Thats completely fair but the player base doesn’t know what staff is thinking, with Grim just posting randomly saying that deltard and the R word was banned was very poor communication and lead to a bunch of avoidable drama had Staff communicated to the player base that they were looking into banning those terms 6 months prior more constructive conversations could have been had and the drama avoided. A great example of this is what happened with penpusher showing the community why a high-profile member got Perma banned is a lot better than just saying trust me bro I’m in the right posting the messages with censored names would have been more beneficial then being secret about it.
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I mean thats kinda the nature of management decisions. I don’t like how a lot of things are done, I don’t have full control or say over everything and its just how it is. I personally dislike the r-word and would’ve rathered it gone much sooner but again it was a ‘if you dont like it, then dont be here’ type situation. I was vocal about it and flamed accordingly as ‘overly sensitive’/‘why do you care’/‘just go somewhere else’. its just how it is.
it wasn’t without notice, delt was put on the timer in the same message the main word was, you can go back and look, and it was put up entirely through miscommunication. there wasn’t a fight that was won unlike how people in the forums celebrated thinking they had a huge impact, it was really just an ‘oh it wasnt banned but I thought it was, sorry my b’, it really wasnt that big of a deal that was announced ~16 hours later
The explanation was given in the discord like a few hundred times practically to the point of copy paste both by the management themselves and the folk who were for the change. It wasn’t a sudden mystery and if im being honest, it was pretty visible for a long time coming.
The point I’m trying to make is two-fold: there is a process by which decisions get made, even if it’s not clearly articulated, and not each and every manager is in favor of every change made, with some things being hotly-contested issues.
I really think it would be a good if we could see/hear about some of the things that are being discussed, even if its stuff with no decisive conclusion and entirely anonymized. just hearing that things are being discussed and the potential changes that could arise are pretty interesting.
We hear all the time that ‘management will discuss this’ or that ‘management has discussed this’ but we rarely get any info past this which contributes to the mystery Illuminati feeling people get
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Thank you for the insight. I appreciate it.
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I try ;-;
It might not be the most satisfying answer, and some things could probably be done differently, but it’s difficult to find the balance between privacy, transparency, and effectiveness.
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From my perspective as a lower ranked staff member, the situation with the r-word stuck me as a case of continual discussions over a very long period of time about whether to allow its usage or not.
I am not privy to management level discussions but at the lower level there was plenty of on and off again discussions about it from all ranks of the staff team.
This holds true for most concepts that affect the game that you can think off.
There is no uniform opinion about these changes from a staff perspective, personally I am not a fan of the change to the rule myself, however it is evidently a case that more information was given that tilted the upper echelons of management to finally change their stance on this issue from one answer to another.
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You can check the drama thread, both hosts (frozen and forest) were defending the ban of “deltard” stubbornly enough (Newest change - Deltard - #17 by Frozentsbgg Newest change - Deltard - #13 by forest2001), so it’s very safe too assume it wasn’t a Grim decision behind their backs. Why did Grim took all the responsibility for this after the backlash? Honestly, I don’t know, some weird damage control? But anyway it’s very misrepresentating to blame Grim’s mistake for this, while it’s very safe to assume that management wouldn’t have backed off without the backlash regardless of whether it was a mistake or not. And, actually, if it was just a Grim’s mistake it doesn’t make it better, it actually makes the issue being discussed a lot worse, because in this case that means even management have no idea what is going on (and this is kinda possible, because we know that the change took staff members by surprise).
...
Just a mere tiny mistake they quickly realized only short 16 hours later, of course, nothing to see here 
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If people in staff think the process was a long time coming, and saw all the signs and discussions surrounding it- But the vast majority of the regular playerbase was surprised when it happened, then I think there’s a disconnect, and there’s work to be done with regards to transparency.
I don’t think people should have to slough through CTRL + F to log dive for the rationale behind changes to policy if they lack access to staff & management channels.
