Overall, creating the RyanSchultz.com Discord server was one of the better decisions I’ve made. At the moment, after a little over a year of operation, I have 365 members who discuss, deliberate, and debate any and all issues related to social VR, virtual worlds, and the metaverse. Quite often, they come up with good ideas for stories for this blog. Most of the time, it works smoothly, and people treat each other with courtesy and respect. People make friends, and learn from each other.
But this morning I decided to ban someone, which is not a step I take lightly. I have only had to ban people a few times before this, mostly obvious trolls.
In this instance, the person I banned was operating like a bull in a china shop, attacking other people’s general statements by demanding empirical facts and statistics (when often they were not available), constantly insisting on “factual raw hard data material”, dropping links to external websites and other Discords when they were not asked for, and generally just behaving rudely. Despite my attempts to get him to moderate his unsociable behaviour, he continued to be disruptive and argumentative to the other users of my Discord, and so I finally hauled out the banhammer today.
My Discord is not here for you to beat other people over the head to convince them of the rightness of your rigidly-held opinions. It is meant to be a a virtual salon, a forum where people representing the various social VR platforms and virtual worlds can have an open, freewheeling, friendly discussion on various topics, and learn from each other’s perspectives. If you are not willing to treat other users with courtesy and respect, and at least listen to points of view that happen to differ from your own, then you’re not welcome to participate in the RyanSchultz.com Discord.
My Discord, my rules. If you don’t like them, then set up your own Discord. I’m not here to put up with your bullshit and bad behaviour.
Agree completely. Your sandbox, your rules.
It is difficult sometimes to spot the difference between disruptive on purpose and trying to engage awkwardly, but abuse of trust and respect for everyone’s opinion is intolerable.
Thank you for all you do. As someone who has long battled the trolls on the web, thank you for reminding us we need to be on our guard and work together to make this a better space.