community for a while because of it. If I had known the devs were totally unaware of the entire situation, I might have tried to contact them about it, but it looked like they might have been aware, and I heard information about them that says they wouldn't have cared to begin with.

4)
Discord was my primary source of connecting with the community, I hate forums. Slowest form of electronic communication there is. Discord, its instant, you can compile code and get immediate help. Great in multiple ways. Thats why I use discord.

I've not found any other discords for Factorio, not sure where anyone is advertising them. When I started my "friendly factorio discord", the people who harassed me in the "official" one attacked it and I couldn't get it to take off. Happened a few times when I started alternate discords to the "unofficial official" versions of a game discord, no one likes competing discord servers or the bullies just follow you and harass you further.

5)
Yea, I started using wayback a few months ago. I've been updating this thread on the wayback each time I check back, just in case. I started using it when this mod thief on steam kept deleting his posts when he retorted against us and kept deleting the evidence that he stole our mods which finally got him banned from the workshop when the dev came around and saw my collection of evidence. Wayback was rather nice. I also started using it cause my laptop is having issues and the corner of my keyboard barely works, including the print screen key which, lost me some evidence before cause I thought I had hit it but it didn't register.

-------------

I do realize now, that I've been holding anger in the wrong areas, and blaming people who weren't actually involved. I don't expect anything'll change though, and I'm willing to bet those people who banned me will eventually see this and go plea to the devs with all this crap about me being some bad person and possibly share out of context screenshots of things, who knows.

[Koub]

Well I've been almost F5-ing this topic in fear someone would make it derail, but was glad to see there was no need for any kind of moderation on this highly sensitive topic. Good point for the Factorio forum's community .

I admit I'm not interested - at all - by Discord. I've been obliged to set foot into it once or twice because I needed information that was available only there, and I just couldn't understand how the whole thing works. I guess I'm ...

getting too old for this shit

I do realize now, that I've been holding anger in the wrong areas, and blaming people who weren't actually involved. I don't expect anything'll change though, and I'm willing to bet those people who banned me will eventually see this and go plea to the devs with all this crap about me being some bad person and possibly share out of context screenshots of things, who knows.

Well now that you've been able to voice your concern, and reading your last post, I think there isn't much to be added here. Moreover, globally well behaved community doesn't imply there are no trolls at all, and I don't want to take the risk to see this exploding as soon as I'll turn my back.
Therefore, I'm locking the topic. This discussion will remain as-is, and whoever feels the need to get in touch with you will be able to, via PM. There is no reason to fear banning permanently or temporarily from here, unless you cross the line one day, and from my experience, this hardly ever happens.

Also, if possible, and however extreme your anger is, I'd rather not see direct attacks ("assholes", and such), even if it's true. Things tent to get quickly out of control when people start calling each others names, and part of my job as a moderator is preventing that things get out of control. I hope you understand.

[Koub] Topic locked.