The Compendium of the Regional Stability Squad
Summary of Discussions #1: The Two Wintreaths
March 1st, 2023 - Published March 2nd, 2023
The Regional Stability Squad has started its discussions by considering the very core of what Wintreath stands for as a community. In the process, we've made the realization that we stand for two things that aren't necessarily mutually compatible: a community that's open and welcoming for all, and a community that's close-knit and personable. Throughout its history, Wintreath has attempted to bridge both ideas, but instead has muddled along without accomplishing either.
This is directly relevant to some of the issues at hand. A focus on an open and accepting community accepts that its members can have conflicting opinions, viewpoints, and ideologies and also accepts the risk that this can lead to offense and hurt. Wintreath has never allowed discrimination of any kind, but we must recognize that it's possible for people to be unintentionally hurt through things like ignorant comments and an inability to understand the feelings and personal experiences that every member brings. In fact, this focus gives hope that those members can overcome any ignorance and biases by interacting with real people and breaking down stereotypes and caricatures. It's hard to remain ignorant about someone when they become your friends.
On the other hand, a focus on a close-knit community will work to reduce the vulnerability of its members by reducing the chances that these kinds of interactions can hurt members and make them less comfortable being themselves in the community. It accepts that people need to have that comfort and safety for a close-knit community to flourish, and that it's not the place for a community that contains vulnerable communities to educate those who are ignorant at the cost of causing harm and distress in the process.
Some questions raised:- Do you try to rehabilitate people while knowing that they're actively causing harm and distress to people within your community?
- Is there room for people to feel safe in Wintreath and to win people who aren't as knowledgeable over? And if so, what are the lines? At what point does an op step in if they say something that hurts others?
- Sometimes we have been successful at bridging the gap, but is it really the role of Wintreath to do that?
The fact is, Wintreath has not excelled in either area and the evidence is clear. Over the course of the years, groups spanning all ideologies have complained that they don't feel their views or identities are entirely welcome in Wintreath, and that they feel they are walking on eggshells when trying to express themselves. It's also clear in the prominence of private servers, which have often been more active than the main Wintreath Discord. These are spaces where subsets of the community could come together and truly feel open to share their feelings and feel safe in a way that they could not on a large, broad, and open Discord server.
In our discussions, we considered a ban on all political debates and discussions. However, the consensus of the RSS is that this would sanitize the community and further restrict people from expressing themselves. It's virtually impossible to promote the LGBTQ+ community and the struggle for their rights without being able to discuss the political end of it. The policing debates of 2020 weren't just about the abuse of force by police, but about the blatant and systemic discrimination against people of color that led to it. We can acknowledge that our handling of heated debates was less than stellar without putting limits on how people can express themselves in the process. We will certainly be discussing how best to go about this in the future.
We also discussed an "ideological purge", mostly as an exercise in considering the most extreme steps possible. However, we feel that this would be difficult to enforce and potentially counter-productive. Being conservative does not necessarily mean that someone opposes the rights and the existence of others, although we are aware that the argument has been made that they should still be unfit to be part of a community that's safe for all due to the fact that they've likely voted for politicians who have. We have several conservative members in Wintreath, none of whom have to the best of our knowledge opposed the IRL rights of any other member, and in one case is a member of the LGBTQ+ community as well. Our discussion made it clear how complex this seemingly simple solution would be.
Ultimately, we suspect that what most people want is really a community of friends (something else we proudly promote), a place that they can relax and vibe with their friends, and feel that they can be comfortable expressing themselves in doing so. It was noted that in most cases, who stayed in Wintreath and who left usually came down to which core group each person was closer friends with. The private servers that have been so prominent in the past years also promote this sort of community, and multiple members of the RSS expressed that they just wanted a relaxed community that they could "vibe" in. This will have implications for virtually all Wintreath reforms, especially when we discuss the IC Wintreath "government", but those are discussions we will be having later.
By definition this veers closer to the close-knit community, although the RSS has only started discussing what measures would be necessary to steer our community into that course. One potential idea involved only granting new members access to a few channels, then after a time if they have sufficiently been active giving them access to the core areas of the Discord server. This would give the community time to vet new members in how they interacted with people and handled themselves in the community, and make it easier to show members who were not interacting well the door. This is where our discussions ended for the day.
Throughout our discussions, we repeatedly came back to the topics of moderation and member conflict. We recognize that regardless of how a new Wintreath is oriented, it will not completely eliminate conflict, offense, and hurt between members. When that happens, it is vital that our community is led by people who can lead their response from a place of recognizing and embracing the feelings and personal experiences that each person brings with them. To paraphrase some of our observations during our discussion, the goal here shouldn't be to stop conflict entirely, because that's never going to happen. The goal should be to mitigate the harm conflict causes when it does happen, and deal with it appropriately. We're not here because conflict happened, we're here because we didn't deal with it appropriately.
In the process, we have started discussing requirements for administrators and senior government members in the future to promote a more understanding community. This includes providing training on diversity, equity, and inclusion, and requiring prospective ops to demonstrate their understanding of these principles through roleplay with various situations. I can say from personal experience that this was really helpful for me because it took me out of my comfort zone and pushed me to make realizations on my own. There have also been some discussions on also providing de-escalation training as well. We do not aim for a monolithic community. At the same time, we wish to be a community of friends who, by being friends, can generally be relied upon to discuss issues (which may sometimes be controversial) reasonably and in good faith. This goes beyond minimum expectations of civility or a simple ban on outright bigotry or prejudice, demanding a higher degree of sensitivity to the lived experiences of other members, which extends to the way people raise their views and respond to the views of others as well as their attitudes going in or when confronted.
On a personal note, as I said
on the forums, I am devastated that my ignorance and dismissive attitudes hurt so many people, including people who were my closest friends and people that I think the world of. I am completely dedicated to fixing what led to this, both within myself and within our team, and I swear that I will do what it takes to make sure this
NEVER happens again in any community that I'm a part of. There will be more discussion on how to handle moderation, and by the end of this process this community of friends will have the leadership and moderation that it deserves to have. I promise that.
In the meantime, we welcome any comments, questions, or thoughts about our discussions so far. There is no wrong comment or question, so please don't be afraid to share even if you don't agree with anything here. If we're off-course in any way, we need to know that and will appreciate the community telling us so.
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Wintermoot on behalf of the Regional Stability Squad