An Invitation to the Reddit community for Shroud of the Avatar!

What someone does in a different place on the internet should have no bearing if they are allowed to post in official places. Or, if you want to allow banning for behavior outside official places then this should be applied fairly to all sides as well.

 

Again. I do not expect ANY place on Reddit or anywhere else for that matter to be a safe space. I would, however, expect it to be in Shrouds own subReddit.

 

Omg..
Answer to your question, yes, he should be allowed to express his thoughts.
Even reddit has rules, usually no flaming, personal insults etc.

A place, where you can't express negative thoughts and feelings, is NOT a safe space.

 

Oh I see the confusion, sorry let me clarify something that perhaps Hroth didn't make clear up at the OP

www.reddit.com/shroudoftheavatar is a community run sub moderated by @Freeman , @hroth and myself. It is not the 'Official' Sota sub and portalarium has nothing to do with it (although it would be nice if they posted once in awhile too)

the 'official' sota sub is at www.reddit.com/r/sota_official

That one is run by the devs and has almost all the same rules as the forums here regarding discussions and topics and everything. It is also quite dead.

 

They are not in the official sota subreddit, this should also be moderated if that's where it is.

No more combative or argumentative talk in this thread. This is an invitation to the community to reddit, any further side-topics like these will be removed.

 

THANK YOU!

 

Thanks for the suggestions. I updated the sidebar with some of the links from there. I am having trouble finding a valid discord invite link though if anyone could help me out with that

 

I deleted the post because it's just so ugly I couldn't bear it be on this forum. I think the point was made.

 

https://discordapp.com/invite/9QwpZ4

Not sure if it's permanent. If it works 24 hours from now, then it is.

 

same message, it tells me its invalid or expired

 

Ah yes I forgot about that. A well deserved annihilation. Glorious

He got manhandled on Reddit, too. Beauty.

 

try this page, its the hospitallers. There are links to discord there.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...s-sotahelp-org-players-helping-players.48819/

 

expired or invalid as well

perhaps @Berek could post a valid link to the discord server and then i would know if it was just me or not

 

Yeah you'll probably need Portalarium staff to get you a non-expiring link for that. I thought I had it but I guess not.

By the way, you should add r/SotA_official to the 'other subreddits' section on the sidebar as well. Would make sense for the 'middle ground' to link both ways.

 

Hi DJ Alleine,

I apologize for being confusing in my original post. As @Preachyr mentioned the oldest and most populous subreddit for Shroud of the Avatar is not an "official" one if the definition of official is being operated by Portalarium. By being oldest and most populous, it does appear to be the first place new potential players arrive at on Reddit.

Reddit tends to attract folks who appreciate content over form; the site itself looks like it might have arisen at the advent of the Internet in the Netscape days (but it underlies some pretty fierce technology and philosophy.) My personal observation is many there love critical thinking and debate, and try to avoid manufactured narrative.

I also wanted to clarify what is meant by 'safe'. By Reddit standards, our definition of safe tends towards being concerned on personal attacks, illegal actions (like doxxing), and spam. Having reviewed the moderation log over the past four years, I can safely say that both players who enjoy Shroud of the Avatar and non-players who do not currently enjoy Shroud of the Avatar have crossed the line and have pulled some pretty crazy things.

What this does not mean is that 'safe' is necessarily pro-game, pro-developer, or pro-player. There's plenty of unique things and unique history to Shroud of the Avatar, both good unique and different unique, and while I love the game and the community - this history and development style may mean a harsh or hurtful word in discourse. Not just in our subreddit, but in Reddit (and most of the Internet) these days, my personal take is that if someone is stating something that is hurtful to me but not personally directed to me, it's not unacceptable/illegal... but I wouldn't respond or enflame that part of the discussion. Two reasons - I don't think it solves anything, but also because I'm mindful that at every turn on Reddit there are some new potential players judging the game on my response which may bound to come off the wrong way.

I definitely value your courage to submit posts to /r/MMORPG about Shroud of the Avatar. At this point my personal focus is to direct first efforts simply on getting /r/shroudoftheavatar established as a place for both players and non-players to feel 'safe' posting quality content to the subreddit without personal attack, including trying to cut through some myths about the platform.

