Best Server Community Sin--Wait, Nevermind

[Phragmar]

I said that was my last post barring replies to attacks or questions, and I meant it, so I'll hit the broad strokes and be as brief as I can.

1. I clarified that I played before to distinguish between the fact that I'm new to the server, not the game, since some of the earlier responses seemed ambiguous on the point.

2. I have an opinion. Sorry if this comes as a surprise. Sometimes I talk about it on the internet and elsewhere. My condolences for you if you don't have an opinion or don't talk about it. You might be sad to discover that I have opinions on other things too, and as it turns out, at least one person agrees with my opinion on this issue. Go figure.

3. Speaking passionately about ethics /= mental instability. I'm not entertained by ad hominems. Also, if you're looking to troll or insult, I'd try for something other than "white knight." I'm sorry, but I just can't bring myself to find it pejorative.

4. Being nice to people is not a huge revolution in thought, even on the internet. A lot of these arguments can be distilled to. "It is okay to be cruel to someone if the rule/law supports it," or perhaps implicitly (and bleakly), "It is okay to be cruel to someone if there are no real world consequences for it." If the former is your view of the world, that's fine (although I would defy you to articulate a rational basis for it, and I think it's patently immoral--yes, my opinion strikes again), and if you hold to the latter, I would suggest that I think it's time for gamers as a subculture to arrive at the place where everyone understands that there is no acceptable justification for having a separate standard for treating people in a game as compared to the real world. Maybe that makes me idealistic, but I'm willing to be idealistic.

5. I'm sorry if this comes as a disappointment--after all, I realize that apparently I come across a little high-handed--but just like everyone's parents, teachers, religious or political authority figures, gurus, pundits, or talking heads, I am not able to articulate for you a uniform, absolute standard for ethics that you can apply in every situation. You have to work that out for yourself. There are a million hypotheticals anyone could posit that are factually similar to the incident I witnessed where either side could be in the wrong for a host of different reasons. There is no hard and fast rule when it comes to human decency. There is a rule for camping on this server, but I don't have to have been here for years to know that one can observe the letter of it while utterly subverting the spirit of it, in more ways than one. EDIT (preemptively): I would also remind you that the rules for server interaction serve more purposes than one, some of which are articulated, and some of which aren't. One of them, however, is to create a line of staff fiat that prevents these disputes from being litigated in whatever dispute-resolution process the server might waste its time implementing, in an effort to cut down on the need for superfluous manpower.