so,
as the title says as of today i’m leaving ogs community
ogs is a kind and very positive place with a lot of good people, everyone can bear witness of that
it’s the place where i started go, and i never really played in other servers,
it’s also the place where i met many go friends as players, but mostly had overall very positive and interesting exchanges in ogs chat
now, why would i leave then ?
i’ll try to be concise below :
so basically the problem is with ogs policy on bad behaviour
i’m a believer of kindness and education, and i think that punishing or repressing people does not achieve anything if people are forced to do what they do, nor does it bring lasting happiness
and as far as ogs is concerned, the ogs moderators are all very kind and patient, i can bear witness of that and i dont even need to name one for being especially outstanding in that, they all are
but !!!
kindness without social justice can never bring community stability !!
human nature being as it is, and ogs growing every day, we see all kind of different people from different places, and some of these are, purposely or not, hurting other people, a few examples :
" filling stones, waiting for last second to troll play a move, verbal insult, pausing games on purpose to annoy opponent, cheating, etc…" , i’m not even mentioning saying hi and thanks, because most likely if you ever do that you’re like some super noble person nowadays, but that’s another topic
now,
i may be a splurgist who likes to have fun and all, but as my name say i also happen to be a metaphysician, and whether i want it or not, i have a strong sense of justice (<- is not trying to auto praise), and when i see these, it really upsets me
what upsets me is not the bad behaviour itself, we can all have bad times, but what upsets me if when someone is hurting someone else from my community, and when i see that i just cant accept it
to go back to the topic of education,
i think that in a civilized world people should be educated and more or less respectful, forget being polite, but now if some people purposely do not want to fix their behaviour after being kindly told to, then they should bear responsibility for their actions and pay the consequences
if you hurt or steal someone in the street, you should be ready to face social justice and pay for that
now, some people are educated to be good and dont need the eye of justice behind them to enjoy being good, but the truth is that some other people in society happen to be good only because disrespect is forbidden and punished, and without these punishments society would be chaos
and ogs is in a similar state of chaos as i’m talking
ogs may delude itself into thinking it has a “nice community” and all, but being kind is not the only face of a “nice community”
when i report these bad behaviour, i get moderator’s responses like “ok it’s bad, but there are too many, there are 100 like them everyday”, “ok it’s bad, but i’m not going to ban them just because of that”
what ???
so because everyone is hurting my friends in ogs community, we should overlook this ??
because people do worse things, we should overlook this ???
now in my community, if someone is hurt, it’s like all the community is hurt, and i’m here to defend my hurt friend and make justice for him
thats what a community is, not what the ogs free self service actually is
let me say it again :
kindness without social justice does not make a community
it’s only a free self service where people think its a good place just because there is no
punishment, except for very harmful ones
now, as far as punishments are concerned, just banning someone or having a too harsh punishment is less effective than a short one, and this is true for ogs too
if you just harshly ban someone, he’ll just create another account and repeat his harm, we dont achieve anything nor at the personal development side, nor at the collective social improvement side
it is better to temporarily ban someone for say 3 days after talking to him (“starting from today xx hour, you are temporarily banned from ogs community for 3 days, because you disrespected our dear other ogs users, during that time please think at what harm you have done, and please come again fresh and clean after that”)
now, there are other go servers, and we dont force anyone to play here on ogs, but if he does, he has to accept our rules, among which can never be removed mutual respect
if the user persists on hurting our friends after being talked to or even punished, then we dont want him in our community, he can go and see if other go places are more welcoming from him, dont hurt our friends here, you are not welcome
this is what true kindness is : true kindness is when you care about yourself first before caring about others
kindness without justice is just weakness
this is what a community is :
“you hurt my friend ? i’m not letting go away with that”
now, ogs is not a “nice community”, its only a free jungle when you’re free to hurt others as long as its “just that” or if “other people do it all the time, so you can do it too”, this is the result of the kindness without social justice policy, again…
and i consider every user in ogs community my friend as a fellow community member
i consider community members to share common values and gather arround these pillars, and care about each other
this is what community is, again
now, it appears basically only me was feeling that way about ogs community…
which makes us move to the second big reason now why i’m leaving ogs community : the lack of collective feel of responsibility in the community
forget moderators, when i pointed out those bad behaviours on ogs chat, i expected a support from fellow active ogs chat community members, surely if you hang out on ogs chat you should be among those who care a little more than average ogs users
i couldnt be appalled when out of 10 reactions, i didnt even get one positive one, quoting a few :
" i dont see what the problem is"
" its just a bot"
" no one cares"
“you’re funny”
etc…
only after talking to the 20th person for like 15 minutes could i make them agree that these behviour are bad
oh, and if you’re wonderingabout which behaviour i’m talking about, look at the gnugo page :
as you can see its super slow to load,
there are tons of games
90% are paused games from 2016 or 2017
oh and i reported all by myself like 40 games one by one,
the list was much bigger, yet it didnt move anyone’s heart strings
now, whats the problem with that ?
