Concerns about Auditorii's role-playing and interactions

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Concerns about Auditorii's role-playing and interactions

Postby Aquinas » Tue Jul 07, 2020 3:56 pm

Raising a concern about how a Moderator is role-playing and interacting within the community is awkward to do, because a Moderator is in a position of authority in the game, and challenging the actions of one raises the inevitable anxiety of being victimised for doing so. I nevertheless hope this is not something that will happen on this occasion.

Yesterday, witnessing on the forum that the Northern Council, a powerful alliance of nations, appears to be being reformed, that Keymon, one of the members of that alliance, has made a territorial claim to sovereignty over part of the territory of Likatonia (where I play), and that nations of the Northern Council are in various ways supporting Keymon (including militarily), I created an innocuous bill suggesting the Likatonian Senate formally request the Northern Council and its member governments to clarify their position in relation to Keymon's territorial claim on Pirland.

As the controller of a party in Likatonia, this was a reasonable and legitimate RP choice on my part.

As a courtesy and to be helpful, I posted a link to the bill on the Northern Council thread, to make the players involved there aware of what was going on. To my amazement, Auditorii followed this up by claiming the RP content of my bill "doesn't make sense" because "this is not a publicly known meeting". This is despite the fact there was nothing at all in the OP to indicate this. All that was stated there was that it was a " special, closed door session", not that the fact of the meeting occurring was a complete and utter secret from the entire outside world.

It goes without saying that even if efforts had been made to keep the meeting a secret, it is unlikely the news would have been stayed secret for long, since the involvement of so many senior leaders/negotiators from so many countries would surely have leaked out. Nevertheless, as I say, the fact remains there was nothing at all in the OP to establish that the holding of the meeting was being kept a secret, only that the meeting was being held in closed door session.

It is difficult not to form the impression that Auditorii's aim in this has been to retcon the original RP in the OP purely in order to OOCly torpedo my RP response to it. The reason for this, it is difficult not to surmise, is to prevent his organisation from facing a potentially controversial political issue which might undermine his OOC agenda of building the Northern Council in to a united and powerful alliance.

A reminder of what the Game Rules state on retconning:

4. Players are reminded that going back on established RP ("retcon", "retconning") is generally unaccepted and Moderation will be involved in the event of significant retcons/retconning, especially when there are OOC issues surrounding RP. Moderation reserve the right to approve or deny retcons/retconning as they see reasonable and realistic;


It is fairly clear Auditorii's actions meet this definition.

By the way, I have no objection to Auditorii and others wanting to role-play nations and alliances of nations with great military and general geo-political power. After all, in any realistic version of Terra, there would probably have to be at least some such nations and alliances. I do feel, though, that players who wish to do this should engage maturely and reasonably with RP that emerges, as opposed to picking and choosing which RP to acknowledge according to whether or not they feel it advances a narrow OOC powergaming agenda. If players are not willing to acknowledge and engage with the challenges their nations/alliances face as well as their strengths, then I really feel that sort of RP should not be rewarded by giving them privileged positions in the economic and military rankings which every single player in the game is then forced by the rules to acknowledge.

I also have a concern about the way Auditorii appears to use IC posts in order to take passive-aggressive OOC jibes at players whom he has personal issues with. The previous rules set explicitly discouraged this, and I quote the previous rule below:

1.1 Players have a responsibility to differentiate between OOC (out-of-character) and IC (in-character) behaviour, and to make clear when they are communicating in OOC or IC terms. Since Particracy is a role-playing game, IC excesses are generally fine, but OOC attacks are not. However, players must not presume this convention permits them to harass a player with IC remarks that have a clear OOC context.


This may not be explicitly stated in the current rules, but the principle should, fairly obviously, still apply.

Auditorii does, I regret to say, have a long history of doing this (including with passive-aggressive OOC comments as well), but I will try to list some reasonably recent examples. Yesterday, he posted this in the Security Council thread:

The Dorvish delegation would like to know from what cue-cards are the Jakanian's reading from? Is there perhaps a Vanukean helicopter outside? Perhaps a Vascanian one? Maybe a Malivian one? These proposals from Jakania are quite something I must say. So, the Security Council would DEMAND that countries reveal if they possess nuclear arms or not? What would the Jakanian delegation say if a country refused to comply with such order?


This stood out to me because there is no IC evidence I have seen of Malivia, Vanuku or Vascania supporting nuclear disarmament, nor of Jakania even being unusually close to any of those 3 countries. With the best will in the world, I genuinely find it really difficult not to interpret this as an IC remark with an OOC context, and with the OOC context being Auditorii's personal issues with the players associated with the countries mentioned in the remarks.

