Hi guys leaving this thread open so you can air your complaints.
Edit: it will be closed though.

I will mention some things.

EN staff is in fact working on this, we are not hushing it along.

Keep it civil. The tone of this thread is getting rude and kinda patronizing. Take a break if you need to.

Also this is confusion and no one is being muted for being gay. I for one am lgbt staff. Its just confusion.
Thank you!

I didn't say they were being muted for being gay, but they said "I'm gay" and was muted. Sorry for the confusion.

Yea but calling them homophobic because of this when it isnt about that makes no sense then.

Right, I get that; my thoughts have gotten a bit jumbled, but when its gone on for two years you can't help but wonder.

Thanks for the clarification pickles~~

Please read my posts, as I feel my point is not successfully resonating in this conversation. If it's a matter of me not being clear, let me know and I'll try to clarify my ideas as much as possible. I'm not trying to be patronizing, but I kinda feel like we're talking in circles.

Haruhitastic a dit :

Mollusc a dit :VoirMasquer

But do the guidelines actually say that? How do you know this?

I'm not 100% sure on it but, reading this gives me the impression that nearly every instance of usage of the word is muted:

Whiskypickle a dit :VoirMasquer

While I understand 'gay' isn't always used in a negative term anymore and that it's perfectly possible for people to have respectful conversations using the term, it is still prominently used as an insult against homosexual people with the intent of being emasculating. There's no denying that. When it comes to giving out sanctions, staff try and check the context of what is said first before handing out a sanction since we understand that not every case may deserve one. We do tend to give out mutes in situations when there is little to no context or if it's not clear beyond any reasonable doubt of the intent of what was said since it is common for people to try and intend to be insulting or negative while claiming that they never intended the use of that term negatively when caught. Hence why warnings and low sanctions are given out in these circumstances.

Source

"...when there is little to no context or if it's not clear beyond any reasonable doubt of the intent of what was said since it is common for people to try and intend to be insulting or negative while claiming that they never intended the use of that term negatively when caught."

"Tend to" does not mean every single time.

I am hesitant to believe muting a user with absolutely no context is the norm. That is the whole reason why moderators join a room before sanctioning players therein.

Since Transformice is hardly a pride parade, many players use the word as a derogatory insult towards other players. There's no denying that. The rooms where these specific incidents occurred might sometimes use "gay" in a different way, but that doesn't make their connotation of the word universal. The word "gay" is (at least on this game), more commonly than not, used negatively and that's why it's, more commonly than not, addressed with like an insult. There is also no denying that. I'm not saying that these 3 specific incidents warranted mutes (some of which were rescinded), but again, I don't think these situations can exemplify every mute.

a dit :

considering people have been muted for using "gay" in any context, homophobic or not, for at least two years; I don't think it's just because of one arb.

Please tell me where you're getting this tidbit of information, because if this has been the norm for at least two years, I don't see why it's not a persistent issue.

Haruhitastic a dit :

Mollusc a dit :VoirMasquer

So they're homophobic and corrupt because they weren't paying attention?

What the hell? Don't twist my words. Never did I imply that. At all. In fact, I request you point out where I even so much as hinted to that idea.

Given that we're discussing homophobic language and homophobic staff members, I figured that statement pertained to the conversation. Otherwise, I'm not sure why mentioning it was necessary at all.[/quote]

i'm going to try to address how i feel about what's happened lately, these are my views / oppinions and by no means represent the atelier801 company.

i personally feel like a mountain is being made out of a mole hill and that a big misunderstanding has happened. to make sure i understand the situation, people are upset that someone was wrongly muted 3 hours for saying "Super Giga Kawaii Gay Bois Tribu is love Super Giga Kawaii Gay Bois Tribu is life." (Wed Mar 11 2015 08:06:33 AM)

I understand and can relate to anyone being upset with that mute. i however, cannot relate to using this instance as grounds to call moderators and their policies "oppressive or homophobic". The player contacted a mod, explained how what happened was unfair and was promptly unmuted. (Wed Mar 11 2015 08:20:19 AM).

Also, for another player being muted in the DE server for saying "i'm gay", although i'm not entirely sure what they said. and i know this was in response to another player calling them gay. The person who called them gay was likely reported, then the mod joined the room after seeing the report, muting him and unable to mute the player which called them gay since they weren't able to see the chat log. EN does not work like DE, and they will need to speak to DE mods about why they were muted. So in my opinion this really has nothing to do with the same situation, just an untimely occurance.

