Abuse of Vulgarity

[Penchant]

How about vulgarity reports taking 12 hours of your character's time.

No one would use the feature because whats the point then? They use all of their characters time because someone else was swearing in their message. Thats punishing the reporter even if its a valid report.

[Vellos]

You are supposed to use your best judgement based on your understanding of the general noble culture.

It's not asking for a scientific certainty. It's asking for common sense.

Yes, because common sense is common. We all have similar common sense intuitions, right?

lol, no. 10 minutes on these forums shatters the idea that we share a basic idea of some kind of "common sense." We don't. Add in that we're coming from many different linguistic and cultural backgrounds and the problem is worse.

I do use my best judgment. But I'm saying that there are many times where my best judgment says, "This seems like vulgarity to me; I'm not 100% sure, I'll let other players review it; if I'm wrong, find, no harm done; if I'm right, fine, the player isn't going to suffer much even if judges erroneously support me."

Crucially, from my position, I would report fewer things if there were a higher penalty for reporting or if the damage done to a reported person was much greater. Though making vulgarity more damaging would be terrible policy for many other reasons, of course.

[Penchant]

I do use my best judgment. But I'm saying that there are many times where my best judgment says, "This seems like vulgarity to me; I'm not 100% sure, I'll let other players review it; if I'm wrong, find, no harm done; if I'm right, fine, the player isn't going to suffer much even if judges erroneously support me."

So whats vulgar about atheism? Its not SMA and is against what Tom wants, but whats vulgar about it?

Here is the page showed when you click on vulgarity:

As a noble, you can expect to be treated with respect and dignity, and expect certain manners from your peers. That does not mean they can not be offensive or they can not backstab you, but it does mean their manner of speech and behaviour should stand above the common, vulgar peasants.

You can mark another noble's words as vulgar and unbefitting of his class, and they will be forwarded to several randomly selected distinguished nobles for a short peer-review. If they agree on your assessment, the vulgar noble will lose a point of honour for behaving in a non-noble way.
If you complain falsely too often, you yourself will lose respect among your peers, and suffer the consequences.


This is a tool to enforce proper roleplaying and keep the atmosphere and quality level of the game up. The focus is on the manner of speech, not its contents.

[Vellos]

You can expect certain manners from your peers. Denying God is bad manners. I would also note the guidelines on reviewing a vulgarity message:

Third is behaviour, this is mostly for roleplays. A noble is
    first and foremost a noble. No matter if he bloodies his sword in the
    bodies of his enemies or poisons the wine of the ruler, his actions and
    his way of acting set him apart from the commoner in a hard-to-describe
    but easy-to-spot way.

Your actions and way of acting can be vulgar. Atheism is not the sort of thing a noble could ever espouse in a polite way.

But more importantly, I don't think I, or anyone, has to be able to express exactly what's vulgar about a message. Note that the vulgarity pages repeatedly state how hard vulgarity is to define! Anybody thinking vulgarity is easy to define is also out of line with those pages. Now, I'm fine with that, because I also disagree with them: I don't think vulgarity is easy-to-spot. I think there are plenty of cases where reasonable people, even reasonable people with similar definitions, can disagree about if a thing is vulgar.

Which is why I think if you have a pretty reasonable idea that you think something is vulgar, even if you can't give a 4 point detailed case for why it is, it's fine to report it. I don't think Athena's message was some perfect textbook case of vulgarity. Far from it. I'm not shocked other players agreed; but I wouldn't have been shocked if they'd disagreed. Because I know it's a borderline case under many definitions of vulgarity (not my preferred definition, as it were, but I know mine is a minority position).

In terms of reasons I thought the specific message was vulgar, I'll direct you to my first post in the thread. It was not exclusively about atheism, and had a great deal to do with the context of the message.

But I'll reiterate what I've said many times: erroneous reporting, even frequent erroneous reporting, is not abuse. The game has a built-in mechanism for dealing with erroneous reporting (which I think we are all agreed should be enhanced), which implies the possibility of legitimate error.

[Norrel]

words

"!@#$ you" = vulgar
"I do not believe in God" = SMA violation.

If there's something that should clearly be put somewhere that isn't vulgarity, don't report it for vulgarity. It doesn't seem like a whole bunch of people are misunderstanding the concept tbh.

[Vellos]

"!@#$ you" = vulgar
"I do not believe in God" = SMA violation.

If there's something that should clearly be put somewhere that isn't vulgarity, don't report it for vulgarity. It doesn't seem like a whole bunch of people are misunderstanding the concept tbh.

Repeating your point doesn't make it right.

"!@#$ you" isn't precisely vulgar; it is precisely obscene. Obscenity, profanity, and vulgarity are not the same, are not simply overlapping sets, and should not be conflated.

I did not report something I thought was an SMA violation. Cyrilos spread nasty gossip about something Athena said that he thought was offensive and ignoble.

[Anaris]

Repeating your point doesn't make it right.

