Please Read: Community Interaction & Discord

[Halfbrood]

Dear EFU,

Since earlier this year we've had a lot of new players come and go due to COVID and we've seen many fantastic characters have the opportunity and courage to explore our setting in their own different ways, truly leading to some spectacular stories that are worth reminiscing about and fondly remember. Many of these new players have stuck around, though of course our little corner of the NWN community is not to everyone's liking. That is fine of course, as we're a little bit of an odd duck as far as servers go: we have an exceptionally punishing death system, we have given the power and freedom to players to decide their own stories whilst simultaneously giving them executive power when to end another's, and the active DM team actively works together to purposefully challenge players in both scripted content as well as during events and plot lines. All these things that EFU does different makes us a very hard but ultimately rewarding server to play on and over the course of many years we've together managed to create a special long-lasting community.

But over the past few months, perhaps due to the general increased stress caused by COVID and its rippling consequences that has affected all of us, we've seen a general slow shift in attitude when it comes to players interacting with one another towards what can only be described as 'more toxic'. Ranging from more snide remarks to passive-aggressiveness beyond the level of 'banter', to full-blown hostility and name calling. It pains us to state that due to things said in our #efu-main Discord, players both new and old have chosen to step away from EFU as both a server and a community, perhaps for good.

Everyone that reads this should take a moment and reflect on how severe things must have become for even longstanding community members, who have called this server 'home' and many players 'friends', to pack up and leave. A large share of this current predicament falls on the shoulders of the DM team; moderation of as active and familial a discord server as ours is both incredibly time-consuming and, frankly, not fun. But we've also come to a point where we can neither abide nor afford for things to remain as they are currently.  For EFU to remain as interesting and varied as it has been these many years, it is imperative that there exists some manner of cordiality between players outside the game; that people trust one another to generally act in good faith so that stories within the frame of the server itself can organically lead where they may. For this to be reality, we must all (DMs included) take a closer look at our outside-the-game interactions and consider what the consequences may and assuredly will be if we don't collectively choose to change the way we chat with one another.  At the end of the day we are all just people playing a silly old game together pretending we have pointy ears and have dragon-slaying as a personal pastime. It would be in our collective interest to ascertain its continuation so that we can continue to craft amazing stories together in our little corner.

Therefore, we all need to be nicer from one another from here on out.

In an effort to accomplish the above, the EFU DM team has decided to start a more active stance on moderation, especially when it's regarding our primary means of communication with one another, Discord.

A summation on this shift:

- A harsher stance on blatant toxicity, offensive commentary and general attempts at riling up other people.
- #efu-main is no longer to be used as a personal venting channel or as an outlet of tirades. We have both a suggestion forum and a ticket system to privately submit tickets.
- Although already a rule, for reiteration: anything (borderline) NSFW is not acceptable to post.
- Quiet Corner will remain to be used in its current implementation to time-out players for relatively short periods of time at more judicious DM discretion,
- We've added a new Restricted role. This role is *permanent* and prohibits interaction in all of our Discord channels and will not ever be removed until a ticket to appeal is submitted to the forums asking for its removal. Trying to get around this role in any way will lead to an immediate and permanent ban of our Discord and possibly even the server itself.

If you have issues with the server, whether IC or OOC, please don't hesitate to reach out to a DM to bring things up so that we can perhaps look at changing certain elements of the server to make it a better experience or so that we can tackle problems that lead to frustration between players.

As a final note, the EFU DM team encourages any player reading this who has chosen to give up on our server for any of the reasons listed in this thread to reach out to any one of us to discuss its contents and a possible return to our beloved server.


Kind regards,

The collective EFU DM team