Citation needed. I personally have never seen the evidence that supports this claim.
Been here for 16 years, and I would disagree.
When people were held to the standard of personal responsibility, to avoid, block and ignore the players who were jerks the game suffered far less turnover. The volatility of the game, from what I can tell, is a direct result of allowing players feelings to dictate the interactions of social discourse in the game. There are other things, more then I could mention in a paragraph, but being hyper focused on making sure the community is nice to one another, my opinion, was a detriment to the population of the game.
I agree 100% with you. Sadly in the case of Twitter, a lot of the good people left and what is left is only a cesspool. What some see a Heaven others see as Hades. It’s almost like different people are different and it’s best when we all just agree to disagree.
I am a fan of kicking bullies as well but much like this thread shows, a lot of times people have differing views of what a bully is. Some on here would argue the people in the thread on the right are bullies, others would argue people on the left are bullies. Sadly, the only way to resolve this is someone like a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion officer who may very well already have a stance on which side is correct and not be willing to hear either side.
Oilitical views destroy rational thinking and decent human beings. One people start down that path, they dehumanize their “opposition” in order to “win at all costs”. In the end we are all just people and deserve respect, even if we disagree
When the game was created and new, Blizzard punished almost no one. You had to do some severe shenanigans to piss off Blizzard. The players knew this, and took it into their own hands. Their method of dealing with the situation best represents itself in the server black lists that were available at the time.
Players could add people to the black list, and as the player in question did more and more bad things, their bad reputation would rise. Then, when you were forming a group, or inviting people into a guild, you could search for these jokers. At that point you could take the responsibility yourself and still invite this person who has a bad reputation if you so choose to.
People are very good at self moderation when you allow them to be.
Though, now people feel as though the authority should be mommy and daddy and punish all those who do wrong in their eyes. It creates a system where when the authority has to choose between the two sides, they are then held to that standard, and can never go back.
Which worked while we were unable to easily name change and server change - and before we had all the merges/CRZ.
Holding people accountable with consequences like excluding them from groups means knowing a recognizable identifier (name).
What you describe though is reality - act like a jerk and people don’t want you around. These days it comes in the form of reports - enough of them with valid logs and you get a time out. Social media does it too - enough reports (as in the user base not being happy) and it gets looked into.
Now, if nobody reports someone then they skate away home free.
The results are the same though - the population uses tools to cause the troublemaker to be removed or excluded. Black list or reports that result in a time out. Same end result of removing the person others don’t want to be around.
Blizzard chose getting a little bit of scratch, over the players ability to self regulate their populations. Wait, that doesn’t sound like Blizzard…oh, never mind that sounds exactly like Blizzard.
I will give you another story from around that time. Somewhere between the end of Wrath and beginning of Cata. I was jaw jacking with some people in Orgrammar. I was using my normal profane laced language, as one does, and my brother who was in the conversation was reported enough to get temp banned by Blizzard. He immediately appealed the report and was exonerated by Blizzard because, in their own words, “He did not bypass the profanity filter to allow the language to be seen by those who wish not to see it.”
Fast forward a few years, and outside Mogoshan Vaults (spelling /shrug) I said three profane words, again, not bypassing the filter, and I was sent a nastygram from Blizzard because of my language. In a few short years, we went from personal responsibility to people intentionally reporting people with their profanity filter off so they can get people in trouble.
Blizzard took a side. And from all the evidence we have access to, it was the wrong one.
One gave every player the agency to make the decision on their own. The other relies on the authority to punish the wrongdoer, even if what they did was within the scope of their own statements from the past, as my previous example shows.
The filter has never ever been an excuse that allows people to use profanity in game. They rules have been in place since the start but you used to have to come to the website and put in a ticket about the infraction so few people bothered. The penalty then was a suspension from the game.
Then they added right click report which captures the name, server, chat channel, and logs. That lets the GM review and penalize far easier - logs are right in front of them vs having to search based off ticket info. They also have an auto squelch for mass spam reports. In 2016 they added the Silence which removes social features instead of a Suspension. The hope was people would learn from that and stop it. Sadly, it did not, so they are back to tacking on Suspensions again if needed.
We mostly used black lists for loot ninjas and guild drama queens on my server, not so much being a potty mouth.
What changed over time was the ease of reporting, and to a degree the lighter penalties now.
Source on the profanity filter not being an excuse to break the rules (besides the thousands of CS posts where people come complain about their silence or suspension for “just using common words”)
Mature Language Filter (aka The Profanity Filter)
This can be activated within your Interface Options: Main menu (ESC key by default) Click Interface > Social and check - Mature Language Filter.Once enabled, all inappropriate words in our profanity database will be filtered and masked to appear as jumbled characters, such as ‘*##@&’.
Note: The filter does not excuse the language used. The filter serves as a temporary shield, to help parents of minors and others who do not wish to see it, to block it. Our policies prohibit the use of both clear and masked inappropriate language.
