Sportsmanship

[Mark392]

For what it's worth: I've always loved you Moh. Nothing is changing that and I'd love to see this all resolved happily and have you back, my friend. I think I gave you my number at one point, so hit me up brother.

[melvin]

Same for me, moh. I gave you my number too, but please burn it. Tired of telling you what I'm wearing. Otherwise we're good.

Also, really nice post Jedi.

[roncli]

A disappointing response, moh. The fact that you're letting something that happened a year and a half ago drive your attitude into the ground says a lot about you. This community is small and really has no room for these kind of things, so I'm letting it go.

Good luck with wherever life takes you.



Lee, man, all is forgiven as far as I'm concerned. Do know that the things I say on commentary are never meant to be malicious. I haven't been around much to play, but with the NecroDancer event I was in concluding this week I might get back into playing a bit.

[LotharBot]

As long as this ladder has been around, people have questioned why we don't enforce stricter sportsmanship rules. We're often asked why certain people haven't been banned (often two people will ask about each other, both expecting us to take sides), or we're criticized and perceived as weak or afraid or "soft" or "playing favorites" or simply being incompetent. But what we're actually doing is very intentional.

This is not just some gaming league, or some random internet forum, where we ban people for misbehaving (I've run plenty of sites where that's the policy, but this isn't one of them.) This is more like a cross between a dojo and a family. We're here to make ourselves, and each other, excellent. At Descent, but not ONLY at Descent. So we don't cast others out because of their demons; we show them how to battle their demons. To use an example who called himself out a few posts back: Jeds has historically been one of the worst sports in all of Descent, and there are ways in which he still is, but it's less and less significant -- he doesn't get as mad, as often, or stay mad for as long. He respects others more, for more reasons, more genuinely. He's quicker to apologize and quicker to offer forgiveness, instead of holding long grudges like in the past. It certainly helped that we banned him once for a really egregious problem, but it also helps that we've given him both space and encouragement to work through things, and we've given him the expectation that he *can* work through conflicts with others, and though he's still far from perfect after nearly four years of this, there's no doubt he's gotten a lot better.

To modify a quote from : "DCL produces people, as well as Descent games." As such, we don't allow "incentives to do the work of morals" -- instead, we encourage trust and responsibility, we allow people to act out and only constrain them if they're intent on causing harm (using minimal necessary constraints), we show people grace and mercy, and we set high expectations socially and cooperatively rather than administratively by force.

We're all capable of asking, and of offering, forgiveness. We're all capable of apologizing and burying the hatchet. We've seen some people work through their issues in this thread, and others who still need time to work things out. That's OK; that's what we're here for.

[Mark392]

Well said, Tom! Very well said!