Talk:Manners

=Opening= Filling this page should probably be a community effort more than the work of a single person. Also discussion will be really important. So what do you think should be put there? VicoV (talk) 15:51, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

A courteous request to remove this page
I think this page should be removed from the wiki. I do not think it should be the wiki's responsibility to prescribe a code of conduct for the community. Generally, informational wikis contain falsifiable information. Nothing on this page is falsifiable because the difference between good and bad manners differ between people. As a result, this page will almost certainly be the victim of edit wars as the community grows larger.

The main problem with a code of conduct is that wikis are often assumed to be reliable sources of information. Statements as "X is considered bad manners" will have immense sway over what people do and think in the game, even if they are not objectively true. For instance, the page used to say that it is considered bad manners to say "gg" as the winner if the loser doesn't, and personally I not only think this is false, but I even think it is POLITE as the winner to say gg after the game even if the loser doesn't. In my book, saying "gg" after a game is functionally equivalent to a handshake after a chess game. If you take offense at my gg, you are taking offense at my handshake, and I find that rude.

The page was since edited to say that "it can be considered rude." While this makes the statement no longer objectively false, it's still a very weaselly way of putting it, and I think an appropriate edit would also say that it can be polite to say gg after the game as the winner. However, I don't want to make this edit. You can imagine how silly it would look to say something like "X is considered bad mannered by some. It is, however, considered polite by some."

I think that if we are trying to create a code of conduct for the community, it should be done in a place that is not the wiki, and preferably by Lunarch themselves. There is just too much disagreement on this issue for it to be a wiki page.


 * That's a lot of things to discuss. Honestly I didn't even think it could be considered not to be Wiki material, to me that's exactly the sort of topics we should address.


 * This page isn't about prescribing a code of conduct. As you said, the only ones with the authority to create such a thing would be Lunarch. It's just guidelines provided by the community (maybe we should state that more explicitly?). Exactly what is considered good or bad manners is not an easy question, but if anything it makes it 'more important' to address, and address well. Yes there will be people coming just to destroy content, but by removing it ourselves we're just doing them a favor, I think if it becomes too much of a problem we need to come up with solutions to that instead of simply giving up.


 * About objectivity, you could raise the same concerns over all of the other articles here. What we're building is based solely on personal experience, there's no such thing as a reliable source in Prismata content (except replay codes to an extent, and we don't have enough of them).


 * I'm not sure I understand your take on the 'offensive gg' question, which is, let's be honest, the only thing causing arguments currently. I haven't seen any debate about the rest, correct me if I'm wrong. You are saying that sometimes when you say 'gg' you offend your opponent. You also know when this happens, i.e. when (1) you have won the match and (2) your opponent did not say 'gg'. Why not use the practical solution to not offend people, and only say 'gg' second when you win? You can't say someone is rude for pointing out you offended them as long as they explain how clearly (which is the case here). If you walk on someone's toes they're not rude for saying 'ouch.' On the other hand, you should probably pay attention to where you put your feet if you don't want to hurt someone unintentionally. No one is going to arrest you if you don't, but that's still a good rule to apply if you care about others (yay, the metaphor about manners and guidelines came full circle :) ).


 * Now I understand saying 'gg' is *usually not* the equivalent of stepping on toes, pretty much the opposite (the comparison to shaking hands, as you put it, is generally better). But if someone doesn't want to shake hands, it makes no sense to force them. It's their loss both figuratively and literally in our case, and if they have trouble dealing with it there's nothing to do. No point extending your hand towards someone who visibly doesn't want it (as explicited by not saying 'gg' themselves). The good thing about this issue is that it will hopefully disappear when emotes will be the only way to communicate: would you say 'Good game' to someone after they conceded without saying it themselves? To me this one is more obvious. They're not even there anymore to see it.


 * So in short what I'm saying is, it's not about "some people like blue, and some people dislike blue." There's a good manners part saying "It's considered nice to do X, you can show respect this way," and a bad manners part saying "Some people are offended by Y." To be understood as "you can do Y if you want, but some people will dislike you for that." Put this way, does it seem better to you?