I wasn’t making the excuse. Blizzard did when they overturned my brothers penatly.
I was giving you an anecdotal from previous experience I have been witnessed to. I could also link the YouTube video from when the right click report feature was implemented, and the 30 guild members reported the priest for saying good things about Blizzard in general chat, then being auto banned in seconds. They had to alter their system after that.
You could add to the list anything you wanted. But, no one would care if you put on there “HexcrafterMcLeetsauce has a potty mouth.”
Ya, because no one talks in general now, for fear of being punished. Not like fear of being obligatorily banned for the worst comments known to man, like race, ethnicity, past atrocity, ect. No, now its people don’t dare say anything in general unless its happy or they want a time out. Fear of speaking is not a good thing. It creates animosity, and sometimes to the point where people won’t deal with it anymore. I have known people who have left for this reason. It happens and it doesn’t need to.
I didn’t change the meaning of this, Blizzard did with how they responded over the course of time in their own game. It is up to them in regards to what rules they adhere to or ignore. It still doesn’t change the fact of how people view Blizzard’s decision making. My opinion, 100%, is that Blizzard hired CS/GM agents who are inept at their position. Their lack of ability to understand and follow transcribed sets of rules and regulation set forth by Blizzard has forced Blizzard to restrict players based on these detrimental employees. Blizzard has no choice but to hire these dregs to fulfill their stance on Diversity and Inclusion. Their limitation on hiring people who have a base understanding of the English Language and the morality of Voldemort.
In all of human history we know that the more you censor the exchange of thoughts between people, the more divisive the conversation becomes. It splits people down the middle into two sides, those with a voice, and those without. Those people who have been silenced don’t just disappear.
Blizzard didn’t have these issues before the censorship started. Didn’t need to police the community until they created an issue themselves. Didn’t need to hire a Diversity and Inclusion manager, until they lost the respect of the people they chose to pander to years ago.
It depends on who she may hire, or have the authority to hire. Honestly, we won’t even know, or have an idea until we see where the game goes in the future. If you get creators talking about how the game “needs to reflect real life” or some other nonsense like that, then you know it’s finished. Those sort of statements are the kind you hear from content creators who are more interested in being activists as opposed to just making something fun. It’s really been evident in the comics industry for a while, and of course in Hollywood. Only time is going to tell.
The issue with this is, she is an HR person. She does not know much, if anything, about the work those in the production side of Blizzard actually do in a day to day basis. Ultimately it is the job managers + the HR personnel that hire in. Her only role is to ensure they hire more women & minorities. (Nothing wrong with doing this obviously, it just comes across as disingenuous with all that’s been happening at Blizzard in recent months.)
In essence, little to no impact will be made to the game with her presence. It is the leadership of production that would incur the greatest change.
If she is hiring people to assist her, then she would have hiring input. If they are hiring a server engineer, she would not be a decision maker.
This is true. It is more than “hiring a more diverse group”. The role has both a recruitment and hiring impact, but also a work culture impact for those already at work to ensure people have a decent work environment.
One way discussed earlier in this thread that someone in her position does is help with recruting more applications from additional resources. So instead of hiring streamers they know, or recruiting from X and Y university, they may do work programs or job fairs at additional universities. They may work with schools to get kids interested in the career so that there are lots of candidates. They may open in-house summer programs to a broader range of applicants, etc.
Once at work, there is a ton to address about workplace culture to just get folks to be professional and respect others. Also that with a broad workforce group, you will have lots of unique holidays, religions, cultural backgrounds. There are parents, there are people with medicial needs, there are people who do family care, there are all sorts who are fantastic and capable with a bit of flexibility. Understanding and tolerance is good for everyone.
Yep, and often make the news that follows corporate hiring.
This lady is very high up in ATVI, not at the individual game publishers or studios. She is not selecting the game devs. She is just making sure there are lots of qualified folks and they ALL get considered instead of buddies or pretty faces.
Those 10 people will go on to make the entire platform less hospitable to everyone else. So then people are less likely to join because that platform will disproportionately favor the 10 bullies who will create a negative net experience for every one person.
This might be a controversial take, but I think this should be normalized.
We are more than just dollar signs, we foster a community.
Seeing as how the default for Bully is - Anyone who may disagree with any statement I may make - this includes many people that do not qualify as a bully anywhere else.
Using the extreme example of what may constitute bullying does not grant you the right to eliminate differences in thought by branding people you don’t agree with as bullies.
If there is no limitation regarding how to quantify what is or is not considered bullying, you run the risk of using oppression as currency. Oh look, too late.
They can’t…which is why they bring in someone to oversee the process and make sure they’re not hiring only the white males they find to be “most qualified”.
There is nothing hypothetical about court filings and journalistic reporting. And some of the lazy claims here about “HoW aBoUt We HiRe ThE bEsT pErSoN” don’t even merit the descriptor of hypothetical.
