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Internet safety, the safety team, grooming, and you.


FreeHongKong
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Some of you really didn’t watch enough PBS kids growing up and it really shows. So let me tell you about the futility of this safety team **** and the staple of child internet safety since NCSA Mosaic made access to the World Wide Web possible for normies who couldn’t use Usenet in 1993. What you will see in every single serious child internet safety PSA is a generalized sentiment of do not trust the internet with lots of common rules like; “Don’t post personal information.” “Don’t talk to strangers.” “Don’t meet with people IRL that you met on the internet.” “Ask your parents before _____.” “If X log off and tell your parents.” 

 

The reason for this is that children are naturally trusting and most if not all internet child predation is based on this. Most of grooming is trust building. So... Teaching children to act distrustful and be skeptical is the single most effective method of child internet safety. 

 

The safety team is going to pose as a force to be trusted, and I hope the above has highlighted the main issue with that. I’m going to mention that its futile compared to actually spreading internet safety information and that the established staff has no concept of anonymous email services, onion browsing, inspect element, and thinks there actually capable of retaliating against false reports dropped into there email. But, with that side point out of the way safety team is contrarian to the basics of internet safety by trying to create an internet group that can supposedly be trusted. Big ******* spoiler this helps accelerate the grooming process. You want the opposite of this.

 

Grooming is an interesting topic if your into psychology but to avoid slapping down a text book of bullshit its a form of social manipulation and positions of power are easier to groom from. You can trust me Lil’ Billy i’m staff i’m apart of the safety team which means i’m trust worthy. Its an exploitable hole that you have created. 

 

IF YOUR UNDERAGED THE MOST IMPORTANT PART IS RIGHT HERE.

Don’t trust the safety team. Don’t trust the staff. Don’t trust anyone you meet on lotc. If you feel uncomfortable at any point in time don’t bother with any part of the lotc community or staff log off and talk to your parents and if you don’t feel comfortable with your parents then click this link. While I do say most of grooming is trust building theirs other tactics like using fear, alienation, fear of alienation, and dependency. If **** gets weird you need to have the nerve cut yourself off despite what threats or social dependencies are levied against you. Big ******* point is don’t respond. You get weird messages then you should ignore, delete, and block.

 

P.S. blocking the feedback forums to unregistered users is very sketchy.

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To take it one step further not a lot of younger folks these days understand how easily their online actions can be recorded by total strangers.

 

It's often overlooked because cameras are everywhere, and social media celebrities, advertisers and everyday YouTubers and streamers are looking for ways to reach out to younger audiences to build trust in these young age groups.

 

While I'm sure not every emote or message is recorded, similar things could be said of Discord. After all how many bans, warns or other punishments have been made based off out of context messages?

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Bit late to the thread, but I felt it was necessary to respond. 

 

The Safety Team's internal vetting and membership involves a degree of OOC that makes us at least more accountable than other layers of staff: because Telanir and Tythus would know our real life names, OOC employment, et cetera.  This does not fully terminate the risk of ‘accelerating grooming’ or  makes our team infallible,  but it at least is a step to avoid misuse of our power or our ability to hide behind this staff title.  We fall under intense scrutiny and I personally feel responsible for the quality of help and oversight we can give to players who feel psychologically harmed in this community, or find their ability to participate in it undermined severely. 

 

We wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that if criminal or psychologically-harmful events take place, the victim should alert all proper organizations and/or the authorities. We can not, and will not try to, replace the role of actual police, family members or close ones.  As a matter of fact, we will constantly suggest the involvement of parents or the authorities if the severity of the situation justifies that. But the fact remains that we have an active policy where we say as a server: we do not want certain people, who commit certain acts, on here. For this policy to be enforced: you need a team that adheres to a protocol and handles these cases, or else you'd get arbitrary enforcement or like in the previous cases: mob rule. It's ridiculous that it requires community outrage or a cohesive exposé on an individual for the responsible people to enforce rules, remove the person in question, et cetera.

