The fine art of balancing civility vs. free speech

[Nancy Drew 39]

This is a frequently debated topic on most Mafia sites and having the right balance between them, contributes the highest overall player enjoyment.

Err too far in the direction of free speech, where pretty much anything goes, and you have a highly toxic extremely unpleasant environment for the vast majority of players. OTOH, err too far in the direction of civility, can lead to players losing interest, due to feeling overcontrolled and walking on eggshells.

Hate speech for example, is frequently disallowed and obviously prevents that specific type of toxicity without making most players feel overcontrolled.

I think that attacking play or an idea, is always fine and while it’s certainly easy to argue against insults of any kind, the somewhat hostile, bullying or inflammatory aspect to someone’s play, can make that a slippery slope. Obviously, because it’s kind of naive to think someone isn’t going to negatively react to that but then insults can then arguably also make the game toxic. So, where should you draw the line?

[Nancy Drew 39]

I think that so long as you consider that this site is meant to be PG in content,
that hate-speech is banned,
and that insults directed towards players themselves are generally considered abusive,
you get to what is a fairly solid standard for how players should conduct themselves. If players still manage to be unpleasantly inflammatory under these regulations without (somehow) breaking any, then it's up to the moderator to warn a player and/or force-replace them if their play is compromising the game.

However, I fully acknowledge and sometimes (too passionately, even) embrace that mafia is a game of rhetoric, and rhetoric can be aggressive and without quarter for one's opponent. This is still a game about using words to convince a mass of players to LYNCH a target, after all.

You, Nsg, RC, Xyzzy, A50, Krazy are all mods I would 100% sign up for their games.