And, by the same token, repeating your denial of it doesn't make it wrong.

[OFaolain]

I have a suggestion:  why doesn't everyone agree that what people think is vulgar differs, and that what a player like Vellos or myself (because I might have reported that statement as vulgar too under a "conduct unbecoming" interpretation of the feature) may find vulgar will not necessarily be the same as what a player like Slapsticks or Anaris may find vulgar, and that that is okay?  Unless it's not?  Are we supposed to all have the same standards for vulgarity?

The issue shouldn't be that Vellos thought something that others don't believe is vulgar is vulgar, the issue should be whether Vellos *didn't* think it is vulgar and is just needling a rival character by abusing the mechanic (and maybe the Magistrates are already past that in the backroom discussion).  Vellos reports a lot, and reports borderline cases a lot, or so it seems.  But, is this behavior abuse, and is this behavior in need of correction?  Or does Vellos just have narrower standards for what constitutes acceptable language/roleplay?  Do the vulgarity reporting/judging guidelines need to be reviewed and edited?  Does a restriction need to be placed on the number of reports or a penalty added for reporting falsely?

The message you receive when a message is reported as vulgar talks about determining the atmosphere of the game.  If the intent is only for actual verbal vulgarity (which it states should find no mercy) then why does it go on about atmosphere?  The first time I got a vulgarity report sent to one of my characters I read through the whole thing, and ended up voting "not vulgar", but I didn't think the reporter was abusing the mechanic just because I thought he was wrong.

@Slapsticks:  Professing atheism (whether or not the letter actually did is irrelevant as long as Vellos thought at the time that it did) is strictly against one of Tom's rules for the game, but it wasn't a straight-up "there is no god and Paul Dirac is his prophet".  Should that be reported to the Titans, which is for "repeated and blatant" violations?  Or should it be reported as vulgarity, something that a noble should not say and for which the penalty is a single point of honor lost?

[Vellos]

I have a suggestion:  why doesn't everyone agree that what people think is vulgar differs, and that what a player like Vellos or myself (because I might have reported that statement as vulgar too under a "conduct unbecoming" interpretation of the feature) may find vulgar will not necessarily be the same as what a player like Slapsticks or Anaris may find vulgar, and that that is okay?  Unless it's not?  Are we supposed to all have the same standards for vulgarity?

The issue shouldn't be that Vellos thought something that others don't believe is vulgar is vulgar, the issue should be whether Vellos *didn't* think it is vulgar and is just needling a rival character by abusing the mechanic (and maybe the Magistrates are already past that in the backroom discussion).  Vellos reports a lot, and reports borderline cases a lot, or so it seems.  But, is this behavior abuse, and is this behavior in need of correction?  Or does Vellos just have narrower standards for what constitutes acceptable language/roleplay?  Do the vulgarity reporting/judging guidelines need to be reviewed and edited?  Does a restriction need to be placed on the number of reports or a penalty added for reporting falsely?

The message you receive when a message is reported as vulgar talks about determining the atmosphere of the game.  If the intent is only for actual verbal vulgarity (which it states should find no mercy) then why does it go on about atmosphere?  The first time I got a vulgarity report sent to one of my characters I read through the whole thing, and ended up voting "not vulgar", but I didn't think the reporter was abusing the mechanic just because I thought he was wrong.

@Slapsticks:  Professing atheism (whether or not the letter actually did is irrelevant as long as Vellos thought at the time that it did) is strictly against one of Tom's rules for the game, but it wasn't a straight-up "there is no god and Paul Dirac is his prophet".  Should that be reported to the Titans, which is for "repeated and blatant" violations?  Or should it be reported as vulgarity, something that a noble should not say and for which the penalty is a single point of honor lost?

+1

And, by the same token, repeating your denial of it doesn't make it wrong.

Absolutely; my point was that repeating the already-had argument adds nothing to the conversation.

[Indirik]

Perhaps we should call this thread done until the Magistrates finish up?

[Geronus]

Yes, we should. Thread locked, verdict forthcoming.

[Fury]

The Magistrates have finished deliberations and a verdict will be posted within a day.

[Fury]

In the case of Abuse of Vulgarity, the Magistrates have found the accused, Lyman Stone, Not Guilty.

Guilty - One Day Lock 1 (16.7%)
Guilty - Warning 1 (16.7%)
Not Guilty - 4 (66.7%)

While the Magistrates do not agree that the message in question was vulgar, the Magistrates in general also do not think that the accused had the intention to harass anyone with the vulgarity report tool. Harassment would require repeated infractions with the same person.

However, the Magistrates recognize that the vulgarity report can be open to abuse due to the relative anonymity it provides and the low penalties given. As such, we recommend that the game mechanics be adjusted to impose a penalty on reporters each time they report a vulgarity that isn't confirmed to encourage people to be more discerning in their reports.

This thread will stay open a short while to allow for questions and clarifications concerning the verdict only.