Ugicywapih said:
I think it would make more sense to include and anti-bullying rule in WW's mini-CoC instead of scrapping it altogether, especially after majority of users voted to keep it in an official poll.
We considered it. (Contrary to popular belief, this wasn't a rushed decision or a spur-of-the-moment thing. We discussed and mulled over the options for quite some time before coming to a decision.)
Additional rules had already previously been added to the WW's CoC in light of certain individuals pushing the boundaries. And we just felt that this was a pattern that was destined to continue, - another boundary pushed here, another line crossed there, and yet another rule added to an ever-increasing list.
Not only would this have become more and more confusing for users, ("A rules-free subforum with actual rules? Dafuq?"), but it would also make it more complicate to moderate, especially considering the WW's initial premise of the moderators 'not monitoring' it. (And before someone suggests "well too bad, people can just ignore the bullying and not visit the WW", please bear in mind that it becomes a bit difficult to ignore a call-out thread made about you when you literally see your username emblazoned on the Escapist's home page as soon as you log in, in light of WW threads appearing in the forum widget that no-one has the ability to modify.)
There's also the issue of where to draw the line. How do we phrase an anti-bullying rule specifically for the WW, and more importantly, how do we enforce it? Do we forbid just the call-out threads? If so, what if someone gets called out and dogpiled in a rather nasty way in another otherwise innocuous thread? WW rules would mean we couldn't clamp down on the thread or do anything about it, which would make any watered-down WW-specific rules functionally useless.
Additionally, how do we define bullying? If we go all-in and forbid all personal attacks, then we just have the normal forum CoC, which would mean the WW doesn't really need to exist at all.
bluegate said:
The Wild West was supposed to be without moderation, moderators were supposed to not patrol that section. No matter how big of a dick people were in the Wild West, what happens in the WW stays in the WW, or that is how it should have been IMHO.
In a perfect world, "what happens in the WW stays in the WW" is something that would have been nice. But we don't live in a perfect world, and human nature doesn't work that way.
People hold resentment, and grudges, and bitterness. And while the WW gave people a place to vent these feelings towards one another, it also created a breeding ground for nastiness that frequently spilled out into threads elsewhere on the forum. Certain people were starting to make obscure jabs at one another in other subforums, referencing some toxic interaction that they'd previously had with each other in the WW.
It worked the other way around too. Someone would get pissed off with someone else on the forum (in a non-WW thread), and so they would invite (or simply harass) the other person to join them in a WW thread for fisticuffs in a sort of a "Meet me behind the bike shed after school" moment.
All in all, the WW was creating an unpleasant atmosphere that was tainting the rest of the forum, - an atmosphere that many users were uncomfortable with, and that the mod team was getting increasingly uneasy with. It just simply didn't gel well with the standards of the rest of the forum, and whatever purpose or 'rules-free fun' that was originally envisioned for the place either never came to fruition, or came and went again leaving nothing but a toxic mess in its wake.
