Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

[Skippy]

Probably to get us to stop being cowardly fucking shits who keep faffing about and get us to go and do something.

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Can you stop with the hyperbole? I think it's very much preventing participants from looking at your argument reasonably.

Like, you may have logical arguments when you express your dissatisfaction with my plan, but your tone of voice is very off-putting and makes it hard to read, for me at least.

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I'm sorry. I just think these people need this crap beaten into their skulls with a goddamn club. They're seriously voting to faff about and lighthouse again.

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WTF are you trying to say?

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official staff communication This had gotten several pages back before our creaky bureaucracy got to it, but I think it's still worth bringing up.

I get how invested one can be in Quests like this one. That's fantastic, but it also requires caution. Please remember to be polite, kind and considerate to one another. I understand how emotive and trying disagreements over Quest decisions can be, for all that it's fiction, but it is almost never helped by getting heated. Just take five and chill if you find your blood rising. It makes the quest a more pleasant place to be for others, and you'll probably do better in the argument. This has been a lovely quest so far with no serious incidents, and I think we'd all like to keep it that way. Please try to keep this in mind in future.

Thanks for your time.

 

[Skippy]

a small note Just a tiny quick note to @Raxner, @Oneiros43, @Jello_Raptor, and whomever else it may concern.

Please try to avoid double-posting. If you want to make another point and someone hasn't replied, your posts do have an edit function. Although in a thread as fast-moving as this one, you really don't usually have long to wait before someone else will have posted and you can make a new post. It's hardly the biggest deal in the world, but please try to keep it in mind. Thanks.

And thank you all for your time. Hope your game is going well.

 

[foamy]

sufficient velocity and dehumanization
If there's anything six thousand and (almost) fifty pages of writing and commentary in this thread proves it's that this is a group that likes to communicate, so I would like to take this time to explain why we have an issue and what we're doing about it.

Our concern arises from the Chapter 271 update and the discussion that resulted from it. This update, among other things, had a proposal involving, effectively, a eugenic breeding program and the sale of the resulting children for future considerations.

Sufficient Velocity is not a neutral platform on issues like human trafficking, racism, sexism, and other evils. We have rules prohibiting their support and, in particular, we have a rule prohibiting something that usually rides alongside it: Dehumanization. That rule is Rule 2, "Don't be Hateful". We expect and require that our users treat any person with the basic respect of recognizing them as a person. Some people have issues with that even with regard to persons who exist in reality; they usually wind up promptly banned.

But Rule 2, and this often comes as a surprise to people, also covers fictional characters. The reasons for this run back to Sufficient Velocity's founding; originally, to prevent things like revenge fantasies from taking hold. Even directed against fictional persons, the language used in them was often the same hateful language that has been against many real people, including many of our users, and the central idea -- that the person you wish to suffer isn't really a person or worth anything -- is the same. The rules, in various versions, have been drafted to keep that language and that mindset off Sufficient Velocity.

Rule 2s intersection with narrative fiction, such as User Fiction or Quests, becomes more complex. We do not wish to eliminate the ability to write about evil things and it is possible -- common, even -- for a story to include elements that an author does not approve of, either neutrally, as backdrop, or as something which is set up as an antagonist or that the story is used to oppose in reality. Thinking Saving Private Ryan is an endorsement of Naziism would be very peculiar, for example. Or the classic satirical piece, A Modest Proposal, also comes to mind.

So when we have to look at a Rule 2 issue in a story we ask ourselves what the intent behind it was; if the material which Rule 2 would cover is being cast in an approving light. This is purely a decision of the author's. They are God, a fourth-dimensional entity who can alter any event and any rule at any time, including before they thought of it. No word appears on a page without an author's decision to put it there, no matter if it's narration or spoken by a character. No frame appears in a movie without a director's decision to include it. They are the ones responsible.

In this case, we have spoken with @eaglejarl, @OliWhail, and @Velorien, and reviewed the updates and thread discussion. Our conclusion is that the child-sale proposal was, in fact, specifically intended to horrify and offer a moral challenge to the players, and was given to the mouth of a mentally unstable character in order to reinforce that aspect.

We have discussed this heavily, and concluded that we will not be taking action against the story or its writers.