Another example I can give is Auditorii's post in the Kafuristan news thread a few days ago, where this reference was made:

Kafuristan had become increasingly involved in regional affairs as of late, after years of backwards thinking and fundamentally silly practices such as the "Sultan of Kafuristan" some paid Vanukuean courtesan.


Given the lack of RP explanation for why Kafuristan having a Sultan is "silly", with the best will in the world, I found that remark difficult to make sense of outside the context of Auditorii's OOC issues with the previous Kafuristan player, Pragma. The "Vanukean courtesan" remark was even more bizarre, given Vanuku had had no real involvement in Kafuristan RP immediately prior to Auditorii's arrival there. It is difficult to make sense of that remaark outsde of the OOC context of Auditorii's OOC issues with Kubrick, the Vanuku player.

As some will remember, only back in April, I think, Auditorii was doing this in the World Congress, where I remember several players (for example, XanderOne here), felt he was using IC statements to take OOC digs at players.

Another concern I have is the way Auditorii, who simultaneously controls Dorvik, Ostland and the OOC position of Third World Coordinator, has been using his control of Dorvik and Ostland in order to try to enhance the military standing of both nations. See this post, from only a few days ago:

Baldor, Greater Kordusia - Ministry of Defense officials confirmed that Dorvik has completed its largest ever multi-prong exercise to date. The Dorvish Armed Forces conducted several simultaneous exercises and operations. The first of the simultaneous exercises was a rapid response to piracy from Joint Base Kamphon in the Sea of Carina. The Dorvish forces stationed in Ostland alongside Ostlandic forces conducted a rapid response operation when a Minan-flagged tanker was boarded by pirates, the Dorvish and Ostlandic forces were able to recapture the tanker and placed several dozen suspected pirates into custody. The tanker was return to Mina underneath Dorvish and Ostlandic escort. Dorvish forces in Ostland have been on a near permanent training mission in Ostland for several decades, this has lead to the Ostlandic Navy having one of the world's leading navies in the Eastern part of Terra, helping to cement Ostlands place as a regional power in Dovani.


Aren't we meant to avoid combining the RP of ex-colonies and our in-game nations in this sort of way? Would it be okay for another player to do this? I feel I would be more comfortable with this if, at least, there was another game official actively supervising this RP, and a more general openness about discussing what is going on.

More generally, I know I am not the only one who finds that Auditorii's RP in the nations he controls - Dorvik, Kafuristan and Ostland - is all, with the greatest respect, rather sameish. It leaves me kind of wondering what the benefit to general RP is of having 3 nations in Terra all RPed by one person and in such a remarkably similar, militaristic/authoritarian style. If this was an ordinary player controlling 3 nations (ie. a primary account, a second account and an ex-colony) would there be more of an expectation that, in the interests of RP quality and diversity, there would be more tangible differences in style/content between their 3 different projects? That really is an honest, genuine question, BTW, and I hope offence will not be taken to it.
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Re: Concerns about Auditorii's role-playing and interactions

Postby Zanz » Tue Jul 07, 2020 4:30 pm

I agree in the specific concerns voiced here, but wish this had been written more broadly - I don't trust that the current Mod team can remove itself from OOC enough to create objective rankings, and feel that to be very suppressive of my own ability to engage in RP. With Deltaria likely a great power in near future, with Kafuristan clearly aiming for the same, with Hutori and Dorvik assuredly so, there is little room for those of us who would rather ignore the sort of RP being done in those states (unless we wish to ignore a significant portion of the occupied nations on Terra).

We continue to be locked in the same system of rankings-centric RP that led to multiple players plagiarizing posts to help themselves rank up. We're locked there in part because of Auditorii, but because of Vesica too, and because of the power they wield to write and interpret the rules OOC, and to interpret and create the rankings that govern play IC. I think this is the real crux of the problem - we care about the manner in which the Mods play ICly because it sets precedent for how other players should play. When the Mods play in a manner that seems to indicate that ranking up is the ultimate goal, we naturally get a bunch of players who do the same. When the Mods then make IC decisions in the rankings that seem at least reasonably suspected to be based in their OOC interactions with players (see the way Vanuku has been downgraded over time despite Sisyphus's great RP there for ages - why is Vanuku a similar power to Jelbania?), we end up with this.