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Forest on the other hand doesn’t really seem to have posted his personal opinion there. he kind of just says stuff we already knew and makes no real statement about whether or not it’ll come back besides “we’re thinking about it” (paraphrasing)
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Staff didn’t know about the change until the same moment the players did.
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To anyone who doesn’t know the history of this topic, or doesn’t understand what’s going on, let me break it down.
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It wasn’t really an organized, linear progression. It had been a persistent concern amongst certain community members, and was eventually brought up by staff members in the discord. Eventually it was picked up as a topic in management and disputed there.
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I don’t know how to do all the fancy things that you’re all doing linking and quoting each other’s stuff directly so I’ll make this as organised as I can.
Biolock, it’s nice to see a manager here but I don’t think anyone would even think about criticising your conduct specifically. From what I and everyone else see’s you’re as transparent as you can be and you being here and actually engaging meaningfully just proves that. It’s sad to see you’re the only one here as to my knowledge no one has an issue with your conduct, only the conduct of Grim, Forest and Frozen.
Lichen your arguments in favour of their zero transparency policy are poor. The doxxing was terrible and there is no defending that. However, the problems presented have been long-standing issues for a lot of people and they will likely continue to be. The dox is awful but that doesn’t mean we should not have had a change in staff transparency a long time ago and it is not an argument to discourage not aiming for that transparency going forward.
For example:
My uncle died, and I watched. I had a drinking problem long before, I cannot justify my drinking issue on his death and the aftermath there of. We are all adults and we are supposed to deal with issues when they present themselves and tragedies are not a good enough reason to not fix our problems. (I haven’t drunk since his death last year for the record)
We’re all apart of this community and we all deserve to be involved to a degree.
Additionally, there was no notice (even lower level staff seemed to be inunvolved) like you said and Grim did claim himself that “r*tard” and other variations were the target of the ruling and Grim just decided to, without input or permission decided to tack “deltard” onto that ruling. It is concerning that anyone can make any decision that effects us all no matter how small without input from the community and the community should be involved. After all, the words we find acceptable in this community should be decided by the community as a whole, in my opinion.
To the rest of management, it’d be nice to see a bit more dialogue from you all. I don’t think you’re all evil lol but as you can see a lot of people have some issues and even if you don’t see them as issues it’d be good-faith to engage with them meaningfully even if we don’t come to an agreement collectively it still shows you’re listening to everyone.
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Well said.
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I didn’t claim to be in favor of the zero transparency, I am a strong proponent against it, but I think the directions these threads take aren’t towards actual transparency and instead are pushed towards topics that I think discourage actual discussion so when we get an actual response practically none of it is actually about transparency.
Things are out of our control, it’s the inevitability of existing in an online community. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be atleast getting “management is discussing xyxyxy” notices. It feels like most of the community doesn’t ask for that much but because of the directions of these threads they get mostly ignored
The communication following the announcement in the discord was nice but pretty much ended in line with the doxxing. We still have a majority of policy posts that go unresponded to, lacking even a “hey management has seen this”. Minor management activity in #lesser-announcements or a new #management-announcements channel would have a massive impact imo
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These threads and discussions are a far cry from what you are implying and pretending they are.
At worst, you can say people are using this thread to publically air their grievances and right now they are all constructive and very fair so I think to imply otherwise is dishonest. We’re not pushing any specific topics here, we are using recent events to highlight a long-standing issue. Many relevant points were made outside of “deltard good no take away” in the last one and here too and again I think to imply otherwise isn’t accurate. People have issues, they should be respected and addressed in some way. Just a small bit of interaction would probably shut a lot of people up if we’re being real.
This is about actual transparency moving forward. There is no window dressing, it is what it says on the tin.
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Man is speaking truth. On a serious note. It is not healthy ecosystem when a third or so of a player base is being told to go to a different server. That does not end well. It only ends with 10 people on a server.
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Ah. I didn’t even realise it was players who bought it up, it sounded like management literally just decided to crack down one day of their own volition. Still don’t like the rulings that ended up from it 
Thanks for the insight, Biolock. We appreciate it.
