Allegations of misconduct

sl_ascend is no longer being supported by the authors/contributors because of allegations made against asymmetric employees.

The report of that is at https://kolmafia.us/showthread.php?23498-sl_ascend-a-cc_ascend-fork&p=154198&viewfull=1#post154198

Details of the allegations can be found at links at https://github.com/soolar/sl_ascend#notice

General Discussion thread here.

I personally am not sure how to respond - but since one response is to stop supporting KoL I figure the community might have some opinions and discussion. I think this is a better place for that.

I felt physically ill after reading all about this.

I canceled my subscription, for now. I'm waiting to see some official response before deciding what my permanent response will be.

KoLmafia is my hobby, and I have a chance to do Java (and now Javascript) things that I don't do at work - and ASH is my baby. I have a couple of things I want to do to improve scripting of Kingdom Of Exploathing, which I will do, for the benefit of people who may want to continue scripting it, regardless of this situation, but I expect I'll sit back and watch and wait, as mentioned above, before deciding on anything else.

I think it is important to remember that good people can do bad things, and bad people can do good things, and everyone makes mistakes. Some of those mistakes deserve prison, and some do not, but they are still mistakes.

I feel like people who equate KoL with the mistakes of one of the developers are being a bit unreasonable. Honestly, I feel it is unreasonable to write a person off as evil because they did something evil.

As it stands, I'm not angry: just disappointed. I reserve my anger for people who don't resolve to do better. Sure, Jick only came clean after being publicly confronted about it, but he still could have denied it. He didn't, and I think that is worth considering. I can't think of anything better they could do as of now, shitty as it may be.

In case you are wondering, I try to have this outlook about anyone who did something horrible. I'd give a similar spiel if they secretly murdered someone, prison sentences aside.

After all, everyone else has excoriated them already. I don't have anything to add in that regard.

I will say that Asymmetric should really use something more formal than Jick's personal Twitter account to respond to this, if only to demonstrate an understanding of how serious this is.

As an outsider to this forum and an avid user of Mafia, the thought of losing all the good work that goes into Mafia concerns me. I would like to ask though, what would it take from TPTB to reassure folks here to continue?

Thanks,

shks

shkspr said:

As an outsider to this forum and an avid user of Mafia, the thought of losing all the good work that goes into Mafia concerns me. I would like to ask though, what would it take from TPTB to reassure folks here to continue?

Thanks,

shks

Click to expand...

I've been thinking about this. The artist and the art are not the same. Composer Richard Wagner expressed numerous anti-Semitic opinions and his music was loved by the Nazis yet his music has merit and is performed today. So I want a solution that acknowledges Jick's transgressions but does not "harm" the game or my continued enjoyment of it.

So I think a very public - on KoL's main page, on Assymetric's site and on Steam in the West of Loathing notices area - acknowledging the truth of the accusations, regret at they way they were handled and public shunning of the rapist would address my personal concerns about supporting the game.

That said, my scripts are used by less than 300 people and I am the least prolific of the devs with commit access so my opinion is of less importance. I also acknowledge my privilege as a male in society and, in consequence, I will pay close attention to the opinions of others who have already earned my respect.

I want to start by saying that me being a KoL dev (playtester is really what it should be called, but that doesn't matter) has no impact on my response to this.

I was planning on making a thread here to discuss this, if no one else got to it first. I thought it might make sense to wait until/if Jick has some response to these events.

How much is a written response actually worth though? Especially from someone that makes a living by writing content for others, and therefore should be decent at putting together a message for people to digest. It's a very different type of writing, but still...

For now, I have cancelled my subscription. I'm also holding off on adding anything more to mafia for now.

(Unrelatedly, my less recent commits lately are because I had to reinstall my OS to continue getting any updates, and I haven't jumped through the hoops needed to have any working IDE set up, and non-trivial updates without an IDE usually don't seem worth the effort.)

Upon further consideration, I suppose I can see why Asymmetric has been reluctant to address this more formally. It’s the same reason that the Reddit post about this is marked NSFW: they are worried about the youngest members of this community seeing it and being traumatized.

I can’t immediately think of a good solution to that, as they can’t put a NSFW tag on their website or a mass Kmail. And I can hardly expect them to do something I can’t think of.

Any ideas about what they should do?

Given some of the testimony in the Kavanaugh, Epstein and Daniels "incidents" I am not sure not doing something to "protect the children" will protect them from anything. I can also craft an apology that does not get more graphic than the word "abuse". If I can do that, so can TPTB. I also recognize that I am not a stakeholder, directly, and a public statement that there was a pattern of abuse, a pattern of not "seeing" the abuse, an apology made to, and accepted by, the victim and an expressed desire not to let it happen again could be widely shared.

I guess I want to feel reassured that my continued support for and participation in the game is not enabling any more abusive behaviour and that there is a sense of remorse about past behaviour.

fronobulax said:

Given some of the testimony in the Kavanaugh, Epstein and Daniels "incidents" I am not sure not doing something to "protect the children" will protect them from anything. I can also craft an apology that does not get more graphic than the word "abuse". If I can do that, so can TPTB. I also recognize that I am not a stakeholder, directly, and a public statement that there was a pattern of abuse, a pattern of not "seeing" the abuse, an apology made to, and accepted by, the victim and an expressed desire not to let it happen again could be widely shared.

I guess I want to feel reassured that my continued support for and participation in the game is not enabling any more abusive behaviour and that there is a sense of remorse about past behaviour.

Click to expand...

You're not wrong. Personally, I'm not sure whether this should be considered NSFW. I'm just thinking that might be TPTB's reason for hesitation.

I'm of the opinion that everyone will have to make deeply personal decisions as to how they want to respond.