I don't know any information about this third occurance that has been mentioned?

this being said, i don't see how these three unrelated occurances prove the mods/policies as oppressive, homophobic, or hypocritical. the first was a wrongful mute, which is bad on our part and for which i apologize for it happening, although they were unmuted. the second happened in a different server which isn't related to EN. and admittedly i haven't figured out what the third event was.

in regards to not seeing the word gay used negatively on transformice, i see it sometimes, but not often.

to give a little insight, i've given 2,996 mutes since i was hired.
of these, around 392 are for homophobic language.
of these 392, 29 mutes are related to using the word gay.
of those 29, 26 are 0 hour warnings with the reason "*Warning* Don't use gay as a negative / insult."
the 3 mutes left over are mutes given after warnings to stop using the word "gay" as an insult.

usefulnpc a dit :

. . . prefer to be addressed as gay rather than homosexual. The latter term just sounds callous, uncaring, and as if you want to whisk us away to some scientific theoretical world, and pretend we're not actually present in real life. Actually, given the game's current policies, that's exactly what you're accomplishing

i don't understand what policies this references. the policy we have for homophobic language is defined here ,

"Racial, homophobic, religious, or any other discrimination is not tolerated. Using derogatory terms, even in jest, is not allowed and will result in a mute or ban from the game."


I understand that these recent events, especially the one involving your tribe, is unfair- which i can't stress enough is why the player was unmuted, because it was a mistake on our part and not the players.


to address some other things stated in the comments of this thread.

right now the thread we're using to discuss this situation is the most active EN team thread currently, it's at the top of our priority to sort out whats happeneing and why it's happening and how to prevent it from happening again.

anyone saying we never mute anyone who uses more offensive homophobic language, that's highly incorrect. please refer to my earlier statement showing around 360 mutes from one moderator for more serious homophobic language.
to say we do nothing or don't check reports is highly frustrating, because we do. but, mind you, we can't be everywhere at once, and we have to see first-hand the bad language.

our guidelines do not clarify 'gay' as a 'trigger word'. please do not make assumptions saying it as, because this will lead to other people citing the statement like that as factual. so, please refrain from arguing that we see 'gay' and just banbanban.
---
in conclusion, please don't read too far into what i've said or twist any words. we are addressing this privately as a team.

I can't properly respond on mobile without 854872 errors but thank you for taking the time to respond, seccy and thanks for the clarification

the third mute I'm citing happened a while ago and was reminded of by a friend after I made my staff FAQ post

I'm not trying to imply that you guys don't do anything, I know youre overworked but its frustrating for users to see one side muted/punished while the other side gets off Scot free
truthfully if there's not enough staff to handle it, then there needs to be an auto mute/ban feature

I'll add more to this when I'm not typing on a like five inch screen lol

The problem with auto ban/mute is that it can affect words with the same wording but different meaning and ask a typo can lead to problems. 'fat' is very close. People will also find work arounds to the feature just like they tried to do with the idea of saying 'fig'. British and American English are different and especially for the f slur can lead to trouble. Different languages as well.

- Sent perspective,

Everyone keeps mentioning that he got unmuted, but no-one read his post a couple lines down where he mentioned that he was muted for another hour shortly after for "provocation"? I feel the 're-mute', if anything, is probably what led to him starting his thread.

And it isn't just these 3 recent instances that led to this discussion. This has been manifesting itself for quite some time. I'm surprised it took this long to be discussed at length publicly.

Laz didn't start this thread.

Travelingpik a dit :

Laz didn't start this thread.

Usefulnpc wasn't unmuted. If i'm not mistaken, Laz is who both Secretive and Mollusc referred to in their responses.

Ehhh, re-reading my other post, it may be difficult to infer that the two 'paragraphs' dealt with 2 separate threads. The 1st being Laz's, and the 2nd referring to this discussion. ma bad :/

Not speaking as a member of the Atelier801 staff:

It's unrelated then which is what their comments is about. This is about homophobia/mutes related to being gay, not about just mutes or not and that is something Lazaar can bring up with a mod similarly to how he was unmuted for his previous comment. This goes along with how Secretive said people are making mountains out of hills.

Speaking as someone who goes to room 3 and 4 fairly often (especially 3) and encounter this tribe brought up in the first post often, they always talk about being gay. Almost annoyingly and mockingly so but they are never muted or banned or anything. To me this is an isolated incident.

Renbush a dit :

Everyone keeps mentioning that he got unmuted, but no-one read his post a couple lines down where he mentioned that he was muted for another hour shortly after for "provocation"? I feel the 're-mute', if anything, is probably what led to him starting his thread.

I was in the room and the re-mute was for provoking the secret mod, I believe something along the lines of "screw you secret mod" was said.

Edit: This might have been someone else actually

Travelingpik a dit :

Almost annoyingly and mockingly so but they are never muted or banned or anything. To me this is an isolated incident.

I was about to say this. But the main point is, maybe some staff has been picked a bit carelessly.
As i've been insulted more than one time by some secret Mod (i've spotted during the time) and i've reported it to the staff. My main concern is that these people still have their role. And that's just annoys me honestly, because thay're the first to show little respect to the players.
Is it possible that A801 is choosing blindly their staff right now?

This is nothing, I got silenced for saying nothing. Many people were spamming in room *#trade and i just said 1 comment and got silenced for 1 hour and then the mod silenced his whispers and wrote "brb peeing", what do we expect from the mods?

To all of you claiming this is an isolated incident, I have to ask why it's been going on for months, then? I haven't documented most instances of it, but also in most instances where I've been muted for using the word gay, it was by a secret mod whom I can't contact, and there's no online public mod at the time. In that case, there's literally nothing I can do but wait out a mute, so I'm effectively not allowed to talk for having the gall to be openly gay.