 

We cannot force people to trust us as a team, but I will personally put in the work to ensure that we show trustworthy conduct.  As much as the launch of this team proceeded in a chaotic fashion, we must not forget that our mandate on this server is highly serious. All I can say for now is: please criticize us, reach out to us and keep us accountable. On our end we will help you do this by giving people that interact with us full access to all documents, transcripts, call recordings & arguments regarding their case. 

 

In the end, only time will tell if we managed to establish a team that helps this server or contributes to its existing problems with staff. Despite my own past wrongs and controversial history, I promise you to do my utmost best to stop the latter from happening.

 

If you wish to join: please reach out to my discord so we can add you to the backlog of people to interview when we start to expand the team. 

Edited by Draeris
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There are a few issues I have with the team as a whole, and they are questions I’d like an answer to directl from @Draeris or @Telanir

 

  • In a case of sexual harassment where the safety team is approached, what evidence is shown them?
    • To clarify on this, usually (in all cases from what I can tell) sexual harassment cases are all admin drive. Would the safety team be able to view all this evidence which usually is only locked away to admins? If they do have access to this, does it apply to all members of the team? I can somewhat understand that higher level members of this team are able to view chat logs, and probably personal information too but will every member of the safety team see things that could potentially be used to further harass players and even doxx them?
       
  • Based on what criteria are new members chosen?
    • I understand there is an interview like there is for the other staff teams, but how deep does it go? From what I can tell applications (or members) share personal information with Tythus and Telanir, but what other things are looked at? Does their public image count, past infractions and the like? Is there a vote where other staff members can voice their opinions on the applicant before they are added to the team?

      What worries me is how this process is far from strict enough, something I can tell when looking at the roster we were already shown. Are these really trustworthy faces of the community? Staff members leak, staff chat is leaked daily and we all know that, so what would make this any different?

      77ec801bf0459954eb4a5b62e6f1bab3.png.ecf7d7cd993d9f699730def9f5b21f8f.png
       
  • What pex will the safety team have?
    • Simple, really. Will the basic pex such as /fly etc. be present? Will they be able to see ip’s in game with /ipsearch or perhaps on the forums? Will they have mod/admincp on the forums? Will they be able to ban players? Fairly straightforward but points I believe are important as I think people should know what staff teams can see their ip’s.
       
  • Why does it feel rushed?
    • Something I noticed last night is also how the entire project feels very rushed. Pushed out early as a response to Harrison's thread

      164d4a33a98049a4ed48e24347c67b0f.png.fe6160f4d5f15e9e93845b8a719077b3.png

      This part concerns me. Did a new staff team really get made in the span of just two months? This includes chosing managers and members. What also bothers me is how this is a team that partially takes over the work of moderation, but failed to inform moderation. In fact, even other admins were not properly informed.
       
    I personally am not entirely against the idea of the safety team, but there are a lot of factors that come into play here that have not been explained to us properly.
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And perhaps most importantly, avoid joining any High Elven community.

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1 hour ago, Rave_Cave_marb said:

----

Thank you for your questions, I will do my best to respond to them. I will only quote your bold questions in my post to avoid cluttering, but I will try to answer all questions below them as well.

 

“In a case of sexual harassment where the safety team is approached, what evidence is shown them?”

In principle, if the Safety Team is approached, all evidence is visible to all members.  This includes the two admins in our chat. This principle isn’t always applied however, as it does depend on how a case comes to our team.

 

If the player comes to us directly, he or she will be put in a specific channel where we organize the evidence, case, et cetera. This channel is visible to the entire Safety Team: but players need to consent to this. If they do not want a specific person involved in the process: not only would the person in question recuse him/herself from the case and voting, but also from the process entirely.

 

If the admins delegate a case to us, I will talk with the admin(s) involved to see how we will proceed with said case. Maybe certain specifications are given surrounding our handling of said case, which might change the answer to your question.

 

But a scenario in which person A doesn’t want Safety member B to be involved, but B remains involved, will not exist on the Safety team. This will change who sees the evidence of a case, obviously.

 

“Based on what criteria are new members chosen?”

