[Ckg]

Honestly this has been a long time coming.  The communities in the discord are so different that trying to please everybody will end up leaving both sides unsatisfied.  The communities of the servers with an older crowd (i.e. TTT, DR, Murder) inherently clash with the younger community of the PH server.  The level of moderation desired by both sides is the exact opposite of the other and leads to grey areas in the rules.  The prime example of this is Discord Rule 1 (No NSFW), where topics that are by definition not allowed are being allowed because to the communities where those conversations are being had it would be ridiculous to disallow these topics.  That is not to say that there should be every scenario under the sun covered in the rules be dictated because that would cause even more strife.  The younger-focused PH community should not be forced to be exposed to content that they do not wish to be exposed to, but it is equally unreasonable to ask the older communities to censor themselves for the sake of a younger audience they have no intention of interacting or playing with.  Trying to compromise on this issue is, ultimately, like mix water and oil; it just won't work.

This issue is only going to increase exponentially as time goes on due to the pendulum shift away from equal representation in the discord staffing crew that is being seen presently.  At the start, discord staff was intended to have equal representation from all parts of the community, but has slowly but surely shifted towards nearly every member, save a few, being from the PH side of the community.  This has lead and will lead to the PH mindset being forced upon the other communities that want the opposite of it, leading to, in their eyes, a problem of over-moderation (for example: think of the "shut up rule" being applied to other servers).  If the current trend continues the only foreseeable end is for an echo chamber to be created, with the only obstacle to a complete takeover of over-moderation being Jammin.  If he were removed from the picture the other communities would be subject to a level of moderation that is not what most of them desire.

The best solution for this would be to add an opt-in role for people joining through PH where they could only see and communicate in the PH channel and other similar channels (Creations, Cute Pets, Gaming Setups, and Marketplace [not Music because of profanity or food because of *kabob*]) and would have to opt-in to see the other channels (including #general) thereby acknowledging/accepting what they are exposing themselves to.  This would eliminate the need to moderate other text channels as severely as the PH channel is moderated, while at the same time preventing their younger audience from being exposed to the older-focused (read: "toxic") communities.

[Salty]

You have a solid point here, but I think the problem with this is it relies on a "honor code" from the community members to be in the appropriate groups; people lie about their age sometimes and that might cause us problems (not people going into PH, but the other way around). 

I don't know if that really makes sense, but I feel like that would be a headache. I do agree with you that the representation for the Discord Staff has shifted heavily from the initial goal of having equal representation; however, I don't really want to put the blame on any particular staff team for this, as it just naturally happened due to more interest in the position coming from those communities rather than an ousting of people who were once in those positions.

[RussEfarmer]

I'm not sure what you mean by Discord moderation being represented by mostly PH members... the discord mod team is a 50/50 split between PH and TTT, the discord admin is from TTT, and TTT has 3 more admins than PH does which also have discord moderator power


I don't think having the two communities coexist is too much to ask. Back when prophunt was only a couple years old TTT and PH had like an actual real rivalry, you got torn up if you played on PH and tried to comment on community issues. They're pretty much chilling now imo. We can probably fix it by actually defining what is and isn't appropriate to talk about a little better since the opinions on what exactly that means across PH and TTT players is pretty diverse.

[August]

I'm not sure where a lot of this is coming from. From my personal observations, things have been so much more diverse than they were say two years ago. I think what you may be getting into is that there's a lot more cross-server players now, both staff and not staff alike. Now back a couple years ago, TTT and PH had WILDLY different cultures. PH was a lot more strict, and TTT was a lot more loose and edgy. In a lot of ways that's still the case, but there is work to make things even and consistent on both sides, and everyone is coming to more of a consensus on what is and is not okay to be allowed on the servers. With time, many regulars are now playing more than one server, so if one thing is okay on TTT, but not okay on PH, there's going to be confusion and possibly some backlash about it. That's why the forums exist, so we can all have a discussion about what is or isn't okay in the community as a whole. I personally think having better consistency across the entire community is a good thing.

As for PH being the "younger community." When it comes to staff, that's not really the case. A good amount of us PH staff are generally older than the average age of the playerbase, and PH in general is, with almost certainty, the #1 game mode on Garry's Mod played by actual children. Thus, we NEED to be more strict about NSFW topics for their sake, or we're subjecting actual children to topics they shouldn't have to witness until they are older. TTT is not safe haven either. I started playing Garry's Mod about a decade ago, and TTT was the reason why. In a past community, Probably 6-7 years ago, I also used to be an Admin for a TTT server. I couldn't tell you how often we get children on there, and they are the ones we know about. How many Randoms do you think cross TTT that are children who don't have mics? I can guarantee you that number is probably higher than you think it is, thus TTT staff have to be mindful about NSFW topics as well, which they have been.