My thoughts on what should be done: 1) do away with rankings. They're unnecessary (RPers as a community can and should choose to whom they grant respect and IC power, otherwise what's even the point of RP? This is why there was plagiarism). Failing that, 2) have some non-Mod position (probably rotating) that has the power to overturn individual Mod's actions IC.
Just a bunch of shit.
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Re: Concerns about Auditorii's role-playing and interactions

Postby alaskancrabpuffs21 » Tue Jul 07, 2020 4:53 pm

I don't think specifically calling someone out is helpful or constructive... This kind of thread is one that will not help anyone at all... We should really stop this kind of nonconstructive attack-like thread. This is in seriously poor taste and this kind of thing needs to stop Please!? If you have concerns talk to the moderator first and voice your concerns, then if you feel they are serious enough to be addressed, please do so.
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Re: Concerns about Auditorii's role-playing and interactions

Postby Kubrick » Tue Jul 07, 2020 6:11 pm

I have to agree with the general sentiment. Two mods governing two superpowers with one mod also boosting his colony (with it specifically saying it has the most awesome navy in the east).. I don't know, it feels like a conflict of interest. And to me the people doing this, not just Farsun but Vesica too (and other mods in the past), should probably has some sense of self-reflection in coming to terms with that. Yes, it is kind of shady when your own nation remains a superpower with minimal RP (Dorvik/Hutori) but other nations that put in an effort are demoted in the rankings and nations like Deltaria had 0 RP before Mr.God arrived yet remained stable as well prior to his arrival. It just feels like an old boys club patting themselves on the back and randomly throwing numbers around.

I disagree with Zanz on throwing away the entire rankings but it needs to be reformed or at least looked at with some serious question marks.

alaskancrabpuffs21 wrote:I don't think specifically calling someone out is helpful or constructive... This kind of thread is one that will not help anyone at all... We should really stop this kind of nonconstructive attack-like thread. This is in seriously poor taste and this kind of thing needs to stop Please!? If you have concerns talk to the moderator first and voice your concerns, then if you feel they are serious enough to be addressed, please do so.

Transparency is good. If you would raise these issues in private it would be considered a 1 on 1 affair and then the only response from it would be "I disagree with your assessment".
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Re: Concerns about Auditorii's role-playing and interactions

Postby jamescfm » Tue Jul 07, 2020 9:06 pm

For obvious reasons it isn't possible for me to offer an account of Auditorii's actions but clearly there are more general concerns raised here about the way that the game operates that I can address. In terms of whether concerns should be raised publicly in this manner, I agree that it is not best practice but if players feel that they cannot approach Moderation privately with issues like this then that is their prerogative. Certainly it is not my view that Moderation should punish players who raise concerns in this manner.

The overlap between a player's role as Moderator and their position as a role-player within the game is always going to be tricky and that is particularly true now that players are able to engage with multiple countries through second accounts and forum-based countries. Likewise the interaction between the forum-based countries and in-game countries create issues and this is something that Moderation has always tried to balance since players have been allowed to control countries in this way.

On the rankings specifically this is something that I have raised before. Based on the feedback I received from players on the matter, it does seem the consensus view (at least among active role-players) is that the rankings are useful but no doubt there are concerns (especially from long-term players) about the impact that they have on role-play. I don't want to diminish these concerns and I will be doing my best to ensure that they are addressed in the next rankings update whenever that happens.
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Re: Concerns about Auditorii's role-playing and interactions

Postby Aquinas » Wed Jul 08, 2020 5:18 pm

Zanz wrote:I agree in the specific concerns voiced here, but wish this had been written more broadly - I don't trust that the current Mod team can remove itself from OOC enough to create objective rankings, and feel that to be very suppressive of my own ability to engage in RP. With Deltaria likely a great power in near future, with Kafuristan clearly aiming for the same, with Hutori and Dorvik assuredly so, there is little room for those of us who would rather ignore the sort of RP being done in those states (unless we wish to ignore a significant portion of the occupied nations on Terra).

We continue to be locked in the same system of rankings-centric RP that led to multiple players plagiarizing posts to help themselves rank up. We're locked there in part because of Auditorii, but because of Vesica too, and because of the power they wield to write and interpret the rules OOC, and to interpret and create the rankings that govern play IC. I think this is the real crux of the problem - we care about the manner in which the Mods play ICly because it sets precedent for how other players should play. When the Mods play in a manner that seems to indicate that ranking up is the ultimate goal, we naturally get a bunch of players who do the same. When the Mods then make IC decisions in the rankings that seem at least reasonably suspected to be based in their OOC interactions with players (see the way Vanuku has been downgraded over time despite Sisyphus's great RP there for ages - why is Vanuku a similar power to Jelbania?), we end up with this.