just having to explain this to you upsets me really
your collective lack of care for the common good not only disappoints me, but it really upsets me
you see the public beaches ?
now surely when you go to the beach you enjoy when its clean,
and surely you wouldnt be hyped about swimming in a dirty beach with junk everywhere arround you, walking over it
but, isnt it how gnugo page currently is ?
some ogs players use it as a free toilet self service
yes, its just bloated with a junk pile of trash in front of its door, but basically because “it’s just a bot” it’s not a problem, or no one cares ???
take a country like japan
in japan, children clean the street and their schools by themselves since they are very little
of course, you dont see even one trash on the street in japan, and they dont even have bins in the street : people take their junk in their hand and walk for 20 minutes until they find a can so they can keep the community they care about clean
now not only do i hate you all for being so casual about this and not even feeling the slightest collective responsibility over this, or even saying its not a problem
but seriously you all piss me off when you’re so selfish about a collective issue
whatever your reasons are (busy, not time, etc…), they are not enough to me
one should never keep silent about unjustices
ogs is free to have its own policy and delude itself about being a so called “nice community”, but mark my words, some day it will all collapse, kindness without justice cant bring stability
we may have been the best friends in the past, and i know there are many kind people on ogs, but this is not enough
ogs may be fine without me, i’m only one user after all, but remember that as moderators said these disrespects happen every day,
and our ogs felllow community friends are hurt everyday
for the anecdote to finish this fat text, when i started go after like 15 days, some abuser badly treated me, cowardly spamming with his venom trash talk, seeing how big his game history his, he surely hurt a lot of beginner players, because yes he’s too brave to go try this against dan players : “you’re too bad, quit go, this is a bad move, you’re so bad, this is dead, resign, you should have played D2, are you 30k ?, etc…”
now, i’m the one who reported him and made a big ruckus of this, because he really hurt me at that time, and even though whats done to previous users was not repaired, he was at least taken care of
at that time, i was truly happy to have ogs community support me in those hard times
now, after that he created many accounts based on my name, but basically everytime he did that again i reported him, or other people did
so, let me say it again, as a take it from all this :
when you see an injustice, dont keep silent about it
condemn it deep inside you
hate it deep inside you
care for fellow community members, whether you know them or not
be actively supporting the people warning about injustices
if one is hurting someone, just BAN him for sometime, we dont want him in our home, he can go see other places, but dont hurt our friends, dont dirty our home
and when you see something bad, talk about it, report it
i dont know, just be a community
as for me sadly i’ve had more than enough with all this
i care a lot about ogs, and it really is my home land since i started go
had a lot of good memories and friends from here
all the more reason why i’m upset when i see people hurting my fellow ogs friends or community nice place that was kindly provided to them
i dont know about you, but i dont share the same values as ogs policy (“we are kind but you’re free to do whatever you want here”),
therefore, as of today, i’m leaving ogs, and i’m not a community member anymore, but i’m only a guest player that happens to play here for i dont know how long
i’ll also cancel my donation to ogs, which truly saddens me because i know people really strived to make ogs such a friendly place
but what can i do !!
i cant live with a dual identity and i cant enjoy myself anymore on ogs because of this lack of collective spirit
now, we’ll see if ogs wants to be such a self service freestyle community, or if maybe it wants to rethink its community
regardless of the result, understand that i cant just barge in with a “hi, oh finally you fixed it nice”
i resent you all for that, and i cant forget that so easily
maybe i’ll come many years from now on, i dont know
but you wont see me on ogs chat nor ogs forums or whatever any time soon
i’m just one user after all, no one cares right ?
last word is my apologies to @anoek and @AdamR for losing my cool when talking to them while they were trying to help
i really was not in the best mood to be casual about all this
again, i apologize for my behaviour at that time
but know that i think no less of all what i said
well then, farewell ogs community, as of today i’m a guest player and i wont have any say nor involvment to whatever happens inside here, and i’m the first one to be sad and disappointed about that…
update : message 2 here I'm leaving from ogs community, this is why : - #12 by metaphysical_simplic