I digress, but the point is that the servers are WAY more diverse than they used to be, and a lot of your gripes just seem to be a bit misinformed.

[Wrong]

you actually can't say shit on the discord without getting overmodded. how does someone posting a kebab that looks like a poop equate to a permanent ban, for example

[HONG]

you actually can't say shit on the discord without getting overmodded. how does someone posting a kebab that looks like a poop equate to a permanent ban, for example

pretty much

if grown adults cant behave themselves around actual children i feel like that points to a much deeper issue than how the discord set up

its also been brought up recently among staff but by segregating people (minors) like this, they can be targeted for a number of reasons; overall i feel like some parts of separation would be healthier, just not like this/for this reason

[Foxka]

you actually can't say shit on the discord without getting overmodded. how does someone posting a kebab that looks like a poop equate to a permanent ban, for example

I can see your point however the ban wasn't exactly valid considering that user is now both unbanned and also newblood ttt trusted.

The big issues i see people complaining about overmoderation are that they don't realize that this is a public server, where it used to be a private one. Public discords are much more required to adhere to discord TOS and Community Standards. Basically most of the shit that gets posted isn't stuff you'd want to be caught reading/viewing on a bus or something, idk how to equate that to an irl metaphor.

Basically, I can see how you think we're over moderating the discord, but we also are lenient with most of the rules we have to adhere to as well. It'd be better if we didn't have to moderate at all, but that's why we're here lol

edit: also as hong stated, giving people a minor role only leads to them being targeted, and we'd like to avoid that im sure.

[Mother Nuru.]

It sounds kind of silly and dumb the kind of stuff that gets moderated, but foxka gave a pretty good explanation/example of why.
The dinks discord is now far more popular/public than it used to be. The more popular/public it becomes, the closer we have to adhere to discord TOS and "strictness" so that we don't lose the discord server. I've seen several that have unfortunately been shutdown for far less/much dumber things than the shit kebob. (funny tho lmao)
I mean we used to have a NSFW channel even in the staff chat, and it was openly talked about in the public discord previously. Those were fun days. but unfortunately not possible anymore.

TL;DR
Discord TOS dumb on some things but necessary to follow so we dont lose the server.


edit; what russ said 100% btw lmao
dumbos thinkin it all ph run
3 ttt, 2 ph, one murder. and the admin is ttt as well so might as well be 4

[Salty]

This is a really valid point. (Just realized the quote I tried adding didn't add: It was this one: "We can probably fix it by actually defining what is and isn't appropriate to talk about a little better since the opinions on what exactly that means across PH and TTT players is pretty diverse" ~Russ)


On a side note that is somewhat similar, as someone who plays more on TTT than anywhere else, I always feel hesitant to give feedback on PH/Murder/DR things when I'm trying to give serious input because I don't fully understand the context of what is and or isn't appropriate with those servers (Yes I could probably read the guidelines to get a better understanding of the rules, but I still wouldn't know the culture as well.) 



The idea of giving a "minor" role is bad because as I mentioned earlier, it gives a massive headache to the staff team.

I've really liked seeing all these points being made by everyone who's made a post, it's given me a little bit of perspective I wasn't considering when I first read it.

[Jammin]

Anything involving rules/etc are really on me and should face the blame onto me. A lot of the controversial bans recently have been valid, though quickly forgiven, bans.
Even though we just did an overhaul of the rules, I'm seeing the issues the new guidelines are presenting. We probably need to form them so that they better read into a person's intent when posting something.

That being said, if I tag a channel as NSFW, then how the hell do we know that everyone going into that channel is 18+? We have a very limited audience in our fitness channel - members who are pre-screened and whom we know are 18 or older. These members are "trusted" enough to not lie about their age.
But to establish a more standard method of determine one's age, we'd have to have a system to weed out those lying about their age. A server I was part of in the past was taken down because a 16 year old lied about their age and joined an NSFW channel - then reported the server to discord. That's why i'm very zero-tolerance on some of these issues, especially those involving information minors have access to.

All of THAT being said, yes we should probably ensure that for even these major issues, that we ensure the intent was a misunderstanding of the rules, and not an intentional attempt to violate TOS (such as the kebab incident). Thanks for the feedback, i'll take a closer look over the next few days.

One thing i'd like to point out is that the server is by no means being influenced by the "PH crowd." I made it a mission to give PH a fighting chance to participate in conversation outside of their own channel. While I don't think i've succeeded exactly, i feel progress is made there. The TTT channel is available for the more rowdy conversations - and I don't think there is any way you can argue we "over-moderate" conversation there.