And not only that, but in reading other complaints on the forums I've also been seeing people complaining about rape jokes, and about a multitude of underage users driving down the play experience by being constantly negative and aggressive with their speech. Now, maybe I'm just making an unfounded logical leap here, but it seems to me that if you moderators are mostly seeing the word gay being used as an attack, and if other players are having similar language problems with other users, and I've never seen any of those problems but also play in rooms with predominantly adult or older teen regulars, then maybe an appropriate conclusion is that you have a lot of underage players in needs of actual bans abusing language, and the rest of us reasonable users are feeling unfairly punished (and we are being punished unfairly) because you're not taking a hard enough stance on a different kind of rule-breaking. Just conjecture here, but again, the entire point of my thread is that the word gay is not a slur, for many of us it is the preferred term of address, and I'm accusing the policies of the staff of being homophobic because the put me in a position of being punished merely for the crime of self-reference.

don't bait the troll people, they'll only bite your hand off. They're choosing to miss-interoperate what has been a very well worded and mature discussion. Please don't let them de-rail it into an argument cos of their stubbornness.

re the "i am gay" and "you are gay" thing. I can understand that mods/admins/whoever think it's justifiable to mute the "you are gay" type comments. but i don't see why anyone should be banned for saying it in refrence to themselves. This made me think if the way the sentence is directed should be the context used to justify mutes. as in the way someone above said that if you were stating your own sexual prefrence that's fine, but if you're stating someone elses (malicious or not) it's not so fine, but this isn't a fool-proof way of doing it for 2 ways. 1) people can genuinly ask questions like "are you gay?" (in a non malicious way) and this would fall into the "calling someone else gay" catagory and get a ban. and 2) people will, and do, randomly spam the chat with single words. How can you tell what context or meaning it has if someone simply says gay gay gay in the chat?

Gay is a hard word to moderate as it's one that's changed it's meaning drasticly in the past few decades. Originally it meant happy/carefree. Look at the flintstones, the lyric "we'll have a gay old time" in the theme tune does not refer to a homosexual orgy :P it's the old meaning which is rarely if ever used these days, and if it is it's mostly by older generations. It then (when i was in school) went on to mean "lame" or "unfair" as in "i got detention today, that's so gay" and had only recently been defined in the dictionary as a term which refers to homosexuals. Recently i have seen a lot lot lot less of the lame/unfair meaning, and it seems to these days genuinly be used only as a term/label for homosexuals. Homosexual is a big word we don't always want to type or say, gay is a quick fast one. It's like i say "i am straight" rather than "i am hetrosexual" purely because hetrosexual is a dang long word. Let's all remember that the word "straight"s meaning has nothing to do with sexual prefrence, the google dictionary defines it as "extending or moving uniformly in one direction only; without a curve or bend." We've simply used that word (incorrectly) for such a long time that everyone knows it has another unofficial meaning. With words changing their meaning based on how people are using them rather than the dictionary meaning they have, it's pretty impossible to police and hand bans out on words alone. Context must be taken into account.

also Usefulnpc, I rarely play in rooms with 10+ mice as i'm sick of the stat padders who kill themselves if they don't get first and make me lose out on saves when i'm sham (seen as it takes a while for your turn to be sham in a big room, and building's my favorite thing/main draw to this game) But if your big room is more of a comminity of people playing together rather than a bunch of randoms playing co-incidently together this may be less of an issue. I also stay out big rooms because the insults and attitudes are A LOOOOOOOOOOOOT worse in there than small rooms, and i have to ignore a lot more people. Sounds like your room 4 might not be like this tho so i might pop my head in and see how it goes thanks :)

To be honest, secret mods (Arbitres) abuse their powers all the time. This incident is just a typical example of it.
Even one of my friends had been muted for just saying "You are so gorgeous" to his friend. In my opinion arbitres should be monitored more carefully for their actions, and there must be sanctions to put on them lest they abuse their powers.

I want a little rebellion c:

-My opinion-
You can say "f*** you" in every other room without punishment
You cant say "f*** you" in a room with a single mod/whiney nub/friend of a mod or you arent allowed to talk at all for a few hours...

Do you know when the mod/mod friend/whiney noob is watching? No, and that is the problem... A universal not-total-crap filtering shstem would be really nice, one that censored a curse word AND the curse word with -ing...

Seriously though, how hard is it to type curse words, type different forms of them, then set up letters that look like them (if @ is in use instead of a its not censored), then let it go! Honestly laziness

Moderators are constant abusers of power (especially secret ones) and dont respect that the mice have been cursing since their first day, and that NOW they are getting a surprise punishment for it... Dispicable TBH

okay but your post has nothing to do with the fact people are being muted for saying "gay?"
"Fucking" isn't a problem. People aren't muted for it unless it's excessive. If you've actually been muted for saying "fucking" and it was only once and there was nothing else in the sentence then you've got a problem.