My thoughts on what should be done: 1) do away with rankings. They're unnecessary (RPers as a community can and should choose to whom they grant respect and IC power, otherwise what's even the point of RP? This is why there was plagiarism). Failing that, 2) have some non-Mod position (probably rotating) that has the power to overturn individual Mod's actions IC.


After we raised concerns previously about the rankings, I was optimistic we would be listened to and there would be a change in approach. However, Auditorii's recent behaviour, with regards to his powergaming over the Northern Council and with Ostland, has convinced me nothing is going to change. So unfortunately, I am now agreeing with Zanz in wanting the rankings to be abolished, as well as the veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council which go along with them. This is not my desired preference, it is simply that given the circumstances, I am seeing this as the least worst option available.

alaskancrabpuffs21 wrote:I don't think specifically calling someone out is helpful or constructive... This kind of thread is one that will not help anyone at all... We should really stop this kind of nonconstructive attack-like thread. This is in seriously poor taste and this kind of thing needs to stop Please!? If you have concerns talk to the moderator first and voice your concerns, then if you feel they are serious enough to be addressed, please do so.


I do understand this point of view and appreciate dissension on the forum can look ugly. The fact remains, though, that the issues with Auditorii are not new. They go back a long time (perhaps a decade), to before he became a Moderator. There have been innumerable private conversations with him about his issues, and nothing has changed - the problems are still going on.

I recall you were also uncomfortable about players being "called out" for plagiarism. Again, I do understand how you feel, but I would point out that without those public discussions, nothing would have changed, and the plagiarism would still be going on. Moderation even made it perfectly clear, for example, that they knew full well plagiarism was going on but were choosing not to do anything about it. So in short, public discussions about the way the game is administered do have a legitimate role in this community, and the game itself will be much the poorer if they are shut down.

Kubrick wrote:I have to agree with the general sentiment. Two mods governing two superpowers with one mod also boosting his colony (with it specifically saying it has the most awesome navy in the east).. I don't know, it feels like a conflict of interest. And to me the people doing this, not just Farsun but Vesica too (and other mods in the past), should probably has some sense of self-reflection in coming to terms with that. Yes, it is kind of shady when your own nation remains a superpower with minimal RP (Dorvik/Hutori) but other nations that put in an effort are demoted in the rankings and nations like Deltaria had 0 RP before Mr.God arrived yet remained stable as well prior to his arrival. It just feels like an old boys club patting themselves on the back and randomly throwing numbers around.

I disagree with Zanz on throwing away the entire rankings but it needs to be reformed or at least looked at with some serious question marks.


Speaking for myself, I am relaxed about controversies over whether a nation should be a rank higher or lower. They can be of intense concern to the players involved, of course, but they are probably inevitable. It becomes more concerning though when it becomes impossible to even pretend the Moderators are not being biased, and for example, powergaming involving blatant breaches of really basic RP etiquette are rewarded with military "Great Power" status. So to summarise, I am relaxed about there being a degree of "problems" with the rankings...but not with simply and purely pulling bullshit out of a horse's ass, which is what is going on at the moment.

jamescfm wrote:For obvious reasons it isn't possible for me to offer an account of Auditorii's actions


Well, Auditorii has responded to some extent, with a series of sarcastic, passive-aggressive comments on the official Discord server, including the following:

Northern Council always brings out the best in people.


NC is just the old boys club who care about rankings and not RP.


Because I write out of a dire need to rank up lmao


It will be noted that player after player after player has experienced this kind of sarcastic passive-aggression from him, and has complained about it, and nothing has happened. Ever.

I feel disappointed that having spent time carefully starting a thread to express my concern, Auditorii has chosen to respond in this way, which it goes without saying, is disrespectful both towards me personally, others who share my concerns and to the community generally.

I genuinely hoped he would respond by carefully reflecting on the points raised, discussing them with his Mod colleagues and then responding in a thoughtful way. Obviously, this has not happened, and it does not look like it is going to happen going forwards either.

He appears to see no need to change. And why should he? Wouter knew full well what he was like when he appointed him Mod, and does not give a damn what he does. He openly boasts, privately and publicly, about how he will remain a Mod until Classic finally closes down. He is giving absolutely no indication of desiring to make any change in his approach.

Which leaves me wondering why I expended the effort in starting this discussion in the first place.
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