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That’s neither how math or asking people to be nicer to eachother works.
I know this seems like pedantic nerdshit, but you really are making out the amount of people affected, the fraction that honestly care, and the magnitude of what they’re being asked, far greater than reality.
There are 12 people in this thread, which is still only about 11% of all the people on just the forum at time of writing. You are 8% of those twelve people, or less than 1% of all the people on just the forums.
Out of 921 Discord Users - give or take, let’s be real: being off by a few dozen is statistically insignificant - who could go and see these posts and transparency, who have received the same announcements and pings as everyone else: This thread represents . . . 0.013% of them.
By all means transparency is nice and all, and staff aren’t perfect . . . but I wanted to show - like mathematically - just how few people really care about some of this drama, especially compared to the people willing to put in extra work whether they’re willing to wrangle cats or code, or even just edit things on the wiki: is there any wonder why some changes don’t reflect the views of a “third” or so of a player base?
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The response “you can host your own server” I saw twice on the discord was from people threatening to leave CM and saying they won’t play anymore because they wouldnt be allowed to say slurs anymore. It’s a large bit of survey bias, the majority of people don’t even talk in game, much less care about their ability to say slurs. It was just a minor group of very toxic and very loud individuals who felt like they needed to defend their rights to call PVT’s slurs when they mess up who were extremely vocal in every place they could say it.
Most were already talking about how they’d be better off in creating their own server with no rules regarding toxicity/community standards in #cm-discussions
edit: again, reminder of how survivorship bias and the volunteer bias work. people who have issues with getting called slurs for messing up tend to already avoid CM for being a cesspit where they will get called slurs with no recourse (until recently), this drives away folks who dont want to have to deal with that in an online community. people who dont want to have to deal with getting called slurs are much less likely to participate in the forum because this place is already :/. toxic folk who care the most about being able to call pvt’s slurs are going to be the most vocal about wanting to be able to say it because toxic people tend to care the most about themselves, this vocality is part of the volunteer bias (Volunteer bias - Catalog of Bias). This is all simple statistics stuff that any college or highschool courses teach you…
people who dont want to get called slurs dont tend to be a part of the ‘you can call new players slurs when they mess up’ community, however this attracts people who are removed from other communities for being toxic to come here and be the way they are. the only way to control what type of a community you have online is via rules. rules that allow people to be extremely toxic attract the most toxic players because they wont be punished for being toxic which drives away normal people, rules that dont allow to players to be extremely toxic tend to attract normal people because normal people dont want to be around toxic folk
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It is rich for you to mention statistics and wanting to know how many people actually care about the discussion here and using that as an argument against Duke. Considering this was rhetoric you were opposed to in the last thread when it came to banning certain slurs and other such things.
I’m not even in the discord but I’m a lot of alternates and I can tell you the prevailing sentiment agrees with this POV. “Staff and management being the death of CM” has been a very popular meme for so long for a reason, it has credence.
Mathematically speaking, in this thread and the last people who share my opinions and Duke’s for example. Saw a lot of positive engagement whilst yours and others who shared your opinions did not and were subject to ridicule even. Mathematically speaking we seem to be representing a larger group here than you do even in this thread the points myself, Duke, TheeBiggest and the OP all have a lot of positive engagement with our posts. The opposition does not. Mathematically, we’re “winning.”
To address Lichen again:
We were told to make our own server more than twice but the number is irrelevant, like all things it is the context. The comment was made in poor taste at a poor time, management instead of yielding to at the very least a dialogue chose to be hostile and tell people to eject themselves from the community and “just start your own” when they and everyone else knows that it isn’t that simple and if it was CM would likely have a direct competitor by now. Regarding your comment about slurs I re-direct you to the former part of this post, a TRUE minority of players complained about “r*tard” however a significantly higher number of people protested. It was not a vocal minority and the major backlash the decision was met with is proof of that.
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