This question is more for Telanir as I did not have a say in the recruitment of this team. I was appointed Safety Manager after its foundation. Though from my experience, Telanir looked at our OOC credentials, affinity with the subjects involved (such as dealing with emotional situations, potential high (dis)stress, that you’re able to deal with the fact that you might become a target yourself, HR, et cetera) and a series of conversations held between himself and myself, where I had to answer questions about my motive or my experiences with certain subjects. What the contents were of the background check I went through, why I was entrusted and the other person was not, is something only Telanir would be able to answer. The roster isn’t definitive and is the only reason why Telanir will proceed with a new public announcement sometime later.

 

Past infractions and public image are relevant, but not leading in the recruitment to this team. If you know my personal history on LotC for example, you might learn that people related to Courland 3 years ago or certain individuals in Haense are on hostile terms with me. You see comments appear on some forum posts or discords about my temper, a harassment accusation, jabs at my character, etc. While on one hand it is relevant to know why this sentiment exists and to what extend it is to blame to my own poor conduct, on the other hand, you must realize that nearly everybody has a similar story to tell. If we were to take all criticism or people’s luggage at face value, nobody that actively participated in communities on LotC would be qualified. You’d have to get total outsiders to which the community wouldn't respond positively as well: as seen by the levied criticism of admins “never logging on and talking to the community” etc. I believe staff like Hunwald are a perfect example of this: loved by one side, hated by others, exposed to do controversial things, but yet remains a highly competent GM that their team wants and basically needs.

 

Needless to say, background checks were held. The fact that I’m here talking to you as the Safety Manager means that Telanir didn’t consider my luggage bad enough for it to sow doubt about my character or competency. Though the rosters aren't final, and maybe even I won't be on the next one. That is up to Telanir.

 

“What pex will the safety team have?

As our forum roles and IG roles need to be finalized, as far as I know, we’d only get access to logs, fly and invisibility. This is not final however, and is still subject to change. I think this will be cleared up in the official announcement 2.0 made by Telanir.

 

“Why does it feel rushed?”

Only some aspects of the entire project were rushed. The announcement was done relatively early because we felt that it should be known that we were handling the GGT – Harrison case, which was exposed quite extensively in Harrison’s thread. We knew this thread was coming, and didn’t want to leave an impression that their concerns weren’t heard. Telanir was on a flight however and we ended up coordinating it with Flamboyant and LotsOfMuffins, who finalized the post with us & the forum rank.

 

Because the announcement was rushed, the project feels rushed. But I can assure that even before we came into the picture, the idea for this team, its jurisdiction and functionality has all been thought out by Telanir and then eventually by the rest of the team. It was made as a follow up to the “We have a crisis” post.

 

“I personally am not entirely against the idea of the safety team, but there are a lot of factors that come into play here that have not been explained to us properly. “

We understand and regret that in the chaos we decided to poorly announce ourselves. But I hope that through answering DM’s, threads like these, future announcements by Telanir and myself and the conclusion of cases such as GGT/Harrison one: we can answer all your questions and show the community that we sit behind this wheel with expertise and good intentions.

 

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I’m going to make a prediction, it’ll be within 4 months that there will be a big controversy regarding the Safety Team. Whether it be from a situation like the Pun incident or something similar.

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Can't ignore the crucial fact that nobody trusts Telanir, which undermines the trustworthiness and effectiveness of this team.

 

FYI the original crisis could have been avoided by admins communicating.

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6 hours ago, Draeris said:

For this policy to be enforced: you need a team that adheres to a protocol and handles these cases, or else you'd get arbitrary enforcement or like in the previous cases: mob rule

 

The administration is meant to be the top of the chain. The most competent members of the staff who are charged with the responsibility of running the rest of the team.

 

However it’s quite obvious from the past recent incidents that this is not the case. While a lot of the blame for the mishandling can be shoved off to Pun who was outed for her ERP with a minor... Telanir is the main focal point of blame in my own opinion. 