Ben

 

One more point I forgot to make in my last message to you too @DJ Alleine Dragonfyre but my personal observation is that it does seem in the modern social-media age an interested player in Shroud of the Avatar actually seeks out harsh and/or balanced discourse about a game and implicitly trusts that much more than a biased source, for example an official forum where problems might be 'airbrushed'.

I can slightly understand that perspective even if it seems somewhat sensational (maybe I'm just showing my age!)

 

Especially in todays gaming environment gamer's tend to trust more what other gamers say about a game in an open environment, than what game journalists write up or developers say about their games. I think even the guys at Portalarium would agree that some of us, know more about the game than they do

 

One other thing to point out from that earlier question about the critic on /r/MMORPG: we try not to single people out so I won't mention the example redditor by name, but critics of the current state of Shroud of the Avatar may still be valuable contributors to discussion. The example in question was a great one; on one hand they had an issue with fundraising methodology, but on another forum had a question about performance, which unearthed some interesting tips on cofactors on Shroud of the Avatar performance and what a user can do to try to speed things up.

As a moderator, I tend to view each contributor locally:

1. For a Post, is this a topic that the Poster has posted before? If not, this is fresh territory and acceptable to me.
2. Within a Post, for a given Commentor, is this a topic that the Commentor has posted before within the Post? If not, (even if it's been said ad nauseum in other Posts) I'm fine with it.

But for a commentor to keep circling back inside a post, or for a poster to double-post - that becomes tiresome for me.

 

Reddit - a discussion tree vs a forum

One subtle innovation of discussion places like Reddit is the use of a "tree" instead of a linear "roll".

So on a forum like this one, the discussion thread goes something like:

Code:

A: Writes
      |
B: Writes (and can reply to A)
      |
C: Writes (and may reply to B... or try to quote A earlier)
      |
A: Replies

In a strange sense, this is somewhat confrontational. When C writes, they clearly can read what A and B have written and so there may be some implicit approval if they do not address A and B's points. So some might feel like they should address all past points to continue the discussion on the thread.

--------------------------------

On Reddit, it's something like a tree.

Code:

A:  Writes
      |
      B: Writes in reply to A
             |
             C: Writes in reply to B
      |
      D: Also writes in reply to A, but not necessarily to C

What this means is that replies are direct, but if there are other points that you are neutral (or even against), you can 'let those slide by' and address only the points you want.

This makes it actually easier to reduce heat in a conversation and remove oneself from a flamewar.

E.g.

Code:

Me:  "I love the new Proficiency system, finally some choices with consequences!"
      |
      Mr. A: "This is just another example of how the game is run poorly"
             |
             Mr. B: "No kidding, it's like P2W now"
      |
      Mr. C: "Wait, what's this about Proficiency?"
             |
             Me: "Check out Atos' Daily blog, he's got lots of details!"

Do I agree or condone Mr. A? Nope, but he's got his viewpoint and it's completely valid for him to hold that viewpoint. With the tree, I feel fine sidestepping that conversation if I don't share the same concerns or don't have the same interest or priorities.

But when Mr. C comes along later I can continue to address his points.

There can be posts where there are many conversations going on about the central topic, with very pro- and very anti- discussions going in parallel.

But there's never a reason to feel forced to directly confront someone.

 

Reddit - What Can't Moderators Do?

Unlike a traditional forum board, like this one moderated by folks like @Berek and @Cerus, Reddit implements strict controls on moderator power in order to protect users' privacy and "level the playing field". My emphasis below in yellow.

FROM: https://www.reddit.com/wiki/moderation#wiki_what_can.27t_moderators_do.3F

Moderators are unable to

• move posts or threads
• edit other users' submissions or comments
• read other users' private messages.
• see the IP address or any other details about a redditor that aren't visible to everyone else, except for comments and submissions removed in their subreddit
• make threads or comments lead to a "not found" page
• change the subreddit capitalization (casing) chosen when the subreddit was initially created without CSS tricks
• remove any voting arrows without CSS
• remove, delete or ban any subreddit, including their own
• know who subscribed to their subreddit
• know who voted on things in their subreddit
• know who reported things in their subreddit. Report button abuse should be dealt with by the admins by messaging the mods of /r/reddit.com