 * Btw I agree it would be nice if Lunarch took responsibility for editing manners guidelines, but they haven't done so as of yet. In the meantime I think we should do our best to draw the lines by ourselves as best we can. As Asimov put it, "If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them." Let's just try to gather knowledge. Auxeras (talk) 00:17, 29 April 2015 (UTC)


 * PS: you can sign and date your messages by putting 4 tilde signs at the end of your text ;). Took me a while to figure out how people did it... Auxeras (talk) 00:17, 29 April 2015 (UTC)


 * The shaking hands analogy makes more sense when you think of it in an in-person competitive context. After a tournament chess match or a fighting game match, it is customary to extend a hand for a handshake, regardless of whether you're the winner or the loser. In fighting game streams, you'll sometimes see the winner extend a hand, only for the loser to get up and walk away. In this case, the loser is usually regarded as being "salty" and his conduct is considered rude. This is why I don't think the "practical solution" is appropriate: I think if a player takes offense at the winner offering a courteous postgame gg, it is not because of the winner's "bad manners," it is simply a case of the loser's sensitivity to his loss.


 * People have been using an analogy with Starcraft to discuss this issue. BM in Starcraft was when the winner said "gg" before the game was actually over (i.e. before the loser conceded). You can still do this in Prismata. The main issue with the analogy is that there is no way to communicate with the other player after a Starcraft came unless you friend them and talk to them, whereas this is possible through global chat in Prismata. This is why I think people are getting the two "gg"s confused. As you said, this will be resolved when global chat is removed from the game.


 * To rephrase, my main point is that there is a very clear difference between actions that constitute bad manners (i.e. clearly malicious intentions) and actions that will tick off a sensitive loser but will not tick off a gracious one. I think that the former absolutely should be on this page and latter absolutely have no place on this page, and in my opinion, postgame ggs fall into this category. There are a LOT of things that will tick off a sore loser, and I do not think we should accommodate those who choose to take their losses ungraciously by calling all of the "offending" actions "bad manners."


 * I think my main point here subsumes my objectivity point in my top-level post. I phrased it badly in the original. And thanks for the signature tip. =) Platyp00s (talk) 14:30, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

I've been thinking about what you said. Lots of people will probably read this article as Prismata grows, it might come to mean a lot. It really *has to be good*. And clear, and straightforward.

Concerning the 'offensive gg' I agree this is different from the 'aggressive gg' from Starcraft. But I think it can help us define another category separated from bad and good manners; what would you say about sorting all the principles stated in the article in one of those 3:


 * Good manners. Polite and respectful actions, written plainly without qualification. Ex: "it is considered good mannered to type 'gg' to your opponent after admitting defeat."
 * Bad manners. Disrespectful actions, written plainly without qualification. Ex: "it is considered inappropriate to comment on ongoing games in global chat."
 * Contested manners. Actions construed by some as offending, while others think it harmless/polite, without consensus on the issue. Written with qualification ("some people", "a number of players", etc.), and the explanation presented by those who feel offended. Ex: "Some players feel that saying 'gg' as the winner if the loser doesn't is offensive, since the loser can interpret this as a gesture of taunting him."

Apart from some fringe cases like our 'offensive gg', I feel like there won't be too much arguing about what practice goes where (hopefully, time will tell). Now image if we colored the main sentences in the article using a color code, like for instance using blue for sentences stating good manners, red for bad, and yellow for contested. That would make things even more straightforward! I'm not sure we can do this yet though, at least I don't know how to color text in here, will need to investigate... Anyway what do you think (of both the categories and the potential coloring)? I'll try to see if I can work them into the intro alongside a good dose of "the rules stated here are neither absolute nor actively enforced" as a start...


 * It's sort of a weird way of categorizing it because the "contested manners" category is purely descriptive without being immediately actionable, but I think it's serviceable so long as, in the contested category, it is also explained why some people think these actions are polite. Also "contested" is kind of a weird word for this issue.... I think better categories would be something like "polite conduct," "impolite conduct," and "context-sensitive conduct." The last name in particular will encourage people to write about specific situations in which an action is good or bad. Platyp00s (talk) 22:13, 3 May 2015 (UTC)