 

Policy from what I recall from my days as moderation manager is that cases of disturbing nature such as grooming and pedophilia is to be referred to Telanir. Telanir then can elect to delegate the case to members of his administration if he is on one of his many hiatuses or does not believe he is needed to handle the case.

 

I saw the administration, and thus Telanir himself or by proxy, fail to take appropriate action time and time again.

 

For two weeks a minor that had been jailbaiting (pretending to be of legal age when they were in fact not) for ERP and forming personal relationships by utilizing LOTC as a means to achieve such, was not banned. Despite overwhelming evidence where more than half a dozen players were interviewed and provided proof, along with evidence submitted by myself for the case... They refused to suspend her account. It took me getting fed up with the situation to take the steps to suspend her account. It then took several more weeks of what appeared to be Telanir doing nothing (as told to me by the administration I was communicating with) to finally give the obvious verdict. Their account has been banned until August 2021 where they may appeal their ban and return once more to the server. 

 

In the case which was the first of two topics in my thread which can be found here...

Telanir took action that left a sour taste in the mouth of many when this case was reported the first time. Other than my conversation with the player in question, all evidence that was present on that report had been submitted to Telanir prior in a report from the player involved.

 

The blatant petitioning of a minor for ERP from someone who acknowledges it as being wrong was met with a shadow staff blacklist. 

 

Their access to LOTC was not suspended. They weren’t barred from utilizing the server like they had been proven to be doing to connect with these individuals. 

 

It took a public thread for proper action to suspend the accounts of the player in question to happen. Where Telanir paraded around that he was making change by bringing forth investigation bans as something new, despite the policy existing for several months already, and claiming that new evidence that changed everything was brought forth.

 

In the second case, this was handled by Pun and thus Telanir cannot be blamed, save for his inability to pick competent administrators who cannot protect players. Screenshots weren’t provided as the player on the receiving end of the abuse requested that they not be shown and we wanted to respect that. However the manipulation, gaslighting, and clear manipulation made many of us who were working on these reports to feel physically sick.

 

The verdict on that? They wouldn’t touch it. “Just block them lol”. Nothing about restricting their access to prevent further victims.

 

In response to this thread put forward by myself and several others, the administration put out their own responses. 

 

For those that don’t know, the policy of an administrative response such as the one received requires the administration to vote on it. This can add delays to a response coming out because one person may hold it up either due to being absent or wanting changes made. However once the thread it put out, it’s put forward as the collective, universal stance of the administration.

 

And you know what they did? They dismissed the threads as rep farming.

 

It wasn’t because of their failure to provide proper responses to the reports originally received. It wasn’t because the only avenue provided to us was to make the threads and force action through outrage. It was because we were wanting to up our rep ratio by capitalizing on the outrage of players.

 

Though things have changed right? They’ve learned from their mistakes?

You would hope so. But that’s proven to not be the case. In a more recent case that saw a moderator removed from the server for exchanging photos with a minor at the time, we saw the moderator banned from the server. We also saw a player from a secondary report involving the moderator banned as well.

 

We however did not see the minor who had involved themselves in the situation and exchanged photos with the moderator suspended from LOTC. A player with an extensive history and has openly admitted to actively jailbaiting.

 

With all of this in hand, why should I trust a team run by an administrator who has proven himself to be incapable of handing these cases?

 

The answer is obvious, I can’t.

 

For a team that remains unaccountable and continues to make outrageous errors... While in a way that I agree should not be the avenue we have to take, public reports and appealing to the server at large to get proper action taken is the only way to ensure accountability. 

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3 hours ago, Draeris said:

This includes the two admins in our chat.

 

Why are there only 2 admins in that chat? What’s the separation between what goes in moderation drive vs admin drive vs safety team drive.

 

How does this team structure shake out, is telanir still defacto “chairman” and is heading moderation and this new moderation+ team? Will you handle cases where admins are the alleged party?

 

2 hours ago, Xarkly said:

Can't ignore the crucial fact that nobody trusts Telanir, which undermines the trustworthiness and effectiveness of this team.