But a quest involves more than just its authors...

player problems
... and unfortunately, a number of players ran into problems of their own. We have issued a number of infractions, but the common thread throughout almost all of them is that the players in question were treating the women and children involved in the proposal as if they were... vending machines. Insert nickle, get baby, flip for profit. That will not fly; I wish to be very clear here: if you want to talk how you'd treat women like 'brood mares', you can do it not on our website.

We do not like descending on someone's creative work with fire, sword, and cross. If nothing else, it's a great deal of work, but in addition, it is discouraging and disruptive to the people involved, both as authors and as readers. QMs are in a prime position to shape their thread's culture and point their players away from these kinds of troubles, which works out best for everybody. We give significant respect to author requests for thread management, such as booting a trouble-making player, for this reason. They are almost certainly the best-placed and best-informed person available... provided they have an understanding of what the rules stop and, more importantly, why they stop it.

This was also something we spoke to the co-QMs about. From that conversation, they were discomfited as well by some of the posts their players have made, and understand the nature and purpose of Rule 2. They have said they will be taking a more active stance towards preventing this particular failure mode from happening again. Hopefully, the infraction points we're handing out to various people will help drive the point home, too. I don't think anybody here has a desire to see a repeat.

infraction time
@Twinnstars has been infracted for 50 points under Rule 2, "Don't be Hateful": Do not try to justify treating people like chattel.
@KaGoGoGadgetMe has been infracted for 50 points under Rule 2, "Don't be Hateful": Do not advocate for sociopathic decision-making.
@Byzantine279 has been infracted for 25 points under Rule 2, "Don't be Hateful": Do not diminish the impact of human trafficking.
@No-one of Importance has been infracted for 25 points under Rule 2,"Don't be Hateful": Do not treat people like Pokemon.
@JulieK has been infracted for 25 points under Rule 2, "Don't be Hateful": Do not treat people like Pokemon. (*Rescinded. Post was misunderstood)
@huhYeahGoodPoint has been infracted for 25 points under Rule 2, "Don't be Hateful": Do not treat women as objects to be passed around.

@Shadowwarp has been infracted for 25 points under Rule 6, "Acceptable Content": Do not talk about how you'd encourage as many teenage pregnancies as possible.
@Rafin has been infracted for 25 points under Rule 6, "Acceptable Content": Do not use terms like 'whoring out' in reference to teenagers.

In addition, all of the above have been threadbanned for one week.

thread reopened Thread reopened. If you would like to read our Rules, they may be found here. Please note that debating a Staff decision in the thread where it was made is considered a breach of Rule 5, "Don't Make It Harder To Do Our Jobs"; we have strong processes to allow for the appeal of individual actions or to discuss things in the Staff Communication forum without further disrupting this thread.

 

[foamy]

stop
@Lailoken has been infracted and threadbanned for 1 week for a violation of Rule 5.

 

[foamy]

rescinded infraction
@JulieK's infraction has been rescinded and her threadban removed. The post for which it was issued was misunderstood.

stop
@Pharos has been infracted and threadbanned for three weeks for violating Rule 5, "Don't Make Our Jobs Harder".

 

[Squishy]

Sheesh, honestly you souud like an abused wife.
We have lost so many cool characters and plot possibilities because "muh simulationism" and now it's not even consistent. Since we don't care about the simulation anymore and votes don't matter, can we please get orochimaru and jiraya back?
Ir even better, If I become a mod can I force you to bring Oro back?

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let's not
I don't think this is productive. Have a week off from the thread.

 

[Orm Embar]

infraction issued @Threnodist has received 25 points under Rules 3 & 4 and been threadbanned for two weeks. Please continue your regularly scheduled posting.

 

[Squishy]

So, I go off on my own self-imposed ban and everything immediately goes to hell. Situation normal, all fucked up.

Give me a place to start reading because this is beyond unacceptable and I want to start taking down names. The vote means that it was a collective decision and scapegoating an individual victim for the results of a collective decision is something which needs to be excruciatingly punished.

Give me names. If I have to dig them out myself I'll make them pay thrice-fold in blood for my time.

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stop
Clearly your self-imposed ban was not adequately long. Allow me to remedy that.

 

[veteranMortal]

faintlysorcerous has been temporarily removed from the thread for violating rule 3
Do not respond to their posts until their threadban has ended.

EDIT: Per the request of the infracted user, feel free to quote their posts.

 

[Ori]

do not do this.

CitizenTen has been infracted under Rule 2 and threadbanned for 72 hours.

I highly recommend dropping this tangent about forced relocations.