The biggest red flag for me was Phoenix's assertion that she still hasn't received any personal replies, even after Jick and HotStuff both tweeted publicly in response to her allegations. That coupled with the wording of the responses felt much more like a defensive PR move than genuine remorse.

That said, I've disapproved with Jick's leadership (direction of the game, interactions with players, etc) for some time and as a result haven't donated in a number of years, so I'm definitely biased going into this.

heeheehee said:

The biggest red flag for me was Phoenix's assertion that she still hasn't received any personal replies, even after Jick and HotStuff both tweeted publicly in response to her allegations. That coupled with the wording of the responses felt much more like a defensive PR move than genuine remorse.

Click to expand...

Why would they reply privately? Why would that be better? The entire issue boils down to keeping quiet about things they shouldn't have. If they were worried about PR so much, they wouldn't have confirmed the accusations at all. They had nothing to gain by doing that.

Saklad5 said:

Why would they reply privately? Why would that be better? The entire issue boils down to keeping quiet about things they shouldn't have. If they were worried about PR so much, they wouldn't have confirmed the accusations at all. They had nothing to gain by doing that.

Click to expand...

... because an apology should be to the person that it's directed toward, not just broadcast for the world to hear? There's nothing wrong with apologizing privately, followed by sending out a public statement, but neither of them did even that.

Jick's response denied / weasel-worded his role and threw Armak under the bus. HS's was a retaliation. Neither was an apology.

heeheehee said:

... because an apology should be to the person that it's directed toward, not just broadcast for the world to hear? There's nothing wrong with apologizing privately, followed by sending out a public statement, but neither of them did even that.

Jick's response denied / weasel-worded his role and threw Armak under the bus. HS's was a retaliation. Neither was an apology.

Click to expand...

It was a public accusation, and a public response. It was directed at them, though. It was objectively an apology, too, even if you think it wasn't sincere.

Saklad5 said:

It was objectively an apology, too, even if you think it wasn't sincere.

Click to expand...

"I'm sorry you feel that way" is an example of an apology that would have been better left unsaid. Perhaps that relates to your definition of "objective apology"?

There are two potential apologies that could/should be made. One of them is from the abuser and those who were oblivious to the abuse and directed to the victim. There is no reason why that needs to be public unless the victim so desires. The other apology should be from TPTB and directed to the KoL (and WoL) community. It could say "We made mistakes that hurt someone. We are sorry we did that, understand it was wrong and we won't do it again."

fronobulax said:

The other apology should be from TPTB and directed to the KoL (and WoL) community. It could say "We made mistakes that hurt someone. We are sorry we did that, understand it was wrong and we won't do it again."

Click to expand...

TPTB, meaning Asymmetric Games as a company, didn't do anything wrong, to my understanding.

Saklad5 said:

TPTB, meaning Asymmetric Games as a company, didn't do anything wrong, to my understanding.

Click to expand...

The individuals listed first and second at Asymmetric's website are accused of abuse and accused of ignoring it. There was a period when they were 2/3 of the entire company and I am quite comfortable with equating them with TPTB. I suspect that if this distinction is important to you then we probably have different answers to the question "If the artist is corrupt, does that taint the art?"

I will also note some of the abuse was alleged to occur in Asymmetric offices. There are definitely circumstances under which a corporation is held liable for the actions of its employees in corporate spaces. Asymmetric is almost certainly too small to be legally responsible but I am certainly willing to follow the precedent imposed on larger companies and assign some responsibility to the company.

I distinguish between someone operating in a personal capacity and someone operating in a commercial capacity. If this happened under the auspices of Asymmetric, then they are at fault. Otherwise, I don't think they did anything wrong.

And you're not asking for the company with 2/3 members accused to apologize. You are asking Asymmetric in the present to apologize. As for legal responsibility, I highly doubt size has anything to do with it.

Saklad5 said:

I distinguish between someone operating in a personal capacity and someone operating in a commercial capacity. If this happened under the auspices of Asymmetric, then they are at fault. Otherwise, I don't think they did anything wrong.

And you're not asking for the company with 2/3 members accused to apologize. You are asking Asymmetric in the present to apologize. As for legal responsibility, I highly doubt size has anything to do with it.

Click to expand...

It seems pretty clear to me that you have never worked for a corporation with over 20 employees, owned a company or had any management responsibilities that had a regulatory and compliance components. Given your previously demonstrated ability to rub me the wrong way, I see no benefit in us continuing this line of discussion.

Ya know, I'm going to rant a bit.

Some of the comments I have seen have been along the line of "Lets look at Wagner, a blatant anti-semite, and how people love and accept his work in spite of that."

There is a lot we can learn from that specific example.

I love Wagner's music. I hate Wagner's moral philosophy. I hate how Wagner's music - and the mythology which inspired it - was adopted by the Third Reich to celebrate and justify White Supremacy.

And yet, I love Wagner's music.

Wagner's personal moral philosophy is repugnant. So, why did anyone ever play it? Even during his time, Gustav Mahler - a Jew - conducted his music. Why? I cannot answer - but that was Mahler's choice.

Given that people are bringing up Wagner, specifically, in reference to Jick and KoL, what does it mean?

As a KoLmafia developer, I see myself in the role of a conductor of Wagner - I loathe the morality of the composer, but he produced beautiful music, and it is not up to me to deny his fans because the composer was loathsome. I present KoL to players of the game, via KoLmaia, in order to make it even more beautiful.

The difference, to my eye, is that I am a conductor supporting an immoral composer while he still lives and produces new music and profits from my performance of his works.

So did Mahler.

I'm not going to screw my own community by disabling KoLmaia - even ignoring the four or more other devs with commit access who could reverse that vandalism.

But do I want to be better than Mahler by refusing to aid somebody whose behavior is reprehensible, as opposed to giving him his royalties?

Still pondering.