Hello,

I've been recently insulted and exposed to various "slangs" in Turkish chat that aren't seen as sanctionable by Turkish moderators. When I try to discuss why these homophobic slurs aren't considered to be against the rules since homophobia isn't tolerated, they said they "don't mute for every little thing anymore". Which got me thinking if Atelier rules are now expanding their window of tolerance, and if so, why?

I insisted on the fact that the word I'm referring to (F word, the Turkish translation of it*) can't be put in a "grey" area in which moderators can articulate the on-going conversation and decide whether they will mute the player or not. Just like the N word can't be put in that grey area.

The English translation of the word is literally "f**ot", so I tried to contact one of the English moderators if they would mute someone for using that word. And they said yes. I know some will say that the rules aren't the same for every community, but considering that Turkish speaking community has relatively worse attitude against queer people, isn't the rules against homophobia supposed to be at least as strict as in English speaking server?

Now the reason why I'm making this thread is my posts were moderated by Turkish sentinels in Turkish forums, for "upholding the discussion", which is very confusing, since Staff thread is in the "Discussions" sub-forums. I literally DO NOT understand and literally feel like I'm being roughed up everytime I'm trying to communicate with Turkish moderators. I was told to directly contact admins from now on, and that it's too late for me and staff to settle and talk. So, I'm directly talking to the admins. As a company that makes a lot of market items for Pride month and has considerable amount of queer staff members, I'm really waiting for a feedback.

You had your answer in TR Discussion thread.

Systern a dit :

You had your answer in TR Discussion thread.

Yeah I did, but I wasn't allowed to reply back and I was told to bring it up to the admins, which comes to why I made this thread.

Tolerating homophobia because it's the "norm" in this country as said by Turkish moderator Sha#0010 is definitely not matching with Atelier 801 Rules and Policy.

I also asked another Turkish moderator, to find out who made the change and decided not to mute for the insult "ib*e" (which means fa**ot in English), and they did not reply.

Also this isn't the first time Turkish moderators taking an anomalous position. Vip#0095, before they left the team, has told me that they will not step in and take an action if something happened in the DMs, whereas the rules say there are exceptions to that (some of them are excessive harrasment, sexual content, etc.). When I talked about this in the Turkish staff thread, no one even addressed the issue.

I don't want to make this about me but I'd like to share my experience also, regarding the "peacekeeping" the Turkish staff had done when I was being targeted and attacked because of my identity. This is very important because this was a very big thing at the time that everyone knew about in the Turkish forums, but it was never once mentioned elsewhere.

It is quite appalling to witness the state of the Turkish server and its maintenance. Between 2014 to 2016, regulars on the Turkish forums have targeted, attacked, humiliated and publicly exposed me on all social networks imaginable, having united under the Turkish forums. Their reasoning was because I'm queer. Yes, I am a queer individual. Funny thing is, even though it is in the very rules of the chat system in-game and the forums that you cannot discriminate against people based on things like race, gender identity and sexuality, the Turkish staff permamuted me because of my angry, and quite provoked, outburst. I had to stay permamuted for 2 years because I wasn't having it and I was just full of rage and, honestly, very justifiably so, cursed all of those who brought such misfortune to my life by literally exposing my then-closeted queer identity to everyone in my high school. They not only outed me, but also advised my classmate whom I had a silly crush on to then go and spread this to the entire city, meaning every high school. Everyone knew that I was the only out queer kid, and it didn't help that I was also out as an atheist. As someone from Turkey, in early 2010s, a queer student in high school, especially in my conservative town, was unheard of. This led to the worsening of my already severe track of receiving systemic abuse and physical bullying.

Do you know what the staff suggested, instead of helping fix the glaring issue of LGBTQ+phobia in our community? They suggested that I, a 14-15 year old at the time, sue the perpetrators for libel. Excuse me, but you allowed this platform to flourish and under your guidance, you let a minor be a target that everyone in their grandma with a stone would go out of their way to strike. The regulars created threads on the forums to openly and very proudly give me a bad reputation, basically to encourage others to see me as a bad person. They tried their best to not make it like "well, let's hate on them for being gay," but more like, "let's hate on them because they think so highly of themselves, but also let's not forget that they are gay."

I don't care what political opinion you have, whatever you think is right, none of that holds any value when we have set of rules regarding the forums and the staff just turns a blind eye to everything that's happening. This is not right. Nothing has changed since my time, nothing has improved.

This experienced has engraved in my brain several traumas, for which I had to go through therapy for several years. It's a big can of worms that I'm not willing to open in public, but if asked by a staff member, or better, a community manager, I'm willing to elaborate and give details into what happened and how the Turkish staff (with failure and outside of A801) contacted me.