 

FYI the original crisis could have been avoided by admins communicating.

 

This. 10000x this. First step in restoring trust in the staff team should be telanir stepping down. No changes will matter because ultimately telanir is still at the helm making arbitrary decisions whenever he decides to be active again.

 

Anytime telanir comes back and decides to be active again, we get some sort of major shake up. Last year around this time was staff consolidation. Now it’s a new team. No amount of staff restructuring is going to help if the issue comes from the top.

Edited by CrazyBigSpiders
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12 minutes ago, Kaelan said:

 

----

 

I didn’t mean to de-legitimize the past threads made on staff, the latest one being Harrison’s. What I meant with the sentence you quoted is basically in support of your criticism: that we found ourselves in a situation where unless big outrage is present, certain actions are not taken. That kind of mob rule may feel righteous because it is a moment where certain sentiments in the community are finally voiced, but I think we both agree that the system shouldn’t have failed in the first place.

 

I hope that with the Safety Team, if there is overwhelming evidence of such a person roaming around: we can just go ahead and demand a(n investigation) ban. It would be a nice milestone if outrage threads are rendered obsolete, because people can venture to their staff teams again to address issues of whatever severity. Hopefully our team becomes obsolete in the future as well.

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45 minutes ago, Draeris said:

but I think we both agree that the system shouldn’t have failed in the first place.

I agree.

 

It should have never come to us having to release those threads. But the system failed us massively and our hands were forced.

 

However, I don’t believe that a team picked by the chairman who has already proven himself incapable of handling these cases while maintaining a position that has him calling the shots, will solve the glaring issues that led to that system failing. 

 

Meaning no offense to you, but you and your team are paraded around as being representative of the community. Yet I was unable to voice my opinion on who represents me. The staff was unable to voice their opinions on who is on the team.

 

I heard your interview list got leaked and there are individuals who have engaged in the behaviour that leads to these bans on that list. 

 

Disregarding the petitioning of the community for their opinion will be disastrous. 

 

We had no sway in who is on the team. We have no trust in the administration that continues to remain in a position of shot calling. And we have issues with the members of the team put forth.

 

I don’t believe Telanir meant any harm in what he’s trying to achieve. I really just think he’s dumb and incompetent and that will lead to the failure of this system that has had a single strip of duct tape put over it.  

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Who is this mysterious chad?

 

While I agree with this post entirely, the purpose of the Safety Team is to deter liability, not to actually keep players safe. There are things we can do, like tell people to log off if they’re uncomfortable and speak to an adult, to make the server safer. Tighten the server’s age range from 13+ to 16/18+ so we don’t have 13 year olds on the same server as ERPers. 

 

But first and foremost, we need to uncuck the GM team.  There are matters that need immediate action. They should not go to Telanir. They should go the GM admin. If there is no GM team admin, the GMs should pick one of themselves to work the issue. I cannot stress enough the importance of immediacy to keep things from spiraling into another ski_king situation. 

 

Creating a safety team is possibly the sketchiest possible thing we can do, and the least effective. The safety team is another layer of red tape thrown on a system literally smothering in bureaucracy. GMs still have no idea how to deal with simple pvp situations because there is a set of convoluted, strict responsibilities for the GMs, administrators, and Telanir.

 

Telanir should not be handling verdicts. He takes days if not weeks to respond. He makes bizarre, self-contradictory decisions, often without full information about the situation. He is not equipped whatsoever to deal with predators. The Safety Team might be his attempt to delegate some of this responsibility, but like most things he does, it is the most bureaucratic solution.

 

Having a group of moderators assigned to “safety” isn’t a terrible idea, though. Create a “safety division” of moderators who are adults and are trusted by the team. But keep those moderators under the same oversight as everyone else, give them the same responsibilities and access, and don’t pick players through a ******* black box secret selection process. 

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All the points I would have made, are stated above but to add another:

 

It’s hard to take the Safety Team seriously, when the rest of the staff doesn’t. 

 

Teamwork makes the dream work, and there is none of that here.

 

 

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