General Update 19 February 2021

Another month has gone by, and just before we all jump into the juicy February releases I thought I’d do a quick update.

The Staff, members and You

It seems there is a requirement to clarify that part of your being a member of the forum is that you agree to cooperate with the staff as they try to make the community as great as it can be. Ergo, if you are warned your posts are encouraging toxic behavior or not coming up to the standard of the conversation - you should definitely take that on board and not double down.

Certainly if you continue to double down, you should not then update your profile to attempt insult staff members and their loved ones, but only reveal your own unfortunately and unflattering hangups.

Similarly, if you are asked by a member to take into consideration how your posts are making some members uncomfortable or are not suitable in the area you’ve posted them - the appropriate action is to take that into consideration and think how you might be able to make the forum a better place. Certainly do not try to get passive aggressive or double down on it while ignoring the individuals.

Update to Civilized Conversation Primer

An update has been added to this regarding a form of trolling that has been coming up lately of people deliberately posting content with the intent on making others feel uncomfortable or unwelcome on the forum.

The main demonstration of this lately has been people displaying a frankly worrying preoccupation with trying to showcase death and other horrible events being inflicted on Diana. While it is true that Diana is a fictional person, and so these misguided attempts at sadism are against an imaginary person, she is also a rare gem for female characters in video games so is of great importance to people who are passionate about quality depictions of women as well as a cornerstone of the Hitmanverse.

We have attempted to have the conversation about this, and while I am proud that the forum has often been home to many complicated conversations on difficult topics - the unfortunate reality here is that it doesn’t go well and there just isn’t currently the foundation of respect for the problems to facilitate it. Ergo, I must ask that people refrain from sharing media depicting horrible fates for Diana - be it screenshots, videos, fan art or … I don’t know what you kids do these days… TikToks?

Other aspects covered under this include no use of MAGA Pepes for avatars, dogwhistles (eg “redpilled!” as an exclamation of endorsement), and linking to any other kind of content which is generally at the expense of someone who just wants to exist in our cruel world. Let’s all not make it any crueler or more difficult than it is already.

Due to the nature of it, final judgement will be at the say of the staff (and ultimate judgement with myself) and there will probably be further discussions - but for now the big emphasis is: If you know it’s primary contribution is going to be making people feel unwelcome - don’t post it. If the response you get is people saying it makes them feel unwelcome,

Should anyone want to discuss it - I encourage you to do so in the Civilized Conversation topics - not in whatever topics that it happens to come up in. People go to topics for topical content.

Should any of this be an issue that you find intolerable, I urge you to support the forum by using this link to build your own site to host your content on - competition is good for character or something.

New Heralds

I have approached and promoted a fresh batch of Heralds. As per the previous update, these are people that I and the rest of the staff are setting an excellent example on the forum.

Thank you all for helping make the forum a civilized, welcoming and enjoyable place.

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@Ibbe @TheChicken congrats on the Herald-ship
:grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: definitely deserved

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Aw, thanks for the nomination, fellow Heralds. :grin: :heart:

Glad to see I’m doing something right around here.

By the way, there’s a bit of a trailing sentence or typo there just before the Heralds section. Just felt the need to point that out.


To anyone curious or wants to brush up on the new civility additions, here’s a link to that Civilized Conversation rules thread Wincen mentioned.

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As a real life Diana this sentence was definitely an odd one to read.

It’s great to be a herald, hopefully I don’t meet the same fate as the ones in Mendoza.

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Sadly I’m still a few years away from finishing my law degree, then setting up my own firm… then partnering with a secret society that will bankroll me buying a winery in South America so it’ll be a while before you get invited to a party like and offered a Grand Paladin 1945.

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Welcome to the new Heralds, glad to see more members being willing to bite the bitter pill of responsibility and to help make the forum a better place. Congratulations to you all.

Also when are we going to add “can’t talk shit about H2 SA” into the guidelines, it’s clearly missing.

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Does it mean that we may have new heralds every month? This is a great motivation to edit the small glances of me which was inappropriate. Really small, but still…

Older members know the structure and not usually do this. Most of the problem is with new-unfamiliar users. Unrelated example, some of them post player support stuff in a new technical issue thread in spite of the informing text. Any attempt to navigate them and to learn-warn them about the appropriate behavior in the forum (other than the guidelines as most of them never read it) will be great.

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Thanks again for the nomination @wincenworks :wink:

Really appreciate it.

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I’m not going to set myself the goal of doing it every month but it will be an ongoing thing.

The general guideline we go by is:

  1. Is it really necessary to intervene?
  2. If it’s minor can we do it without making a scene?

Arguably “here I found a way to work around until there’s an official fix” is of interest to people with technical issues, and may even be of interest to IO Interactive. “I want to know why I can’t post …” followed by fourteen posts back and forth about censorship, freedom of expression, etc is of no interest to someone who just wants to see Hitman memes.

If it is something we think we can fix with a private message, it is always preferable to do it that way and we encourage members who want to actively help new members to consider doing so via private messages.

The main issue being cited there is people who are reached out to, and then either decide to do something passive aggressive or start to make a scene or double down, etc

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Thanks for the explanation. Just a question. We had a bunch of new Regulars lately. Were they promoted automatically or manually by mods?

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that happened automatically since 50 days had passed since the new forum was made, that was the last condition for a lot of people so they became suddenly eligible

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